The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dropped stitches in Tennessee history,
by John Allison
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Title: Dropped stitches in Tennessee history
Author: John Allison
Release Date: April 24, 2023 [eBook #70636]
Language: English
Produced by: Carla Foust and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE
HISTORY ***
[Illustration:
BELTIN ENGRAVING CO NASHVILLE
]
DROPPED STITCHES
----IN----
TENNESSEE HISTORY.
----BY----
JOHN ALLISON.
1897:
MARSHALL & BRUCE CO.,
NASHVILLE.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1897,
BY JOHN ALLISON,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
DEDICATION.
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER,
WHO, WHEN I WAS BUT A YOUTH,
FIRST INTERESTED ME IN AND TAUGHT ME MUCH
OF THE
EARLY HISTORY
OF THE
PIONEERS OF MY NATIVE STATE.
PREFACE.
This little volume, as will appear to the reader, is not a history of
anything nor of anybody, and is not so intended. The whole is simply an
effort to put together in readable form some facts in the very earliest
history of Tennessee not hitherto fully shown, if even mentioned.
I was born and brought up at Jonesboro, in Washington county,
Tennessee, and resided there until 1889.
My mother, when I was a mere boy, first interested me in and taught
me much about the pioneers and early history of my native state.
Following up much learned from her, I frequently visited old gentlemen
and aged ladies in Eastern Tennessee and a few in North Carolina, and
conversed with them about “old times” and their early lives, and from
them obtained much information not to be gotten in any other way. By
a formal order of the County Court of Washington county, made many
years ago, I was given custody and possession of the very earliest
court records made at Jonesboro (records from 1778 up to 1800, as I now
remember), and had possession of them for two or three years, and at
odd times went through and copied much from these old records. I had,
however, become interested in, and read much, from these court records
before the order of the court giving me possession of them.
I made, as best I could, original investigation as to facts plainly
suggested by the proceedings of the courts, as to the men who
constituted the court, their lives, character, etc., and also as to the
events surrounding, or involved in, the entries as indicated by the
substance of the “motions,” “orders,” etc.
Where authorities consulted and information obtained in my original
investigation have conflicted as to a date, I have given that which
seemed most probably the correct one: where no date at all could
be found or fixed, I have followed the “illustrious example of
distinguished historians,” and said, “about this time”--without giving
any date at all.
By permission of my long, long time scholarly friend, Dr. R. L. C.
White, the author, I publish with the volume “A Centennial Dream” with
the Key thereto. The “dream” and interpretation are put in an appendix,
for the reason that I can not copyright either.
Dr. White’s “Centennial Dream” has suggested, in fewer words, more
Tennessee history than any publication heretofore made, and, as
hundreds of persons can testify, has excited more interest, and caused
more thorough investigation, in Early History of Tennessee, than any
book or paper hitherto written on the subject. It will live as an
attractive, proficient instructor and teacher of the history of the
“Volunteer State” after he has “crossed over the river” and is at “rest
under the shade of the trees.”
All who read the dream and key to it will appreciate the obligation I
am under to Dr. White.
CONTENTS.
I. ANDREW JACKSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW 1
II. THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION 15
III. A UNIQUE COURT 38
IV. A TRAGIC EPISODE 60
V. EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION 69
VI. MIRO, ALIAS “MERO” 86
VII. ANDREW JACKSON AS A “SPORT” 100
VIII. JACKSON’S DUEL WITH AVERY 110
IX. ANDREW JACKSON, DEPUTY SHERIFF AND FIREMAN 119
X. ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN 125
“A CENTENNIAL DREAM” 137
INTERPRETATION OF THE “DREAM” 143
INDEX 151
DROPPED STITCHES
----IN----
TENNESSEE HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
_ANDREW JACKSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW._
Most English-reading people, as well as many of those who read history
written in other languages, are familiar with the life and deeds of
_General_ and _President_ Andrew Jackson; and very many people in
the United States know of _Senator_ and _Judge_ Andrew Jackson. Few,
however, are acquainted with young Andrew Jackson, Esq., attorney at
law, of Jonesboro, then (1788-9) the county-seat of Washington county.
North Carolina. They are all one and the same personage; and it can
truthfully be said that there is a still smaller number who know
anything whatever about the leading and dominating characteristics
of the people among whom young Andrew Jackson really began life, at
Jonesboro, in what is now Washington county, Tennessee.
Most of Jackson’s biographers, and nearly all of those who have written
and spoken about him, make him begin his business and professional life
at Nashville, in the fall of the year 1788. John Reid, in his “Life of
Andrew Jackson” (published in 1817), says that Jackson, on reaching the
settlement on the Holston river, near Jonesboro, remained there until
October, 1788, when he left and went to Nashville, arriving at the
latter place during the same month. Jenkins, in his “Life of General
Jackson” (published in 1850), says that Jackson reached Nashville in
October, 1788. Parton, in his “Life of Jackson” (published in 1860),
says: “Upon the settlement of the difficulties between North Carolina
and her western counties (1788), John McNairy, a friend of Jackson’s,
was appointed judge of the Superior Court for the Western District, and
Jackson was invested with the office of solicitor or prosecutor for the
same district.... Thomas Searcy, another of Jackson’s friends, received
the appointment of clerk of the court.... Before the end of October,
1788, the long train of immigrants, among whom was Mr. Solicitor
Jackson, reached Nashville, to the great joy of the settlers there.”
The distinguished historians are all in error in all of these
statements. There was no Superior Court at Nashville at this date.
The act of the general assembly of North Carolina, providing for or
establishing a Superior Court of Law and Equity for the counties of
Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee, was not passed until November, 1788.
The act passed at Fayetteville, in that month, “erected the counties
of Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee into a district for the holding of
Superior Courts of Law and Equity therein, by the name of Mero.” The
first volume of the original record of the minutes of the Superior
Court of Law and Equity for the district of Washington--then the
“Western District”--at Jonesboro, shows that David Campbell alone held
that court from the February term, 1788 (which was the first term),
until the February term, 1789, at which latter term the record shows
that Judge McNairy appeared and sat with Judge Campbell. The same
volume shows that, at the February term, 1788, and on the first day
of the term, Francis Alexander Ramsey was appointed and qualified as
clerk of the court, and that “Archibald Roan was appointed Attorney
to prosecute on behalf of the State,” on the first day of the term,
but that he resigned on the following day; “whereupon, William Sharp,
Esq. is appointed in his room.” Sharp continued to act as prosecuting
attorney until February, 1790, when, as the record shows, he was
succeeded by William Cocke. The same volume has this entry: “August
Term 1788. John McNairy Esq. produced a License to practice as an
Attorney in the several Courts within this State with a certificate
from the Clerk of the Court for the District of Salisbury that he
has taken the oaths necessary for his qualification as an attorney
whereupon he is admitted to Practice in this Court.”
The Superior Court of Law and Equity for the Mero District was not
formally organized and opened until late in the year 1789, when John
McNairy was appointed judge of that court.
Under the territorial form of government provided by Congress, in
May, 1790, for “the territory of the United States of America south
of the river Ohio,” the President appointed three attorneys for the
territory--one for Washington District, one for Hamilton District and
one for the “Mero District.” Andrew Jackson was appointed in and for
the “District of Mero,” and I have not been able to find any evidence
whatever that he held any office whatever prior to this appointment.
It is doubtful whether he ever received any compensation from the
government of the United States for the services rendered as attorney
of the “Mero District;” for, at the first session of the third general
assembly of Tennessee, an act was passed, October 26, 1799, the second
section of which is as follows: “Be it enacted, that the sum of four
hundred dollars shall be and the same is hereby appropriated for the
payment of the sum due Andrew Jackson, as a full compensation for
his services as Attorney General for the District of Mero under the
territorial government.” Andrew Jackson never accepted payment twice
for the same service.
Section 1 of the same act appropriates two hundred dollars “to
Archibald Roane, as full compensation for services as Attorney General
for the District of Hamilton under the territorial government.”
Jackson did not arrive at Nashville until the fall of the year 1789
or the spring of 1790--most probably the latter. He “settled” in
Jonesboro, in what was then Washington county, North Carolina, and is
now Washington county, Tennessee, in the early part of the spring of
1788. He probably came from Morganton, North Carolina, across the range
of mountains to Jonesboro, as early in the spring as the melting snow
and ice made such a trip over the Appalachians possible. From Morganton
to Jonesboro, by the trail or route then travelled, was more than one
hundred miles, two-thirds of which, at that time, was without a single
human habitation along its course. As emigration from east of the
mountains to “the new world west of the Alleghanies” was considerable
about this period, it is quite possible that Judge McNairy and others
came at the same time; but who they all were, and the exact date of
their arrival in Jonesboro, is not known.
On the old record books of the minutes of the proceedings of the Court
of Pleas and Quarter Sessions kept at Jonesboro will be found the
following entry: “State of North Carolina Washington County, Monday the
Twelfth day of May Anno Domini One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty
Eight. Andrew Jackson Esq. came into Court and Produced a license as
an Attorney With A Certificate sufficiently Attested of his Taking
the Oaths Necessary to said office and Was admitted to Practiss as
an Attorney in this County Court.” The entry immediately preceding
recites that “Archibald Roane, David Allison, and Joseph Hamilton
Esquires Produced sufficient Licenses to Practiss as Attorneys and were
admitted,” etc.; and the entry immediately following recites that “John
McNairey Produced a license as an Attorney,” etc., and “was admitted to
Practiss as an attorney,” etc.
Thus this old record shows the admission to the bar, on the same
day, in the one-story log court-house, twenty-four feet square, at
Jonesboro, of five young men.
Jackson’s promotion from one office to another, until he reached the
highest and most exalted office on earth, the Presidency of the United
States, is known to all; but that “Twelfth day of May Anno Domini One
Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Eight” must have been a lucky day,
or there must have been good material in those young men--for Andrew
Jackson was not the only one of them who attained eminence. Jackson
was first United States attorney for the “District of Mero,” but Roane
held the same office at the same time in the Hamilton District, while
McNairy presided over both of them as federal judge for “the territory
of the United States of America south of the river Ohio.” Jackson
met both McNairy and Roane as fellow delegates in the constitutional
convention for Tennessee, in 1796. Jackson was afterward a judge of
the Superior Court of Law and Equity, but so were both McNairy and
Roane--and this, too, before Jackson reached the bench, they having
been elected at the first session of the first general assembly of
Tennessee, in April, 1796, before the state had been formally admitted
into the Union by act of Congress. Their decisions, however, were never
called into question on that ground.
In 1797, McNairy was appointed a district judge of the Federal Court
in Tennessee, which position he held continuously until his death in
1831 or 1832, leaving his reputation as a wise and just judge and an
upright man as a heritage to Tennesseans.
Roane resigned his judgeship in June, 1801, and was elected Governor
of Tennessee in the following August. On retiring from the office
of Governor, after having served two years, he remained in private
life until 1811, when he was appointed circuit judge. Thereafter--in
October, 1815--he was again appointed to the Superior Court bench,
where he remained until April or May, 1818, and then retired from
public service, honored and esteemed.
David Allison was commissioned “Master of the Rolls and Clerk in Equity
of the Superior Court of Law and Equity” for Washington District at
Jonesboro, by Judges Samuel Spencer and David Campbell, in August,
1788. He held this office for about two years, resigning in 1790,
when he went to the settlement on the Cumberland--now Nashville--and
engaged, I believe, in the mercantile business.
Joseph Hamilton disappears entirely from the court records and
proceedings at Jonesboro, and I have been able only to trace him
elsewhere, as Clerk of the County Court of Caswell county, State of
Franklin, 1785, and when he was appointed by the territorial Governor
and Council to aid in running and marking the lines of Knox and
Jefferson counties, when they were established in 1792, and where he
was appointed one of the Trustees of Greeneville College in 1794.
It was while Roane was Governor, in 1802, that the memorable
contest between John Sevier and Andrew Jackson, for the position of
Major General of militia in Tennessee, occurred. It was no empty
and meaningless honor to hold this position then in the state--as
subsequent events demonstrated. Under the terms of the constitution,
the Major General was elected by the field officers of the militia.
When the votes which had been cast were counted, there was found to
be a tie between Jackson and Sevier. The Governor, by virtue of his
office, was commander-in-chief of the militia. He was therefore a field
officer, and as such was entitled to cast, and did cast, the deciding
vote between these two great commanders. Governor Roane gave his vote
for Jackson, and Jackson thus became Major General of militia in
Tennessee, which led him up to the victory he gained over the British
at New Orleans, and this victory eventually made him President of the
United States. If Roane had voted for Sevier?--I am a Presbyterian.
Roane was a candidate for re-election to the office of Governor, in
August, 1803. John Sevier was a candidate against him, and defeated
him, notwithstanding the fact that Roane had the earnest and active
support of Jackson. Jackson and Roane combined could not beat Sevier
before the people, although the latter had been three times Governor
theretofore. Roane, as before stated, remained in private life until
1811. Sevier was twice elected Governor after having defeated Roane,
and remained in public service almost continuously until his death
in September, 1815. To give in detail the various offices with which
John Sevier was honored, every one of which he honored in turn,
would be foreign to the subject. He filled every office known to the
statutes--and some which were unknown--except two: he was never a
Senator in Congress nor a judge of any of the Superior Courts. (He was
not a lawyer.) Nothing that could be said on the subject would add to
this evidence of the confidence the people had in him, and of their
faith in and affection for the man.
Jackson had attained to the age of twenty-one years on the 15th of
March preceding the entry above quoted, admitting him to the bar in
Washington county. He may have been formally admitted at Salisbury or
Morganton, North Carolina, but he did not in fact open an office or
enter upon the practice of law at either place. The order admitting him
to the bar at Jonesboro, therefore, may be accepted and regarded as the
opening entry in the business life and the professional and political
career of this, one of the greatest of all Americans.
These old court records at Jonesboro disclose the fact that Jackson
was in the town and in attendance on the Court of Pleas and Quarter
Sessions, at its November term, 1788. Under the law at that time, bills
of sale of slaves and horses and deeds to land had to be proven in the
court mentioned. A bill of sale was presented to this court by Jackson,
at its November term, 1788. This bill of sale is given below, for
reasons hereafter to be stated. It is as follows: “A Bill of Sale from
Micajah Crews to Andrew Jackson, Esquire for A Negroe Woman named Nancy
about eighteen or twenty years of Age was Proven in Open Court by the
Oath of David Allison a Subscribing Witness and Ordered to be Recorded.”
The court records for the years 1788 and 1789, kept in Washington,
Sullivan, Greene and Hawkins counties, establish the fact that Jackson
was practising law in those counties during the two years mentioned. He
could not, in the very nature of things, have attended court in those
counties, if he had been residing at Nashville or practising law in
Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee counties, which at that time constituted
the “District of Mero.”
It has been stated without qualification by some writers that Jackson
was present in Morganton, North Carolina, when Governor John Sevier
escaped from the authorities there and returned to “the western
waters.” Parton says that “Jackson may have witnessed the celebrated
rescue of Governor Sevier, as, about the time of its occurrence in
1788, he was at Morganton, on a visit to Colonel Waightstill Avery,
on his way to the western wilds of Tennessee.” Sevier, for having
organized and been elected Governor of the “lost state of Franklin,”
was arrested near Jonesboro, in October, 1788, and taken to Morganton;
but there was no such “celebrated rescue” or escape of Sevier as that
pictured in the various accounts of this affair which have been given.
Sevier, on reaching Morganton, was met by Generals Charles McDowell and
Joseph McDowell, who became his bondsmen until he could make a visit
to a brother-in-law who resided some miles from the town. Sevier made
this visit, returning to Morganton on the second day after leaving, and
reported to the sheriff of Burke county, who permitted him to go where
he pleased without requiring bond. In the meantime, Sevier’s two sons,
James and John, together with Major Evans, Mr. Crosby and probably
others from “the western waters,” had arrived in Morganton; and, in
consequence of what was then told to Sevier by his sons and friends
(which need not be stated here), he left Morganton, quietly and openly,
in broad day, and returned with them immediately to Washington county.
All of these occurrences took place during the month of October, 1788;
and Jackson could not have been, during this month, in Morganton, in
Jonesboro and in Nashville. He was, as before stated, at Jonesboro,
familiarizing himself with the country and getting acquainted with the
people in the counties mentioned.
It has been written of Jackson that he came into the “new settlements”
on foot, or that he walked from Morganton to Jonesboro. This is
incorrect. More than twenty-five years ago, the writer made it his
business to investigate the truth of that statement, and also other
incidents and facts in reference to the early life of Jackson while
he made his home at Jonesboro. There were then living in Washington
and the surrounding counties several aged native-born citizens who had
known Jackson personally, and who had heard much concerning him. These
old gentlemen, who ranged in age around eighty-five years, delighted
to talk of what they knew and had heard of Jackson when he came to
Jonesboro, and while he lived there during the years 1788 and 1789. All
that has been or will be stated herein is from notes of conversations
had with them, and either taken literally from or based on the old
court records at Jonesboro. From these sources of information it can be
asserted as truth that Jackson arrived in Jonesboro riding one horse
and leading another; that the horse he was riding was a “race horse;”
that he had a pair of “holsters” (pistols) buckled across the front
of his saddle; and that on the led horse was a shot gun, a “pack”
and a well-filled pair of saddle-bags, while following after him and
by his side was a goodly pack of foxhounds. This is an inventory of
his personal belongings, as given me by at least three of these old
gentlemen,[A] each of whom had known Jackson personally, and had heard
the story of his arrival in the community repeated often by fathers,
mothers and others. It is reasonable to infer that he had some money
also, or he could not, within a few months after his arrival, have
purchased the slave shown, by the bill of sale set out above, to have
been bought by him. The price of such a slave as that described was at
that time about three hundred dollars. When one of the old gentlemen
referred to was told by me that it had been said and “published” that
Jackson had come to Jonesboro “afoot,” he fired up and his eyes fairly
sparkled as he exclaimed: “Good God! Jackson never walked anywhere
from necessity. He came here riding a race-horse and leading another
first-rate horse.”
