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 Hiwassee 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 assured. 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 Hiwassee 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 assistance 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 assist 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, assisted 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
Assembly of North Carolina passed a resolution of gratitude to the
overmountain men in general, and to Sevier and Shelby in particular, for
their "very generous and patriotic services" with which the "General
Assembly of this State are feelingly impressed." The resolution
concluded by urging the recipients of the Assembly's acknowledgments to
"continue" in their noble 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
Assembly, there to be scrutinized by unkindly eyes, the dissatisfaction
increased. The breasts 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 assailed as
grasping persons who seized on every pretense to "fabricate demands
against the Government." Nor were those fiery breasts 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 Assembly 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 passing
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 Assembly's brought about immediate
consequences in the region beyond the hills. The Cherokees, who knew
nothing about the Assembly'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 Assembly
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 assert that they were not acting illegally,
for in her first constitution 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 passed
preliminary resolutions, and then adjourned to meet later in the year.
The news was soon disseminated through North Carolina and the Assembly
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 Assembly'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--assented 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 document 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 constitution 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 Assembly 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
sturdy 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 constitution 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 Assembly 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 assemblymen 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 Cocke, 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 Cumberland
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 opéra 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 blustered
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 assert 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 assassin'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. ¹ 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 pass in the hills.
¹ 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 Assembly passed the
Pardon Act, and thereby granted absolution to every one who had been
associated 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 Assembly'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
circumvented 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 Cumberland, 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 Bloody Ground
anew, the Cumberlanders 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 association 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 assistance 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 assist 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 assist 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 caractères peu maniables! In
writing to Luzerne, the French Ambassador 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 coöperation 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. ¹
¹ See John Jay, On the Peace Negotiations of 1782-1783 as Illustrated 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 ² 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 pronounced by a later French
statesman "a vile speculation"
² "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 snatch 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 massacres 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 Constitution. "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!
Bounded as they were on one side by the precipitous mountains and on the
other by the southward flow of the Mississippi and its tributary, the
Ohio, the trappers and growers of corn in Kentucky and western Tennessee
regarded New Orleans as their logical market, as the wide waters were
their natural route. If market and route were to be closed to them,
their commercial advancement was something less than a dream.
In 1785, Don Estevan Miró, a gentleman of artful and winning address,
became Governor of Louisiana and fountainhead of the propaganda. He
wrote benign and brotherly epistles to James Robertson of the Cumberland
and to His Excellency of Franklin, suggesting that to be of service to
them was his dearest aim in life; and at the same time he kept the
southern Indians continually on the warpath. When Robertson wrote to him
of the Creek and Cherokee depredations, with a hint that the Spanish
might have some responsibility in the matter, Miró replied by offering
the Cumberlander a safe home on Spanish territory with freedom of
religion and no taxes. He disclaimed stirring up the Indians. He had, in
fact, advised Mr. McGillivray, chief of the Creeks, to make peace. He
would try again what he could do with Mr. McGillivray. As to the
Cherokees, they resided in a very distant territory and he was not
acquainted with them; he might have added that he did not need to be:
his friend McGillivray was the potent personality among the Southern
tribes.
In Alexander McGillivray, Miró found a weapon fashioned to his hand. If
the Creek chieftain's figure might stand as the symbol of treachery, it
is none the less one of the most picturesque and pathetic in our early
annals. McGillivray, it will be remembered, was the son of Adair's
friend Lachlan McGillivray, the trader, and a Creek woman whose sire had
been a French officer. A brilliant and beautiful youth, he had given his
father a pride in him which is generally denied to the fathers of sons
with Indian blood in them. The Highland trader had spared nothing in his
son's education and had placed him, after his school days, in the
business office of the large trading establishment of which he himself
was a member. At about the age of seventeen Alexander had become a
chieftain in his mother's nation; and doubtless it is he who appears
shortly afterwards in the Colonial Records as the White Leader whose
influence is seen to have been at work for friendship between the
colonists and the tribes. When the Revolutionary War broke out, Lachlan
McGillivray, like many of the old traders who had served British
interests so long and so faithfully, held to the British cause. Georgia
confiscated all his property and Lachlan fled to Scotland. For this, his
son hated the people of Georgia with a perfect hatred. He remembered how
often his father's courage alone had stood between those same people and
the warlike Creeks. He could recall the few days in 1760 when Lachlan
and his fellow trader, Galphin, at the risk of their lives had braved
the Creek warriors--already painted for war and on the march--and so had
saved the settlements of the Back Country from extermination. He looked
upon the men of Georgia as an Indian regards those who forget either a
blood gift or a blood vengeance. And he embraced the whole American
nation in his hatred for their sakes.
