USA > Tennessee > History of Tennessee the making of a state > Part 4
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1 See List of Authorities.
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HISTORY OF TENNESSEE.
1
the Anglo-Saxon race the history of colonization gave a steady, unwavering impulse -to the inflow. We have no statisties, but the probable population of the three settle- ments in 1776 was about six hundred.1 Some time in 1775 or 1776, the citizens of the infant settlements which had been formed and others which were being formed gave to the district of country in which they lived the name of Washington District, in honor of the commander-in-chief of the American armies. During the excitement of the colonial difficulties the District of Washington had tagen a lively interest in the impending conflict, and " in open committee acknowledged themselves indebted to the united colonies their full proportion of the continental expenses." Their position was one peculiarly exposed to all the worst influences that exist in an unsettled state of society, espe- cially when a weaker and less compact territory offers a place of refuge to the criminals of one larger and more powerful. Fugitives from justice in Virginia and North Carolina fled to the District of Washington, and relying on the lack of judicial organization and the fear felt, by those in power of trespassing on the authority of the larger colonies, they escaped, if not detection, at least arrest. The articles of association made no provision. for the punishment of those who denied their validity. As a result murderers, forgers, horse-thieves, and all classes of criminals fairly infested the new settlements. The Poors of the settlers, who were proverbially hospitable, Were always open to those who craved a meal and a pallet. Often the host would awake in the morning to find not merely his guest but his horse gone, and with it perhaps all the powder and lead to be found in the cabin. One is compelled to admire the self-restraint the old settlers evince in their declaration that " murderers. horse-thieves. and robbers have escaped us for want of proper authority."
1 This estimate is based upon a careful comparison of the names of those who composed Shelby's company at Kanawha and the names signed to a petition for annexation in 1776.
41
THE REVOLUTION AND INDIAN WARS.
The history of that period gives no finer example of the natural aptitude of those who inherit English traditions for .self-goverment, and the least imaginative mind, fol- lowing the gradual stages of the evolution of old Anglo- Saxon ideas of government, ean easily hear on the banks of the Watauga and among the hills of the Cumberland echoes of the voices which were raised at Runnymede. In addition to these troubles, their frontier position and the neighborhood of the Cherokees exposed the people of the district to the double danger of British and Incre hostilities. Their loyalty to the cause, however, was never shaken, though often severely tested. On one occasion they compelled all the Tories in the distriet to take the oath of allegianee to the Contines.tal Congress. Many of them had fled there hoping to find a place of
refuge from the oppressive measures c:
· colonies, which
rectired of them a test oath of loyalty. But the war for independence cannot be said ever to have actually found a battle-field on Tennessee soil. Its effects could be seen and felt, and frequently the war it self swept along its eon- fins. But the actual suffering which came to those who th n inhabited the District of W .: shington was either the result of their own seeking, as in the battle of King's Mountain, or it came from the policy of the British agents who incited the Indians to make war upon the adherents of the American eause. The intrigues of a Scotchman naned Alexander Cameron were peculiarly fruitful of dis- - astrous results. In 1776 the inhabitants of the district were sudfler) - warned vi ars impending outbreak on the part of/ the Indians. It appears that Cameron, under the dire, tion of John Stuart, the British superintendent of Ind'an affairs in the south, assembled the chiefs of the Cherokees, and bribed them with arms, ammunition, and promises of plunder, to make war on the colonies. The plan was to attack the District of Washington, destroy the inhabitants to a man, and then invade Virginia and the
42
HISTORY OF TENNESSEF.
Carolinas. A friendly Indian squaw first gave warring to the settlements, and enabled them to put themselves in a posture of defense. An open communication from Henry Stuart, a brother of John Stuart, at that time a resident agent among the Cherokees, to the Tories of the distriet confirmed the news and increased the alacrity of the people. This communication and the apprehension of the dangers it threatened to those who refused to return to their allegiance to King George were followed by the reports of traveling traders, which the settlers, knowing the ways of those who travel and trade, required them to swear to in due form of law. The plan of attack sug- gested a more than Indian mind. Seven hundred warriors were to make the attack in two divisions of equal strength and each division was to attack one of the two impor- tant forts, which were the Watauga fort and Fort Heaton. The Watauga committee took prompt and energetic nhas- ures to meet the threatened invasion. Runners were sent through the settlement to give notice to all who were isolated to abandon their houses and repair to the protec- tion of the forts. The forts themselves were strengthered and provisioned. Those too weak to hold, among them Fort Lee, 1 were dismantled and destroyed.