Jackson made his home, while he remained in the eastern part of what
is now Tennessee, at the house of Christopher Taylor (father of Abram
Taylor, before mentioned), about one mile west of Jonesboro, on the
road that led from the town to the “Brown settlement” on the Nolichucky
river. The old house is still standing, and can be seen from the
passing trains on the Southern railway. A view of it, as it appeared
some years ago, is given.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF CHRISTOPHER TAYLOR.
Where Andrew Jackson boarded during years 1788-9. Showing port-holes.
Erected about 1773. From a photograph taken in April, 1897.]
Christopher Taylor was a slaveholder and a large landowner, and had
some race-horses which were fairly good for the times, together with
a pack of the “finest and fastest hounds” in the country. While every
one knew that Jackson was a devotee of the race-course, a lover of the
chase and not averse to a cock-fight, still he was admired and esteemed
by all, from the time he came into the country.
It is not probable that he had a law-office in Jonesboro, the tradition
being that he received and consulted with his clients at Christopher
Taylor’s, when court was not in session. When he was consulted by a
client, his first effort was to compromise or adjust the difference,
if possible; failing in this, he was most stubborn and unrelenting
on behalf of his client, never, however, resorting to anything not
in keeping with the strictest rules of propriety and fairness, and
always courteous, manly and open in his bearing toward court, jury and
opposing counsel, and exacting from every one the most respectful and
courteous treatment, whether in court, at the race-course or elsewhere.
He never insinuated anything--he spoke it out plainly. He despised
deceit and treachery, and he held in the highest esteem the bold, open
loyalty of a man to a friend or a conviction. He loathed any man who
was guilty of a little mean, or mean little, act. He had a profound
contempt for the narrow-minded and penurious or niggardly man. He
himself was not extravagant, but his heart and hand seemed to open
spontaneously to a deserving object of charity. Strange to say, while
he did not know what fear was, he was often heard to express great
sympathy for cowards or the timid, and he would never allow such an one
to be imposed on in his presence.
It is not necessary to recite evidence or narrate circumstances to show
that such a man as Jackson had the most exalted opinion of woman, and
that he was always her champion and defender; but an incident which
occurred at Rogersville, in Hawkins county, will be related here.
A most estimable widow kept the “tavern” at Rogersville. Her house
was generally full during court week. One day, a stranger came into
the public or reception room, shortly before supper, and asked for
entertainment or a room. The landlady in person showed him a room, with
two or three beds in it, and told him that he could, if he wished,
occupy that room with two other gentlemen, having a bed to himself,
explaining that, on account of it being court week, her house was so
crowded that she could not give him a separate room. The stranger was
not pleased with this arrangement, and so told the landlady. As they
returned to the public room, the stranger, just as they entered it,
made some insolent remark about a country and a town which could not
afford a gentleman a separate room. Jackson, who was sitting in the
room, heard the remark. Springing to his feet, he seized the stranger
by the arm, exclaiming, “Come with me, sir--I’ll find a separate
room and bed for you!” The stranger, observing Jackson’s tone and
manner, hesitated, and asked him what he meant. The only answer he
received was, “Come on, sir!” and he reluctantly went with Jackson,
who was still holding him by the arm. Jackson took his captive out
the “back way,” and brought him up in front of a corn-crib, in which
were some corn and shucks. Opening the door of the crib, he commanded
the stranger to “climb in,” at the same time displaying in his right
hand an argument that so overcame all desire of resistance that
prompt obedience was the immediate result. The stranger “climbed in,”
apologizing and begging at the same time, and Jackson closed the door
upon him. After looking at his prisoner for some minutes with great
satisfaction, Jackson asked him if he was willing to go back to the
house, apologize to the landlady, and accept the room which she had
offered him. The stranger readily expressed his willingness to do this,
which he did, and so the incident closed.
In going from Jonesboro to the courts in Greene, Hawkins and Sullivan
counties, Jackson always took with him his shotgun, holsters and
saddle-bags, and very often his hounds, so that he was always ready to
join in a deer chase or a fox hunt. He was an unerring marksman, and
was always the centre of attraction at the “shooting matches,” at which
the prizes were quarters of beef, turkeys and deer. He would dismount
anywhere on these trips, in order to participate in such a contest; and
messengers were frequently sent from remote parts of the settlements,
inviting him to come out and join in a hunt or a “shooting match.” He
invariably accepted such invitations.
In those early days, when a new settler came into the community, or
a young man married, as soon as the place for the “clearing” and the
erection of a cabin was fixed upon, the neighbors “gathered in,” and
they had what was called a “house raising” and a “barn raising.” They
felled the trees, hewed the logs and built the house and barn--all in
one day, or in two days at most. It was said that Jackson attended
more of these house and barn “raisings” than any other one man in
the country. They usually wound up with a fox hunt, a deer chase or
a shooting match. He was said to have been “a horseman without an
equal, the boldest and most fearless rider that had ever crossed
the Alleghanies.” He would ford or swim his horse through a river
wherever he came to it, if he wished to get to the opposite side. His
aggressiveness and restlessness were often the subject of remark, and
led to the opinion, which was freely expressed, that if ever there was
a war, he would be a great general.
He began life among people who had views and opinions of their own
on all questions of the day and subjects of public interest; yet his
judgment was consulted and his views sought on almost all public
affairs, notwithstanding his youth. He was recognized from the first as
a man who “would fight at the drop of a hat, and drop the hat himself”;
but in all the personal difficulties which he had while he resided in
Washington county, save one--a duel with Col. Avery, an account of
which will be given in another chapter--public opinion was generally
largely in his favor.
It may, and it should, be interesting to those who love and revere the
memory of Andrew Jackson to know something of the life, habits and
characteristics of the people among whom he first settled at Jonesboro,
as well as of those with whom he afterwards made his permanent home at
Nashville; for whatever can be said to the credit and glory of either
the early settlers on the Watauga or those upon the Cumberland can
be truthfully said of the others. Therefore, a brief account of the
dominating characteristics of the people among whom he first settled
will be given. This will, it is believed, throw some light on the
formation of Jackson’s character, methods and course throughout his
life.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Major Bird Brown, Abram Taylor and John Allison.
CHAPTER II.
_THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION._
The first settlers in Tennessee: what did they do?
They founded and administered the first free and independent government
in America. They established the first church, the first institution
of learning, and the second newspaper, in “the new world west of the
Alleghanies.”
They were in the wilderness. The hour of the day was determined by the
shadow cast by the sun upon the home-made dial; the time of the night
was reckoned from the positions of particular stars in the firmament.
Years and months they measured by moons. From the course, color and
velocity of clouds, from the temperature and from the direction of
the winds, they foretold the weather. They also observed the habits
of animals and birds of passage, as aids to their weather bureau;
and they watched and studied closely the development and growth of
plants, herbs, vines, vegetables and the cereals, as helps to their
agricultural department.[B]
The country in which Andrew Jackson made his home for about two years
deserves a name and place in history not yet fully given to it. In its
wild and picturesque magnificence, in the rugged honesty and frank
simplicity of the people who settled it, in their love and struggle for
liberty, “home rule” and local self-government, it was a counterpart of
the Switzerland of tradition and story.
The sun shone nowhere upon a land of more ravishing loveliness and
awe-inspiring sublimity--silver threads of river and streamlet, and
gem of valley set in emerald of gorgeous luxuriance; waters murmuring
and thunderous, striking every note in the gamut of nature’s weird
minstrelsy, dashing and bounding to the sea; every acclivity a
Niagara of color flashing from rhododendron and mountain magnolia,
elysian fields without Rhenish castles or Roman towers; grooved with
fastnesses, terraced with plateaus and monumented with peaks upheaved
into a very dreamland of beauty and grandeur, all overlooked by the
majestic Roan--
“The monarch of mountains--
They crowned him long ago,
On a throne of rock, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow!”
About one hundred and thirty years ago, the first permanent white
settlement was made on the Watauga river, near where Elizabethton now
stands. Up to the winter of 1770-1, there were in all probability
twenty families in the new settlement.
May 16, 1771, the “Regulators” fought the famous but disastrous battle
of the Alamance, about forty miles northwest of Raleigh. During the
summer and fall following this battle, settlers came in considerable
numbers to “the new world west of the Alleghanies,” and cast their lot
with the settlers on the Watauga; and about this time settlements were
made on the Holston and Nolichucky rivers.
Who were these people? Whence and why did they come? I answer:
They were every one patriots, soldiers and good citizens. They came
from the battle-field of the Alamance--that first contest of the
revolution which eventuated in American independence. They left their
homes because of the disastrous result of that battle, in which many of
them had participated, and because of their unconquerable hatred of the
British government and their open revolt against British authority and
the oppression of British officials.
The following letter from Hon. George Bancroft, the historian, then
Minister from the United States to Great Britain, on the subject of
the “Mecklenburg Resolves,” and the subsequent course and conduct of
some of those engaged in the battle of the Alamance, is still of great
interest to Tennesseans:
90 EATON PLACE, LONDON, July 4, 1848.
MY DEAR SIR--I hold it of good augury that your letter of the 12th
of June reached me by the Herman just in time to be answered this
morning. You may be sure that I have spared no pains to discover the
Resolves of the Committee of Mecklenburg. A glance at the map will
show you that in those days the traffic in that part of North Carolina
took a southerly direction, and people in Charleston, and sometimes
in Savannah, knew what was going on in ‘Charlotte Town’ before Gov.
Martin. The first account of the Resolves extraordinary, ‘by the
people in Charlotte Town, Mecklenburg County,’ was sent over by Sir
James Wright, then Governor of Georgia, in a letter of the 20th of
June, 1775. The newspaper thus transmitted is still preserved, and
is the number 498 of the South Carolina Gazette and Country Journal,
Tuesday, June 13, 1775. I read the Resolves, you may be sure, with
reverence, and immediately obtained a copy of them, thinking myself
the sole discoverer. I do not send you the copy, as it is identically
the same with the paper you enclosed to me, but I forward to you a
transcript of the entire letter of Sir James Wright. The newspapers
seem to have reached him after he had finished his dispatch, for
the paragraph relating to it is added in his own handwriting, the
former part being written by a secretary. I have read a great many
papers relating to the Regulators, and am having copies made of a
large number. Your own state ought to have them all, and the expense
would be, for the state, insignificant, if it does not send an agent
on purpose. A few hundred dollars would copy all you need from the
State Paper Office on all North Carolina topics. The Regulators are
on many accounts important. They form the connecting link between
the resistance to the Stamp Act and the movement of 1775, and they
also played a glorious part in taking possession of the Mississippi
Valley, toward which they were irresistibly carried by their love
of independence. It is a mistake if any have supposed that the
Regulators were cowed down by their defeat at Alamance. Like the
mammoth, they shook the bolt from their brow and crossed the mountains.
I shall always be glad to hear from you and to be of use to you or
your State.
Very truly yours,
GEORGE BANCROFT.
D. L. SWAIN, ESQ., Chapel Hill, N. C.
One of the “ringleaders” in organizing the Regulators for the battle of
the Alamance was John Pugh, who was afterwards sheriff of Washington
county, which at that time included all of the territory now embraced
within the boundaries of the state of Tennessee. Among the few names
of the participants in the battle of the Alamance which have been
preserved in history may be found those of several who were afterwards
prominent among the settlers on Watauga, Holston and Nolichucky. I have
said this much because of some facts which will be given further along.
These people were on the very verge of the frontier, standing as a
mere handful of pickets out on the confines of civilization, where
the war-whoop of the painted savage rang through the forests, and the
constant apprehension of the tomahawk and the scalping-knife haunted
every abode, and every thicket ambushed a bloodthirsty foe. When open
daring failed, fiendish cunning, the torch and midnight butchery
wrought the ruin. Atrocity followed atrocity, in the utter extinction
of homes. Men hunted, fished, toiled, slept and worshipped with their
trusty rifles at hand. The women also, through necessity and with
courage inspired by constant peril, were no less dextrous in the use
of deadly weapons, and no less unerring in the precision of their aim.
The very genius of evil and desolation seemed at times to brood over
the infant settlements. Still, they prospered; and, amid their dangers,
they followed industrial pursuits. The creaking clang of the loom and
the whir of the spinning-wheel furnished the “accompaniment to the
maiden’s concord of measured monotones.” The woodman’s axe felled the
forest trees, and fields and farms were opened up, fenced and put in
cultivation. Churches and schools were established, and public highways
“viewed out” and opened up in the wilderness.
[Illustration: FIRST GRIST MILL BUILT IN WASHINGTON COUNTY, TENNESSEE.
Erected by Michael Bacon, on Little Limestone Creek, six miles
southwest of Jonesboro, in the year 1779.]
Among the wealthiest the wheaten cake appeared only at the Sabbath
breakfast. Milk and spring water were their only drinks at meals. The
red deer flitted through the voiceless solitudes, and bruin roamed the
jungles at will. The fruits of the chase and the fishing-rod, together
with pounded maize, supplied the wholesome comforts of the hospitable
board. Quilting bees, log rollings, house raisings, corn shuckings,
flax pullings, maple sugar boilings and the innocent abandon of the
dance, enlivened with brimming gourds of nectared dew and the high fun
and mirth of backwoods “social functions,” gave variety and zest to the
monotony of frontier life.
Maid and matron were clad in fabrics of their own handiwork, each a
Joan of Arc in moral and physical prowess and power, and a Venus in
rounded symmetry and development, with all the unaffected graces of
natural and unspoiled womanhood, “the red wine of lusty life mantling
and blushing in the alabaster face”; the men garbed in skins or the
coarsest textures of the loom, athletic of limb and fleet of foot as
the roe, more than a match for all the cunning stratagems of Indian
warfare, “lion-hearted to dare and win, and yet with gentleness and
generosity to melt the soul.”
The log structure rose in the wilderness, with puncheon floor,
slab benches, port-hole windows and rifle-rack, in whose cribbed
and darkened shrine alternated the thunderous vociferations of the
fire-and-brimstone preacher and the cries of the truant urchin under
the savage birch of the pitiless schoolmaster.
These people were without any local form of civil government, without
executive, military, civil or peace officers; but they had among them
John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, James Robertson and others, who kept the
good of the community at heart. It will be remembered that there has
been much controversy, at times in the not very distant past, as to
when, where and by whom the first declaration of a free and independent
government was made and entered into on this continent--some claiming
that Mecklenburg, North Carolina, was the place, its citizens the
people, and May, 1775, the date; others asserting that the association
formed for Kentucky, “under the great elm tree outside the fort at
Boonsboro”--this also in 1775--was the first. I propose to show that
neither one of these associations, declarations or formations of
government was the first “free and independent government” established
on this continent; but that this honor belongs to the settlers on the
Watauga. Haywood, in his history of Tennessee (page 41), says: “In 1772
(May), the settlement on the Watauga, being without government, formed
a written association and articles for their conduct. They appointed
five commissioners, a majority of whom was to decide all matters of
controversy, and to govern and direct for the common good in other
respects”; and again (page 46): “This committee settled all private
controversies, and had a clerk, Felix Walker, now or lately a member of
Congress from North Carolina. They had also a sheriff. This committee
had stated and regular times for holding their sessions, and took the
laws of Virginia for the standard of decision.” Haywood further says
that they were living under this government in November, 1775.
Some four years after this local, self, independent government had been
entered into by the settlers of Watauga, John Sevier, in a memorial to
the North Carolina legislature explaining it, says: “Finding ourselves
on the frontiers, and being apprehensive that, for want of a proper
legislature, we might become a shelter for such as endeavor to defraud
their creditors; considering also the necessity of recording deeds,
wills, and doing other public business, we, by consent of the people,
formed a court for the purposes above mentioned, taking, by desire
of our constituents, the Virginia laws for our guide, so near as the
situation of affairs would permit. This was intended for ourselves, and
was done by consent of every individual.”
I rather suspect that some inquiry was made by the authorities of North
Carolina, as to what kind of a government this was which had been set
up within their jurisdiction, and which established courts that took
the laws of _Virginia_ as their guide.
The “written association and articles for their conduct,” entered
into by the settlers on the Watauga, in May, 1772, formed the first
“free and independent government” established and put into practical
administration on this continent.
The five commissioners or committeemen first appointed were John
Sevier, James Robertson, Charles Roberson, Zachariah Isbell and John
Carter. This was an independent government, because they did not ask
permission of any power on earth to enter into it, and they did not
recognize any authority as superior to that which they had voluntarily
vested in the five commissioners chosen by them. It was not a compact
or league with any other power, but, as Sevier says, “was intended
for ourselves.” It was a free government, because it was voluntarily
entered into by the whole people, “by consent of every individual.”
The settlers lived, prospered and were happy, under the government
of the five commissioners, for about six years. These commissioners
settled all questions of debt, determined all rights of property, took
the probate of wills and the acknowledgment of deeds, recorded the
same, issued marriage licenses and hanged horse thieves, with much zest
and great expedition--the arraignment, trial, conviction, condemnation
and execution of a horse thief all occurring within an hour or so after
he was arrested, inasmuch as they had no jail in which to imprison him
overnight, and believed strongly in the idea that a man who was bad
enough to be put in jail deserved to be hanged on the spot.