In 1776 Alexander McGillivray was in his early thirties--the exact date
of his birth is uncertain. ¹ He had, we are told, the tall, sturdy, but
spare physique of the Gael, with a countenance of Indian color though
not of Indian cast. His overhanging brows made more striking his very
large and luminous dark eyes. He bore himself with great dignity; his
voice was soft, his manner gentle. He might have been supposed to be
some Latin courtier but for the barbaric display of his dress and his
ornaments. He possessed extraordinary personal magnetism, and his power
extended beyond the Creek nation to the Choctaws and Chickasaws and the
Southern Cherokees. He had long been wooed by the Louisiana authorities,
but there is no evidence that he had made alliance with them prior to
the Revolution.
¹ Probably about 1741 or 1742. Some writers give 1739 and others 1746.
His father landed in Charleston, Pickett (History of Alabama) says, in
1735, and was then only sixteen.
Early in the war he joined the British, received a colonel's commission,
and led his formidable Creeks against the people of Georgia. When the
British were driven from the Back Countries, McGillivray, in his British
uniform, went on with the war. When the British made peace, McGillivray
exchanged his British uniform for a Spanish one and went on with the
war. In later days, when he had forced Congress to pay him for his
father's confiscated property and had made peace, he wore the uniform of
an American Brigadier General; but he did not keep the peace, never
having intended to keep it. It was not until he had seen the Spanish
plots collapse and had realized that the Americans were to dominate the
land, that the White Leader ceased from war and urged the youths of his
tribe to adopt American civilization.
Spent from hate and wasted with dissipation, he retired at last to the
spot where Lachlan had set up his first Creek home. Here he lived his
few remaining days in a house which he built on the site of the old
ruined cabin about which still stood the little grove of apple trees his
father had planted. He died at the age of fifty of a fever contracted
while he was on a business errand in Pensacola. Among those who visited
him in his last years, one has left this description of him:
"Dissipation has sapped a constitution originally delicate and feeble.
He possesses an atticism of diction aided by a liberal education, a
great fund of wit and humor meliorated by a perfect good nature and
politeness." Set beside that kindly picture this rough etching by James
Robertson: "The biggest devil among them [the Spaniards] is the half
Spaniard, half Frenchman, half Scotchman and altogether Creek scoundrel,
McGillivray."
How indefatigably McGillivray did his work we know from the bloody
annals of the years which followed the British-American peace, when the
men of the Cumberland and of Franklin were on the defensive continually.
How cleverly Miró played his personal rôle we discover in the letters
addressed to him by Sevier and Robertson. These letters show that, as
far as words go at any rate, the founders of Tennessee were willing to
negotiate with Spain. In a letter dated September 12, 1788, Sevier
offered himself and his tottering State of Franklin to the Spanish King.