1 There is some confusion in reference to these forts and their names. Ramsey makes Fort,Gillespie and Fort Lee distinct. In a letter written 6th April, 1793, and published in the Knoxville Grette, we find the following statement : "Others fortified themselves at Amos Heaton's, now Sullivan's Old Court House, and those in Va- tauga and Nollichucky posted hbont thirty volunteers under Captain (now General) James Robertson, just above the mouth of Big Line- stone, where Mr. Gillespie lives. Shortly after this party took post and before they had completed their fort (called Fort Leey our traders escaped." The people then filed again, leaving about ti well volunteers behind, who, being joined by about the same number in their rear, " were thus compelled to fortify near the Sycamore Shoals on Watauga, on mnuch weaker ground than they had vacated." .t is evident that Fort Lee was abandoned after Sevier wrote the letter dated at that fort.
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43
THE REVOLUTION AND INDIAN WARS.
Officers were elected, and companies were organized. Petitions for aid were sent to Virginia. The destiny of the settlements was at stake. The Virginians had seen with pleasure a bulwark. gradually rising between them- selves and the ferocity and cruelty of Indian warfare. This bulwark was now to be put to the test ; its fate might involve their own and aid was promptly furnished. Five companies were raised in the border counties, and marched to Fort Heaton. Having arrived there, a council of war was held, and Captain William Coeke, at whose suggestion the fort had been built, urged immediate action. His sug- gestion was acted upon, and it was decided to march out at once and meet the Indians, signs of whose near ap- pronch had been discovered and reported by the scouts. An advance guard was thrown forward, which came in contaet with a scouting party of Indians and drove them back. Some hours later the main body of the Indians came up, and Thompson, the officer in command, gave the orde ; to engage them. The battle whieli ensued, though of short duration, is remarkable as being among the first attempts ever made by the Indians to adopt the civilized plan of fighting a battle. They made a direet attack, charging over open ground, and their chief, Dragging Canoe, a savage Napoleon, attempted to break through the centre of Thompson's command and then crush his flanl.s in detail. The Indians, however, have never had the abil- ity, which comes only from organized training, of stand- ing direct fire, and on this occasion they fled after a few vollelys, leaving dead on the field about twenty-six men. ineluding Dragging Canoe himself. During the fight ou- curred one of those sanguinary hand-to-hand conflicts, the accounts of which fill the annals of that time, and which is here given entire, as an example of all the rest. It is copied from Ramsey, who appears to have had it from Modre himself. " Moore had shot the chief, wounding him in the knee, but not so badly as to prevent him from stangling. Moore advanced towards him, and the Indian
44
HISTORY OF TENNESSEE.