In November, 1777, the assembly of North Carolina erected the District
of Washington into Washington county, which included the whole of what
is now the state of Tennessee. This was the first territorial division
in the United States named in honor of George Washington. The Governor
of North Carolina appointed justices of the peace and militia officers
for this county, who, in February, 1778, met and took the oath of
office, and organized the new county and its courts. Thereupon, the
first “free and independent government” formed and put into operation
in America was no more, the jurisdiction and authority of the five
commissioners having, by their own consent and that of the people,
been superseded by the newly appointed authorities. The first written
instrument, paper or record authoritatively made in the organization
of what is today the judicial, political, civil and military existence
of the state of Tennessee, is in the office of the county clerk at
Jonesboro, and is in the words and figures following:
FEBRUARY COURT 1778
The oaths of the Justices of the peace melitia & for officers There
Attestments, &c,
Washington County, I A. B. do solemnly swear that as a Justice of the
peace, and a Justice of the County Court of pleas, & Quarter Sessions
in the County of Washington, in all articles in the Commission to me
directed. I will do equal Right to the poor and to the Rich to the
Best of my Judgment and according to the Law of the State. I will not
privately or Openly by my-self or any other person, be of Council in
any Quarrel, or Suit, depending Before me, and I will hold the County
Court, and Quarter Sessions of my County, as the Statue in that case
shall and may direct.
The fines and amerciaments that shall happen to be maid and the
forfeitures that shall be incurred I will cause to be duly entered
without Concealment. I will not wittingly or willingly take by myself
or any Other Person, for me, any fee, Gift, Gratuity, or reward
whatsoever for any matter or thing by me to be done, By virtue of
my office except such fees as are or may be directed or Limited by
statue, but well and truly I will do my office, of a Justice of the
peace as well within the County Court of pleas, and Quarter Sessions
as without. I will not delay person of common Right, By reason of
any Letter, or order from any person or persons in authority to me
directed, or per any other Cause whatever, and if any Letter or Order
Come to me, contrary to Law I will proceed to Inforce the Law, such
letter or Order notwithstanding. I will not direct or cause to be
directed any warrent by me to be maid to the parties. But will direct
all such Warrants to the Sheriff or Constable of, the County or Other
the Officers, Of the State or Other Indiferant person to do execution
Thereof, and finally, in all things belonging to my office, during
Continuation therein will faithfully, Truly and Justly according to
the best of my (Jud) skill and Judgment do equal and Impartial Justice
to the Public and to Individuals, So help me God. Jas, Robertson,
Valentine Sevier, John Carter, John Sevier, Jacob Womack, Robert
Lucas, Andr, Greer, John Shelby Jr, George Russill, William Been,
Zacr. Isbell, Jno McNabb, Tho, Houghton, William Clark, Jno McMaihen,
Benjamin Gist, J. Chisholm, Joseph Wilson, William Cobb, James Stuart,
Michl, Woods, Richd. White, Benjamin Wilson, Charles Roberson, William
McNabb, Thos Price, Jesse Walton.
This oath has a deep and significant meaning, in view of the practices
which had characterized the administration of justice by British
officials. It is worthy of note that this oath, so full and specific
in detail, did not bind those who took it to allegiance either to the
state or the colony of North Carolina, or to the United States of
America. It did bind them, however, to be honest, just and faithful
to the people; it did bind them to “do equal right to the poor and to
the rich”; it did bind them not to make suggestions or give counsel
in any quarrel or suit pending before them, not to delay any person
in obtaining justice, not to allow outside influence to dictate or
control their actions, not to accept any fee, gift, gratuity or reward
whatsoever for any matter or thing by them to be done, except the
compensation allowed by law; to keep an account of fines and to enter
them without concealment; and, finally, to “do equal and impartial
justice to the public and to individuals.” This oath was not merely
administered to them in the modern, perfunctory way, as “You do
solemnly swear,” etc. They _took_ it, repeated it after the officer,
and signed it.
The new order of things was an innovation on the former simple,
direct and expeditious way of administering justice; but the five
“committeemen” were also members of the new court, and methods were
not very materially changed, as the records of the clerk’s office at
Jonesboro will show. They took jurisdiction of all matters relating to
the public good, and disposed of all questions summarily, as will be
more fully and particularly shown in another chapter.
Whenever a stranger appeared in the settlements, and gave his name as
William Morningstar, Samuel Sunshine or Walter Rainbow, he would not
be there long before he would be waited upon by a committee, one of
whom would say to him: “Look here, stranger, we have examined the book
of Genesis from end to end since you came here, and we can’t find the
name of your ancestors. We think that you have got another name, and
that you stole a horse somewhere and have run off. You must leave this
settlement before night, or we’ll hang you!” Such frank treatment was
invariably effective: its object was sure to heed the warning and to
disappear before sunrise the next morning.
About this time a vigorous and ambitious young man left the city of
Philadelphia for the wilds of the southwest. His mind was stored with
the rich intellectual treasures of old Princeton, then under the
presidency of the father of Aaron Burr. He walked, driving before
him through Delaware and Maryland, over the Alleghanies and across
Virginia, his “flea-bitten grey,” burdened to the utmost capacity with
a huge sack of books. These classics were the nucleus of the library
of an institution of learning yet unborn. After a fatiguing journey
through a large portion of territory, with only obscure paths through
gloomy forests for a highway, this devout and dauntless adventurer
halted among the settlers whom I have been describing. Soon thereafter,
the first church--a Presbyterian--and the first institution of learning
that were established west of the Alleghanies were founded. These
were “Salem Church” and “Washington College,” both established in the
year 1780, eight miles southwest of the seat of the present town of
Jonesboro--the college being the first one in the United States that
honored itself by assuming the name of the Father of his Country. It is
stated as a fact that, long prior to the late war, twenty-two members
of the Congress of the United States had received or completed their
education at Washington College, under this pioneer in letters and
religious training, whose achievements constitute the jewels of our
early literary and moral history. This man was Rev. Samuel Doak, D.D.
Though he left a deep and indelible impress on the civilization and
the literature of the Southwest, he sleeps today, amid the scenes of
his successful earthly labors, with only a simple and fast crumbling
memorial to mark the hallowed sepulchre of his silent dust.
[Illustration: THE FIRST CHURCH AND FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE BUILT IN THE “NEW
WORLD WEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES.”
Afterward, and now, Washington College and Old Salem Church. The
picture in an exact reproduction of the original log house, with log
partition, erected by Samuel Doak, D.D., 1780, eight miles southwest of
Jonesboro.]
The settlers lived and their public affairs were conducted under the
jurisdiction of the County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for a
period of about six years, in a quiet and orderly manner; but ever
since that May day of 1772 when they organized the first “free and
independent government,” their dream had been of a new, separate and
independent commonwealth, and they began to be restless, dissatisfied
and disaffected toward the government of North Carolina. Many causes
seemed to conspire to increase their discontent. The first constitution
of North Carolina had made provision for a future state within her
limits, on the western side of the Alleghany mountains. The mother
state had persistently refused, on the plea of poverty, to establish a
Superior Court and appoint an attorney general or prosecuting officer
for the inhabitants west of the mountains. In 1784, many claims for
compensation for military services, supplies, etc., in the campaigns
against the Indians, were presented to the state government from the
settlements west of the Alleghanies. North Carolina was impoverished;
and, notwithstanding the fact that these claims were just, reasonable
and honest, it was suggested, and perhaps believed, “that all pretences
were laid hold of (by the settlers) to fabricate demands against the
government, and that the industry and property of those who resided on
the east side of the mountains were becoming the funds appropriated
to discharge the debts contracted by those on the west.” Thus it came
about that, in May, 1784, North Carolina, in order to relieve herself
of this burden, ceded to the United States her territory west of the
Alleghanies, provided that Congress would accept it within two years.
At a subsequent session, an act was passed retaining jurisdiction and
sovereignty over the territory until it should have been accepted by
Congress. Immediately after passing the act of cession, North Carolina
closed the land office in the ceded territory, and nullified all
entries of land made after May 25, 1784.
The passage of the cession act stopped the delivery of a quantity of
goods which North Carolina was under promise to deliver to the Cherokee
Indians, as compensation for their claim to certain lands. The failure
to deliver these goods naturally exasperated the Cherokees, and caused
them to commit depredations, from which the western settlers were of
course the sufferers.
At this session, the North Carolina assembly, at Hillsboro, laid taxes,
or assessed taxes and empowered Congress to collect them, and vested in
Congress power to levy a duty on foreign merchandise.
The general opinion among the settlers west of the Alleghanies was
that the territory would not be accepted by Congress (and in this they
were correct); and that, for a period of two years, the people in that
territory, being under the protection neither of the government of the
United States nor of the state of North Carolina, would neither receive
any support from abroad nor be able to command their own resources at
home--for the North Carolina act had subjected them to the payment of
taxes to the United States government. At the same time, there was no
relaxation of Indian hostilities. Under these circumstances, the great
body of the people west of the Alleghanies concluded that there was but
one thing left for them to do, and that was to adopt a constitution
and organize a state and a state government of their own. This they
proceeded to do. Was there anything else which these people could have
done? Perhaps there was; but did they not adopt just such a course as
any people situated as they were would have taken?
They proceeded to take steps for the holding of a convention. Delegates
were elected from Washington, Sullivan and Greene counties, who met
in convention at Jonesboro, August 23, 1784. Messrs. Cocke, Outlaw,
Carter, Campbell, Manifee, Martin, Roberson, Houston, Christian,
Kennedy and Wilson were appointed a committee, “to take under
consideration the state of public affairs relative to the cession of
the western country.” This committee appointed Messrs. Cocke and
Hardin a sub-committee to draft a report, which they did. This report
was in the nature of an address to the people. The convention then
adjourned, to meet again in Jonesboro, September 16. It did not,
however, assemble on that date. In October, 1784, the North Carolina
assembly repealed the act of cession. In the following November,
the delegates again assembled at Jonesboro, but failed to adopt a
constitution, and broke up in confusion, because of the repeal of the
act of cession. John Sevier, having received official information that
the cession act had been repealed, courts established, an attorney
general appointed and military officers commissioned, made a speech
advising the people to go no further; but Cocke and a majority of the
people were unwilling to abandon their dream of a new state--and Sevier
went with his people.
December 14, 1784, another convention assembled at Jonesboro, and
adopted a constitution, which was to be ratified or rejected by a
convention called to meet at Greeneville, November 14, 1785. In the
meantime, a general assembly was elected, which met at Greeneville,
early in 1785, and chose John Sevier for Governor, David Campbell judge
of the Superior Court, and Joshua Gist and John Anderson assistant
judges. Landon Carter was chosen Speaker of the Senate, and William
Cage Speaker of the House. The same assembly, at the same session,
afterward elected Landon Carter Secretary of State and William Cage
State Treasurer. Joseph Hardin was then elected Speaker of the House,
but I have not been able to ascertain from any source who was elected
Speaker of the Senate in place of Carter. Stoakley Donaldson was made
Surveyor General, and Daniel Kennedy and William Cocke were appointed
Brigadiers General. The assembly elected all other officers, civil
and military, being careful to choose those who already held offices
under the government of North Carolina--and so the ill-starred “state
of Franklin” began its career. The new state was named in honor of
Benjamin Franklin, as the correspondence of Sevier conclusively shows,
and the name should therefore always be written “Franklin,” and not
“Frankland.”
The boundaries of the new state, as set forth in a paper in the
handwriting of Col. Arthur Campbell of Virginia, were as follows:
“Beginning at a point on the top of the Alleghany or Appalachian
mountains, so as a line drawn due north from thence will touch the bank
of the New river, otherwise called Kenhawa, at the confluence of Little
river, which is about one mile above Ingle’s ferry; down the said river
Kenhawa to the mouth of Rencovert or Greenbriar river; a direct line
from thence to the nearest summit of the Laurel mountain, and along
the highest part of the same to the point where it is intersected by
the parallel of thirty-seven degrees north latitude; west along that
latitude to a point where it is met by a meridian line that passes
through the lower part of the rapids of Ohio; south along the meridian
to Elk river, a branch of the Tennessee; down said river to its mouth,
and down the Tennessee to the most southwardly part or bend in said
river; a direct line from thence to that branch of the Mobile called
Donbigbee [Tombigbee]; down said river Donbigbee to its junction
with the Coosawatee river to the mouth of that branch of it called
the Higtower [Etowah]; thence south to the top of the Appalachian
mountains, or the highest land that divides the sources of the eastern
from the western waters; northwardly along the middle of said heights
and the top of the Appalachian mountains, to the beginning.”
I am not prepared to say whether or not these people intended their new
state to become part of the Union, as one of the provisions in their
proposed form of government was that “the inhabitants within these
limits agree with each other to form themselves into a free, sovereign
and independent body politic or state, by the name of the commonwealth
of Franklin.” I am inclined to the opinion that in the beginning
they did not intend to join the Union of states, but that later they
concluded that they would, as there was an effort made to have Congress
recognize the new state.
An examination of the boundary lines of the state of Franklin will show
that it included fifteen counties of Virginia, six of West Virginia,
one-third of Kentucky, one-half of Tennessee, two-thirds of Alabama and
more than one-fourth of Georgia. Cast your eye over this magnificent
area: see the blue mountains, the sun-browned cliffs, the beautiful
rivers, the broad valleys with their golden wheat-fields and verdant
meadows, with the hundreds of smaller streams and sparkling springs:
it seems like one grand piece of natural embroidery, fashioned and put
together by the fingers of infinity and spread out by the hand of the
Almighty. Think of the iron, coal, marble, lead, copper, zinc and other
minerals hidden within its soil--you might have put a Chinese wall
around the people of the “state of Franklin,” and still they could have
lived in absolute independence of the outside world. There is more iron
and coal in this territory than can be found in the same area elsewhere
in the United States, and it is today yielding a vast revenue to its
inhabitants. You can stand on some of its mountain-tops, and see the
heavens darkened by day with the pillar of cloud, and made luminous by
night with the pillar of fire, arising from furnace and forge in the
valleys below, and hear the hammer of Thor beating the iron ribs of
those majestic old mountains into the marvellous machines of modern
invention and the utilities of a grand civilization.
At the first session of the general assembly of the state of Franklin,
held in March, 1785, fifteen acts or laws were passed. In the act
levying a tax for the support of the government was the following
section:
Be it enacted, That it shall and may be lawful for the aforesaid land
tax, and the free polls, to be paid in the following manner: Good
flax linen, ten hundred, at three shillings and six pence per yard.
Nine hundred at three shillings: Eight hundred two shillings and
nine pence: Seven hundred two shillings and six pence: Six hundred
two shillings: tow linen one shilling and nine pence: linsey three
shillings: and woolen and cotton linsey three shillings and six pence
per yard: Good clean beaver skin six shillings: cased Otter skins
six shillings: uncased ditto five shillings: rackoon and fox skins
one shilling and three pence: woolen cloth at ten shillings per
yard: bacon well cured at six pence per pound: good clean beeswax
one shilling per pound: good clean talow six pence per pound: good
distilled rye whiskey at two shillings and six pence per gallon: good
peach or apple brandy at three shillings per gallon: good country
made sugar at one shilling per pound: deer skins, the pattern six
shillings: good neat and well managed tobacco fit to be prized that
may pass inspection the hundred, fifteen shillings, and so on in
proportion for a greater or less quantity.
The last section of the act is in these words: “And all the salaries
and allowances hereby made shall be paid by any treasurer, sheriff or
collector of public taxes to any person entitled to the same, to be
paid in specific articles as collected, and at the rates allowed by the
state for the same, or in current money of the state of Franklin.” This
provision furnished those who adhered to the North Carolina government
much amusement. They asserted that the salaries of the Governor, judges
and other officers were to be paid in skins, absolutely; and, to add
to their amusement, had them payable in mink skins at that. From this
provision the inhabitants of that section of the country fell into
the habit of referring to money as “mink skins;” and this term, as
descriptive of money, thus spread all over the southwestern country.
They estimated by law two dollars and fifty cents to be equal to
fifteen shillings of the current money of Franklin. They allowed the
Governor two hundred pounds annually; the Attorney General twenty-five
pounds for each court he attended; the Secretary of State twenty-five
pounds and fees; the judge of the Superior Court one hundred and fifty
pounds; the assistant judges twenty-five pounds for each court they
attended; the treasurer forty pound; and each member of the council six
shillings per day for each day of actual service.
A convention met in Greeneville, in November, 1785, to adopt a
constitution. Up to this time no disagreement had taken place--all
were for Franklin; but when the constitution which had been proposed
was submitted, it was rejected; and, on motion of Col. William Cocke,
the convention adopted the entire constitution of North Carolina. Thus
began the trouble which ended in the overthrow of the state of Franklin.
[Illustration: HOUSE USED AS CAPITOL OF THE STATE OF FRANKLIN.
In Greeneville, Tennessee. From a photograph taken in April, 1897.]
I can not now notice the various sessions held by the assembly of
Franklin. It met for the last time in Greeneville, in September,
1787. “During the years 1786 and 1787, a strange spectacle was
presented--that of two empires being exercised at one and the same
time, over one and the same territory and people.” County courts were
held in the same counties, under the Franklin and the North Carolina
governments; “the same militia was called out by officers appointed
by each government; laws were passed by both assemblies”; taxes were
laid by authority of both states--but the people said that they did
not know which government had the right to receive their taxes, and
therefore they adopted the easy solution of paying to neither. The
Superior Courts of Franklin were held at Jonesboro; the courts under
North Carolina were held at Davis’s on Buffalo creek, ten miles east
of Jonesboro, and at Col. Tipton’s. There were now two strong parties,
one under Tipton, adhering to North Carolina, and the friends of
Franklin following Sevier, each of whom endeavored by every possible
means to strengthen his cause. “Every provocation on the one side was
surpassed in the way of retaliation by a still greater provocation on
the other.... The clerks of the county courts of Washington, Greene and
Sullivan, under Franklin, issued marriage licenses, and many persons
were married by virtue of their authority.”