This offer may have been made to gain a respite, or it may have been
genuine. The situation in the Tennessee settlements was truly desperate,
for neither North Carolina nor Congress apparently cared in the least
what befell them or how soon. North Carolina indeed was in an anomalous
position, as she had not yet ratified the Federal Constitution. If
Franklin went out of existence and the territory which it included
became again part of North Carolina, Sevier knew that a large part of
the newly settled country would, under North Carolina's treaties, revert
to the Indians. That meant ruin to large numbers of those who had put
their faith in his star, or else it meant renewed conflict either with
the Indians or with the parent State. The probabilities aria that Sevier
hoped to play the Spaniards against the Easterners who, even while
denying the Westerners' contention that the mountains were a "natural"
barrier between them, were making of them a barrier of indifference. It
would seem so, because, although this was the very aim of all Miró's
activities so that, had he been assured of the sincerity of the offer,
he must have grasped at it, yet nothing definite was done. And Sevier
was presently informing Shelby, now in Kentucky, that there was a
Spanish plot afoot to seize the western country.
Miró had other agents besides McGillivray--who, by the way, was costing
Spain, for his own services and those of four tribes aggregating over
six thousand warriors, a sum of fifty-five thousand dollars a year.
McGillivray did very well as superintendent of massacres; but the
Spaniard required a different type of man, an American who enjoyed his
country's trust, to bring the larger plan to fruition. Miró found that
man in General James Wilkinson, lately of the Continental Army and now a
resident of Kentucky, which territory Wilkinson undertook to deliver to
Spain, for a price. In 1787 Wilkinson secretly took the oath of
allegiance to Spain and is listed in the files of the Spanish secret
service, appropriately, as "Number Thirteen." He was indeed the
thirteenth at table, the Judas at the feast. Somewhat under middle
height, Wilkinson was handsome, graceful, and remarkably magnetic. Of a
good, if rather impoverished, Maryland family, he was well educated and
widely read for the times. With a brilliant and versatile
intellectuality and ready gifts as a speaker, he swayed men easily. He
was a bold soldier and was endowed with physical courage, though when
engaged in personal contests he seldom exerted it--preferring the red
tongue of slander or the hired assassin's shot from behind cover. His
record fails to disclose one commendable trait. He was inordinately
avaricious, but love of money was not his whole motive force: he had a
spirit so jealous and malignant that he hated to the death another man's
good. He seemed to divine instantly wherein other men were weak and to
understand the speediest and best means of suborning them to his own
interests--or of destroying them.
Wilkinson was able to lure a number of Kentuckians into the separatist
movement. George Rogers Clark seriously disturbed the arch plotter by
seizing a Spanish trader's store wherewith to pay his soldiers, whom
Virginia had omitted to recompense. This act aroused the suspicions of
the Spanish, either as to Number Thirteen's perfect loyalty or as to his
ability to deliver the western country. In 1786, when Clark led two
thousand men against the Ohio Indians in his last and his only
unsuccessful campaign, Wilkinson had already settled himself near the
Falls (Louisville) and had looked about for mischief which he might do
for profit. Whether his influence had anything to do with what amounted
virtually to a mutiny among Clark's forces is not ascertainable; but,
for a disinterested onlooker, he was overswift to spread the news of
Clark's debacle and to declare gleefully that Clark's sun of military
glory had now forever set. It is also known that he later served other
generals treacherously in Indian expeditions and that he intrigued with
Mad Anthony Wayne's Kentucky troops against their commander.
Spain did not wish to see the Indians crushed; and Wilkinson himself
both hated and feared any other officer's prestige. How long he had been
in foreign pay we can only conjecture, for, several years before he
transplanted his activities to Kentucky, he had been one of a cabal
against Washington. Not only his ambitions but his nature must
inevitably have brought him to the death-battle with George Rogers
Clark. As a military leader, Clark had genius, and soldiering was his
passion. In nature, he was open, frank, and bold to make foes if he
scorned a man's way as ignoble or dishonest. Wilkinson suavely set about
scheming for Clark's ruin. His communication or memorial to the Virginia
Assembly--signed by himself and a number of his friends--villifying
Clark, ended Clark's chances for the commission in the Continental Army
which he craved. It was Wilkinson who made public an incriminating
letter which had Clark's signature attached and which Clark said he had
never seen. It is to be supposed that Number Thirteen was responsible
also for the malevolent anonymous letter accusing Clark of drunkenness
and scheming which, so strangely, found its way into the Calendar of
State Papers of Virginia. ¹ As a result, Clark was censured by Virginia.
