Rethinking Resistance:
Popular Dissidence in the Kentucky Backcountry, 1774-1784

Honor Sachs
University of Wisconsin - Madison

This paper explores militia desertion and insubordination as forms of subtle resistance, reflecting a low and sustained murmur of disaffection in the Kentucky backcountry that was equally significant to the development of the early republic as explosions of violence. Focusing on Kentucky's first ten years of formal settlement, 1774 - 1784, I will examine how the everyday resistance, and minor, forgotten mutinies, characterized everyday life in the backcountry of the new nation. In many ways, these less confrontational, even plodding forms of resistance provide a better perspective on the more consistent conflicts experienced by the westering population of the early republic than do the brief explosions of violent rebellion often cited as central to backcountry political opinion.

When Thomas Jefferson asked whether or not a country could maintain its liberties "if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance," he posed a question that has been as problematic as it has been useful for understanding backcountry rebellion. This paper expands definitions of protest to include quotidian political expression alongside radical action to reveal how rulers were not merely "warned from time to time" by their people. Rather, including forms of everyday protest shows how authorities experienced an almost constant cycle of reminders, however subtle, of their own fragility. While my initial observations about militia desertion and insubordination are distilled for the purposes of this paper, I hope that my larger questions and conclusions about redefining protest will suggest a new framework through which to uncover additional examples of obscured opposition, and forums for political expression.