In 1786, while a court was in session at Jonesboro, under the Franklin
government, Col. John Tipton entered the court house with a party of
men, took the records away from the clerk and drove the justices out
of the house. Not long after this, Sevier entered the house where the
North Carolina court was sitting, turned the justices out bodily and
carried off the records. “The like acts were repeated several times
during the existence of the Franklin government.” James Sevier was
clerk of Washington county under the Franklin government, as he had
been under North Carolina. Tipton went to Sevier’s house and took the
old records away from him by force. Shortly afterward, the same records
were recaptured, and James Sevier hid them in a cave. During these
captures and removals many of the records were lost. Of the Franklin
records all save one were either lost or destroyed.
This single remaining record of the Franklin courts is not only
interesting but amusing; and, to be as drunk as it unquestionably is,
contains some law and a great deal of early history. This record was
evidently made late at night, by the light of a “tallow dip” or a
bear-oil lamp, with a bottle of well-distilled apple or peach brandy
near by. It is the only written record relative to the “lost state” and
its courts that I have ever been able to find. It is like an old-time
copy-book. On the outside are the following entries and memoranda--I
give them literally:
State of Franklin,--Washington County
J James Sevier, State of Franklin James Sevier clerk of
Washington County State of Franklin
Franklin
Franklin
Franklin
Inside, in the same handwriting, will be found the following:
Good deeds are very commendable in youth,
Good many men of good many minds
Good birds of Good many kinds
State of ---- Court Adg’d, till court In course from a general
insurrection of the times, to this date 7th, of May 1786,
On the next page the record continues as follows:
Something ambiguous will say he went to the Indians, no witnesses,
no opportunity, they are not able to proove anything, The meaning
is to be taken, the latter in contracts, deeds and wills, construed
differantly was there a ejectment, and he never tryed, nothing can
be done until Injunction issue from the judge. The law says no party
shall be tryed without witnesses Hobgobblins, and Ghosts. So many
tryals
Read and interpret this record in the flickering light of the history
of the times. The court had been broken up and the justices driven out
of the house--this, I suppose, is the “ejectment” referred to. John
Sevier was at this time on the frontier, fighting the Indians--hence,
he “went to the Indians.” There was at this time in the hands of the
North Carolina sheriff a bench warrant for the arrest of Sevier; if
he was arrested, the charges against him could not be proven without
witnesses; these would be hard to procure against John Sevier, and yet
no one could be fairly “tryed without witnesses.” So this clerk, alone
at midnight, with no company except the flask whose odor seems still
perceptible in the pages of his record, reasoned and wrote--until the
“Hobgobblins and Ghosts” got after him!
In January or February of 1788, John Sevier’s property was seized under
a _fieri facias_ issued by North Carolina. Sevier and Tipton, with
their respective followers, met and fought a slight battle two miles
south of the present site of Johnson City, in which the former was
repulsed. In the following October, Sevier was arrested and carried to
North Carolina for trial. Soon afterward, the government of Franklin
collapsed, and North Carolina passed an act of “pardon and oblivion,”
and reassumed her government of these people.
The state of Franklin, in 1787-8, was composed of the three original
counties of Washington, Sullivan and Greene, together with four new
counties--Sevier, which covered the same territory it now covers and a
part of what is now Blount; Caswell, which occupied the same section of
country now included in Jefferson; Spencer, which covered Hawkins; and
Wayne, covering Johnson and Carter.
As late as February, 1789, the record in Jonesboro shows the following
entries:
James Allison and James Sevier came into open court and prayed to be
admitted to take the benefit of the act of pardon and oblivion by
taking the oath provided by law, which was deferred till tomorrow for
want of the acts of the General Assembly.
On the next day the following entry was made:
James Sevier, James Allison and Francis Baker, persons _who had
withdrawn their allegiance_ [from North Carolina] came into open
court, and availed themselves of the act of pardon and oblivion by
taking the oaths prescribed by law.
At the February term, 1788, of the court, the following order was made
and entered of record:
Ordered by the Court that Johnathan Pugh Esqr, Sheriff of Washington
County, Take into custody the County court docket of said county,
supposed to be in the possession of John Sevier Esqr, And the same
records bring from him or any other person or persons, in whose
possession they are now, or hereafter shall be, and the same return to
the Court or some succeeding court for said county.
At the May term, 1788, this order was made:
Ordered by the court that the Sheriff of this County demand the public
records of this County from John Sevier, former clerk of the court.
The records referred to were lost, or remained in the cave where they
were hidden.
All opposition to North Carolina authority was now virtually withdrawn,
but the people west of the Alleghanies worked quietly for a separation
and a new state.
North Carolina passed a second cession act, under the provisions
of which, February 25, 1790, Samuel Johnston and Benjamin Hawkins,
Senators in Congress from North Carolina, deeded the territory to the
United States, and the sovereignty of North Carolina over it instantly
expired. It has been aptly said that “the separation was not like that
of a disconsolate mother parting from a beloved daughter, but rather
like that when Abraham said to Lot, ‘Separate thyself, I pray thee,
from me. If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right;
or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left.’”
President Washington appointed William Blount Governor of the
territory, August 7, 1790. On the 10th day of the following October,
Governor Blount organized the territorial government, at the house
of Mr. Cobb, in Sullivan county, on the north side of Watauga river,
since known as the Massengale farm, above and opposite where Austin
Springs are. The population of the territory in July, 1791, was
36,043, including 3,417 slaves. The whole population of the Cumberland
settlement at that time was 7,042.
November 5, 1791, the second printing press introduced in the “New
World west of the Alleghanies” was set up, at Rogersville, by Mr.
George Roulstone.
The people who made it possible for Tennessee to have a centennial were
a wonderful people. Within a period of about fifteen years, they were
engaged in three revolutions; participated in organizing and lived
under five different governments; established and administered the
first free and independent government in America; founded the first
church and the first college in the southwest; put in operation the
second newspaper in the “New World west of the Alleghanies;” met and
fought the British in half a dozen battles, from King’s Mountain to
the gates of Charleston, gaining a victory in every battle; held in
check, beat back and finally expelled from the country four of the most
powerful tribes of Indian warriors in America; and left Tennesseans
their fame as a heritage, and a commonwealth of which it is their
privilege to be proud.
These are the people among whom Andrew Jackson settled and began
life, and from whose character, example and achievements he must have
received some little degree of inspiration.
Passing from the scene of their toil and trials, their struggles and
dangers, from war with the savage and war with the civilized, let us
devote a little time to further examination into their character, as
revealed in the judicial records made and left by them.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] The almanac-groundhog and goose-bone theories were adopted
by a later and wiser generation.
CHAPTER III.
_A UNIQUE COURT._
There may be mistake, error, fraud and injustice in court proceedings
and judicial records; but when such records were made more than a
century ago, and contain some part of the history of the people
who made them, and have stood all these years unchallenged and
uncontradicted, such records may be safely accepted as truth. In
writing of a people more than a century after the period in which
they lived--a people who did not have a daily newspaper in their
midst to chronicle their deeds and views, and who were in a country
between which and other parts of the world there was but little if any
communication--it is easy indeed for a facile writer to ascribe to them
characters which they did not have, views which they did not entertain,
and accomplishments with which they were not entitled to be credited,
without taking much risk of being contradicted.
The early history of the colonies and “new settlements” in North
America is and has been for many years a fascinating field for
writers; and it must be confessed that too often a little incident or
tradition has been so magnified by a too vivid imagination that it has
appeared in print as a very readable but colossal falsehood. It is
also lamentable that the plain, unvarnished truth of history has, in
many instances, been so colored and distorted in the effort to make it
romantic, that many persons who could have contributed much valuable
information in the way of simple facts have not done so, because of
a lack of that faculty of imagination which some writers possess to
such a degree that they can inform you beforehand that they are going
to tell you a lie--in part, at least--and yet will tell it in such
beautiful language and in so smooth and plausible a way as to make you
believe the whole story.
The Tennessee pioneers did not have any one with them in their earliest
days to write an account of their experiences, or to portray their
lives and characters; nor did they have any newspapers to make a record
of their doings in the business concerns and affairs of life; and if
they wrote any letters on these matters, they have not been preserved.
They had, however, at Jonesboro, a “County Court of Pleas and Quarter
Sessions,” in which they made and left a record showing much that they
did, and from which, even at this late day, we can get a very clear
insight into their views as to the duties and responsibilities of
citizenship, the power and duty of courts, as well as their notions
concerning the business and social relations of life, and indeed on all
matters which, in their judgment, pertained in any way to the peace,
good fame and welfare of the community and of individuals. I shall,
therefore, quote literally much from these old original records kept in
Washington county--the quotations being taken from the records of that
county only, for the reason that it was the first county established
and organized in what is now Tennessee, and included for quite a time
all of the early settlements in what is commonly known as “upper East
Tennessee.” The same character of entries will no doubt be found in
the old records kept in Sullivan, Greene, Davidson, Hawkins, Sumner,
Tennessee and Knox counties, in all of which Jackson practised as an
attorney or presided as a judge. The proceedings in the courts of
the counties named, especially those that will be set out, will be
of interest not alone to Tennesseans, but also to the descendants,
scattered throughout the southwest and west, of the men who made these
records.
The first session of the court was held at the log-cabin of Charles
Roberson, near Jonesboro, February 23, 1778. It was composed of the
justices of the peace whose names have been given as subscribers to the
oath set out in a preceding chapter. After the court had been organized
by electing officers, its first act was to fine John Sevier, Jr., for
some minor matter which was gravely denominated “a contempt to the
court.” John Sevier, Sr., had just been elected clerk of the court, and
was undoubtedly the most influential man in the country, on account of
his meritorious character--but this did not shield the son. The fine
was not remitted; and there is no evidence that John Sevier the clerk
endeavored in any way to interpose.
On the second day, “William Cocke by his counsel Waightsell Avery moved
to be admitted to the office of Clerk of this County of Washington
which motion was rejected by the Court knowing that John Sevier
was entitled to the office.” This is absolutely the whole of the
record. It was the first contested election case that occurred west
of the Alleghany mountains, and was between two citizens who became
very distinguished--Cocke having been elected one of the first two
Senators from Tennessee, while Sevier, after holding all the other
offices within the gift of the people of that county, was elected a
representative in Congress and six times chosen Governor of Tennessee.
The worthy justices, “knowing,” as they said, that Sevier had been
elected, without hearing Mr. Cocke, his counsel or any evidence
whatsoever, swore in Sevier as clerk.
These entries follow:
Ordered that David Hinkley be fined 30 L. for insulting the Court.
Ordered that Hump Gibson be fined 10 L. for swearing in Court.
Then, after passing upon a motion or two--
Ordered that Ephriam Dunlap Atty. be fined 5 Dollars for insulting the
Court, especially Richard White.
It is not likely that any member of this court had ever held any office
prior to his appointment as a justice of the peace therein, and it is
not probable that many of them had ever been in a court of any kind
before they organized that which they constituted; and yet the record
shows that, from the first day of the first term, and on through all of
the many stormy sessions which they held thereafter, they guarded and
defended jealously the dignity of their court, and enforced obedience
to its mandates. It was a heinous offence indeed, and visited with
condign punishment, to “insult the Court.”
The aggregate fines imposed on Sam Tate, at one term, amounted to forty
thousand pounds;[C] and while fines were imposed on some one at every
term, there are but two entries to be found on the record, from the
February term, 1778, to and including the November term, 1790, showing
that such fines were remitted.
At the May term, 1778, a somewhat embarrassing question presented
itself. Some one of three persons, it would appear, had taken from
Samuel Sherrill,[D] without his consent, his bay gelding, and left
the country. They could not, therefore, get any one of the suspected
persons into court or in custody, and they must have been in doubt as
to which of the three did in fact ride the horse off; so they said:
On motion it appears that Joshua Williams Johnathan Helms and a
certain James Lindley did Feloniously Steal a certain Bay gelding
horse from Saml Sherill Senr. Ordered that if the said Saml Sherill
can find any property of the said Joshua Williams Johnathan Helms &
said Lindley that he take same into his possession.
So far as the record shows, they never caught any of the defendants,
but Sherrill must have got close on them at one time; for, at the
August term, the court “ordered that a saddle and coat the property
of Joshua Williams be sold and the money arising therefrom be left in
the possession of Saml Sherill.” They could not capture and punish
the thieves, but they could and did authorize Sherrill to seize the
property of the rascals wherever he could find it.
The first case of high treason tried by the court was at the August
term, 1778. This is the record:
STATE }
_v._ } _High Treason._
MOSES CRAWFORD. }
It is the Opinion of the Court that the defendant be imprisoned during
the present war with Great Britain, and the Sheriff take the whole of
his estate into custody which must be valued by a jury at the next
Court and that the one half of the said estate be kept by the said
Sheriff for the use of the State and the other half remitted to the
family of defendant.
I have not examined the statute under which this _county court_
tried, convicted and imprisoned defendants charged with treason, and
confiscated their property, to see whether or not they had a right to
remit one half of confiscated property to the family of the defendant,
for the reason that I do not wish to know how the fact was. I am
satisfied with the record as they made it, and leave others to look up
the statute.
Having disposed of Crawford--and his property too--they took up the
case of Isaac Buller, whom, as he had neither family nor property, and
the evidence, if any was heard (on motion), was a little vague, they
simply put him in prison until an opportunity should offer to make a
better use of him. This is the summary manner in which they disposed of
Isaac:
On motion of Ephriam Dunlap that Isaac Buller Should Be sent to the
Contl. Army, and there to Serve three Years or During the War On
Hearing the facts it is Ordered by the Court That the said Isaac
Buller Be Immediately Committed to Gaol and there Safely kept until
the said Isaac can be delivered unto A Continent’l Officer to be
Conveyed to Head Quarters.
At the February term, 1779, the court made and entered of record an
order prescribing the charges that tavern-keepers might exact from
guests as follows:
Diet 08s. 0: Lodging 1 night good bed and clean sheets 1s. 6d: Rum
Wine or Brandy 3L. 4s. 0: Toddy pr Quart, & sprts of Rum therein 8s.
0. and so in proportion. Corn or Oats per Gal 4s. 0: Stabledge with
hay or fodder 24 hrs 4s. 0: Pasturage 24 hrs. 2s: Cyder pr qrt 4s. 0:
Bear pr qrt 2s. 0: Whisky pr Gallon 2L. 0. 0:
After they had put the above on record, they entered upon the trial of
their second case of a very high crime, as the following entry shows:
STATE }
_vs._ } _For Treason Feby 1779_
GEORGE LEIVIS. }
On hearing the facts and considering the testimony of the Witnesses It
is the Opinion of the Court That the defendant be sent to the District
Gaol It Apg. To the Court that the said Leivis is a spie or An Officer
from Florida out of the English Army.
At this term, besides transacting routine business, they tried ten
persons on charges of treason, convicted five of them, ordered
their property confiscated, and sent them to the district jail at
Salisbury--and the entire record of the term is contained on twelve
pages!
If this court could have been transferred to the more intelligent
states of Massachusetts or New Hampshire, and had held a few terms
therein, “Shays’s rebellion” would have been crushed out in a week,
or all the “gaols” would have been filled with the rebellious and
the public treasury with the proceeds of confiscated property. These
patriots were in earnest.
At the May term, 1779, two entries appear as having been made on the
same day, which show two sides of this remarkable court. The first
entry is as follows:
STATE }
_v._ } _For stealing a Ploughshear, hogs and some_
PAT MURPHEY } _other Things_
The Court are of Opinion that the defendant pay 33L. 6s. 8d. to Zachr.
Isbell for his Hog & 26L. 13s. 4 to Thos. Evans for his Hog and ten
pounds fine And also receive Twenty Lashes on his bare Back well laid
on by the Sheriff or Deputy.
The other entry was:
Ordered that John Murphey be fined the sum of Twenty pounds for Ill
Treatment to his reputed father Pat Murphey.
The court said that, in its opinion, Pat Murphey was a bad man--and he
was, as other cases in the records against him show; and they had him
whipped, fined him and, under the operation of the court’s adjustable
jurisdiction, rendered judgment against him in a criminal case for the
value of two hogs; but these “backwoods” justices of the peace said to
the reputed son of this old and hardened criminal that “Ill Treatment”
of a father, by even a reputed son, would not be tolerated in that
community.
At this May term, and following the entries just given, is another,
which, in a few words and (so far as the record shows) without any
previous notice, deprives a citizen of his liberty and of further
opportunity to do harm to “the common cause of liberty,” on the mere
motion of the state’s attorney. Here it is:
On motion of E. Dunlap State Attorney it is ordered that John Holly
for his Ill practices in Harboring and Abetting disorderly persons
who are prejudicial and Inimical to the Common Cause of Liberty and
Frequently Disturbing our public Tranquility in Genl. be Imprisoned
for the Term & Time of One Year.
Up to the date of the entry of this order imprisoning John Holly “for
the term and time of one year,” on the mere motion of the state’s
attorney, the record shows a little more formality in convictions for
treason and the confiscation of property, as it will appear from the
recitals that the court, “on considering the facts,” or “on hearing the
witnesses [or evidence],” “are of opinion,” etc.
