Borderland

“ These three dissipations not only exhaust the nerve force of men, but blunt both their physical and their moral sensibilities so that the man for whom, in all possibility, his angel mate may be waiting upon the Borderland may find himself handicapped at the outset, should he ever essay an adventure into Borderland romance while still on the earth. ”

“ While considerable changes may take place in the course of a century, yet these are often of a more or less superficial character, affecting only to a limited extent the thoughts, habits, and customs of a community. In the present instance, however, the changes which took place in the life of the Border clans seem to have been as thorough as they were rapid. In a comparatively short time the Borders, from being one of the most lawless and disorderly districts in the country, became an example to both kingdoms in honesty, sobriety, and true patriotism. ”

“ Border disputes, commercial jealousies, wrongs done to individual citizens, the mere vague dislike which turns a neighbour into a natural enemy, all exist, and that in a form condensed and intensified by the very minuteness of the scene on which they have to act. A rival nation is, to all but the inhabitants of a narrow strip of frontier, a mere matter of hearsay: but a rival whose dwelling-place is within sight of the city gates quickly grows into an enemy who can be seen and felt. ”

“ Is she to become a border State, and her southern boundary the line of blood, marked by frowning forts, by bristling bayonets, by the tramp of contending armies, engaged in the carnival of slaughter, and revelry of death? Is New England to be re-colonized, and the British flag again to float over the chosen domain of freedom? What of the small States, deprived of the secured equality and protective guarantees of the Constitution, to be surely crushed by more powerful communities? ”

“ The Border States in our Civil War were the deadliest battle-grounds, not only the meeting-places of the contending armies but also the scene of innumerable local feuds and conflicts between the inhabitants, half of whom inclined to one side and half to the other. ”

“ In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization. Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.
The American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier—a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land. ”

“ But while poverty,—largely due to circumstances over which the people had no control,—and lawlessness,—the result of the inherent weakness of the central government,—had much to do in creating that condition of affairs on the Borders which we have briefly described, there were other and perhaps more potent causes which demand consideration. ”

“ The obligations of the Government in reference to the Western frontier are of a very peculiar character. It is first bound, by a common duty, to protect its own border settlements, extending along a line of one thousand miles, against the incursions of numerous savage tribes, separated from those settlements by mere imaginary lines ”

“ Hence, distance from the centres of civilization, chronic misrule and stupid superstitions, are effectual obstacles to all immigration, except that a main armee. This is evidently the sole way to protect the frontier, and if duly carried out it might succeed in re- pressing revolutions. ”

“ In such an atmosphere there could not fail to return a belief in the good old border rule, "the simple plan: that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can." And it must be remembered that an island country's border is the enemy's coast! On that ethical understanding many privateer owners built up large fortunes, still enjoyed by descendants who in these days would look upon high-sea looting of non-combatants with definite horror. ”

“ Better to be the part of a great WHOLE than the whole of a little nothing.
These continental Border-lands may see the face of their future history in the mirror of England’s annals. They are quaking now with the impetuous emotions of local nationality. They are blackened and scarred in the contest for the Welsh and Scotch independence of centuries agone. But over those boundary wastes the grass shall yet grow soft, fair and green, and there, too, the white lambs shall lie in the sun.
My walk lay over the most inhospitable and unpeopled section I ever saw. ”

“ The proximity of the English and Scots in the neighbourhood of the border line, and the inoperative character of the laws, arising from the disorders of the feudal system, which filled both countries with chiefs and petty governors, eager, and sufficiently powerful, to make aggressions and reprisals on each other, are of themselves a sufficient explanation of the causes which led to those continued strifes called the Border warfare. ”

“ Regarding the question from another point of view,—it is infinitely more dangerous for a state to have on its borders a race who have kin immediately beyond the border in the enjoyment of a form of government which assures them their independence, or in which they are paramount, than to have on its frontier a race alien to their neighbours beyond the border. ”

“ For Border matters, they are so shameful and inhuman as it would loathe a king’s heart to think of them. I have borne for your quiet too long, even murders committed by the hands of your own wardens, which, if they be true, as I fear they be, I hope they shall well pay for such demerits, and you will never endure such barbarous acts to be unrevenged. ”

“ Many of the men of the border were blunt in manners, rude in speech, driven to the absolute liberty of the far West with better natures shattered and hopes blasted, to seek in the exciting life of the plainsman and mountaineer oblivion of some incidents of their youthful days, which were better forgotten. Yet these aliens from society, these strangers to the refinements of civilization, who would tear off a bloody scalp even with grim smiles of satisfaction, were fine fellows, full of the milk of human kindness, and would share their last slapjack with a hungry stranger. ”

“ Within the frontiers of the States is massed a population of 110 millions. When we look closely we see that over ten millions of these inhabitants are marked off from the rest by a frontier, a colour line, as sharply defined and jealously guarded as the frontiers of a kingdom. Across that racial frontier all legitimate social traffic is barred, the custodians of the frontier being those who stand on the white side of the line. Any attempt to cross that racial frontier produces mob war. ”

