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RED BELTS
“On the ground lay Elsie Tonpit, hurled there by a bandit,
a huge brute of a man, bending over her.”
RED BELTSBY HUGH PENDEXTERFRONTISPIECE BYRALPH PALLEN COLEMANGARDEN CITY NEW YORKDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY1920
In 1784 North Carolina’s share of the national debt wasa ninth, or about five millions of dollars—a prodigioussum for a commonwealth just emerging from a colonialchrysalis to raise. Yet North Carolina was more fortunatethan some of her sister débutantes into Statehood, in that shepossessed some twenty-nine million acres of virgin countrybeyond the Alleghanies. This noble realm, from which theState of Tennessee was to be fashioned, had been won by confiscationand the rifles of the over-mountain settlers and hadcost North Carolina neither blood nor money.
The republic was too young to have developed coalescence.A man might be a New Yorker, a New Englander, a Virginianand so on, but as yet seldom an American. The majorityof the Northern representatives to the national Congressbelieved the Union was full grown, geographically; that itcovered too much territory already. To all such narrowvisions the Alleghanies appealed as being the natural westernboundary. These conservatives insisted the future of thecountry was to be found on the seaboard.
Charles III of Spain heartily approved of this policy ofrestriction and set in motion his mighty machinery to preventfurther expansion of the United States. He knew thestimuli for restoring his kingdom to a world plane could befound only in his American possessions.
As a result of those sturdy adventurers, crossing the mountainsto plunge into the unknown, ca