The Winning of the West, Volume 4: Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 4: Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
Blount brought his family to Tennessee at once, and took the lead in
trying to build up institutions for higher education. After a good deal
of difficulty an academy was organized under the title of Blount
College, and was opened as soon as a sufficient number of pupils could
be gotten together; there were already two other colleges in the
Territory, Greeneville and Washington, the latter being the academy
founded by Doak. Like almost all other institutions of learning of the
day these three were under clerical control; but Blount College was
chartered as a non-denomination institution, the first of its kind in
the United States. [Footnote: See Edward T. Sanford's "Blount College
and the University of Tennessee," p. 13.] The clergyman and the lawyer,
with the school-master, were still the typical men of letters in all the
frontier communities. The doctor was not yet a prominent feature of life
in the backwoods, though there is in the _Gazette_ an advertisement of
one who announces that he intends to come to practise "with a large
stock of genuine medicines." [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, June 19,
1794.]
Books of the Backwoods.
The ordinary books were still school books, books of law, and sermons or
theological writings. The first books, or pamphlets, published in
Eastern Tennessee were brought out about this time at the _Gazette_
office, and bore such titles as "A Sermon on Psalmody, by Rev. Hezekiah
Balch"; "A Discourse by the Rev. Samuel Carrick"; and a legal essay
called "Western Justice." [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, Jan. 30 and
May 8, 1794.] There was also a slight effort now and then at literature
of a lighter kind. The little Western papers, like those in the East,
had their poets' corners, often with the heading of "Sacred to the
Muses," the poems ranging from "Lines to Myra" and "An Epitaph on John
Topham" to "The Pernicious Consequences of Smoking Cigars." In one of
the issues of the _Knoxville Gazette_ there is advertised for sale a new
song by "a gentleman of Col. McPherson's Blues, on a late Expedition
against the Pennsylvania Insurgents"; and also, in rather incongruous
juxtaposition, "Toplady's Translation of Zanchi on Predestination."
Settlers Throng into Tennessee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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