It is very doubtful whether there can be found (outside of Tennessee)
another such judicial record as this one, made and entered on a mere
motion, without the accused having previous notice or (so far as the
record shows) being present in person or by attorney, and without any
evidence being heard to support the charge, embodied in the motion,
that Holly was an enemy to the public tranquillity generally and guilty
of other specified offences. It is safe to assume, however, that
the court “knew” he was guilty, as they “knew” that John Sevier was
entitled to the office of clerk when they dismissed Cocke’s contest
without hearing him at all.
At this term, the court “nominated and appointed John Sevier, Jesse
Walton and Zachr. Isbell to take into possession such property as
should be confiscated,” and they gave “bond as such commissioners in
the sum of Five Hundred and Fifty Thousand pounds.”
And they had the “tax-dodger” with them also, as early as August,
1779--the good citizen who always wants his full share of attention
and protection by the law, without paying his just proportion of the
taxes to support the government; but he could not escape this court’s
resourceful remedies for all exigencies. Here is given the disposition
of the case:
Ordered that the Sheriff Collect from Wm. More four fold: his Taxable
property being apraised by the Best Information that John Woods, Jacob
Brown & Johnathan Tipton Assessors could get--to the sum of Eight
thousand pounds.
Even the smart and rascally tax-dodger could not evade the law, with a
court like that one to take hold of him.
At the May term, 1780, it was “Ord. that a fine of One Hundred pounds
be imposed on John Chisholm Esqr for being Guilty of Striking and
Beating Abram Denton in the Court Yard also Disturbing the peace and
Decorum of the Court and that the Clerk issue an execution for the
same.” This fine is here set out for the reason that John Chisholm
was one of the first justices appointed for the county--he was at the
time a member of the court that imposed this fine--and, as the records
show, was wealthy and prominent in public affairs, being trusted with
various appointments by the court; and yet he did not escape the hand
of correction so often laid on offenders by the court in one or another
way. The offence for which he was fined was committed, not in the
presence of the court, but out in the court-yard. I very much doubt if
an instance prior to this one can be found, where the limits within
which it has been held that a contempt of court could be committed have
been so extended as to include the court-yard.
At the November term, 1780, the court formulated and entered the
following very remarkable order:
The Court appointed John Sevier, William Cobb, Thomas Houghton
and Andrew Greer Commissioners for the County to be Judges of the
Different kinds of paper Emissions in Circulation in this County or
may be hereafter, in order to prevent frauds and Impositions that
might be committed on said County, and for the purpose of Detecting
and Suppressing Coins of this kind, who shall be the Judges & Viewers
of all such Monies.
The record recites that these commissioners and judges “took the oath
and entered into bond for the performance of sd Trust.”
At the time these four gentlemen were appointed as a high commission
to be “judges and viewers” of the currency of the realm, and
“detectors and suppressers” of spurious or counterfeit “coins” and
“paper emissions in circulation,” all kinds of “such monies” seem to
have gotten into “the new world west of the Alleghanies,” for, at
the same term of the court making the order regulating the charges
of tavern-keepers, referred to above, two rates or schedules were
prescribed, one in “paper emissions,” the other in “coins.” The order
of the county court creating this commission and investing it with
power to “view” and “judge” of the genuineness of the circulating
medium, and to detect and suppress such of it as should be adjudged
fraudulent, does not point out the way, lay down any rules or provide
any method for the guidance and direction of the commission in the
exercise of the powers given or the discharge of the duties imposed. It
says simply what they shall do, or rather what they have been appointed
to do, and then leaves them to do it. That they found out an effective
way to exercise their powers there is not a doubt. They did not need
to be given “mandatory” power. “Counterfeiters” had been “dealt with,”
before this domestic monetary commission was created, by some of the
same men who constituted the commission.
One of the most delicate and difficult duties that devolved upon this
commission, under the terms of the order creating it--particularly
the words, “in order to prevent frauds and impositions that might be
committed,” etc.--was in cases where a question was raised as to the
genuineness of the money offered in payment by a citizen known to be
upright and free from any suspicion of handling spurious money, to
another equally honest, who refused it because he was doubtful as to
its being “good money.” The “judges and viewers” were called in to take
action, and had to decide in effect whether or not the money offered
was a “legal tender.” Their decision was accepted; and henceforth that
particular money circulated, if so ordered, without question, and
performed all the functions of money, whether it was in fact genuine
or spurious: if the decision was adverse, that money was thenceforth
worthless.
As an incident of the power and authority vested in these “judges and
viewers,” arose the question occasionally of guilt or innocence, when a
charge of counterfeiting or of wilfully and knowingly passing spurious
money was preferred. The person so charged was tried before the high
currency commission, and its finding or judgment not only settled
the question of the guilt or innocence of the accused, but made the
particular currency involved either “sound money” or counterfeit in
that entire country. John Sevier, according to tradition, was chairman
of the commission; if his name was written on the “paper emission,” it
passed current thereafter, and when offered in payment was a “legal
tender.”
The court also “Ordered that Capt. John Patterson deliver unto John
Halley a Certain Rifle Gun being the property of said John Halley.”
Some very serious difference or grave misunderstanding between the
court and Mr. James Gibson must have occurred at the November term,
1780, or at some time previous, if the record left in reference thereto
be correct--and who would doubt it? Whether or not the court intended
to suppress freedom of speech generally, it must be admitted that its
action toward Gibson would certainly tend toward suppressing the public
expression of a want of confidence in the integrity of that court, and
putting a stop to the practice of “throwing out speeches” against it.
The record relates that--
James Gibson being brought before the Court, for throughing Out
Speeches Against the Court, to-wit,--Saying that the Court was
purjured and would not do Justice, and Other Glareing Insults. The
Court On Considering the matter are of Opinion that the said James
Gibson is guilty of a flagrant Breach of The peace & for the same and
the glareing and Dareing insults offered to the Court do order that
the said James Gibson be fined the sum of fifteen thousand pounds &
that he be kept in custody until same is secured.
Gibson, as the record shows, secured the fine. It is not to be supposed
that any of the “speeches” which he had been “throwing out” were made
in the court room or in hearing of the court, because the record states
that he was “brought before the court.” When and where he assailed
this august body does not appear. This did not matter to them: their
jurisdiction was as wide as the universe, and their power to punish him
unquestionable, as they believed. The fine imposed on John Chisholm,
a member of the court, for striking and beating Abram Denton out in
the court-yard; the fine imposed on John Murphey, for “ill treatment”
of his reputed father, no doubt at home; the order directing Capt.
Patterson to deliver “unto John Halley” a gun decided by the court to
be “the property of said John Halley”; the method employed to punish
Gibson; the creation of a commission to determine in effect what money
should or should not be a legal tender, as well as the other matters,
hereafter to be related, to which they gave attention, show that this
remarkable court had no idea of having its powers limited and defined
or its jurisdiction circumscribed.
Only two orders of the May term, 1781, will be noticed. The first is,
“Ord, that Saml Tate be fined the sum of ten thousand pounds[E] for a
contempt of Court and that the Clerk issue F. Facious vs his estate
for the same.” On a subsequent day of the term, the clerk acknowledges
the receipt of the fine imposed on Tate. The other order is: “Ordered
that Jesse Greer be fined the sum of One Hundred pounds for a Contempt
offered to the Court &c in refusing to deliver unto the Widow Dyckes
her property as Directed By Order of the Court.” Under _their_ rules of
practice, they did not require “the Widow Dyckes” to employ a lawyer
and bring an action of replevin against Greer; they had heard the case
at a former term “on motion,” without stating on the record who made
the motion, and had directed Greer to deliver the property in question
to the widow Dyckes, which he had refused to do. They did not require
her to employ counsel to sue Greer and recover a judgment for the value
of the property detained from her, issue execution, levy on and sell
the property to satisfy the judgment; they made use of a much more
direct method, by holding Mr. Greer liable for contempt, and resorting
to their favorite mode of administering justice without delay--to-wit,
“on motion” and “ordered.”
At the May term, 1782, nothing of any considerable consequence was
done. The court “nominated and appointed John Sevier William Cocke
and Valentine Sevier Commissioners of Confiscation for the year 1782,
whereupon sd. Comr’s entered into bond with security for the sum of
Fifteen Thousand pounds, Specie.”
The court, at this term, gave to a citizen who had evidently been
“hiding out” permission to return to the settlements, as the following
order shows:
On motion that Joshua Baulding should be admitted to come in and
Remain henceforth peaceably in this County. On proviso, that he comply
with the Laws provided for persons being inimical to the State and
have Rendered Service that will expiate any Crime that he has been
Guilty of inimical to this State or the United States. The Court on
considering the same Grant the sd Leave.
This order, and others similar to it, which are not given place in
this chapter, serve to establish beyond question the intense loyalty
of the members of the court to “the common cause of liberty” (as the
struggle of the Americans then going on against Great Britain was
always designated), and also the vigilance with which they must have
scrutinized the conduct of each individual. There can be no doubt that
Baulding had fled and was hiding in the hills or mountains, and that he
knew it would not be safe to return or “come in” without the permission
of the court.
The August term, 1782, was one of the most memorable in the history of
the court. It was a “Court of Oyer and Terminer & Genl. Gaol Delivery,”
as well as for other county purposes. At this term it was presided over
for the first time by a judge--“the Honl. Spruce McCay Esqr Present
and Presiding.” He had the court opened by proclamation, and with all
the formality and solemnity characterizing the opening of the English
courts.
On the first day of the term, John Vann was found guilty, by a jury,
of horse-stealing, the punishment for which at that time was death.
On the same day the record contains an entry to the effect that “the
Jury who passed upon the Tryal of John Vann beg Leave to Recommend
him to the Court for Mercy”; but no mercy was shown him by “the Honl.
Spruce McCay Esqr,” as the record discloses further along. During the
week, two more unfortunates--Isaac Chote and William White--were found
guilty of horse-stealing; and, on the last day of the term (August 20),
Judge McCay disposes of all three of these criminals in one order, as
follows: “Ord that John Vann Isaac Chote & Wm White now Under Sentence
of Death be executed on the tenth day of September next.” This is the
whole of the entry.
The judge was mistaken in saying that the three persons named in the
order were “under sentence of death.” No such sentence is to be found
of record--all that appears is an entry of the style of the case, as
“State vs” etc., in each case, and the entry opposite the case, that
“the jury sworn to pass upon the Tryal do find the defendant guilty in
manner and form as charged in the indictment”; but there is no formal
sentence of death entered of record in either of the three cases. It
is not probable that a parallel proceeding can be found in judicial
history. Judge McCay utterly ignored the unanimous action of the jury
who recommended John Vann to the mercy of the court. Can a case be
found where a judge, in the United States, ever refused mercy to a
criminal who was commended to him for mercy by the jury that found him
guilty? Can another case be found where a judge caused three persons
to be “executed” by one order, consisting of five lines and seventeen
words, exclusive of the names of the criminals?
Judge McCay omits entirely to direct the method of executing the
three criminals--he does not say whether they shall be hanged, shot,
burned or drowned--but they were executed, either with rope, rifle or
tomahawk, according to the good taste of the sheriff or the wishes of
the defendants.
Tradition in that country gave Judge McCay the character of a heartless
tyrant. He was said, while judge, to have always been on one side or
the other of suits tried before him; and he never failed to let it be
known which side he was on. He frequently indulged in lecturing, not
to say abusing, juries publicly, when they returned verdicts contrary
to his wishes and instructions. But “the Honl. Spruce McCay Esqr”
found his match in the juries. They could not be driven or intimidated
into giving verdicts contrary to their convictions; and whenever they
differed with the judge--and they always knew his views--in a case of
weight or serious results, they would deliberately disperse, go to
their homes, and not return any more during that term of court. In
a case styled “State vs. Taylor,” the record shows that the jury was
sworn and the defendant put on “Tryal.” Nothing more appears except the
following significant entry: “State vs. Taylor. The jury having failed
to come back into court, it is therefore a mistrial.”
Judge McCay may only have been, as has been said of him, “a man of
strong character, determined and fearless in discharging his duty”--but
so were the juries in that county, as the records show.
At the May term, 1783, there was made an entry, which, when taken in
connection with one which will be given immediately after it, will show
how wisely these pioneers judged of men, and how necessary, sometimes,
it was for them to take measures which at the time appeared harsh and
cruel. The first entry is as follows:
On petition of Lewis & Elias Pybourn that they who is at this time
Lying out and keep themselves Secreted from Justice that the Court
would permit them to Return to their Respective Houses and places
of abode and Them the said Lewis & Elias Pybourn to give bond
and sufficient Security for their Good behavior &c. The Court on
consideration of the matter do Grant and Give Leave unto said Elias &
Lewis Pybourn to Return accordingly on their giving bond & approved
security to Capt. John Newman for their Good behavior &c.
A final entry, made in the “Superior Court of Law and Equity” at
Jonesboro, seven years later--at the August term, 1790--in the case of
the “State of North Carolina Against Elias Pybourn for Horse Stealing,”
justifies the members of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in
having required Elias Pybourn to give security for his future good
behavior. The full entry is as follows:
The defendant being called to the Bar and asked if he had anything
to say why sentence should not be passed upon him Saith Nothing. It
is therefore Ordered that the said Elias Pybourn be confined in the
publick Pillory one Hour. That he have both his ears nailed to the
Pillory and severed from his Head; That he receive at the publick
Whipping post thirty nine lashes well laid On; and be branded on the
Right cheek with the letter H, and on his left cheek with the letter
T. and that the Sheriff of Washington County put this sentence in
execution between the hours of Twelve and Two this day.
Horrible, awful punishment! Marked for life; a description of his crime
burned on and into his face with a hot iron--“Horse Thief”; both of
his ears cut off close up to his head. What a hideous spectacle! Was
the mark placed upon Cain by the Almighty such that when people met
him they said, “Let him alone; keep your hands off him; he has been
punished sufficiently already”? Would not people say the same of poor,
debased, degraded Pybourn?
Was the punishment inflicted on Pybourn barbarous? Yes; but the court
had warned him of the wrath to come, and had first made him flee to
the forest for safety--better had he gone to the Indians--and had then
given him permission to return to his home, on condition that he would
reform and behave himself. The only entry found in the whole of the
records to soften in the slightest degree the harsh and (it may be
said) inhuman punishment meted out to Pybourn, is one that suggests the
horror that came over one Joseph Culton, when he discovered, after he
had emerged from a single combat with Charles Young, that the latter
had bitten off one of his ears. Culton of course regretted the loss of
his ear, and was still more annoyed to be thus disfigured for life; but
these were the least of his troubles--somebody thereafter might think
that he had been “cropped” for crime. What was he to do? He appeared at
the November term, 1788, of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions,
whose jurisdiction knew no limits as to venue, time when or subject
matter, and the following entry was made for his relief and protection
from suspicion:
Joseph Culton comes into Court and Proved by Oath of Alexander Moffit
that he lost a part of his left Ear in a fight with a certain Charles
Young and prays the same to be entered of record. Ordered therefore
that the same be Admitted Accordingly.
It is not probable that any one ever examined this entry, and demanded
to see the page whereon the lost ear had been formally entered
of record; but it is certain that Joseph Culton carried with him
constantly a certified copy of the entry which attested that he had
been maimed in honorable combat, and not as a punishment for violation
of law.
This wonderful county court, before and since which there has been none
like it, adapted or adjusted its jurisdictional powers and methods to
all matters, questions and conditions that could be brought in any
way to its notice. When a stranger came into the community, it did
not content itself with letting him alone, no matter how quietly and
orderly he might conduct himself; it had him interviewed, as the entry
here quoted will prove:
The Court Order that Wm Clary a trancient person give security for his
behavior, and return to his family within five months, as the said
Clary is without any pass or recommendation and confesses he left his
family and have taken up with another woman.
The most that the average detective could have gotten out of Clary
would have been that he came from--where he started, and was
going--where he went; but the court found out more than this about
him, and they must have got it from his own mouth, as the order, after
reciting facts that they could have gotten from him only, concludes by
setting forth a very damaging confession which he had made, and which,
all will agree, justified the court in requiring security of him for
his behavior while he might remain in their midst, and peremptorily
ordering him to return to his family within a stated time.
By the time of the meeting of the August term, 1784, the court
had pretty well purged the country of traitors, horse thieves,
“trancients,” etc. At this term the court seems to have turned its
attention to the ugly habits of some of the very respectable; for, on
the first day of the term, as the record shows, fines were imposed
and paid as follows: “Eml. Carter three prophane oaths 8s. 10d. pd:
Pharoh Cobb four prophane oaths 10s. 8d. pd: Buckner Nantz One prophane
swearing Oath prays mercy Granted: Valentine Sevier for prophanely
swearing 4 Oaths fined 10s. 8d. pd: Mark Mitchell for swearing One
prophane Oath fined 2s. 8d. Patrick Murphey One Oath, Michael Tylloy
Two Oaths.” This treatment seems to have been effective; for, no fines
being recorded after the first day, it is reasonably sure that no
“prophane oaths” were indulged in, during the remainder of the term--at
least in hearing of the court.
As a result of the many battles with the Indians, and the numerous
Indian massacres which had occurred, numbers of children were left
without fathers or mothers. They had no orphan asylum, but the
records of the court show that homes were provided for these wards,
nevertheless, by the Watauga and King’s Mountain heroes. They had no
county asylum for the poor; but the county court, whose jurisdiction
could be extended to meet all emergencies, “ordered” some citizen
by name to “take and keep” the person named therein for the time
specified. These orders contained no recital that they were made by the
consent of anyone--they emanated from the inherent power and duty of
the court, as it believed, to provide for the poor.
