The battle had lasted less than an hour. After Ferguson fell, De Peyster advanced with a white flag and surrendered his sword to Campbell. Other white flags waved along the hilltop. But the killing did not yet cease. It is said that many of the mountaineers did not know the significance of the white flag. Sevier"s sixteen-year-old son, having heard that his father had fallen, kept on furiously loading and firing until presently he saw Sevier ride in among the troops and command them to stop shooting men who had surrendered and thrown down their arms.
The victors made a bonfire of the enemy"s baggage wagons and supplies. Then they killed some of his beeves and cooked them; they had had neither food nor sleep for eighteen hours. They dug shallow trenches for the dead and scattered the loose earth over them. Ferguson"s body, stripped of its uniform and boots and wrapped in a beef hide, was thrown into one of these ditches by the men detailed to the burial work, while the officers divided his personal effects among themselves.
The triumphant army turned homeward as the dusk descended. The uninjured prisoners and the wounded who were able to walk were marched off carrying their empty firearms. The badly wounded were left lying where they had fallen.
At Bickerstaff"s Old Fields in Rutherford County the frontiersmen halted; and here they selected thirty of their prisoners to be hanged. They swung them aloft, by torchlight, three at a time, until nine had gone to their last account. Then Sevier interposed; and, with Shelby"s added authority, saved the other twenty-one. Among those who thus weighted the gallows tree were some of the Tory brigands from Watauga; but not all the victims were of this character. Some of the troops would have wreaked vengeance on the two Tories from Sevier"s command who had betrayed their army plans to Ferguson; but Sevier claimed them as under his jurisdiction and refused consent. Nolichucky Jack dealt humanely by his foes. To the coa.r.s.e and brutish Cleveland, now astride of Ferguson"s horse and wearing his sash, and to the three hundred who followed him, may no doubt be laid the worst excesses of the battle"s afterpiece.
Victors and vanquished drove on in the dark, close to the great flank of hills. From where King"s Mountain, strewn with dead and dying, reared its black shape like some rudely hewn tomb of a primordial age when t.i.tans strove together, perhaps to the ears of the marching men came faintly through the night"s stillness the howl of a wolf and the answering chorus of the pack. For the wolves came down to King"s Mountain from all the surrounding hills, following the scent of blood, and made their lair where the Werewolf had fallen. The scene of the mountaineers" victory, which marked the turn of the tide for the Revolution, became for years the chief resort of wolf hunters from both the Carolinas.
The importance of the overmountain men"s victory lay in what it achieved for the cause of Independence. King"s Mountain was the prelude to Cornwallis"s defeat. It heartened the Southern Patriots, until then cast down by Gates"s disaster. To the British the death of Ferguson was an irreparable loss because of its depressing effect on the Back Country Tories. Ding"s Mountain, indeed, broke the Tory spirit. Seven days after the battle General Nathanael Greene succeeded to the command of the Southern Patriot army which Gates had led to defeat. Greene"s genius met the rising tide of the Patriots" courage and hope and took it at the flood. His strategy, in dividing his army and thereby compelling the division of Cornwallis"s force, led to Daniel Morgan"s victory at the Cowpens, in the Back Country of South Carolina, on January 17, 1781-another frontiersmen"s triumph. Though the British won the next engagement between Greene and Cornwallis-the battle of Guilford Court House in the North Carolina Back Country, on the 15th of March-Greene made them pay so dearly for their victory that Tarleton called it "the pledge of ultimate defeat"; and, three days later, Cornwallis was retreating towards Wilmington. In a sense, then, King"s Mountain was the pivot of the war"s revolving stage, which swung the British from their succession of victories towards the surrender at Yorktown.
Shelby, Campbell, and Cleveland escorted the prisoners to Virginia. Sevier, with his men, rode home to Watauga. When the prisoners had been delivered to the authorities in Virginia, the Holston men also turned homeward through the hills. Their route lay down through the Clinch and Holston valleys to the settlement at the base of the mountains. Sevier and his Wataugans had gone by Gillespie"s Gap, over the pathway that hung like a narrow ribbon about the breast of Roan Mountain, lifting its crest in dignified isolation sixty-three hundred feet above the levels. The "Unakas" was the name the Cherokees had given to those white men who first invaded their hills; and the Unakas is the name that white men at last gave to the mountain.