threw his tomahawk but missed him. Moore sprang at him with his large butcher knife drawn, which the Intlian eanght by the blade, and attempted to wrest from the hand of his antagonist. Holding on with desperate tenacity to the knife, both clinched with their left hands. A scuffle ensued in which the Indian was thrown to the ground, his right hand being nearly dissevered and bleeding profusely. Moore, still holding the handle of his knife in the right hand, succeeded with the other to disengage his own toma- hawk from his belt, and ended the strife by sinking it in the skull of the Indian." Among those who took part in this battle, called the battle of Island Flats, was Isaac Shelby, who was present as a private and volunteer. The other division of Indians was under a crafty chief named Old Abraham. He was to attack Fort Lee, but the Nol- lichucky inhabitants, fearing their fortifications were not sufficient, had broken them up and retreated to Watauga, leaving crops and stock open to the attack of their enemies. The garrison was only forty men strong, but they were under the command of an officer not less resolute, not Mess fertile in resources, not less cool in the presence of danger, than the Englishman who, three years later, gained immor- tality and an English peerage by the defense of Gibraltar against equally overwhelming odds. The achievements of one were viewed with wondering admiration by the civili- zation of the world. The achievements of the other. though not less worthy of all honor and renown, were per- formed under the shadows of a primitive forest in a fron- tier fort, against unrecorded savages. James Robertson deserves for his memorable defense of the Watauga fort a · place not less illustrious in the annals of Tennessee than that accorded to Lord Heathfield in the annals of England. More than three hundred Indians were held at bay by less than forty men capable of active service, and despite st pata- gems, and all the arts and cunning of an Indian varfare, midnight attacks, and daily onslaughts, were eventually compelled to raise the siege and retire. This defense of
45
THE REVOLUTION AND INDIAN WAARS.
the Watauga fort is deserving of special mention in the history of Tennessee as the first display on Tennessee soil, and for the people of Tennessee, of that martial prowess to which a Tennessean may call attention with justifiable pride, and of which he may say without any feeling of provincial exaggeration or gasconade that it has, as a whole, never been surpassed by anything recorded in the histories of the world's warfares.
Although defeated in their attacks on the infant settle- ments, the Indians renewed the war in another quarter and invaded Virginia. Angered by what was regarded as a flagrant outrage. it was determined to strike terror to the hearts of the Cherokees by invading their country with an overwhelming force. Their estimated population was two thousand. North Carolina and Virginia both sent bodies of troops, and these in conjunction with the settlers formed what in those days was regarded as a large foree. The country of the Cherokees was laid waste, and they were compelled to sue for peace. The proper blow had been struck at the proper time. The implacable Indians were taught that the boasted sanetity of their strongholds could be violated with impunity. Town after town, the most secluded, the most distant. the most thoroughly guarded, was taken and razed to the ground. But little merey was shown and but few prisoners taken. The In- dian's were glad to make treaties of peace and cessions of territory. The boundary line agreed upon between the Cherokees and North Carolina was so run as to leave the Distriet of Washington in possession of the latter.
The law of development that the end of each successive Indian war brought an addition of population was again exemplified after the Cherokee war. The troops from the colonies were charmed with the natural advantages of the country they had seen in passing through the Watauga country, and their accounts, doubtless highly colored, painted an Eldorado, which drew to the new settlement a rapid influx of adventurous pioneers.
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CHAPTER V.
ANNEXED TO NORTH CAROLINA, AND LIMITS DEFINED.
THE Watauga people had hopes, when the articles of association were adopted, of being able eventually to forni an independent government, governed as the older colonies were governed, by roval governors. When the disagree- ments between the colonies and the mother country arrose. they modified their views to the new order of things, and regarded themselves as a distinct though as yet inclroate state. But their weakness, and the dangers which re- sulted from Indians and horse-thieves, bands of despera- does who sold stolen horses to the Indians, rendered the protection of some more powerful state necessary; for their welfare. They had not the material to construct; the machinery of government, nor the strength to set it in motion. They petitioned North Carolina for annexation in 1776. Their petition was granted. It was signed by the committee of thirteen, and many others. The pro- vincial congress of North Carolina met at Halifax in' No- vember, 1776, and Charles Robertson. John Carter. John Haile,1 aud John Sevier were delegates from Washington District, Watauga settlement. Five in all were elected, but only four took their seats. At this session a bill of rights and a state constitution, one modeled upon an Eng- lish statute declaratory of the common law, the other upon the common law itself, were formally adopted. It is sig- nificant that in the declaration of rights is the following clause : " It [the boundary line of the State] shall not be so
1 Haywood says Hill.
1
47
ANNEXED TO NORTH CAROLINA.
lied as to prevent the establishment of one or more ments westward of this State by consent of the legis- "
er the annexation of the Washington District the ofterm of government was allowed to stand until the spring of 1777. An act was then passed establishing courts of pleas and quarter sessions, and also a bill for the appointment of justices of the peace, and sheriff's for the several courts in the District of Washington. In Novem- ber of this year, 1777, the District of Washington became Washington County. It was made a part of the Salisbury judicial distriet, and the act establishing it is noteworthy as being the first determinate expression of the geographi- cal outlines of Tennessee.
