Primitive in their games, recreations, and amusements, which not
infrequently degenerated into contests of savage brutality, the
pioneers always set the highest premium upon personal bravery,
physical prowess, and skill in manly sports. At all public
gatherings, general musters, "vendues" or auctions, and even
funerals, whisky flowed with extraordinary freedom. It is worthy
of record that among the effects of the Rev. Alexander Craighead,
the famous teacher and organizer of Presbyterianism in
Mecklenburg and the adjoining region prior to the Revolution,
were found a punch bowl and glasses.

The frontier life, with its purifying and hardening influence,
bred in these pioneers intellectual traits which constitute the
basis of the American character. The single-handed and successful
struggle with nature in the tense solitude of the forest
developed a spirit of individualism, restive under control. On
the other hand, the sense of sharing with others the arduous
tasks and dangers of conquering the wilderness gave birth to a
strong sense of solidarity arid of human sympathy. With the lure
of free lands ever before them, the pioneers developed a
restlessness and a nervous energy, blended with a buoyancy of
spirit, which are fundamentally American. Yet this same
untrammeled freedom occasioned a disregard for law and a defiance
of established government which have exhibited themselves
throughout the entire course of our history. Initiative,
self-reliance, boldness in conception, fertility in resource,
readiness in execution, acquisitiveness, inventive genius,
appreciation of material advantages--these, shot through with a
certain fine idealism, genial human sympathy, and a high romantic
strain--are the traits of the American national type as it