“ If you go straight away from Levees and Government House Lists, past Trades' Balls—far beyond everything and everybody you ever knew in your respectable life—you cross, in time, the Border line where the last drop of White blood ends and the full tide of Black sets in. It would be easier to talk to a new made Duchess on the spur of the moment than to the Borderline folk without violating some of their conventions or hurting their feelings. ”

“ The general introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters, for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in the debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief," and the difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. ”

“ For the frontier, therefore, the centripetal force is weakened; the centrifugal is strengthened often by the attraction of some neighboring state or tribe, which has established bonds of marriage, trade, and friendly intercourse with the outlying community. Moreover, the mere infusion of foreign blood, customs, and ideas, especially a foreign religion, which is characteristic of a border zone, invades the national solidarity. Hence we find that a tendency to political defection constantly manifests itself along the periphery. ”

“ Abolitionists going to the Border War; innocent-looking outfits carrying fugitive slaves; officers hunting escaped negroes; and most numerous of all, homeseekers "hunting country"--a nation on wheels, an empire in the commotion and pangs of birth. Down I went with the rest, across ferries, through Dodgeville, Mineral Point and Platteville, past a thousand vacant sites for farms toward my own farm so far from civilization, shot out of civilization by the forces of civilization itself. ”

“ Reduced to their lowest terms, the elements which enter into a national boundary are two, the land and the people; and an ideally perfect frontier would be at the same time geographic and ethnographic. Such coincidences are, however, relatively rare, and the problem varies from age to [Pg 11] age as different geographical considerations change in relative importance and as the human elements of race, language, and nationality develop, shift, and grow more complex. ”

“ But we shall never get away from the Border if we stop to moralise on all its scenes of strife—most of them well forgotten. Border fighting was commonly on a small scale, with plunder rather than conquest or glory for its aim; like the Arabs of to-day, those fierce but canny neighbours were seldom in a spirit for needless slaughter, that would entail fresh blood-feuds on their own kin. The Border fortresses were many, but chiefly small, designed for sudden defence against an enemy who might be trusted not to keep the field long. ”

“ Through commerce and widespread territories the nation is brought into constant intercourse and often into the most delicate relations with almost every savage race on the globe, thus standing almost alone of European nations on that border-land where civilization confronts barbarism, of all positions in which a nation can be placed perhaps the one most weighted with responsibilities and most pregnant with possibilities of good and evil. ”

“ There was a misty look about the room, giving a curious softness to each table and chair and furnishing.
Gradually, the mistiness increased; growing, as it were, out of nothing. Then, slowly, a soft, white light began to glow in the room. The flames of the candles shone through it, palely. I looked from side to side, and found that I could still see each piece of furniture; but in a strangely unreal way, more as though the ghost of each table and chair had taken the place of the solid article. ”

“ The people of this beautiful State are just now enduring a double share of the evils of border location, having not only the ill-directed “sympathy” with the insurrectionists of Canada to repress, but the excitement of the newly-vexed question of boundary. As this last subject is one little understood, perhaps the history of the negotiations on the subject may not be unacceptable to the readers of the American Scenery. ”

“ If ever there was a cold-blooded transaction, in which the lives and happiness of thirty thousand innocent people were reckoned of no account in the mere tracing of a boundary line between two countries, this appears to be one ”

“ But the morals of the people, under the influence of the faithful ministrations of Boston, were gradually reformed, and the desert was made to bud and blossom like the rose. [Pg 297] And what was effected in this particular district may be taken as a fair sample of the good work accomplished by the Church throughout the whole length of the Borders. Its influence was potent and far-reaching, and mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of evil. “How did it happen,” says a modern writer, “that the raiding and reiving race which inhabited the Borders became so peaceful and law-abiding? ”

“ The border States are worse off than during the previous decade, owing, no doubt, to the war and to the proximity of the old free States, in which the freedmen found more sympathy than among their former neighbors. ”

“ So the generations beat one another into neighbourly hatred and national pride; till the Border clans half forgot their feuds in a larger sentiment of patriotism; and what was once an adventurous exercise, rose to be a fierce struggle for independence. The Borderers were the “forwards” of this international sport, on whose fields and strongholds became most hotly forged the differences in which they played the part of
THE BASS ROCK, FIRTH OF FORTH, OFF THE COAST OF HADDINGTONSHIRE hammer and of anvil by turns. ”

“ After a time, I looked to right and left, and saw the intolerable blackness of the night, pierced by remote gleams of fire. Onward, outward, I drove. Once, I glanced behind, and saw the earth, a small crescent of blue light, receding away to my left. Further off, the sun, a splash of white flame, burned vividly against the dark. ”

“ THE DARK SUN
How long our souls lay in the arms of joy, I cannot say; but, all at once, I was waked from my happiness, by a diminution of the pale and gentle light that lit the Sea of Sleep. I turned toward the huge, white orb, with a premonition of coming trouble. ”

“ You are young here yet; you are flushed with the success of your teaching; you have lived a short time in this quiet village, where, until the last few days, all has been serene. You know nothing of the strife, of the necessity of fighting, of the cruelty which makes up this border existence. Only two years have hardened me so that I actually pant for the blood of the renegade who has robbed me. A frontiersman must take his choice of succumbing or cutting his way through flesh and bone. Blood will be spilled; if not yours, then your foe's. The pioneers run from the plow to the fight ”