The entries and orders selected from these old records are given, in
order that those who wish to know something of the views, characters
and abilities of the very earliest pioneers of Tennessee, may read
for themselves the views and opinions which they placed in solemn form
on court records, in reference to the various matters, questions and
conditions on which, as they thought, the vicissitudes of the times
made it necessary for them to take action. I wish to give, at this
place, two more orders of the court, before closing this chapter. At
the November term, 1784, the following was entered on the record:
The Court recommend that there be a Court House built in the following
manner, to wit: 24 feet square diamond corners and hewed down after
the same is built up, 9 feet high between the two floors, and the
body of the house 4 feet high above the upper floor, each floor to be
neatly laid with plank. The roof to be of joint shingles neatly hung
on with pegs, a Justices bench, A lawyers and a Clerks bar, also a
Sheriffs box to sit in.
[Illustration: FIRST COURT HOUSE BUILT IN THE “NEW WORLD WEST OF THE
ALLEGHANIES.”
Erected at Jonesboro, Washington county, Tennessee, in the year 1784.]
At the November term, 1785, the following was entered:
The Court Ordered that Col’o Charles Roberson be allowed fifty pounds
Current money for the building of the Court House in the Town of Jones
Borough.
As this was the first court house erected in what is now Tennessee, and
the one in which Andrew Jackson, John McNairy, Archibald Roane, William
Cocke, David Campbell and others began their professional careers; and
in and about which John Sevier, though not a lawyer, rendered so much
and such invaluable service in laying the foundations of our state, and
its civil as well as military institutions, I have had it reproduced,
and present a picture of it in this little volume. From what has been
said, and from the records which have been quoted, the imagination
can picture the scenes and proceedings occurring in this “temple of
justice”--for such it was, although made of logs “hewed down” and
covering “hung on with pegs.”
These early records challenge comparison, in spirit, form and
substance, with any others made during the same period in any
community, country or state in the United States. No patriotic,
intelligent people can read them without being filled with admiration
and inspired with respect and reverence for the men who made them.
They said, on the first day of the first term of the court, the court
must be respected; to the cruel son, you shall not ill-treat your
father, though he be a criminal; to the vagrant without a “pass or
recommendation,” you must give security for your behavior or leave the
community; to the man who had abandoned his wife, you must return to
your family; to the strong and influential, you must render unto the
widow her own, or we will force you to do so by fines that will make
you glad to obey; to the tax-dodger, you shall pay your proportion of
the taxes; to a member of the court, no matter what your position is,
if you cruelly beat your neighbor, we will take from you a large part
of your wealth and turn it into the public treasury; to the man who
was “throwing out speeches” calculated to destroy the influence of
the court for good, you must not malign the court, no matter when nor
where--if you do, we will lay the heavy hand of summary punishment upon
you; to such as were stirring up sedition and opposition to “the common
cause of liberty,” you shall not remain openly and peaceably in the
community without giving security for your good conduct; to thieves, we
will fine, whip, brand and hang you; to tories, we will confiscate your
property and imprison you; to the British, we will meet and fight you,
on every field from the mountains to the sea; to the Indians, we will
fight you too, from the mountains to the lakes and the gulf. And they
did it all. Who could have done more? They were heroes, one and all,
but history, it seems, has long since given them over to oblivion.
Although, in 1788, they had passed through a “general insurrection of
the times,” as chronicled by the clerk of the court under the state of
Franklin, and had no doubt come out somewhat demoralized, still the
habit of doing what they believed to be right was so strongly imbedded
in their natures that, at a term of court (February, 1788) held after
its reorganization following the Franklin collapse, they imposed upon
and collected from one of the most prominent citizens of the county a
fine for swearing in the court-yard. The record recites that “Leroy
Taylor came into Court and pays into the Office the fine prescribed by
Acts of Assembly for one profane Oath which was accepted of. Ordered
therefore that he be discharged. 21s.” Leroy Taylor was elected from
Washington county as a delegate to the constitutional convention of
1796, and was kept in the General Assembly almost continuously for
eight or ten sessions after Tennessee was admitted into the Union; he
was the author and introducer of the first resolution offered in the
General Assembly (in 1801), raising a committee to prepare a design for
the great seal of the state of Tennessee--but, with all his prominence,
he could not with impunity make use of even “one profane oath” in
hearing of the county court of Washington county.
The achievements of these old pioneers will run, however, “like
the covenants of warranty with the land” they loved so well. A few
glimmering memories, a few dim traditions, some scattered fragments
of stories--these are all that is left (outside the old court records
alluded to) of many of these men, every one of whom was a giant in
morals and a colossus in intellect, as compared with many modern
pigmies whose little deeds have been magnified into great achievements.
If the structures of state, county and municipal institutions in
Tennessee, and the social fabric as well, had been kept in harmony
with the pure, simple, steadfast and enduring foundations laid by John
Sevier and his contemporaries, what models we would have today for the
world to imitate. Are we wiser or better than they? Read and study
these old records: then answer.
FOOTNOTES:
[C] Continental currency.
[D] This was the father of Catherine Sherrill, the “Bonnie
Kate” of John Sevier.
[E] It must constantly be kept in mind that these apparently
enormous sums were in Continental currency.
CHAPTER IV.
_A TRAGIC EPISODE._
Tennessee does not need the prolific genius of the romanticist to
embellish and invest with thrilling interest the narrative of her
origin and development, of the hardships and endurance of her pioneers,
of the heroism and triumphs of her builders and defenders; but, looking
backward, with more than a century between us and the Revolutionary
War, we would be unmanly not to admit that at times we were a little
too vindictive and remorseless in pursuing those whose reverence and
love for the “mother country” were stronger than their desire for a
change and greater than their faith in the young dream of American
liberty.
Whilst separation and independence were imposing theories, so
fascinating to the wild and restless spirits who had founded and were
building up a vast empire in the western world, advocating their bold
measures with absorbing zeal and desperate earnestness, there was a
minority, many of whom were staid and sturdy, honest in purpose and
courageous in conviction, who regarded the movement as unwarranted, and
fraught with immediate peril and ultimate ruin. Despite persuasion,
remonstrance, threats, social ostracism and what seemed to them
persecution, they held allegiance to the Crown as a paramount duty, and
regarded the war that must inevitably follow, in its destruction of the
flower of the new country, as a twin horror of the Cretan Minotaur that
fed on the Athenian youth.
At the close of the Revolutionary War, these tories (“loyalists,” as
they called themselves) were universally execrated; and the most
popular victor, with many of the patriots, was he who could suggest the
most humiliating punishment for these unfortunates: they were put in
stocks, chained to the public pillories, cast into prison, and beggared
by the confiscation of their property, “without benefit of clergy.”
These and other punishments inflicted on the tories were justified
during the times as retaliatory for outrages committed upon the
patriots by the British and some of their American allies. Then, too,
some extenuation must be found for the victorious revolutionists in the
riot of frenzy and demoralization that always follows war.[F]
In the perspective of this group of terrible scenes, heartaches,
desolation of homes and disruption of families that the “common cause
of liberty” might not perish, stands out a tragedy which, while it
is of itself a melancholy picture of misfortune, suffering, despair
and absolute want, is yet luminous with courageous manhood and the
transcendent glory and conquering heroism of a pure and noble womanhood.
Novr Term 1780. Ordered that the Commissioners advertise and sell
the property of James Crawford & Thomas Barker, they the said James
Crawford and Thomas Barker being found and taken in Arms Against the
State.
May Term 1782. John Sevier a Commissioner of Confiscated property for
the year 1781, made return that he sold Two Slaves Confiscated of the
estate of Thomas Barker at the price of thirty four Hundred pounds,
and that he have the money ready to Return.
Aug. Term 1782. The Court Order that Mrs. Ann Barker wife of Thomas
Barker who stands charged with joining the British & was taken at
Kings Mountain a prisoner, by the Americans & after that his estate
was Confiscated by the County Court of Washington--On her application
in behalf of her Husband for Tryal by Jury the same is Accordingly
Granted.
These musty old records kept at Jonesboro, stitched together like
an old-fashioned copy-book, unbound, “unhonored and unsung,” have
slumbered for more than a century. They contain history so sacred,
however, that not a mouse or a moth has dared to touch them; the paper
is still good and the ink and penmanship clear and legible; and, if
properly cared for, they will be as enduring almost as the principles
of justice and integrity that guided the men who made them.
Connected with, growing out of and clustering around some entries and
orders in these almost forgotten archives of a bygone century, there
are stories and traditions which, if they could be unravelled, touched
up and then put together again by a skilful and painstaking historian,
would thrill with awe, admiration and wonder many of the present
generation, and arouse in them sentiments and sympathies far more
ennobling and exalting than those aroused by the ephemeral literature
of the day. One only of these stories and traditions have I been able
to trace and treasure up, for the purpose of giving it to the public at
such time as I should think proper.
I have grouped the three entries given above, for the purpose of
publishing (for the first time, so far as I know) one of the saddest
and most pathetic of the many sad and pathetic stories of the times.
The mere reading of these three short entries suggests not only to
Tennesseans, but to Americans, a whole history: the Revolutionary War,
King’s Mountain, treason, confiscation, imprisonment, wife and children
reduced to want, the faithfulness of the wife and her final appeal
in person to the court for a trial of her husband by jury. But these
entries have their own peculiar and painful history, which will be
related briefly, as obtained from sources which would make doubt, on my
part at least, undutiful and discrediting to my ancestors.
Thomas Barker came to the Watauga country immediately preceding or just
after the formal Declaration of Independence was made by the colonies.
He came from either southeastern Virginia or Maryland. He was a large,
handsome man, over the average in intelligence. He brought with him
a fair library for the times, the best of household and kitchen
furniture, some slaves and plenty of live stock and farming utensils.
His purpose was to acquire an immense estate in lands, which he was
preparing to do when the Revolution broke out in earnest. He was a
“tory” from the start, and did not attempt to conceal his views, which
were, in brief, that the colonies were too weak to contend successfully
with Great Britain; that the latter, with her wealth and facilities,
would ultimately crush out all opposition, and the colonies would be
reduced in resources and yet subjected to burdens more oppressive
than those complained of; or, if they were successful in gaining
their independence, they would not be able to agree among themselves
upon such form of government as would permanently unite them into one
people, offensive and defensive; that no matter what form of government
they might adopt for uniting all of the colonies into one whole, they
would soon become disaffected and dissolve their relations to each
other, thereby becoming a scattered, weak and helpless people for more
powerful nations to prey upon and subjugate; and that it was better to
yield obedience to and enjoy the protection of the “mother country.”
These views had been expressed by Barker to the court which afterward
confiscated his property, as early as the February term, 1779, at
which term he was arraigned on a charge of “treason.” Barker also
stated to the court that it was not his desire to take sides in the
struggle; that he preferred, if let alone, to remain with them and his
wife and children, but that, if forced to participate on one side or
the other, he should take up arms for the “mother country.” He was a
brave man and an honest, and the court knew it; and they disposed of
the case--which was styled “State vs Thomas Barker for Treason”--by the
following order: “On hearing the facts It is the Opinion of the Court
that he the Deft. be discharged.” As the war progressed, however, the
feeling of hate and bitterness in the community against “tories” became
more and more intense, and Barker finally left his home and joined
the British army. He was captured at King’s Mountain by some of the
very men who constituted the court to which he had so boldly expressed
his views more than a year before. He had been made a captain, and,
according to tradition, commanded a company of tories at the battle.
He was not only a man of personal courage, but he was a proud,
“high-strung” fellow, about twenty-eight or thirty years old; and, at
the moment of the surrender of the remnant of Ferguson’s army, he was
denouncing in bitter terms the cowardice of his own and other troops.
After the battle of King’s Mountain, the Americans from Virginia and
from Washington and Sullivan counties, North Carolina, started home
with the prisoners, arms, etc., captured in the battle. On the way,
about October 12 to 14, a court martial was held at a point called
Bickerstaff’s Old Field, in Rutherford county, North Carolina, and
some thirty or more of the prisoners were sentenced to be hanged--some
for desertion from the American army, others for horse-stealing, and
still others for crimes and outrages perpetrated on the people who were
supporting the “common cause of liberty.” None of those so sentenced
were regular British soldiers; they were North Carolina tories, some
of them from Washington and Sullivan counties. Among the latter were
Thomas Barker and James Crawford, who were saved from the ignominious
death to which they had been sentenced, and which was actually
inflicted on nine or ten of the prisoners, by the intervention of
their former friends and neighbors who were then present as soldiers in
the commands of Sevier and Shelby. Barker and Crawford knew the men who
had captured them, and knew that as a class they were both brave and
just. Barker’s bearing, during and after the court martial proceedings,
was cool and defiant; he said, with much deliberation, that he was not
guilty of a single one of the offences charged against him, and that
there were more than a hundred men there who knew him and knew his
statement to be true; and he added that, if they stood by and permitted
him to be hanged for crimes he was incapable of committing, then he was
no judge of men.
This speech infuriated some of the men from Washington and Sullivan
counties and Virginia, and they made some demonstrations of instant
violence upon the speaker, who stood with a scowl upon his face, and,
holding up his open hands, said quietly: “I am unarmed; you can kill
me, but you can’t scare me!” His speech, however, had quite a different
effect upon those who knew him at home, those who knew his wife, and
especially those who knew him to be a brave, truthful, honest man. Col.
Charles Roberson, John McNabb, Charles Allison and John Allison,[G]
who had participated in the battle of King’s Mountain, interposed with
earnestness and emphasis against hanging Barker and Crawford, and
they were supported in their opposition by Col. John Sevier and Col.
Isaac Shelby, which of course settled it. Barker was brought back to
Jonesboro and put in prison, where he had been kept for a little more
than a year and ten months, when his noble wife appeared in court in
person, and procured the order granting him a trial by jury, given
above.
This August term, 1782, was one long talked of and remembered for more
reasons than one. It was the term at which a judge--“the Honl. Spruce
McCay Esqr.”--presided for the first time; the term at which three
horse-thieves had been tried and sentenced to be executed; the term at
which tories had been tried and sentenced to imprisonment, and their
property confiscated; the term at which some offenders were sentenced
to be, and were, whipped at the public whipping-post.[H] Few, very few
women would have gone in person before such a court, to demand that
a tory be granted a trial by jury; but Mrs. Antoinette Barker, wife
of Thomas Barker, walked into court, with two (possibly three) small
children with her. Their appearance was sufficient to excite sympathy:
their faces were pale and haggard, and their clothing, although neat,
was patched and worn. Mrs. Barker was a woman of fine appearance,
with a beautiful face and a symmetrical figure, and more than a match
for the court in intelligence; but, depicted in every line of her
countenance, were the traces of mental anguish and physical suffering.
She did not, however, weep, go into hysterics, faint, fall down and be
carried out, but she stood up in the presence of that court, in all the
magnificence of superior womanhood, and, with the vehement eloquence of
despair, pleaded the cause of her husband. All that she said will never
be known; some things that she said were handed down from generation to
generation. She “used the Declaration of Independence on the court”;
she denied that her husband was a traitor; she reminded the justices
that he had stated his views to them openly and boldly, that he had
never taken the oath of allegiance to the continental cause, and that
he had told them plainly that, if forced to a choice, he would go into
the British army; that he was her husband, and a kind and good one,
and the father of her little, innocent, helpless children; that they
had taken all of his property and left his family paupers; that he
was then in prison, and had been for nearly two years, in consequence
of which his health was altogether gone; that she and her little ones
were without a protector, and that her neighbors and former friends had
almost wholly forsaken her. Her face, no doubt, was flushed with the
hot blood of agony welling up from her heart; possibly her voice grew
weak and broke under the stress of her emotion--but this noble woman
won her cause. Her application for the trial of her husband by a jury
was granted, and the court immediately adjourned. The record shows it,
and the adjourning order is signed by Andrew Greer, James Stewart,
Charles Roberson, Charles Allison, Thomas Houghton and John McNabb,
four of whom at least had participated in the capture of Thomas Barker
at King’s Mountain, and had afterward been present at his trial by
court martial.
This heroine, in the wilds of the western world, had undoubtedly quoted
from the Declaration of Independence the charge against Great Britain
“for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury,” and
had also probably suggested to the mind of the court, for the first
time, the question as to whether treason could be committed against a
government by a person who had never acknowledged allegiance to it.
The order granting Barker a trial by jury, unlike other orders of this
court, is not clear. It bears on its face evidence of confusion in
the court; and this, taken in connection with the fact that the court
adjourned immediately after granting the order, renders it certain that
this wonderful woman was, for the time being, in absolute control of
this marvellous court.
Did she try to secure the services of a lawyer and fail? I do not know;
but I do know that these old records fail to disclose the presence of
an attorney as counsel for a single one of the various defendants who
were tried by the court on a charge of treason. There were at this
time, according to the old records, about six attorneys practising
regularly in the court, and the records recite their presence as
counsel in other cases at that and other courts. Were these attorneys
too patriotic to appear in these cases, or too timid from a personal or
business standpoint?
The court afterward relented, and Barker was released on his own
recognizance, and never tried. Ruined in fortune, ostracized by
friends, broken in spirit and in health, he could not endure his
changed condition in life. He died soon after his release from prison,
and the brave, faithful, noble but broken-hearted wife speedily
followed her husband to the grave, leaving two or three children, the
oldest a boy of some five or six years. They were taken by a gentleman
and his wife who had no children, but a brother of either Barker or his
wife soon came and removed them from scenes and faces that it was well
for them to forget forever.
The little graveyard in which this brave man and his noble wife were
buried was remembered by old people in Washington and Sullivan counties
as late as thirty years ago. When I first saw and knew this graveyard
as the one in which they were buried, it looked much like a thicket
fenced in, but the old crooked rail fence around it was fast rotting
down. There were some large trees in it, the largest a wild cherry.
