The Conquest of the Old Southwest (ePub)

"In 1920 ...Archibald Henderson, published The Conquest of the Old Southwest to much acclaim...was a descendant of Judge Richard Henderson, founder of the Transylvania Company and Boone's employer." -Best Creative Nonfiction of the South (2020)

"Archibald Henderson has helped me with disputed points in Boone's early life in North Carolina; and his published writings have been unusually valuable." -Daniel Boone - Master of the Wilderness (2013)

"Archibald Henderson is one of the most alert and astute of the modern intelligences. Few living men...keep under such cultivation such an immense area of knowledge." -Asheville Citizen-Times, March 23, 1930

"Archibald Henderson...died Friday...was a noted educator, historian, critic, and mathematician...was on the UNC faculty for 49 years." -The Daily Tar Heel, Dec. 8, 1963

"According to Archibald Henderson, Boone was hired by the lawyer Richard Henderson...to spy and explore land over the mountains as early as 1764." -Boone: A Biography (2008)

Why is early backwoodsman John Sevier considered the first hero of Tennessee? Famous North Carolina historian Archibald Henderson (1877-1963) sheds some light on this in his 1920 book: "The Conquest of the Old Southwest: The Romantic Story of the Early Pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 1740-1790."

In describing the heroic Sevier, Henderson writes:

"The most daring spirit in this little state was the young John Sevier...With his arrival there begins one of the most fascinating and romantic careers recorded in the varied and stirring annals of the Old Southwest. In this daring and impetuous young fellow, fair-haired, blue-eyed, magnetic, debonair-of powerful build, splendid proportions, and athletic skill-we hold the gallant exemplar of the truly heroic life of the border. The story of his life, thrilling in the extreme, is rich in all the multi-colored elements which impart romance to the arduous struggle of American civilization in the opening years of the republic."

In introducing his book Henderson writes:

"Independence of spirit, impatience of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the nomadic temperament-these are the strains in the American character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to create a typical democracy....

"This era, constituting the first stage in our national existence, and productive of a buoyant national character shaped in democracy upon a free soil, closed only yesterday with the exhaustion of cultivable free land, the disappearance of the last frontier, and the recent death of "Buffalo Bill". The splendid inauguration of the period, in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, during the second half of the eighteenth century, is the theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old Southwest."

About the author:

Archibald Henderson, was born July 17, 1877 and died December 6, 1963. He was an American professor of mathematics who wrote on a variety of subjects, including drama and history. He is well known for his friendship with George Bernard Shaw. He was born at Salisbury, N. C., was educated at the University of North Carolina (A.B., 1898; Ph.D., 1902), where he was a member of Sigma Nu Fraternity, and studied more at Chicago, Cambridge, and Berlin universities, and at the Sorbonne (Paris). After 1899 he taught at the University of North Carolina, becoming professor of pure mathematics in 1908, where he was on the faculty for 49 years.