The men of the border, with their independent dispositions, were extremely difficult to control. Even when imminent danger demanded concerted action, they were amenable only to the lightest discipline. If they followed a leader, it was not from any consideration of their obligations as militiamen, but because they had confidence in him and personal regard for him. These sentiments Boone excited in almost every one with whom he came in contact, and his influence over the rough, untrammelled backwoods fighters was probably greater than that exerted by any other leader. In the time of dire danger and stress that came upon the Kentucky settlers, when hundreds fled at the approach of the storm, had not Boone stood his ground, the new country must have been deserted. The affection and respect which the settlers evinced for Boone were enhanced by the fact that he was in all respects one of themselves. Born on the border, of backwoods parentage, he was wedded to the hard life led by the frontier people, and like most of them he was poor and unlettered. There is much in his simple, honest character, with its homely common sense and cheery humor, to remind us of Abraham Lincoln, and it is not difficult to believe that Lincoln, under similar circumstances, would have been just such a backwoodsman as Boone. The high qualities which made Daniel Boone a natural leader among his fellows were not lost upon men of superior station with whom he happened to have relations. Colonel Richard Henderson, of Granville County, North Carolina, had the highest opinion of the pioneer’s character and ability. Henderson was a judge whose circuit included the backwoods town of Hillsboro, and here he had frequently met Boone at the time that the latter lived upon the Yadkin. In fact, there is a tradition that Boone once saved Henderson from ill-treatment, if not death, at the hands of a band of Regulators. Boone’s descriptions of Kentucky had keenly interested the Judge and ultimately awoke in his mind the idea of establishing in that wonderful region a semi-independent republic, to be called Transylvania. Of course, such a movement would meet with the disapprobation of the British authorities, but active opposition was hardly to be feared in such a remote part of the country. Three brothers named Hart who, like Colonel Henderson, were men of means, associated themselves with him in this romantic project. The defeat of the Indians in Dunmore’s War and the subsequent treaty of peace seemed to open a promising prospect of prosecuting the enterprise with success.