Great companies of men were to come over the mountain paths on their way to the Mississippi country and beyond; and with them, as we know, were to go many of these mountain men, to pa.s.s away with their customs in the transformations that come with progress. But there were others who clung to these hills. They were of several stocks-English, Scotch, Highlanders, Ulstermen, who mingled by marriage and sometimes took their mates from among the handsome maids of the Cherokees. They spread from the Unakas of Tennessee into the c.u.mberland Mountains of Kentucky; and they have remained to this day what they were then, a primitive folk of strong and fiery men and brave women living as their forefathers of Watauga and Holston lived. In the log cabins in those mountains today are heard the same ballads, sung still to the dulcimer, that entertained the earliest settlers. The women still turn the old-fashioned spinning wheels. The code of the men is still the code learned perhaps from the Gaels-the code of the oath and the feud and the open door to the stranger. Or were these, the ethical tenets of almost all uncorrupted primitive tribes, transmitted from the Indian strain and a.s.sociation? Their young people marry at boy and girl ages, as the pioneers did, and their wedding festivities are the same as those which made rejoicing at the first marriage in Watauga. Their common speech today contains words that have been obsolete in England for a hundred years.
Thrice have the mountain men come down again from their fastnesses to war for America since the day of King"s Mountain and thrice they have acquitted themselves so that their deeds are noted in history. A souvenir of their part in the War of 1812 at the Battle of the Thames is kept in one of the favorite names for mountain girls-"Lake Erie." In the Civil War many volunteers from the free, non-slaveholding mountain regions of Kentucky and Tennessee joined the Union Army, and it is said that they exceeded all others in stature and physical development. And in our own day their sons again came down from the mountains to carry the torch of Liberty overseas, and to show the white stars in their flag side by side with the ancient cross in the flag of England against which their forefathers fought.
Chapter X. Sevier, The Statemaker
After King"s Mountain, Sevier reached home just in time to fend off a Cherokee attack on Watauga. Again warning had come to the settlements that the Indians were about to descend upon them. Sevier set out at once to meet the red invaders. Learning from his scouts that the Indians were near he went into ambush with his troops disposed in the figure of a half-moon, the favorite Indian formation. He then sent out a small body of men to fire on the Indians and make a scampering retreat, to lure the enemy on. The maneuver was so well planned and the ground so well chosen that the Indian war party would probably have been annihilated but for the delay of an officer at one horn of the half-moon in bringing his troops into play. Through the gap thus made the Indians escaped, with a loss of seventeen of their number. The delinquent officer was Jonathan Tipton, younger brother of Colonel John Tipton, of whom we shall hear later. It is possible that from this event dates the Tiptons" feud with Sevier, which supplies one of the breeziest pages in the story of early Tennessee.
Not content with putting the marauders to flight, Sevier pressed on after them, burned several of the upper towns, and took prisoner a number of women and children, thus putting the red warriors to the depth of shame, for the Indians never deserted their women in battle. The chiefs at once sued for peace. But they had made peace often before. Sevier drove down upon the Hiwa.s.see towns, meanwhile proclaiming that those among the tribe who were friendly might send their families to the white settlement, where they would be fed and cared for until a sound peace should be a.s.sured. He also threatened to continue to make war until his enemies were wiped out, their town sites a heap of blackened ruins, and their whole country in possession of the whites, unless they bound themselves to an enduring peace.
Having compelled the submission of the Otari and Hiwa.s.see towns, yet finding that depredations still continued, Sevier determined to invade the group of towns hidden in the mountain fastnesses near the headwaters of the Little Tennessee where, deeming themselves inaccessible except by their own trail, the Cherokees freely plotted mischief and sent out raiding parties. These hill towns lay in the high gorges of the Great Smoky Mountains, 150 miles distant. No one in Watauga had ever been in them except Thomas, the trader, who, however, had reached them from the eastern side of the mountains. With no knowledge of the Indians" path and without a guide, yet nothing daunted, Sevier, late in the summer of 1781 headed his force into the mountains. So steep were some of the slopes they scaled that the men were obliged to dismount and help their horses up. Unexpectedly to themselves perhaps, as well as to the Indians, they descended one morning on a group of villages and destroyed them. Before the fleeing savages could rally, the mountaineers had plunged up the steeps again. Sevier then turned southward into Georgia and inflicted a severe castigation on the tribes along the Coosa River.
