The Fair Play System
The settlers elected three commissioners each March who were responsible that everyone was dealt with fairly (hence the name "fair play"). Most of their rulings seem to have dealt with property issues, but they dealt with any legal or criminal cases in the Fair Play area. They granted permission for new settlers to enter the area, could take away a settler's land claim if they were absent more than six weeks (except for military service), and could expel a person (by setting them adrift in a canoe on the river). The commissioners' decisions were final and supposedly were never challenged. In 1776 the three commissioners of the Fair Play Men were Bratton Caldwell, John Walker, and James Brandon. They are the only commissioners whose names are now known and it is conjectured that they were the only three for the duration of the Fair Play system.
Read more about this topic: Fair Play Men
Famous quotes containing the words fair, play and/or system:
“Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe fields
A fair mouth’s broken tooth.”
—Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918)
“One way to think about play, is as the process of finding new combinations for known things—combinations that may yield new forms of expression, new inventions, new discoveries, and new solutions....It’s exactly what children’s play seems to be about and explains why so many people have come to think that children’s play is so important a part of childhood—and beyond.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)