From 1777 until the disturbances of eight years later, the history of Tennessee was a part of the history of North Carolina. The policy of the mother State, for such it had now become, was to open the new territory to settle- ment. and to encourage emigration. In several counties offices " for the entry of lands acquired by treaty or con- quest " were established. and a land office was opened in Washington County. The land system of Tennessee is fourled upon that of North Carolina, and the general outles are the same in both States. The earlier laws of Tennessee modified the North Carolina system, and the later laws have modified the earlier.
The system of Carolina was in many respects the result of a peculiar combination of the rigidity of English and the laxity of American ideas of landed proprietorship. In many points the grants of land in North Carolina, be- ginning with the charter of Charles II., to the colonial proprietors give the student of history numerous exam- ples of the continuity of popular institutions, and serve as chains of tradition to link the present and the past. With the change of those details which need to be changed for the sake of the larger example, the conquest
48
HISTORY OF TENNESSEE.
and settlement of England by the Saxons is the con and settlement of Virginia and the Carolinas 1 English. A comparative study, however, of the stages of history, though interesting and rich in mas lies beyond the measure of proportion of such a wo this. Still, a proper comprehension of the earlier system of North Carolina, with its paraphernalia of grants, char- ters, deeds, entries, certificates, bounties, entry-takers, land-agents, and charts, is not without value for an intel- ligent investigation into the gradual growth of Tennessee from a state of barbarity to a state of civilization, to enable the mind to bridge the interval from the time when the country was inhabited by a few tribes of Indians with small tent-spread villages scattered here and there along the banks of the rivers and on the plateaus of steep mountains, from which scarcely a film of vapor ascended, to the time when its surface is covered by the houses, towns and cities, roads and railroads, and its skies are darkened by the smoke that arises from the industries of nearly two millions of people. When the government of North Carolina passed out of the hands of the proprietors, and their title was extinguished, this extinction carried with it all that region of country west of the Appalachian Mountains, which as yet lay beyond the Ultima Thule of colonial geography, known only by the vague tissue of sur- mises which had grown like cobwebs around the old and half-forgotten traditions of De Soto's ill-starred expedition. Occasionally a trader would pass over the range. Frc- quently he disappeared never to return. If he did return, he brought with him pictures of a primeval Eldorado which caused a stir of excitement for the moment. and were then quickly forgotten in the struggles of colonial life. The accounts of Marquette, Hennepin. Allouez, Membre, and Anastaste Douay detracted nothing from the prevailing ignorance. The North Carolinians re- garded the western country very much as one of the less
1
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49
ANNEXED TO NORTH CAROLINA.
active litigants in: Jarndyce against Jarndyce might have regarded the estate in question, having in it indeterminate possibilities, but too remote to form any basis of imme- diate action. The extinction of the English title gave this title to North Carolina, but until her own children had in a manner rushed into it, and suddenly founded a new commonwealth, and then applied for a recognition of their importance and the work they had performed, the parent State made no movement implying a knowl- edge or desire of proprietorship. After the annexation an entry-taker's office was opened in the recently erected Washington County, and Tennessee was thrown open to the land system of North Carolina. But however simple the system, the early history of this State is filled with accounts of the troubles and conflicts which arose in ref- erence to lands and claims of preemption and doubtful grants. The frequent changes of government, together with the laek of interest in the frontier settlements, occa- sioned a state of confusion which required act after act for its disentanglement. Those who had settled beyond the Steep Rock and entered their lands under the laws of Virginia had incessant conflicts with those who, when the running of the line threw them into North Carolina, made haste to enter the lands under the laws of that State. Sometimes five or six claimants would appear for the same land, - one elaiming under grant from the lords proprietors, one under executor's sale, one under an unrecorded grant from Lord Granville's office, one who wished to enter the lands under the laws of North Caro- lina, and one in possession. The various treaties with the Indians and the little regard paid them by the settlers added to the causes of confusion. In 1778 an act was passed declaring null and void all entries made on the hunting-grounds of the Indians. Grants of land were the means adopted for rewarding the soldiers who had fought the war for independence, there being no money
5
50
HISTORY OF TENNESSEE.