Thereupon he petitioned for a Court of Inquiry, but this was not
granted. Wilkinson had to get rid of Clark; for if Clark, with his
military gifts and his power over men, had been elevated to a position
of command under the smile of the Government, there would have been
small opportunity for James Wilkinson to lead the Kentuckians and to
gather in Spanish gold. So the machinations of one of the vilest
traitors who ever sold his country were employed to bring about the
stultification and hence the downfall of a great servant.
¹ See Thomas M. Greene's The Spanish Conspiracy, p. 72, footnote. It is
possible that Wilkinson's intrigues provide data for a new biography of
Clark which may recast in some measure the accepted view of Clark at
this period.
Wilkinson's chief aids were the Irishmen, O'Fallon, Nolan, and Powers.
Through Nolan, he also vended Spanish secrets. He sold, indeed, whatever
and whomever he could get his price for. So clever was he that he
escaped detection, though he was obliged to remove some suspicions. He
succeeded Wayne as commander of the regular army in 1796. He was one of
the commissioners to receive Louisiana when the Purchase was arranged in
1803. He was still on the Spanish pay roll at that time. Wilkinson's
true record came to light only when the Spanish archives were opened to
investigators.
There were British agents also in the Old Southwest, for the
dissatisfaction of the Western men inspired in Englishmen the hope of
recovering the Mississippi Basin. Lord Dorchester, Governor of Canada,
wrote to the British Government that he had been approached by important
Westerners; but he received advice from England to move slowly. For
complicity in the British schemes, William Blount, who was first
territorial Governor of Tennessee and later a senator from that State,
was expelled from the Senate.
Surely there was never a more elaborate network of plots that came to
nothing! The concession to Americans in 1796 of the right of navigation
on the Mississippi brought an end to the scheming.
In the same year Tennessee was admitted to the Union, and John Sevier
was elected Governor. Sevier's popularity was undiminished, though there
were at this time some sixty thousand souls in Tennessee, many of whom
were late comers who had not known him in his heyday. His old power to
win men to him must have been as strong as ever, for it is recorded that
he had only to enter a political meeting--no matter whose--for the crowd
to cheer him and shout for him to "give them a talk."
This adulation of Sevier still annoyed a few men who had ambitions of
their own. Among these was Andrew Jackson, who had come to Jonesborough
in 1788, just after the collapse of the State of Franklin. He was
twenty-one at that time, and he is said to have entered Jonesborough
riding a fine racer and leading another, with a pack of hunting dogs
baying or nosing along after him. A court record dated May 12, 1788,
avers that "Andrew Jackson, Esq. came into Court and produced a licence
as an Attorney With A Certificate sufficiently Attested of his Taking
the Oath Necessary to said office and Was admitted to Practiss as an
Attorney in the County Courts." Jackson made no history in old Watauga
during that year. Next year he moved to Nashville, and one year later,
when the Superior Court was established (1790), he became prosecuting
attorney.
The feud between Jackson and Sevier began about the time that Tennessee
entered the Union. Jackson, then twenty-nine, was defeated for the post
of Major General of the Militia through the influence which Sevier
exercised against him, and it seems that Jackson never forgave this
opposition to his ambitions. By the close of Sevier's third term,
however, in 1802, when Archibald Roane became Governor, the post of
Major General was again vacant. Both Sevier and Jackson offered
themselves for it, and Jackson was elected by the deciding vote of the
Governor, the military vote having resulted in a tie. A strong current
of influence had now set in against Sevier and involved charges against
his honor. His old enemy Tipton was still active. The basis of the
charges was a file of papers from the entry-taker's office which a
friend of Tipton's had laid before the Governor, with an affidavit to
the effect that the papers were fraudulent. Both the Governor and
Jackson believed the charges. When we consider what system or lack of
system of land laws and land entries obtained in Watauga and such
primitive communities--when a patch of corn sealed a right and claims
were made by notching trees with tomahawks--we may imagine that a file
from the land office might appear easily enough to smirch a landholder's
integrity. The scandal was, of course, used in an attempt to ruin
Sevier's candidacy for a fourth term as Governor and to make certain
Roane's reëlection. To this end Jackson bent all his energies but
without success. Nolichucky Jack was elected, for the fourth time, as
Governor of Tennessee.