When, after thirty days of warfare and mad riding, Sevier arrived at his Bonnie Kate"s door on the Nolichucky, he found a messenger from General Greene calling on him for immediate a.s.sistance to cut off Cornwallis from his expected retreat through North Carolina. Again he set out, and with two hundred men crossed the mountains and made all speed to Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, where he learned that Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. Under Greene"s orders he turned south to the Santee to a.s.sist a fellow scion of the Huguenots, General Francis Marion, in the pursuit of Stuart"s Britishers. Having driven Stuart into Charleston, Sevier and his active Wataugans returned home, now perhaps looking forward to a rest, which they had surely earned. Once more, however, they were hailed with alarming news. Dragging Canoe had come to life again and was emerging from the caves of the Tennessee with a substantial force of Chickamaugan warriors. Again the Wataugans, augmented by a detachment from Sullivan County, galloped forth, met the red warriors, chastised them heavily, put them to rout, burned their dwellings and provender, and drove them back into their hiding places. For some time after this, the Indians dipped not into the black paint pots of war but were content to streak their humbled countenances with the vermilion of beauty and innocence.
It should be chronicled that Sevier, a.s.sisted possibly by other Wataugans, eventually returned to the State of North Carolina the money which he had forcibly borrowed to finance the King"s Mountain expedition; and that neither he nor Shelby received any pay for their services, nor asked it. Before Shelby left the Holston in 1782 and moved to Kentucky, of which State he was to become the first Governor, the a.s.sembly of North Carolina pa.s.sed a resolution of grat.i.tude to the overmountain men in general, and to Sevier and Shelby in particular, for their "very generous and patriotic services" with which the "General a.s.sembly of this State are feelingly impressed." The resolution concluded by urging the recipients of the a.s.sembly"s acknowledgments to "continue" in their n.o.ble course. In view of what followed, this resolution is interesting!
For some time the overhill pioneers had been growing dissatisfied with the treatment they were receiving from the State, which on the plea of poverty had refused to establish a Superior Court for them and to appoint a prosecutor. As a result, crime was on the increase, and the law-abiding were deprived of the proper legal means to check the lawless. In 1784 when the western soldiers" claims began to reach the a.s.sembly, there to be scrutinized by unkindly eyes, the dissatisfaction increased. The b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the mountain men-the men who had made that spectacular ride to bring Ferguson to his end-were kindled with hot indignation when they heard that they had been publicly a.s.sailed as grasping persons who seized on every pretense to "fabricate demands against the Government." Nor were those fiery b.r.e.a.s.t.s cooled by further plaints to the effect that the "industry and property" of those east of the hills were "becoming the funds appropriated to discharge the debts" of the Westerners. They might with justice have asked what the industry and property of the Easterners were worth on that day when the overhill men drilled in the snows on the high peak of Yellow Mountain and looked down on Burke County overrun by Ferguson"s Tories, and beyond, to Charlotte, where lay Cornwallis.
The North Carolina a.s.sembly did not confine itself to impolite remarks. It proceeded to get rid of what it deemed western rapacity by ceding the whole overmountain territory to the United States, with the proviso that Congress must accept the gift within twelve months. And after pa.s.sing the Cession Act, North Carolina closed the land office in the undesired domain and nullified all entries made after May 25, 1784. The Cession Act also enabled the State to evade its obligations to the Cherokees in the matter of an expensive consignment of goods to pay for new lands.
This clever stroke of the a.s.sembly"s brought about immediate consequences in the region beyond the hills. The Cherokees, who knew nothing about the a.s.sembly"s system of political economy but who found their own provokingly upset by the non-arrival of the promised goods, began again to darken the mixture in their paint pots; and they dug up the war hatchet, never indeed so deeply patted down under the dust that it could not be unearthed by a stub of the toe. Needless to say, it was not the thrifty and distant Easterners who felt their anger, but the nearby settlements.
As for the white overhill dwellers, the last straw had been laid on their backs; and it felt like a hickory log. No sooner had the a.s.sembly adjourned than the men of Washington, Sullivan, and Greene counties, which comprised the settled portion of what is now east Tennessee, elected delegates to convene for the purpose of discussing the formation of a new State. They could a.s.sert that they were not acting illegally, for in her first const.i.tution North Carolina had made provision for a State beyond the mountains. And necessity compelled them to take steps for their protection. Some of them, and Sevier was of the number, doubted if Congress would accept the costly gift; and the majority realized that during the twelve months which were allowed for the decision they would have no protection from either North Carolina or Congress and would not be able to command their own resources.
