l
government. [Footnote: Blount MSS. Biography of Blount, in manuscript,
compiled by one of his descendants from the family papers.] He laid out
Knoxville as his capital, where he built a good house with a lawn in
front. On his recommendation Sevier was appointed Brigadier-General for
the Eastern District and Robertson for the Western; the two districts
known as Washington and Miro respectively.

Blount was the first man of leadership in the West who was of Cavalier
ancestry; for though so much is said of the Cavalier type in the
southern States it was everywhere insignificant in numbers, and
comparatively few of the southern men of mark have belonged to it.
Blount was really of Cavalier blood. He was descended from a Royalist
baronet, who was roughly handled by the Cromwellians, and whose three
sons came to America. One of them settled in North Carolina, near
Albemarle Sound, and from him came the new governor of the southwestern
territory. Blount was a good-looking, well-bred man, with cultivated
tastes; but he was also a man of force and energy, who knew well how to
get on with the backwoodsmen, so that he soon became popular among them.

Retrospect: What had been Accomplished during the Seven Years.

The West had grown with astonishing rapidity during the seven years
following the close of the Revolutionary War. In 1790 there were in
Kentucky nearly seventy-four thousand, and in the Southwest Territory
nearly thirty-six thousand souls. In the Northwest Territory the period
of rapid growth Years had not yet begun, and the old French inhabitants
still formed the majority of the population.

The changes during these seven years had been vital. In the West, as
elsewhere through the Union, the years succeeding the triumphant close
of the Revolution were those which determined whether the victory was or
was not worth winning. To throw off the yoke of the stranger was useless
and worse than useless if we showed ourselves unable to turn to good
account the freedom we had gained. Unless we could build up a great
nation, and unless we possessed the power and self-restraint to frame an
orderly and stable government, and to live under its laws when framed,
the long years of warfare against the armies of the king were wasted and
went for naught.

At the close of the Revolution the West was seething with sedition.
There were three tasks before the Westerners; all three had to be
accomplished, under pain of utter failure.