Later, the fence was entirely gone, as well as most of the trees, and
cattle were lying on the graves in the shade of the trees. Still later,
the trees were all gone save the lone wild cherry, and there was not a
stone or a mound left: the owner of the land was plowing over the dust
of the dead.
The world’s heroes are not those only who talk face to face with
death at the cannon’s mouth, and wet battle-fields with their crimson
life-tide.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] If the motives that prompted many of the tories to adhere
to the British crown during the Revolution were measured by the more
modern political standards of selfishness or self-interest, there be
many now who could not make mouths at their memories.
[G] Grandfather of the writer.
[H] See chapter iii.
CHAPTER V.
_EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION._
The first legislative act passed in what is now the state of Tennessee
was an “Ordinance of the Governor and Judges of the Territory of the
United States of America South of the River Ohio, for circumscribing
the counties of Greene and Hawkins, and laying out two new counties,
Jefferson and Knox.” This act was passed June 11, 1792, and describes
with minute particularity that part of the boundaries of the old
counties affected by it, as well as those of the new counties created.
The act appoints Charles McClung and James Maberry to run and mark
certain parts of the lines, and Alexander Outlaw and Joseph Hamilton to
run and mark the other parts. It also directs that the Courts of Pleas
and Quarter Sessions for Knox county be held at Knoxville, for the
ensuing year, on the third Mondays of January, April, July and October,
and for Jefferson county at the house of Jeremiah Matthews, on the
fourth Mondays of the same months, “for the administration of justice.”
The second ordinance passed by the same authority is one the example
of which it were well we had followed, but, alas! we have not. This
ordinance, in a preamble, recites that, “whereas, doubts have arisen
whether the several Courts of Pleas and Quarter Sessions in this
Territory have by the laws of North Carolina authority to levy taxes
for building or repairing court houses, prisons and stocks in the said
counties respectively, pay jurors and defray contingent expenses; and
whereas, it is necessary that these doubts shall no longer exist”; and
then proceeds to authorize and empower the courts to levy and collect
a tax for the purposes named--not to issue bonds, and entail their
payment, with interest, upon future generations.
The ordinance provides that the tax so levied and collected by the
several counties shall not exceed, in any one year, more than fifty
cents on each poll, nor more than seventeen cents on each hundred acres
of land.
Wise legislators were William Blount, David Campbell and Joseph
Anderson, who constituted the legislative authority. Their example was
followed, after Tennessee was admitted into the Union, by the general
assemblies elected by the people, for a very long period, so that,
whenever money was appropriated or a county authorized to make any
expenditures, the same act required the county authorities to levy
a tax, collect it and pay up, instead of piling up debt. Those who
wish to know how it was that Tennessee made such rapid strides in the
production of statesmen, the building up of a name, the development
of her natural resources, and advancement in education and the very
highest order of civilization, for the first half century of her
existence, have but to study the legislative history of that period.
“The Governor, Legislative Council and House of Representatives of the
Territory of the United States of America South of the river Ohio”
passed an act, September 30, 1794, entitled “An Act for the relief of
such persons as have been disabled by wounds, or rendered incapable
of procuring for themselves and families subsistence in the military
service of the territory, and providing for the widows and orphans of
such as have died.”
The act provides that persons of the description mentioned in the
caption must apply to and establish their right to an allowance, under
the act, before the county court; that the county court shall make an
allowance “adequate to their relief for one year--which allowance shall
be continued for the succeeding year and so long as such court shall
certify such person to continue under the description aforesaid”; that
when such certificate was “countersigned by the Governor and President
of the Council and Speaker of the House of Representatives, together
with their order or certificate for the said allowance, it shall be a
sufficient voucher to any sheriff, collector or treasurer paying the
same, in the settlement of their public accounts.”
On August 26, 1776, Congress promised, by a resolution, to the officers
and soldiers of the army and navy who might be disabled in the service,
a pension, to continue during the continuance of their disabilities.
On June 7, 1785, Congress recommended that the several states should
make provision for the army, navy and militia pensioners resident with
them, to be reimbursed by Congress.
On September 29, 1789, an act was passed providing that the military
pensions which had been granted and paid by the states, respectively,
in pursuance with the foregoing acts to invalids who were wounded and
disabled during the late war, should be paid by the United States from
the fourth day of March, 1789, for the space of one year.
The act of March 26, 1790, appropriated the sum of $96,979.72 for
paying pensions which may become due to the invalids.
The act of April 30, 1790, provides for one-half pay pensions to
soldiers of the regular army disabled while in line of duty; and the
act of July 16, 1790, provides that the military pensions which have
been granted and paid by the states respectively shall be continued and
paid by the United States from the fourth day of March, 1790, for the
space of one year.
There were several other similar acts providing for the yearly payment
of pensions, but the first general act which made a regular provision
for the pensioning of commissioned and non-commissioned officers,
musicians, soldiers, marines and seamen, disabled in the actual service
of the United States, and in line of duty, by known wounds received
during the Revolutionary war, was the act approved on March 10, 1806,
which provided by its terms that it should remain in force for and
during the space of six years from the passage thereof, and no longer;
but it was subsequently revived and kept in force by the acts of April
25, 1812, May 15, 1820, February 4, 1822, and May 24, 1828.
And so it appears, that the “Governor, Legislative Council and House
of Representatives of the Territory of the United States of America,
south of the river Ohio,” passed an act unconditionally and permanently
pensioning disabled soldiers and militiamen, and the _widows_ and
_orphans_ of such as had died from wounds, twelve years before such an
act was passed by the Congress of the United States.
It would not be in keeping with the main purpose of this modest effort
to catch up and put together in their proper places some dropped
stitches in Tennessee history, to go into an examination in detail of
the various acts passed by the legislative authority of the territorial
government and by the earliest sessions of the general assembly of the
state. Believing, however, that it may be profitable, at this time,
to bring into public view some of the great doctrines, principles and
policies that seem to have guided our early legislators, as gathered
from what they did, they will be briefly mentioned, with date,
substance, objects, etc.
The first of the policies indicated was that counties and
municipalities should not contract interest-bearing debts and postpone
their payment for a long period of years. This policy was fixed and
not deviated from; for in every act which authorized a county or
municipality to expend money for the erection of public buildings of
any kind, or for any other purpose, such county or municipality was
also required to levy a tax to pay for it; and, to prevent extravagance
or the erection of a building or buildings for public uses not
required, the act fixed a limit in excess of which tax should not be
levied or collected. Was this because they were wiser than we are? No.
They read the constitution, took an oath to support it, and found that
it said, as it does now, that “the general assembly shall have power
to authorize the several counties and incorporated towns in this state
to impose taxes for county and corporation purposes respectively”; and
they had not then become wise enough to construe the true meaning out
of this provision, and make it mean that the general assembly shall
have power to authorize counties and incorporated towns to borrow
money and issue promises and obligations to pay it ten, twenty or
thirty years after date, with interest payable semi-annually. If some
holder of such promises to pay, or of bonds issued by a county or an
incorporated town or city, should be called upon to point out that
provision in our constitution which gives power to the general assembly
to authorize a county or municipality to enter into and deliver such
obligations, what section, clause, line or word could be found to make
such bonds legal, valid and binding?
They had the “fee question,” the “school question,” public roads, the
regulation of private corporations, the “gold” or “specie contract”
question, all to deal with; and they dealt with all of them prior and
up to the year 1801, taking hold of and settling these complicated,
vexatious problems in a courageous and statesmanlike way.
The fee act, passed in April, 1796, not only regulated the compensation
of public officers, but fixed the fees of attorneys in civil suits,
from “twelve dollars and fifty cents in any suit in equity,” down to
“one dollar and twenty-five cents in any appeal from the judgment of a
justice of the peace to the county courts.” The fees allowed attorneys
were specified in each character of the various suits, the greatest sum
allowed being twelve dollars and fifty cents.
Two acts, however, ought to have special prominence given to them in
Tennessee at this particular time (March, 1897). One of these, bearing
on the subject of “gold” or “specie contracts,” with the cunning
methods used to ultimately accomplish the repeal of the most important
section in it, is here given in full:
An act respecting dollars and cents, and contracts, and the manner of
keeping accounts, so far as respects the currency in which contracts
shall be made and accounts kept. Passed January 5th, 1799.
SEC. 1. _Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of
Tennessee_, That all judgments and verdicts in courts of record, and
by justices of peace out of court, shall be rendered in dollars and
cents, or such parts thereof as the nature of the case may require;
and all executions thereon and all bills of costs shall issue
accordingly.
SEC. 2. _Be it enacted_, That from and after the first day of January,
One thousand eight hundred, all accounts shall be kept, and contracts
made where money is stipulated for, in dollars and cents, or such
parts thereof as the nature of the case may require; and all accounts
kept or contracts entered into, where money is stipulated for, other
than is by this act directed, shall be void and not recoverable by law.
By an act passed October 23, 1799, the second section of the foregoing
act was suspended “until the next stated General Assembly.” At the
next general assembly, November 10, 1801, this second section was
again suspended “until the next stated General Assembly.” At the next
succeeding general assembly, October 25, 1803, the following act was
passed:
Chap. 60. An Act to repeal _part_ [italics mine] of the second
section of an Act entitled An Act respecting dollars and cents,
contracts and the manner of keeping accounts, passed January the
fifth, 1799.
1. _Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee_,
That so much of the second section of the above recited Act that
requires all accounts kept or contracts entered into, where money is
stipulated for, other than are by said Act directed, shall be void and
not recoverable by law, is hereby repealed, any law to the contrary
notwithstanding, _except_ as respects accounts kept by _merchants_,
_physicians_ and _innkeepers_ [italics mine].
2. _Be it enacted_, That this Act shall be in force after the first
day of September next.
October 3, 1805, another act, of one section only, was passed, as
follows:
An Act to repeal the second section of an Act respecting dollars and
cents, accounts, contracts, &c.
_Be it enacted_, That the second section of the before recited Act,
passed on the fifth day of January, in the Year of Our Lord One
thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, be and the same is hereby
repealed, anything to the contrary notwithstanding.
The original act passed in January, 1799, was intended to remedy two
evils. The first, but not the chief one, was to put a stop to the
keeping of accounts, the taking of notes or the making of any kind
of contract where payment in money was stipulated for, in pounds,
shillings and pence, and to compel the use in all such obligations of
the terms dollars and cents; and to more effectually enforce this, the
act prohibited courts from rendering judgments, making out bills of
costs or issuing executions for anything but dollars and cents. The
second evil the act, in its original form and provisions, had forever
cut up by the roots was the “specie” account or contract--that is to
say, the shrewd keepers of accounts and money-lenders would embody in
the account, note or other obligation, where money was stipulated for,
the term “specie.” If it was an account, it would be opened something
like this: “Spruce McCay, in account with Ephraim Dunlap--specie”; or
if a note, due-bill or other obligation, the term “specie” usually
followed the “promise to pay” or the statement of the amount contracted
to be paid or acknowledged to be due.
To the close student of the methods which are usually employed by the
artful and designing, these several acts are amusing--first suspending
a particular section, then suspending it again, then repealing part of
it, and finally accomplishing the repeal of the whole section. Now,
note. The first repealing act excepted from its provisions “merchants,
physicians and inn-keepers”; that is, the repealing act was so artfully
worded as to leave the original act in full force against the three
classes mentioned--about the only people who transacted any business
of consequence and who required payment in money at that time. These
could not make any contract, or keep an account, for payment in
“specie”--they must accept payment in the currency of the times. The
system of barter, at this period, between the agricultural class and
the blacksmith, cooper, wagonmaker, shoemaker, etc., was such that
accounts between them were so kept as to be payable in the products
of each, and not in money--no money ever being passed between them
or expected. Thus, this first repealing act, stripped of the film
that shrouded it, simply left the original act in full force against
everybody that it could have affected, except one poor fellow--or one
class of poor fellows--the man or men who had a little bit of money
to loan on a note with “undoubted personal security” or secured by
mortgage.
This first repealing act was “class legislation” so rank and
rotten that the poor fellows who had money to loan--and who had it
passed--became, no doubt, exceedingly solicitous for the well-being,
prosperity and “business interests” of the “merchants, physicians and
inn-keepers” and therefore came forward at the next meeting of the
general assembly, in 1805, with an act repealing the whole of the
second section of the original act; and then they breathed easy and
praised the Lord because they had entirely relieved the “merchants,
physicians and inn-keepers” of this odious act, which had for its
object the prevention of requiring payment in “specie” where money
should be stipulated for.
This last full and final repealing act deserves to be further noted,
and to be remembered with reverence--so to speak--for the reason that
it is the first act passed in Tennessee in which the term “in the year
of our Lord” is used. What an intellectual treat it must have been to
hear the man (not the member of the general assembly) who prepared
this last repealing act, explaining its provisions to the members of
the general assembly, and pointing out to them the great benefits
that were to accrue to the “merchants, physicians and inn-keepers” of
the country by its passage; and also to note with what reverential
humility he bowed his head, and with what unction he read, “‘in the
year of our Lord,’ who has put it into my mind and heart to prepare
this great measure and ask you to pass it”; and (aside) “has also made
me a shining light in the church and the community”--while, all the
time and every minute, his greedy, covetous little soul was becoming
more contracted, and visions of dollars or pounds in “specie” were
blinding him to the great truth that it would be easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for such as he ever to enter the
domain of “our Lord,” where “specie” is used only to pave streets.
The county court records at Jonesboro show that, early in the nineties
of the last century, slave-holders were emancipating their slaves.
On October 2, 1797, an Act was passed by the General Assembly of
Tennessee entitled, “An Act to confirm the emancipation of a black man
named Jack.” The preamble recites that, “Whereas at July sessions One
thousand seven hundred and ninety seven, John Stone, of Knoxville, in
the State of Tennessee did apply to the County Court of Knox, for a
license to emancipate, and forever set free a certain negro man slave,
named Jack,” etc., “which license hath issued to said John Stone, and
whereas the said John Stone, on the thirty-first day of August 1797
... did emancipate, discharge and forever set free from all manner of
servitude and slavery whatever, the said negro Jack.” The Act then
confirms the emancipation, and confers upon the liberated slave “the
name of John Saunders.”
On November 13, 1801, the General Assembly passed an act, entitled “An
Act empowering the county courts to emancipate slaves,” the preamble
of which recites that, “Whereas the number of petitions presented to
this legislature, praying the emancipation of slaves, not only tend
to involve the state in serious evils, but are also productive of
great expense. For remedy whereof, _Be it enacted_,” &c. The act then
proceeds to confer power and authority upon the county courts generally
to emancipate slaves upon the petition and request of the owners, and
directs the clerks of such courts to record such proceedings and make
out and issue to the emancipated slaves a certificate of emancipation.
These old records will explain why it was that, twenty and twenty-five
years later, the “Manumission Intelligencer” and “The Emancipator”
were published at Jonesboro and the “Genius of Universal Emancipation”
at Greeneville. They show another fact, viz., that long before _Elihu
Embree_,[I] Benjamin Lundy, William L. Garrison and Harriet Beecher
Stowe began the agitation of the abolition of slavery--in theory--in
the public press, these people were not only _thinking_, but _acting_,
on the subject--the great question that ultimately shook the pillars
of the American republic, and earthquaked a continent when the shock
of war came--these people were not only teaching but practising
emancipation. It would not only be unpatriotic, but filial impiety in
the descendants of those people, to allow without protest their fame to
diminish, and their views, deeds and accomplishments to be taken from
them and credited to others.
[Illustration: LIMESTONE HOUSE, 1780.
Home of Elihu Embree, the founder and editor of the first abolition
paper published in the United States. Erected by his brother, Thomas
Embree, about five miles west of Jonesboro, now near Telford’s Station,
on Southern Railway. From a photograph taken in April, 1897.]
It must not be. It was easy indeed, for Embree, Lundy and others to
drop in, twenty to twenty-five years later, and join them in the
advocacy of the policy of emancipating slaves, when they found, or
had heard before coming to the country, that manumission societies
had been in existence for near a quarter of a century before, and
when the county court records disclosed the fact that these people
were practising what they advocated, and when petitions to the
general assembly of the state from the various counties “praying the
emancipation of slaves” were so numerous that they were about to
involve the state in serious evils by turning irresponsible persons
loose upon society and also entailing great expense.
The reader, must not however, confuse the policy advocated and
_practised_ by those people of emancipation or of manumitting their
slaves, with the doctrine of forcible abolition, or of freeing
slaves by legislative enactment, without the consent of the owner.
Petitions, with nearly two thousand signers or names to them, coming
from all settlements in the state (territory) were presented to the
Constitutional Convention in 1796, asking that a provision be embodied
in the constitution prohibiting slavery in the state after the year
1864. This was the voice of prophecy coming up out of the _Western
Wilderness_.
True philanthropy liberates its own slaves, and not other people’s
without their consent.
The first private corporation chartered by the general assembly of
Tennessee was the “Nolichucky River Company,” November 10, 1801. Its
objects are briefly stated to be “to clear out and remove from the bed
or channel of so much of the river Nolichucky as shall be within the
limits of Washington, Greene and Jefferson counties, all and every
obstruction which in any way impede or hinder the navigation of the
same.” The tenth section of the act is as follows:
_Be it enacted_, That three custom houses be established on said
river, for the purpose of receiving toll, in such places as the said
Nolichucky River Company may think expedient; and any boat, craft
or other vessel, entering in above the upper custom house shall pay
at the rate of one dollar per ton; any boat, craft or other vessel,
entering between the upper custom house and the second below, shall
pay at the rate of seventy-five cents per ton; and any boat, craft
or other vessel, entering in between the second custom house and the
third, shall pay at the rate of fifty cents per ton.