In August, 1784, the delegates met at Jonesborough and pa.s.sed preliminary resolutions; and then adjourned to meet later in the year. The news was soon disseminated through North Carolina and the a.s.sembly convened in October and hastily repealed the Cession Act, voted to establish the District of Washington out of the four counties, and sent word of the altered policy to Sevier, with a commission for himself as Brigadier General. From the steps of the improvised convention hall, before which the delegates had gathered, Sevier read the a.s.sembly"s message and advised his neighbors to proceed no further, since North Carolina had of her own accord redressed all their grievances. But for once Nolichucky Jack"s followers refused to follow. The adventure too greatly appealed. Obliged to choose between North Carolina and his own people, Sevier"s hesitation was short. The State of Frankland, or Land of the Free, was formed; and Nolichucky Jack was elevated to the office of Governor-with a yearly salary of two hundred mink skins.
Perhaps John Tipton had hoped to head the new State, for he had been one of its prime movers and was a delegate to this convention. But when the man whom he hated-apparently for no reason except that other men loved him-a.s.sented to the people"s will and was appointed to the highest post within their gift, Tipton withdrew, disavowing all connection with Frankland and affirming his loyalty to North Carolina. From this time on, the feud was an open one.
That brief and now forgotten State, Frankland, the Land of the Free, which bequeathed its name as an appellation for America, was founded as Watauga had been founded-to meet the practical needs and aspirations of its people. It will be remembered that one of the things written by Sevier into the only Watauga doc.u.ment extant was that they desired to become "in every way the best members of society." Frankland"s aims, as recorded, included the intent to "improve agriculture, perfect manufacturing, ENCOURAGE LITERATURE and every thing truly laudable."
The const.i.tution of Frankland, agreed to on the 14th of November, 1785, appeals to us today rather by its spirit than by its practical provisions. "This State shall be called the Commonwealth of Frankland and shall be governed by a General a.s.sembly of the representatives of the freemen of the same, a Governor and Council, and proper courts of justice.... The supreme legislative power shall be vested in a single House of Representatives of the freemen of the commonwealth of Frankland. The House of Representatives of the freemen of the State shall consist of persons most noted for wisdom and virtue."
In these exalted desires of the primitive men who held by their rifles and hatchets the land by the western waters, we see the influence of the Reverend Samuel Doak, their pastor, who founded the first church and the first school beyond the great hills. Early in the life of Watauga he had come thither from Princeton, a zealous and broadminded young man, and a st.u.r.dy one, too, for he came on foot driving before him a mule laden with books. Legend credits another minister, the Reverend Samuel Houston, with suggesting the name of Frankland, after he had opened the Convention with prayer. It is not surprising to learn that this glorified const.i.tution was presently put aside in favor of one modeled on that of North Carolina.
Sevier persuaded the more radical members of the community to abandon their extreme views and to adopt the laws of North Carolina. However lawless his acts as Governor of a bolting colony may appear, Sevier was essentially a constructive force. His purposes were right, and small motives are not discernible in his record. He might reasonably urge that the Franklanders had only followed the example of North Carolina and the other American States in seceding from the parent body, and for similar causes, for the State"s system of taxation had long borne heavily on the overhill men.
The whole transmontane populace welcomed Frankland with enthusiasm. Major Arthur Campbell, of the Virginian settlements, on the Holston, was eager to join. Sevier and his a.s.sembly took the necessary steps to receive the overhill Virginians, provided that the transfer of allegiance could be made with Virginia"s consent. Meanwhile he replied in a dignified manner to the pained and menacing expostulations of North Carolina"s Governor. North Carolina was bidden to remember the epithets her a.s.semblymen had hurled at the Westerners, which they themselves had by no means forgotten. And was it any wonder that they now doubted the love the parent State professed to feel for them? As for the puerile threat of blood, had their quality really so soon become obliterated from the memory of North Carolina? At this sort of writing, Sevier, who always pulsed hot with emotion and who had a pretty knack in turning a phrase, was more than a match for the Governor of North Carolina, whose prerogatives he had usurped.
