government. But as Dinsmore wrote in his defense, “gentlemen in the Western Country” such as Jackson believed that no laws pertained to them. They practically hallucinated freedom. “Is it a dream?” They also took the mere request for documents proving their ownership of slaves to be a form of slavery, to be (as Jackson wrote in one of his letters) an “evil” and affront to the “bravery and blood of our forefathers.”
