The new settlers were almost all soldiers of
the Revolutionary armies; they were hardworking, orderly men of trained
courage and of keen intellect. An outside observer speaks of them as
being the best informed, the most courteous and industrious, and the
most law-abiding of all the settlers who had come to the frontier, while
their leaders were men of a higher type than was elsewhere to be found
in the West. [Footnote: "Denny's Military Journal," May 28 and June 15,
1789.] No better material for founding a new State existed anywhere.
With such a foundation the State was little likely to plunge into the
perilous abysses of anarchic license or of separatism and disunion.
Moreover, to plant a settlement of this kind on the edge of the
Indian-haunted wilderness showed that the founders possessed both
hardihood and resolution.
Contrast with the Deeds of the Old Pioneers.
Yet it must not be forgotten that the daring needed for the performance
of this particular deed can in no way be compared with that shown by the
real pioneers, the early explorers and Indian fighters. The very fact
that the settlement around Marietta was national in its character, that
it was the outcome of national legislation, and was undertaken under
national protection, made the work of the individual settler count for
less in the scale.
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