The overmountain men no longer needed to complain bitterly of the lack of legal machinery to keep them "the best members of society." They now had courts to spare. Frankland had its courts, its judges, its legislative body, its land office-in fact, a full governmental equipment. North Carolina also performed all the natural functions of political organism, within the western territory. Sevier appointed one David Campbell a judge. Campbell held court in Jonesborough. Ten miles away, in Buffalo, Colonel John Tipton presided for North Carolina. It happened frequently that officers and attendants of the rival law courts met, as they pursued, their duties, and whenever they met they fought. The post of sheriff-or sheriffs, for of course there were two-was filled by the biggest and heaviest man and the hardest hitter in the ranks of the warring factions. A favorite game was raiding each other"s courts and carrying off the records. Frankland sent William c.o.c.ke, later the first senator from Tennessee, to Congress with a memorial, asking Congress to accept the territory North Carolina had offered and to receive it into the Union as a separate State. Congress ignored the plea. It began to appear that North Carolina would be victor in the end; and so there were defections among the Franklanders. Sevier wrote to Benjamin Franklin asking his aid in establishing the status of Frankland; and, with a graceful flourish of his ready pen, changed the new State"s name to Franklin by way of reinforcing his arguments. But the old philosopher, more expert than Sevier in diplomatic calligraphy, only acknowledged the compliment and advised the State of Franklin to make peace with North Carolina.
Sevier then appealed for aid and recognition to the Governor of Georgia, who had previously appointed him Brigadier General of militia. But the Governor of Georgia also avoided giving the recognition requested, though he earnestly besought Sevier to come down and settle the Creeks for him. There were others who sent pleas to Sevier, the warrior, to save them from the savages. One of the writers who addressed him did not fear to say "Your Excellency," nor to accord Nolichucky Jack the whole dignity of the purple in appealing to him as the only man possessing the will and the power to prevent the isolated settlements on the c.u.mberland from being wiped out. That writer was his old friend, James Robertson.
In 1787, while Sevier was on the frontier of Greene County, defending it from Indians, the legal forces of North Carolina swooped down on his estate and took possession of his negroes. It was Tipton who represented the law; and Tipton carried off the Governor"s slaves to his own estate. When Nolichucky Jack came home and found that his enemy had stripped him, he was in a towering rage. With a body of his troops and one small cannon, he marched to Tipton"s house and besieged it, threatening a bombardment. He did not, however, fire into the dwelling, though he placed some shots about it and in the extreme corners. This opera bouffe siege endured for several days, until Tipton was reinforced by some of his own clique. Then Tipton sallied forth and attacked the besiegers, who hastily scattered rather than engage in a sanguinary fight with their neighbors. Tipton captured Sevier"s two elder sons and was only strained from hanging them on being informed that two of his own sons were at that moment in Sevier"s hands.
In March, 1788, the State of Franklin went into eclipse. Sevier was overthrown by the authorities of North Carolina. Most of the officials who had served under him were soothed by being reappointed to their old positions. Tipton"s star was now in the ascendant, for his enemy was to be made the vicarious sacrifice for the sins of all whom he had "led astray." Presently David Campbell, still graciously permitted to preside over the Superior Court, received from the Governor of North Carolina the following letter:
"Sir: It has been represented to the Executive that John Sevier, who style"s himself Captain-General of the State of Franklin, has been guilty of high treason in levying troops to oppose the laws and government of the State.... You will issue your warrant to apprehend the said John Sevier, and in case he cannot be sufficiently secured for trial in the District of Washington, order him to be committed to the public gaol."
The judge"s authority was to be exercised after he had examined the "affidavits of credible persons." Campbell"s judicial opinion seems to have been that any affidavit against "the said John Sevier" could not be made by a "credible person." He refused to issue the warrant. Tipton"s friend, Spencer, who had been North Carolina"s judge of the Superior Court in the West and who was sharing that honor now with Campbell, issued the warrant and sent Tipton to make the arrest.
Sevier was at the Widow Brown"s inn with some of his men when Tipton at last came up with him. It was early morning. Tipton and his posse were about to enter when the portly and dauntless widow, surmising their errand, drew her chair into the doorway, plumped herself down in it, and refused to budge for all the writs in North Carolina. Tipton bl.u.s.tered and the widow rocked. The altercation awakened Sevier. He dressed hurriedly and came down. As soon as he presented himself on the porch, Tipton thrust his pistol against his body, evidently with intent to fire if Sevier made signs of resistance. Sevier"s furious followers were not disposed to let him be taken without a fight, but he admonished them to respect the law, and requested that they would inform Bonnie Kate of his predicament. Then, debonair as ever, with perhaps a tinge of contempt at the corners of his mouth, he held out his wrists for the manacles which Tipton insisted on fastening upon them.
