Mountain (political faction)

“ All who were suspected by the Mountain of having the least sympathy with the nobles or persecuted priests were branded as counter-revolutionary. The Mountain was willing to resort to any measures, however shocking, to rid the nation of those suspected of counter-revolutionary tendencies, and its leaders relied upon the populace of Paris to aid them in reaching their ends. ”

“ Clan and tribal societies, feudal and republican rule, always on a small scale, characterize mountain sociology. All these are attended by an exaggerated individualism and its inevitable concomitant, the blood feud. Mountain policy tends to diminish the power of the central authority to the vanishing point, giving individualism full scope. Social and economic retardation, caused by extreme isolation and encouraged by protected location, tend to keep the social body small and loosely organized. Every aspect of environment makes against social integration. ”

“ The first is the easy possibility of a counter-revolution among the inhabitants of the mountain districts, who hold but few slaves, who have preserved a devoted love for the Union, and who are, if not at positive feud, at least on anything but social harmony with their aristocratic neighbors of the lowlands and of the plantation. Unlike the 'mean whites' who live among slaves and slave-holders, and are virtually more degraded than the blacks, these mountaineers are men of strong character and common-sense, combining the industrious disposition of the North with the fierce pride of the South. ”

“ It is more often the case, however, that the scant resources, small number, and divided political condition of the mountain tribes make such conquest impossible. Their depredations provoke reprisals from the stronger states of the plain, who bring the mountain region under subjection, merely to police their frontier. Strabo makes it clear that the Romans, having secured certain passes over the Alps, neglected the conquest of the ranges, till the increase of Roman colonies along the piedmont rim excited the cupidity of the mountaineers. ”

“ It is only in case our government, impelled by ill-directed vanity, should decide on the absolute conquest of the mountains of the Kabyles, that we might encounter in the country, and in the political constitution of those mountaineers, some of the obstacles that characterise the Caucasian regions. ”

“ No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than the democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the situation. A part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is of the opinion that the Army would revolt in its favor. ”

“ In fact there seemed to be a general uproar taking place, during which each party of the free and independent mountaineers deemed it expedient to show their steady adherence to their own side of the question by shooting at any one they saw, from behind a stone or a tree, for fear that person might accidentally be a partizan of the opposite faction. ”

“ He smiled grimly that following spring when he heard that a company of mountain militia from a county that was notorious for a desperate feud had been sent down to keep order in the tobacco lowlands; he kept on smiling every time he heard that a mountaineer had sold his coal lands and moved down to buy some blue-grass farm, and wondering how far this peaceful dispossessment might go in time; and whether a fusion of these social extremes of civilization might not be in the end for the best good of the State. ”

“ The reason for this is, that Nature intervenes every barrier to prevent conquests, and shields the native mountaineer from onslaughts of a foreign foe. The ringing words, "Make way for Liberty," could never have become immortal had it not been for a mountain pass. ”

“ So steep and precipitous are the ridges which divide these smiling vales from each other that the ascent and descent are in many places both difficult and dangerous even for the natives; European mountaineers need to have stout limbs and steady heads to accomplish them in safety. Hence in former days each valley contained a separate tribe, which was commonly in a state of permanent hostility towards its neighbours across the mountain barriers. ”

“ An early alpine tradition, historically traceable to the isolated and responsible position of the first guideless parties, who had to face the dangers of the mountains, still unfamiliar, and the army of their hostile critics as if going forth against an enemy, made the leader an absolute autocrat, the commander of a forlorn hope. Many leaders of this type were frankly bullies, ordering their friends for their good like old-time schoolmasters. Occasionally, when one man was marked out by experience or personality, the results were effective in climbing. ”

“ Parties and ideas continually move, but not by measurable marches on a stable course; the political soil itself steals forth by imperceptible degrees, like a travelling glacier, carrying on its bosom not only political parties but their flag-posts and cantonments ”

“ Beyond these rise the stern barriers of the Rocky Mountains, the limits, as it were, of the Atlantic world. The rugged defiles and deep valleys of this vast chain form sheltering places for restless and ferocious bands of savages, many of them the remnants of tribes, once inhabitants of the prairies, but broken up by war and violence, and who carry into their mountain haunts the fierce passions and reckless habits of desperadoes. ”

“ The West’s general interest in public affairs is not remarkable when we consider the history of the Valley. The pioneers who crossed the Alleghanies with rifle and axe were peculiarly jealous of their rights and liberties. They viewed every political measure in the light of its direct, concrete bearing upon themselves. They risked much to build homes and erect States in the wilderness and they insisted, not unreasonably, that the government should not forget them in their exile. ”

“ Do you believe that the Mountain has not enough forces to defeat the adherents of Dumouriez, Orléans and Coburg combined? Parisians, the fate of all France, of all Europe, and all humanity is in your hands. The Mountain needs the People. ”

“ If sinister in purpose, that mountain army was certainly well drilled and under the dominant spirit of some amazing leadership, for no sound, no gesture, no movement came from it. And then Jason saw a pale, dark young man, the secretary of state, himself a mountain man, rise above the heads of the crowd and begin to speak.
"You are not here as revolutionists, criminals, or conspirators, because you are loyal to government and law." ”

“ The Northern faction is not so sure of itself; it has sacrificed the interests of the free North to the existence of the party and is accustomed to yield to the threats of secession and to the arrogance of the South. The first of these factions considers itself victorious; the other looks upon itself as beaten ”

