In the spring of 1842 an event occurred which again threw the whole
nation into a state of the wildest excitement. The friends of the
murdered Ridges and Boudinot had never forgiven the act, nor had
time served to soften the measure of their resentment against the
perpetrators and their supposed abettors. Stand Watie had long been
a leader among the Ridge party and had been marked for assassination
at the time of the murders just alluded to. He was a brother of John
Ridge, one of the murdered men, and he now, in virtue of his mission as
an avenger, killed James Foreman, a member of the Ross party and one of
the culprits in the murder of the Ridges. Although Stand Watie excused
his conduct on the score of having come to a knowledge of certain
threats against his life made by Foreman, no event could at that time
have been more demoralizing and destructive of the earnestly desired
era of peace and good feeling among the Cherokee people. From that
time forward all hope of a sincere unification of the several tribal
factions was at an end.