It was not likely that any jail in the western country could hold Nolichucky Jack overnight. Tipton feared a riot; and it was decided to send the prisoner for incarceration and trial to Morgantown in North Carolina, just over the hills.
Tipton did not accompany the guards he sent with Sevier. It was stated and commonly believed that he had given instructions of which the honorable men among his friends were ignorant. When the party entered the mountains, two of the guards were to lag behind with the prisoner, till the others were out of sight on the twisting trail. Then one of the two was to kill Sevier and a.s.sert that he had done it because Sevier had attempted to escape. It fell out almost as planned, except that the other guard warned Sevier of the fate in store for him and gave him a chance to flee. In plunging down the mountain, Sevier"s horse was entangled in a thicket. The would-be murderer overtook him and fired; but here again fate had interposed for her favorite. The ball had dropped out of the a.s.sa.s.sin"s pistol. So Sevier reached Morgantown in safety and was deposited in care of the sheriff, who was doubtless cautioned to take a good look at the prisoner and know him for a dangerous and a daring man.
There is a story to the effect that, when Sevier was arraigned in the courthouse at Morgantown and presently dashed through the door and away on a racer that had been brought up by some of his friends, among those who witnessed the proceedings was a young Ulster Scot named Andrew Jackson; and that on this occasion these two men, later to become foes, first saw each other. Jackson may have been in Morgantown at the time, though this is disputed; but the rest of the tale is pure legend invented by some one whose love of the spectacular led him far from the facts. The facts are less theatrical but much more dramatic. Sevier was not arraigned at all, for no court was sitting in Morgantown at the time. * The sheriff to whom he was delivered did not need to look twice at him to know him for a daring man. He had served with him at King"s Mountain. He struck off his handcuffs and set him at liberty at once. Perhaps he also notified General Charles McDowell at his home in Quaker Meadows of the presence of a distinguished guest in Burke County, for McDowell and his brother Joseph, another officer of militia, quickly appeared and went on Sevier"s bond. Nolichucky Jack was presently holding a court of his own in the tavern, with North Carolina"s men at arms-as many as were within call-drinking his health. So his sons and a company of his Wataugans found him, when they rode into Morgantown to give evidence in his behalf-with their rifles. Since none now disputed the way with him, Sevier turned homeward with his cavalcade, McDowell and his men accompanying him as far as the pa.s.s in the hills.
* Statement by John Sevier, Junior, in the Draper MSS., quoted by Turner, "Life of General John Sevier," p. 182.
No further attempt was made to try John Sevier for treason, either west or east of the mountains. In November, however, the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed the Pardon Act, and thereby granted absolution to every one who had been a.s.sociated with the State of Franklin, EXCEPT JOHN SEVIER. In a clause said to have been introduced by Tipton, now a senator, or suggested by him, John Sevier was debarred forever from "the enjoyment of any office of profit or honor or trust in the State of North Carolina."