“ We may suppose, too, that the mountaineers, or agricultural party, not the least powerful, would resist so great advantages to the faction of the coastmen, if acquainted with all the results which the new policy would produce. Nor could so experienced a leader of mankind be insensible of those often not insalutary consequences of a free state in the changing humours of a wide democracy—their impatience at pecuniary demands— their quick and sometimes uncharitable apprehensions of the motives of their advisers. ”

“ Part of the Mountain fled abroad, another part was assigned to the High Court of Bourges, and a parliamentary regulation placed the rest under the school-master supervision of the President of the National Assembly. Paris was again put under a state of siege; and the democratic portion of the National Guards was disbanded. Thus the influence of the Mountain in parliament was broken, together with the power; of the small traders’ class in Paris. ”

“ The Whigs seem determined to extirpate the Tories, and the Tories the Whigs.... If a stop cannot be put to these massacres, the country will be depopulated in a few months more, as neither Whig nor Tory can live.”
In September 1780, while this spirit of hatred was at its height, the regiments of backwoods patriots, who were to go down in history as “Kings Mountain Men,” rendezvoused at South Mountain north of Gilbert Town and determined to set upon Ferguson and his command, then believed to be in Gilbert Town. ”

“ The mountaineers planted themselves like rocks in a torrent, and dammed its course with all their might. On both sides arose a determined resistance, different in method, similar in result. In the case of the peasants labour came to a stand-still; in that of the hill folk open war broke out. The grasping exactions of the tyrant dominant body produced nothing from waste lands and armed mountaineers; destitution and revolt were equally beyond their power to cope with ”

“ Among the fastness of the mountains, in the rural districts, far from the contagion of political centres, the fires of patriotism still burned, sometimes in the higher walks of life, oftener in obscure hamlets, and still oftener under skins as black as the hearts of those who claimed to own them. ”

“ The presidents were nearly all Girondists; they charged the Mountain with the design of destroying the National Assembly, and substituting in its place a Parisian Dictatorship. They also reproached it with the massacre of September.
"The Mountain, in its turn, charged them with wishing for a federative republic like Switzerland, with being hostile to the capital, and with having, without cause, placed the republic in a state of warfare with the whole of Europe.
"The Mountain had at its command the Jacobins of Paris, and the greatest part of the popular societies of the republic ”

“ Not a word can be spoken by a supposed reactionary orator without a murmur—not a phrase completed without a shout of denegation, a torrent of interruptions, or peeling bursts of ironical laughter. The "Mountain" is in perpetual labour; but its produce bears more resemblance to a yelping pack of hungry blood-hounds, than to an innocent mouse: it is in perpetual movement; and, like crushing avalanches from its summit, rush down its most energetic members to the tribune, to attempt to crush the Assembly by vehemence and violence of language. ”

“ She had once heard a mountain preacher draw a picture of the devil, which made him most attractive and in the same way that this youth was most attractive. Certain of the sympathies of his rough hearers, the man had painted Beelzebub with broad, rough, verbal strokes, as a bluegrass gentleman intent on the destruction of the honor, independence, liberty of mountaineers. The mountaineer has never and will never understand what right the government of state or nation has to interfere with whatsoe'er he does on his own land with his own corn in his own still. ”

“ The first rough conquest of the wilderness is accomplished, and that great supply of free lands which year after year has served to reinforce the democratic influences in the United States is exhausted. It is true that vast tracts of government land are still untaken, but they constitute the mountain and arid regions, only a small fraction of them capable of conquest, and then only by the application of capital and combined effort. The free lands that made the American pioneer have gone. ”

“ Pretty soon there aren’t going to be any more hill folk—if indeed, there are any now.
“‘“The Hatfields and McCoys, they were reckless mountain boys,” whose history is now as stale as that of the Capone mob. Their feud, which ... threatened to provoke a civil war between two states, gave rise to the general belief in the lasting endurance of the hill dwellers. 324 A race must be hardy as the ragweed when it could not be exterminated even by its own patient effort. ”

“ It means also in general a wide zone of habitation and food supply on the gentler slope, a better commissary and transport base whence to make the final ascent, whether in conquest, trade or ethnic growth. Mountain boundaries are therefore rarely by nature impartial. They do not umpire the great game of expansion fairly. They lower the bars to the advancing people on one side, and hold them relentlessly in place to the other. ”

“ I am as resolutely determined to defend the independence of Vermont, as Congress that of the United States, and rather than fail, will retire with the hardy Green Mountain Boys into the desolate caverns of the mountains, and wage war with the devil, hell, and human [114] nature at large. ”

“ As a rule, falling stones, so great a danger in the Alps, are rare among our mountains; once or twice in a season, perhaps, you may see, or hear, a big stone go thundering [Pg 105] down the hillside when no human agency has been at work.
I refer to human agency, because the mention of falling stones reminds me of the now disused sport of crag-bowling. The rolling of stones down mountain sides, still a recognized method of warfare among hillsmen, has rightly been anathematized in this peaceful country since rock-climbing became popular ”

“ Those people are as lugubrious as a ruin.
About eleven o'clock, a fierce barking announced the neighborhood of the camp. Ten or a dozen enormous dogs rushed out and hurled themselves upon us, showing all their teeth. Our captors drove them back with stones, and after a quarter of an hour of hostilities, peace was declared. These inhospitable monsters were the advance sentinels of the King of the Mountains. They scent the soldiers as a contrabandist's dog scents a custom-house officer. ”

“ Yonder it rolls, along the mountain's base, now leaping, rushing onward, like a giant army charging a deadly foe, lashing its banks as if it longed to break from its restraint, and charge the world. And there it strikes the mountain's side, and for a moment falters. It will turn aside defeated! Will it? No! It is no coward, and the mountain yields—the mountain falls—the Osage breaks the barrier, and rushes on. ”