ange then that we have no record of an early flourishing slave
plantation beyond the mountains. Kercheval gives an account of a settlement
by slaves and overseers on the large Carter grant situated on the west side
of the Shenandoah, but it seems that the settlement did not prosper as
such, for it soon passed into the hands of the Burwells and the Pages.[10]

The rise of slavery in the Tidewater section, however, established the
going of those settlers in the direction of government for the people. The
East began with indentured servants but soon found the system of slavery
more profitable. It was not long before the blacks constituted the masses
of the laboring population,[11] while on the expiration of their term of
service the indentured servants went west and helped to democratize the
frontier. Caste too was secured by the peculiar land tenure of the East.
The king and the proprietors granted land for small sums on feudal terms.
The grantees in their turn settled these holdings in fee tail on the oldest
son in accordance with the law of primogeniture. This produced a class
described by Jefferson who said: "There were then aristocrats, half-breeds,
pretenders, a solid independent yeomanry, looking askance at those above,
yet not venturing to jostle them, and last and lowest, a seculum of beings
called overseers, the most abject, degraded and unprincipled race, always
cap in hand to the Dons who employed them for furnishing material for the
exercise of their price."[12]

In the course of colonial development the people of the mountains were
usually referred to as frontiersmen dwelling in the West. This "West" was
for a number of years known as the region beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains
and later beyond the Alleghenies. A more satisfactory dividing line,
however, is the historical line of demarcation between the East and West
which moved toward the mountains in the proportion that the western section
became connected with the East and indoctrinated by its proslavery
propagandists. In none of these parts, however, not even far south, were
the eastern people able to bring the frontiersmen altogether around to
their way of thinking. Their ideals and environment caused them to have
differing opinions as to the extent, character, and foundations of local
self-government, differing conceptions of the meaning of representative
institutions, differing ideas of the magnitude of governmental power over
the individual, and differi