The overhill men in Greene County took due note of the a.s.sembly"s fiat and at the next election sent Sevier to the North Carolina Senate. Nolichucky Jack, whose demeanor was never so decorous as when the ill-considered actions of those in authority had made him appear to have circ.u.mvented the law, considerately waited outside until the House had lifted the ban-which it did perforce and by a large majority, despite Tipton"s opposition-and then took his seat on the senatorial bench beside his enemy. The records show that he was reinstated as Brigadier General of the Western Counties and also appointed at the head of the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Not only in the region about Watauga did the pioneers of Tennessee endure the throes of danger and strife during these years. The little settlements on the c.u.mberland, which were scattered over a short distance of about twenty-five or thirty miles and had a frontier line of two hundred miles, were terribly afflicted. Their nearest white neighbors among the Kentucky settlers were one hundred and fifty miles away; and through the cruelest years these could render no aid-could not, indeed, hold their own stations. The Kentuckians, as we have seen, were bottled up in Harrodsburg and Boonesborough; and, while the northern Indians led by Girty and Dequindre darkened the b.l.o.o.d.y Ground anew, the c.u.mberlanders were making a desperate stand against the Chickasaws and the Creeks. So terrible was their situation that panic took hold on them, and they would have fled but for the influence of Robertson. He may have put the question to them in the biblical words, "Whither shall I flee?" For they were surrounded, and those who did attempt to escape were "weighed on the path and made light." Robertson knew that their only chance of survival was to stand their ground. The greater risks he was willing to take in person, for it was he who made trips to Boonesborough and Harrodsburg for a share of the powder and lead which John Sevier was sending into Kentucky from time to time. In the stress of conflict Robertson bore his full share of grief, for his two elder sons and his brother fell. He himself was often near to death. One day he was cut off in the fields and was shot in the foot as he ran, yet he managed to reach shelter. There is a story that, in an attack during one of his absences, the Indians forced the outer gate of the fort and Mrs. Robertson went out of her cabin, firing, and let loose a band of the savage dogs which the settlers kept for their protection, and so drove out the invaders.
The Chickasaws were loyal to the treaty they had made with the British in the early days of James Adair"s a.s.sociation with them. They were friends to England"s friends and foes to her foes. While they resented the new settlements made on land they considered theirs, they signed a peace with Robertson at the conclusion of the War of Independence. They kept their word with him as they had kept it with the British. Furthermore, their chief, Opimingo or the Mountain Leader, gave Robertson his a.s.sistance against the Creeks and the Choctaws and, in so far as he understood its workings, informed him of the new Spanish and French conspiracy, which we now come to consider. So once again the Chickasaws were servants of destiny to the English-speaking race, for again they drove the wedge of their honor into an Indian solidarity welded with European gold.
Since it was generally believed at that date that the tribes were instigated to war by the British and supplied by them with their ammunition, savage inroads were expected to cease with the signing of peace. But Indian warfare not only continued; it increased. In the last two years of the Revolution, when the British were driven from the Back Country of the Carolinas and could no longer reach the tribes with consignments of firearms and powder, it should have been evident that the Indians had other sources of supply and other allies, for they lacked nothing which could aid them in their efforts to exterminate the settlers of Tennessee.
Neither France nor Spain wished to see an English-speaking republic based on ideals of democracy successfully established in America. Though in the Revolutionary War, France was a close ally of the Americans and Spain something more than a nominal one, the secret diplomacy of the courts of the Bourbon cousins ill matched with their open professions. Both cousins hated England. The American colonies, smarting under injustice, had offered a field for their revenge. But hatred of England was not the only reason why activities had been set afoot to increase the discord which should finally separate the colonies from Great Britain and leave the destiny of the colonies to be decided by the House of Bourbon. Spain saw in the Americans, with their English modes of thought, a menace to her authority in her own colonies on both the northern and southern continents. This menace would not be stilled but augmented if the colonies should be established as a republic. Such an example might be too readily followed. Though France had, by a secret treaty in 1762, made over to Spain the province of Louisiana, she was not unmindful of the Bourbon motto, "He who attacks the Crown of one attacks the other." And she saw her chance to deal a crippling blow at England"s prestige and commerce.
In 1764, the French Minister, Choiseul, had sent a secret agent, named Pontleroy, to America to a.s.sist in making trouble and to watch for any signs that might be turned to the advantage of les duex couronnes. Evidently Pontleroy"s reports were encouraging for, in 1768, Johann Kalb-the same Kalb who fell at Camden in 1780-arrived in Philadelphia to enlarge the good work. He was not only, like several of the foreign officers in the War of Independence, a spy for his Government, but he was also the special emissary of one Comte de Broglie who, after the colonies had broken with the mother country, was to put himself at the head of American affairs. This Broglie had been for years one of Louis XV"s chief agents in subterranean diplomacy, and it is not to be supposed that he was going to attempt the stupendous task of controlling America"s destiny without substantial backing. Spain had been advised meanwhile to rule her new Louisiana territory with great liberality-in fact, to let it shine as a republic before the yearning eyes of the oppressed Americans, so that the English colonists would arise and cast off their fetters. Once the colonies had freed themselves from England"s protecting arm, it would be a simple matter for the Bourbons to gather them in like so many little lost chicks from a rainy yard. The intrigants of autocratic systems have never been able to understand that the urge of the spirit of independence in men is not primarily to break shackles but to STAND ALONE and that the breaking of bonds is incidental to the true demonstration of freedom. The Bourbons and their agents were no more nor less blind to the great principle stirring the hearts of men in their day than were the Prussianized hosts over a hundred years later who, having themselves no acquaintance with the law of liberty, could not foresee that half a world would rise in arms to maintain that law.
