The people who made it possible for Tennessee to have a centennial were a wonderful people. Within a period of about fifteen years, they were engaged in three revolutions; participated in organizing and lived under five different governments; established and administered the first free and independent government in America; founded the first church and the first college in the southwest; put in operation the second newspaper in the “New World west of the Alleghanies;” met and fought the British in half a dozen battles, from King’s Mountain to the gates of Charleston, gaining a victory in every battle; held in check, beat back and finally expelled from the country four of the most powerful tribes of Indian warriors in America; and left Tennesseans their fame as a heritage, and a commonwealth of which it is their privilege to be proud. These are the people among whom Andrew Jackson settled and began life, and from whose character, example and achievements he must have received some little degree of inspiration. Passing from the scene of their toil and trials, their struggles and dangers, from war with the savage and war with the civilized, let us devote a little time to further examination into their character, as revealed in the judicial records made and left by them. FOOTNOTES: [B] The almanac-groundhog and goose-bone theories were adopted by a later and wiser generation. CHAPTER III. _A UNIQUE COURT._ There may be mistake, error, fraud and injustice in court proceedings and judicial records; but when such records were made more than a century ago, and contain some part of the history of the people who made them, and have stood all these years unchallenged and uncontradicted, such records may be safely accepted as truth. In writing of a people more than a century after the period in which they lived--a people who did not have a daily newspaper in their midst to chronicle their deeds and views, and who were in a country between which and other parts of the world there was but little if any communication--it is easy indeed for a facile writer to ascribe to them characters which they did not have, views which they did not entertain, and accomplishments with which they were not entitled to be credited, without taking much risk of being contradicted.