ng theories of the relations of church and
State. The East having accepted caste as the basis of its society naturally
adopted the policy of government by a favorite minority, the West inclined
more and more toward democracy. The latter considered representatives only
those who had been elected as such by a majority of the people of the
district in which they lived; the former believed in a more restricted
electorate, and the representation of districts and interests, rather than
that of numbers.[13] Furthermore, almost from the founding of the colonies
there was court party consisting of the rich planters and favorites
composing the coterie of royal officials generally opposed by a country
party of men who, either denied certain privileges or unaccustomed to
participation in the affairs of privileged classes, felt that the
interests of the lowly were different. As the frontier moved westward the
line of cleavage tended to become identical with that between the
privileged classes and the small farmers, between the lowlanders and the
uplanders, between capital and labor, and finally between the East and
West.

The frontiersmen did not long delay in translating some of their political
theories into action. The aristocratic East could not do things to suit
the mountaineers who were struggling to get the government nearer to them.
At times, therefore, their endeavors to abolish government for the people
resulted in violent frontier uprisings like that of Bacon's Rebellion
in Virginia and the War of Regulation in North Carolina. In all of these
cases the cause was practically the same. These pioneers had observed
with jealous eye the policy which bestowed all political honors on the
descendants of a few wealthy families living upon the tide or along the
banks of the larger streams. They were, therefore, inclined to advance
with quick pace toward revolution.[14] On finding such leaders as James
Otis, Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, the frontiersmen instituted such
a movement in behalf of freedom that it resulted in the Revolutionary
War.[15] These patriots' advocacy of freedom, too, was not half-hearted.
When they demanded liberty for the colonists they spoke also for the
slaves, so emphasizing the necessity for abolition that observers from afar
thought that the institution would of itself soon pass away.[16]

In the reorganization of the governments necessitated by the overthrow
of the British, however, the frontiersmen