When the War of Independence had ended, the French Minister, Vergennes, and the Spanish Minister, Floridablanca, secretly worked in unison to prevent England"s recognition of the new republic; and Floridablanca in 1782 even offered to a.s.sist England if she would make further efforts to subdue her "rebel subjects." Both Latin powers had their own axes to grind, and America was to tend the grindstone. France looked for recovery of her old prestige in Europe and expected to supersede England in commerce. She would do this, in the beginning, chiefly through control of America and of America"s commerce. Vergennes therefore sought not only to dictate the final terms of peace but also to say what the American commissioners should and should not demand. Of the latter gentlemen he said that they possessed "caracteres peu maniables!" In writing to Luzerne, the French Amba.s.sador in Philadelphia, on October 14, 1782, Vergennes said: "it behooves us to leave them [the American commissioners] to their illusions, to do everything that can make them fancy that we share them, and undertake only to defeat any attempts to which those illusions might carry them if our cooperation is required." Among these "illusions" were America"s desires in regard to the fisheries and to the western territory. Concerning the West, Vergennes had written to Luzerne, as early as July 18, 1780: "At the moment when the revolution broke out, the limits of the Thirteen States did not reach the River [Mississippi] and it would be absurd for them to claim the rights of England, a power whose rule they had abjured." By the secret treaty with Spain, furthermore, France had agreed to continue the war until Gibraltar should be taken, and-if the British should be driven from Newfoundland-to share the fisheries only with Spain, and to support Spain in demanding that the Thirteen States renounce all territory west of the Alleghanies. The American States must by no means achieve a genuine independence but must feel the need of sureties, allies, and protection. *
* See John Jay, "On the Peace Negotiations of 1782-1788 as Ill.u.s.trated by the Secret Correspondence of France and England," New York, 1888.
So intent was Vergennes on these aims that he sent a secret emissary to England to further them there. This act of his perhaps gave the first inkling to the English statesmen * that American and French desires were not identical and hastened England"s recognition of American independence and her agreement to American demands in regard to the western territory. When, to his amazement, Vergennes learned that England had acceded to all America"s demands, he said that England had "bought the peace" rather than made it. The policy of Vergennes in regard to America was not unjustly p.r.o.nounced by a later French statesman "A VILE SPECULATION."
* "Your Lordship was well founded in your suspicion that the granting of independence to America as a previous measure is a point which the French have by no means at heart and perhaps are entirely averse from." Letter from Fitzherbert to Grantham, September 3, 1782.
Through England"s unexpected action, then, the Bourbon cousins had forever lost their opportunity to dominate the young but spent and war-weakened Republic, or to use America as a catspaw to s.n.a.t.c.h English commerce for France. It was plain, too, that any frank move of the sort would range the English alongside of their American kinsmen. Since American Independence was an accomplished fact and therefore could no longer be prevented, the present object of the Bourbon cousins was to restrict it. The Appalachian Mountains should be the western limits of the new nation. Therefore the settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee must be broken up, or the settlers must be induced to secede from the Union and raise the Spanish banner. The latter alternative was held to be preferable. To bring it about the same methods were to be continued which had been used prior to and during the war-namely, the use of agents provocateurs to corrupt the ignorant and incite the lawless, the instigation of Indian ma.s.sacres to daunt the brave, and the distribution of gold to buy the avaricious.
As her final and supreme means of coercion, Spain refused to America the right of navigation on the Mississippi and so deprived the Westerners of a market for their produce. The Northern States, having no immediate use for the Mississippi, were willing to placate Spain by acknowledging her monopoly of the great waterway. But Virginia and North Carolina were determined that America should not, by congressional enactment, surrender her "natural right"; and they cited the proposed legislation as their reason for refusing to ratify the Const.i.tution. "The act which abandons it [the right of navigation] is an act of separation between the eastern and western country," Jefferson realized at last. "An act of separation"-that point had long been very clear to the Latin sachems of the Mississippi Valley!