Sunday, November 24, 2013

6 November 1810 to Col. Smith at Fort Hampton, TN: Who would call these people anarchists? Only a historian.

16 November 1810, the Nashville REVIEW:
EXTRACT FROM A PETITION OF THE INHABITANTS OF DOUBLEHEAD’S RESERVE, TO COL. SMITH COMMANDING AT FORT HAMPTON.
               The greater part of our crops of every description are yet in the fields; our stocks wandering in the woods, our debts unliquidated and uncollected; your fellow citizens laboring under extreme sickness. There is not one family out of twenty, we will venture to say, is exempt from this affliction. Few waggons in the reserve for the removal of citizens; few boats to be got, and none yet prepared, from the recentness of the orders, to effect the same. Our situation is truely distressing. If there is no mitigation of the orders, in addition to our calamities and sacrifices, we must inevitably lose the labors of the present year, which are our principal dependance for support for our families. We shall be turned adrift iinto a wide world, to seek a scanty maintenance for ourselves, wives, and little children. To what extremity, and where, the storms of fate will drive us—the God of Heaven knows. The foxes have holes, the fowls of the air have nests, but we have not where to lay our heads.
               To hear the child cry for bread and the parent not to have wherewithal to supply the calls of nature—this must be the situation of many of your fellow citizens without an extention of the orders. Your fellow citizens know you are an agent of the government, and that you are bound to obey. And in consequence of that, your fellow citizens will pledge their honor, and every thing that is sacred, that they will afford you nothing of a disagreeable nature in consequence of their removal. They will obey you promptly.
               The only thing we crave, ask, and pray for, is indulgence to effect the same; in obtaining of which, your petitioners will ever feel themselves in duty bound, to pray for your future welfare while in life.
               (Presented 6th November. Time prolonged until lst January.)

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