Campbell's Choice | Big Stone Gap Publishing

Virginians, the Forks of the Ohio, and the Valley of Virginia. It could have happened no other way.

The English were the first to attempt to fortify the Forks of the Ohio. They had a construction party from Virginia busy building a fort there when they were attacked and driven off by a force of French Canadians. Virginia sent its militia under twenty two year old George Washington to reassert the English claim. Washington ambushed a French patrol about 40 miles up the Monongahela at Jumonville Glen, and the war was on. The year was 1754, and the conflict was to spread over the world, and ended in 1763 with the victory of the English.

However, the English Empire almost lost the affair, and nearly bankrupted itself in winning it. The English blamed the Americans, and especially the Virginians, for starting it. They had conveniently forgotten the aggressive settlement policies of King George II. They did not understand the dynamics of the flow of surplus European populations onto the American coast, nor did they make any attempt to limit it. The English just wanted to make sure that war over the interior of North America never happened again. In their minds they identified unrest among the Indians due to incursions on their land by settlers as the cause of the French and Indian War.

The Treaty of Paris, which ended the French and Indian War, set up a barrier to western expansion. The Royal Decree, which was issued by the English government as an implementation of the Treaty of Paris, set up a Line of Demarcation across the map. In Virginia the New River was that line, and the English decreed that all settlements west of that line withdraw to the east of it. The land to the west of it was to be reserved for the Indians forever.

The practical results of this policy were to create a large population in Virginia who felt betrayed by the Crown, and to teach Americans that there was a difference between their interests and the interests of England. A pressure cooker of exploding population was created, which one day would have to explode. Wealthy Virginians and poor frontiersmen alike were not compensated for the money that they had given the Crown for their western lands – lands that the Crown kept them from possessing or working. In short, the seeds of the Revolution had been sown. The seeds of legal controversies over how to deal with the related issues over unpaid real estate taxes, unfulfilled requirements for cultivation and improvement of the western lands, and of uncompleted title registration which could not proceed because the Land Office had been closed by the Revolution from 1774 to 1779 were left for the American government to deal with. Surprisingly, Saltville was to prove to be the crucible in which this process was to occur.

... Continue to the Settlement of Saltville

CAMPBELL'S CHOICE	Page
INTRODUCTION	1
SALTVILLE GEOLOGY	1
SALTVILLE INDIANS	4
LEGAL MECHANISMS OF LAND TITLE OWNERSHIP IN VA.	6
THE SETTLEMENT OF SALTVILLE	13
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION AROUND SALTVILLE BETWEEN THE PIONEER PERIOD AND THE CIVIL WAR	27
SALTVILLE IN THE CIVIL WAR	31
AFTER THE WAR	47
A MODERN CHEMICAL FACTORY	52
EPILOGUE	57
BIBLIOGRAPHY	61
INDEX	66

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