Friction with the Backwoodsmen.

Though the relations of the officers of the regular troops with the
gentry were so pleasant there was always much friction between them and
the ordinary frontiersmen; a friction which continued to exist as long
as the frontier itself, and which survives to this day in the wilder
parts of the country. The regular army officer and the frontiersman are
trained in fashions so diametrically opposite that, though the two men
be brothers, they must yet necessarily in all their thoughts and
instincts and ways of looking at life, be as alien as if they belonged
to two different races of mankind. The borderer, rude, suspicious, and
impatient of discipline, looks with distrust and with a mixture of
sneering envy and of hostility upon the officer; while the latter, with
his rigid training and his fixed ideals, feels little sympathy for the
other's good points, and is contemptuously aware of his numerous
failings. The only link between the two is the scout, the man who,
though one of the frontiersmen, is accustomed to act and fight in
company with the soldiers. In Kentucky, at the close of the Revolution,
this link was generally lacking; and there was no tie of habitual, even
though half-hostile, intercourse to unite the two parties. In
consequence the ill-will often showed itself by acts of violence. The
backwoods bullies were prone to browbeat and insult the officers if they
found them alone, trying to provoke them to rough-and-tumble fighting;
and in such a combat, carried on with the revolting brutality
necessarily attendant upon a contest where gouging and biting were
considered legitimate, the officers, who were accustomed only to use
their fists, generally had the worst of it; so that at last they made a
practice of carrying their side-arms--which secured them from
molestation.