having a marketable value in the treasury. In 1780 an act laid off a certain tract of land for bounty purposes, but when in 1782 the grants were made, it was found that " sundry families had before the passing of the said act settled on the said tract of country," and it became necessary to allow them to "retain their entries to the usual limit of 640 acres."
There were several eauses which tended to produce this confusion, but the main cause of all was the ignorance that existed in the minds of those who were the centres of government as to the limits of their territory. They appear to have known the grant of Charles II. by repu- tation alone, and it is doubtful if any members of the earlier government, except Lord Granville, attempted to fix in his own mind the limits of the land which was .. ject to the laws of North Carolina. In the act of 1. .. which formed Washington County, the boundaries are specified as running to the Mississippi River.
No clearer proof of dense ignorance could be adduced than this act. John Sevier had virtually forced the an- nexation upon North Carolina, and the legislature, their minds filled with the great struggle which was going on, passed this as they would have passed any act to satisfy the importunities of a bold, persistent, and active advocate, who asked no money, and promised them soldiers. The grant of Charles II., which was the only claim of North Carolina upon the country in question, extended to the Pacific coast-line.1 Their title to the land west of the Mississippi was as good as their title to the land east of it.
It is a remarkable fact that Sevier alone of all the men of his times inhabiting what subsequently became Tennes- see had a definite idea of what should be the logical limits of the future State. These limits were not recognized in
1 The words of the grant are : " West in a direct line as far as the South Seas."
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ANNEXED TO NORTH CAROLINA.
the statutes of North Carolina, except the one drawn most probably by Sevier and in the cession to the United States. The act of cession cedes a certain district in direct terins, and by implication allow's the United States to follow their pleasure in reference to the rest. When the constitution was framed, the limits of the State were fixed according to the ideas of Sevier of twenty years before. It is necessary to bear in mind the confusion of boundary lines resulting from the eneroachments of the settlers upon the Indians, and the recognition of the rights of the latter by the home government, in order to have a clear view of the gradual formation and making of the State. The general groundwork was the same in all cases. Indian lands were taken possession of and improved. The Indians entered into hostilities, and were eventually defeated and compelled to sue for peace. Treaties were made and increased territory given the whites, and new boundary lines established which were soon again overstepped. Act after act was passed to legalize usurpations, and all the worst features of civilization were brought into play to win a field for the foundation of a government, the forma- tion of which called forth all that is noble and admirable in the character of man.
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CHAPTER VI.
NEW COUNTIES FORMED.
AFTER the formation of the county of Washington immediate steps were taken to attract emigration, and a land office was opened. Another aid to emigration was the improvement of the road into Washington County from North Carolina. Commissioners were appointed to survey and lay off a road from Washington County Court H. into Burke County, and the new road, allowing the sage of vehicles, materially increased the inflowing stream of population. But if the frontier position of the settle- ments brought them increase of population, it also brought the elements of lawless violence, which were expelled from more settled communities. In 1778 bands of Tories, who were said to have combined with the robbers that infested the country, inflicted heavy losses on the settlers by con- tinnous thieving and highway robbery, sometimes accom- panied by personal violence, and even murder. Finding the agents of the law inadequate to their protection, the militia having been disbanded, the old Watauga pioneers, whose self-reliance had been in no wise weakened by the lapse of time and the successive prosecution of Indian wars, again devised means to restore order to the troubled settlements, and selected from among themselves com- mittees, to whom they gave power to adopt any measures they saw fit, to put a stop to the evil. The evil was great, the remedy was adequate. Two companies, thirty each, were organized and set immediately to work. All suspi- cious persons were arrested. The mere fact of arrest was
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