Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/151

128 to be a constant menace. In the early days of its settlement the wars with the different tribes followed fast on the heels of one another. The hostile Indians made it impossible to have a survey of the whole State, as was done with most of the other States settled in the piping times of peace, and under the protection of the United States. So when the State devised a plan for the granting of public lands, each enterer was permitted to make his entry as he pleased, and in advance of a survey. It resulted that grants interlapped and covered each other. There was scarcely an acre of desirable land which was not covered by more than one grant, and to some land there were scores of claimants. As a further complication, North Carolina had issued a number of grants before the cession of the territory to the United States; and even after Tennessee had become a State, land warrants issued by North Carolina to her Revolutionary soldiers served as the basis of grants. When the Legislature came to devise the laws for the granting of land in the new State, the plan had features drawn from the laws of North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky, yet it was widely variant from any of the three. In addition, the different portions of the State were not settled at the same time; and as each part was thrown open to entry, it was made a separate land district, with a new procedure prescribed for that district. This patchwork of incongruous legislation made the labor of the judges a most arduous one; but with the repose of society always in view, they laid down the rules to decide conflicting claims that govern to-day. The judges who followed them had but to apply the principles they had worked out.

The system of common-law pleading was then in vogue, and decisions as to its niceties took up a good deal of the attention of the court.

The criminal cases then appealed reflected well the state of society at the time. There were very few convictions for larceny, or any of the infamous crimes. The convictions were largely for murder, but they never grew out of assassinations. The killing was nearly always the result of an affray. The constant wars had brought personal courage to be considered a virtue, and caused any thing savoring of cowardice to be despised. This spirit has descended to the children and grandchildren of those fearless men as a rightful part of their inheritance. The judges on the bench did not hold themselves exempt by reason of their office from exposure to bodily danger. It has been related how Judge White left the bench to take part in an Indian war then in progress. In his younger days he had killed the chief King Fisher with his own hand.

Neither did the judges consider themselves debarred from taking part in matters political. Archibald Roane resigned as judge to become Governor, and afterwards was again put on the bench. Hugh Lawson White was continually before the public, though it was not of his own seeking. John Overton was the Warwick of General Jackson; and no man ever took a keener interest in the affairs of State, though he never sought political office. Judge Catron was a most intense partisan, and was one of the best-hated men of his day.

When the lives of these pioneers of the State of Tennessee, and the great work they accomplished in what was a wilderness of forest and a stronghold of savages when they came to it, are considered, it must be said of them, " There were giants in those days."