Not long after his inauguration, Sevier met Jackson in Knoxville, where
Jackson was holding court. The charges against Sevier were then being
made the subject of legislative investigation instituted by Tipton, and
Jackson had published a letter in the Knoxville Gazette supporting them.
At the sight of Jackson, Sevier flew into a rage, and a fiery
altercation ensued. The two men were only restrained from leaping on
each other by the intervention of friends. The next day Jackson sent
Sevier a challenge which Sevier accepted, but with the stipulation that
the duel take place outside the State. Jackson insisted on fighting in
Knoxville, where the insult had been offered. Sevier refused. "I have
some respect," he wrote, "for the laws of the State over which I have
the honor to preside, although you, a judge, appear to have none." No
duel followed; but, after some further billets-doux, Jackson published
Sevier as "a base coward and poltroon. He will basely insult but has not
the courage to repair the wound." Again they met, by accident, and
Jackson rushed upon Sevier with his cane. Sevier dismounted and drew his
pistol but made no move to fire. Jackson, thereupon, also drew his
weapon. Once more friends interfered. It is presumable that neither
really desired the duel. By killing Nolichucky Jack, Jackson would have
ended his own career in Tennessee--if Sevier's tribe of sons had not, by
a swifter means, ended it for him. At this date Jackson was thirty-six.
Sevier was fifty-eight; and he had seventeen children.
The charges against Sevier, though pressed with all the force that his
enemies could bring to bear, came to nothing. He remained the Governor
of Tennessee for another six years--the three terms in eight years
allowed by the constitution. In 1811 he was sent to Congress for the
second time, as he had represented the Territory there twenty years
earlier. He was returned again in 1813. At the conclusion of his term in
1815 he went into the Creek country as commissioner to determine the
Creek boundaries, and here, far from his Bonnie Kate and his tribe, he
died of fever at the age of seventy. His body was buried with full
military honors at Tuckabatchee, one of the Creek towns. In 1889,
Sevier's remains were removed to Knoxville and a high marble spire was
raised above them.
His Indian enemies forgave the chastisement he had inflicted on them and
honored him. In times of peace they would come to him frequently for
advice. And in his latter days, the chiefs would make state visits to
his home on the Nolichucky River. "John Sevier is a good man"--so
declared the Cherokee, Old Tassel, making himself the spokesman of
history.
Sevier had survived his old friend, co-founder with him of Watauga, by
one year. James Robertson had died in 1814 at the age of seventy-two,
among the Chickasaws, and his body, like that of his fellow pioneer, was
buried in an Indian town and lay there until 1825, when it was removed
to Nashville.
What of the red tribes who had fought these great pioneers for the wide
land of the Old Southwest and who in the end had received their dust and
treasured it with honor in the little soil remaining to them? Always the
new boundary lines drew closer in, and the red men's foothold narrowed
before the pushing tread of the whites. The day came soon when there was
no longer room for them in the land of their fathers. But far off across
the great river there was a land the white men did not covet yet.
Thither at last the tribes--Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and
Creek--took their way. With wives and children, maids and youths, the
old and the young, with all their goods, their cattle and horses, in the
company of a regiment of American troops, they--like the white men who
had superseded them--turned westward. In their faces also was the red
color of the west, but not newly there. From the beginning of their
race, Destiny had painted them with the hue of the brief hour of the
dying sun.