It is worth the time of the curious to read the whole of this act, as
it is not probable that another like it can be found in the statute law
of any other state.
Another act deserving our attention is one passed by the third general
assembly, creating the second private corporation chartered in
Tennessee. What a model it was and is for the guidance of all future
general assemblies, and how free we would be today from the many
questions that now vex courts and legislative bodies, if we had only
followed this wise precedent. But we have not; our “swollen estimate
of our own pre-eminence” seems to have so beclouded our minds as to
cut off vision in both directions: too proud and stiff-necked to look
back and study the example and teachings of our fathers, and too
weak-minded, with all our boasting, to see a single span of life into
the future, we have lost that which they, in their far-reaching mental
grasp, held on to in the charter--control and regulation of private
corporations by means of commissions appointed by state authority
and compensated by the corporation, these provisions being part and
parcel of the charter. The act referred to was passed November 14,
1801, and incorporated the Cumberland Turnpike Company--nothing but a
little turnpike company, to build a road or public highway “from the
district of Hamilton, across the Cumberland mountains to the district
of Mero”: but these backwoods pioneers, who (as we, their offspring,
have supposed) did not know how to spell “railroad,” “commission,”
“regulation,” “freight,” etc., actually had sense and foresight enough,
without books and court decisions bearing on the subject to guide them,
to embody in this second charter of a private corporation granted in
Tennessee provisions as follows:
1. It might make by-laws, rules and regulations not inconsistent with
the laws of the state.
2. It must “measure and mile-mark” the whole road, “erect bridges and
causeys” (causeways?), dig and level fields, hills and mountains to the
width of fifteen feet, and maintain and keep the road in good order and
repair.
3. The life of the franchise is limited to a period of ten years.
4. The corporation is required to execute a bond, in the sum of two
thousand dollars, with approved security, for keeping the road in safe
condition and good repair.
5. The Governor shall appoint three commissioners, and they or either
of them shall review and examine the condition of the road once in six
months, and report its condition to the Governor.
6. The company, on the completion of the road, is required to report to
the Governor that the road has been completed in accordance with the
charter requirements.
7. Thereupon, the commissioners are to view and examine the road,
and if they report to the Governor that the road has been completed
in accordance with the true intent and meaning of the charter, the
Governor will then issue a license to the company, permitting it to
erect gates and collect toll.
8. The toll that shall be demanded and received from the various kinds
of vehicles, live stock, footmen, etc., is prescribed by the charter.
9. It provides that, if any person shall sustain any damage on account
of being detained by the keepers of said turnpikes, or on account of
the road being out of repair, such person shall have an action against
the company for the damages sustained.
10. It fixes the compensation of the commissioners at two dollars per
day while necessarily employed, which shall be paid by the corporation.
11. It requires the road to be completed on or before the first day of
September, 1802, in default of which all rights granted by the charter
are forfeited.
This charter takes up one page and two-thirds of another page of the
acts as published, and is embodied, caption and all, in eighty-one
printed lines; and yet almost every conceivable phase of the questions
which have arisen between the people and such corporations, to annoy
both and vex courts and general assemblies, are fully covered in this
short charter, either in specific words, terms and provisions, or in
the true intent and meaning of the whole.
Some features of this charter deserve more than a passing notice. One,
which limited the life of the corporation to ten years, is in keeping
with and conformity to the great doctrine announced in the twenty-third
paragraph of the “declaration of rights” appended to and adopted
as part of the state constitution in 1796, that “perpetuities and
monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free state, and shall not
be allowed”: therefore they limited the life of this “monopoly” to ten
years. As private citizens, the men who composed the general assembly
believed in this doctrine; and, as representatives of the people, they
stuck to it with a firmness and manliness worthy to be followed by all
future legislative bodies.
Another feature of this second charter, which should have commended it
as a model in form and substance to future general assemblies, is the
retention in its face of the right and power of the state to regulate
and control the road, in its condition with reference to the safety of
the travelling public, and the services to be rendered and the charges
to be made therefor, as well as to require the corporation to pay the
agents of the people, who were to supervise and regulate it in these
particulars.
Here again, in this second charter of a private corporation for profit,
is given unmistakable evidence that these early legislators believed
in and adhered to that other fundamental principle proclaimed in the
“declaration of rights”--that “all power is inherent in the people, and
all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for
their peace, safety and happiness; for the advancement of those ends,
they have at all times an unalienable and indefeasible right to alter,
reform or abolish the government in such manner as they may think
proper.” They had probably not learned, so early, that it would ever
be insisted by anyone that the government could bring into existence
a creature greater and more powerful than the creator; but fearing,
no doubt, that such a claim might be set up, they put in the face of
this charter an answer to any such pretence. It had not probably been
intimated, at that early day, that a government which the people, in
the exercise of their inherent power, could alter, reform or abolish
at their pleasure, could nevertheless by its legislature bring into
existence an invisible, intangible, incorporeal entity which the people
could neither control nor destroy, although they have the power to do
both with reference to the creator of such entity; still, they said
in the charter that all power is inherent in the people, and you take
the rights, privileges and franchises granted, subject to their power
to control and regulate your operations, and your dealings with and
relations to the public.
Two other features of this charter deserve to be thoughtfully
considered. The first is that the corporation is made liable, in the
face of its charter, for damages sustained by any person who shall be
detained by the keepers of the turnpikes or the bad condition of the
road. Under the language of the section, the liability is fixed and
absolute, the plaintiff having to prove only two facts in any case: the
fact that he was detained, and the amount of damage sustained--this was
all; he did not have to prove negligence, or carelessness, ordinary
or gross. The other feature is that which required the corporation to
give a bond, with approved security, conditioned for keeping the road
in good repair. The corporation might become insolvent, go into the
hands of a receiver, come out again under a new organization, load up
again with mortgages first, second and third, stock itself again and
issue first and second preferred and common, and then collapse again;
but the bond which this charter required this corporation to give, and
the security thereon, could not be cancelled, or touched by anyone
except one who had sustained damages by reason of being detained by the
keepers of the gates or the road being out of repair. The corporation
might dissolve, become bankrupt, go out of business--but the bond and
security remained.
What a monument is this charter, granted to a private corporation
for profit, to the wisdom and far-reaching foresight of the pioneer
statesmen who framed and granted it; and how unfortunate it is, for
both the people and for the corporations, that subsequent general
assemblies in Tennessee have not engrafted its principles upon all
charters since granted to private corporations.
“History repeats itself” only when and where human nature parallels
itself: have legislative statesmen duplicated themselves in Tennessee?
FOOTNOTES:
[I] Thomas Jefferson Wilson, an aged, intelligent and
respected citizen, now nearly blind, living at Chesterton, in
Washington county, Tenn., writing to me, April 1, 1897, among other
things, says: “In the spring of 1833 I went to live with Elijah Embree
[brother of Elihu], and continued to reside with him until his death,
in 1846. During this time I had access to all his books and papers, and
I found a copy of ‘The Emancipator.’ I hunted up all of the numbers
that had been issued, and had James Dilworth of Jonesboro to bind
them in book form. Elihu Embree claimed [in ‘The Emancipator’] that
his paper was the first paper ever published in the United States
wholly in the interest of emancipation. It was a monthly paper, and
the first number was published in 1820, during which year Embree died,
and the paper ceased. The first movement that I know of in Tennessee
in the interest of emancipation was among the Quakers. They organized
a society on Lost Creek, in Jefferson county, from which sprang many
similar societies all over East Tennessee. Charles Owens, Benjamin
Lundy and a great many others who were emancipationists moved [from
Eastern Tennessee] to Ohio between 1815 and 1820.”
With reference to this subject of the first abolition paper, see
an interesting note on Elihu Embree, in the interpretation of the
“Centennial Dream,” in the appendix to this volume.
CHAPTER VI.
_MIRO, ALIAS “MERO.”_
In November, 1784, the general assembly of North Carolina, at Newbern,
divided the district of Morgan, which had theretofore included all of
the state “west of the mountains,” and erected Washington, Sullivan,
Greene and Davidson counties into a “Superior Court of Law and Equity”
district, by the name of “Washington.” From 1784 to 1788 all of the
territory west of the Cumberland mountains was included in Davidson
and Sumner counties, then the only organized counties in what is now
Middle and West Tennessee. The population of Davidson county had so
increased and extended westward from Nashville by the fall of 1788 that
the general assembly of North Carolina, at Fayetteville, in November of
that year, divided Davidson county by a line “beginning on the Virginia
line now Kentucky, thence south along Sumner county to the dividing
ridge between Cumberland river and Red river, thence westwardly along
said ridge to the head of the main south branch of Sycamore creek,
thence down the said branch to the mouth thereof, thence due south
across Cumberland river to Davidson county line.” All that part of
Davidson county west of this line was erected into a new county, which
was named “Tennessee.” Tennessee county, therefore, included all of
the territory now within the limits of Montgomery, Robertson, Dickson,
Houston and Stewart, and parts of Hickman, Humphreys and Cheatham. The
county seat of Tennessee county was fixed at Clarksville.
By another act of the general assembly of North Carolina, at
Fayetteville, in November, 1788, the counties of Davidson, Sumner and
Tennessee were erected into a new district for the holding of “Superior
Courts of Law and Equity” therein. When this act forming the new
district west of the Cumberland mountains was on its third and final
reading, the Speaker called on the author of the bill for the name with
which the blank left for that purpose was to be filled. James Robertson
and Robert Hays were the members from Davidson, and one of them was the
author of the bill providing for the new district. It is a matter of
history that, in answer to the Speaker’s call for the name of the new
district, James Robertson arose and suggested “Mero.” He evidently gave
the name as it is pronounced, without spelling it for the benefit of
the clerk, and the latter evidently recorded it phonetically; and thus
the name of the new district went upon the official record as “Mero,”
which is the correct pronunciation, instead of “Miro,” which is the
correct orthography. The error, once committed, was perpetuated; and
“Mero” it continued to be, not only in contemporary records and legal
documents, but in subsequent histories.[J]
The name as suggested by Robertson was adopted without open objection.
It is probable that some of the leading spirits in the assembly had
been made acquainted with the motive which prompted the selection of
the name, while others, without any knowledge, opinion or preference,
simply followed the leaders in accepting it. There were, however, some
members who knew some things, but not everything, in connection with
this name; and, on reflection, after the name had been adopted, they
took offence at the selection, and it was discussed, not in the general
assembly, but at the taverns and boarding-houses, with spirit and much
feeling. They said that it was strange and unexampled that the name of
an officer of a foreign government, who was not and had never been in
our service, should be given to a political division of our country
and perpetuated on our public records. They wished to know what this
meant.[K] They knew, they said, that Don Estevan Miro was a colonel
in the Spanish army, that he was also “Governor of Orleans,” and
they had heard that he was a very kind-hearted, agreeable gentleman;
but so were scores of other foreigners, not to mention the names of
the many loyal and distinguished citizens of the United States who
had not been honored with any such mark of popular esteem. Why, said
they, select a Spaniard already very distinguished, and at the very
time when that nation unjustly withholds from us the free navigation
of the Mississippi river, and when this very Don Estevan Miro is the
instrument chosen by the Spanish king and court to guard the waters
and mouth of the Mississippi and exclude us from its use? And this is
not all; why, they continued, should a Spanish official be so honored
during the very same year when Spain was demanding of the Congress that
the United States should relinquish the navigation of the Mississippi
for a period of at least twenty-five years--a measure which, if acceded
to, would completely break up and ruin all of the settlements in
Kentucky and on the Cumberland? Still more, this mark of respect was
shown to a Spanish soldier and governor at a time when the boatmen from
the upper Mississippi, Ohio and Cumberland, if they dared to float
their flatboats down the Mississippi to Natchez or New Orleans with
their tobacco and other products, were subjected by the Spanish to the
most outrageous fines and extortions, in the shape of duties imposed
for the use of a great river, and also to seizure and sometimes to
imprisonment. Last but not least, said they, this very Don Estevan Miro
is at this very time negotiating and intriguing with certain persons
in Kentucky and Cumberland, with a view of coming to terms upon which
Kentucky and the Cumberland country will become part of and submit to
the government of Spain. Truly, it did appear rather cloudy.
These various phases of the subject, and the situation of affairs
at that particular time, gave to the tavern-talkers a wide field
for speculation and conjecture, as well as alarm. The truth is, the
correspondence and communications alleged to have passed between
Governor Miro and certain citizens of Kentucky and the Cumberland
country, about this time, would read rather curiously if offered in
court to vindicate the Kentucky and Cumberland citizens from a charge
of disloyalty to the United States. Col. Robertson, however, said
nothing but “Miro”; and he subsequently demonstrated that he knew what
he was saying.
It is suggested--and this is probably the correct view--that the
main purpose of these persons in Kentucky and Cumberland who were in
correspondence with Governor Miro was, in view of their unanswered
appeals to Congress for help and protection, “if the federal Union
can not give aid and protection to us in life, liberty and property,
and also secure to us the free and peaceable exercise of the right
to navigate the Mississippi river with our products, why then, Spain
having promised all this, we will unite our fortunes with the Spanish.”
They knew that whoever could keep the Indians at peace with them,
and at the same time control New Orleans and the navigation of the
Mississippi, was the absolute arbiter of their destiny, inasmuch as,
without the right to use the Mississippi, there was no market they
could reach with their products.
August 26, 1779, Galvez, then governor civil and military and intendant
of Louisiana, appointed, as third in command in the campaign which he
was about to undertake against the British, Don Estevan Miro, with the
rank of lieutenant-colonel. Congress observed with satisfaction the
rupture between Great Britain and Spain; and, in the fall of 1779,
sent a minister to the Spanish court, with instructions to negotiate a
treaty of alliance, and particularly to insist on the free navigation
of the Mississippi river. To this the court of Spain responded: “We
are disposed to acknowledge the independence of the United States, and
to enter into a treaty of alliance and commerce with you; but if you
wish us to consent to your admission into the great family of nations,
you must subscribe to the right of Spain to the exclusive navigation
of the Mississippi, and consent to our taking possession of both the
Floridas and of all the territory extending from the left bank of
that river to the back settlements of the former British provinces,
according to the proclamation of 1763.” In this proposition, strange as
it may seem, Spain was supported by France; and up to 1788, and indeed
on up to October 27, 1795, Spain did control the Mississippi. On this
latter date, and about six months before Tennessee was admitted into
the Union, after long and tedious negotiations, a treaty was concluded
between the United States and Spain, a part of the fourth article of
which reads as follows: “And his Catholic Majesty has likewise agreed
that the navigation of the said river Mississippi, in its whole breadth
from the source to the ocean, shall be free to only his subjects
and the citizens of the United States, unless he shall extend this
privilege to the subjects of other powers by special convention.” At
the time this treaty was entered into, Governor Miro was in Spain, in
attendance, it has been said, on the court at Madrid. He was then a
lieutenant-general in the Spanish army, and held in great esteem in
Spain, and nothing is more probable than that his counsel and advice on
the subject of the proposed treaty were sought. It was entirely natural
that, when asked for his views, he should remember James Robertson,
Daniel Smith and Robert Hays, the courtesy shown him and the friendly
and respectful treatment which he had received from the inhabitants of
the district named in his honor, and that he should therefore favor the
concession of this right. In the very nature of things, the district of
“Mero,” misspelled though it was, and the circumstances connected with
and surrounding its baptism and the man who was its sponsor, ought to
and must have a place, not only in Tennessee history, but in the true
history of the United States.
The Spaniards, constantly haunted by fear of their restless neighbors
in Kentucky and the Cumberland country, spared no means by which
they might conciliate the Indians. The chief military officer of the
Spanish, writing to the home government, in 1786, concerning Alexander
McGillivray, said: “So long as we shall hold this chief on our side,
we will have a barrier between the Floridas and Georgia. The Indians
are convinced of the ambition of the Americans; past injuries still
dwell in their minds, with the fear that these greedy neighbors may one
day seize upon their lands. It ought to be one of the chief policies
of this government to keep this sentiment alive in the breasts of the
Indians.” Alexander McGillivray was a noted tory during the Revolution,
and had taken refuge after its close among the Creek nation. He was
a man of great courage and intelligence, entertained inveterate
hostility to the whites, and had an insatiable ambition for personal
promotion. He was in the Spanish pay, as agent of that government
among the Indians, had usurped regal authority, and was also chief
of the Talapouches. It is said that he cherished the hope of having
his nation admitted into the federal compact, although he was in the
service of Spain, with the rank of colonel, and was afterward promoted
to be commissary general. This dangerous man was under the absolute
control of Governor Miro in 1788, when the name of the latter was
bestowed by Robertson on the new district. The fact that Miro had
control of the Mississippi river, and at the same time almost absolute
command over the Indians in the south, furnishes, it is believed, the
logical explanation of the motive which prompted Robertson and Hays to
compliment him by giving his name to the newly established judicial
district.
In 1788 Miro was made civil and military governor and intendant of
Louisiana and West Florida. In this year McGillivray wrote him that
two delegates from the district of Cumberland had just visited him
with proposals of peace; that they were in extremities on account of
the incursions of his (McGillivray’s) warriors, and would submit to
whatever conditions he might impose; and, “presuming that it would
please me, they added that they would throw themselves in the arms
of His Majesty as subjects, and that Kentucky and Cumberland are
determined to free themselves from Congress; that they no longer owe
obedience to a power which is incapable of protecting them. They
desired to know my sentiments on the propositions, but as it embraces
important political questions, I thought proper not to divulge my
views.” Miro, commenting on this letter, says:
I consider as extremely interesting the intelligence conveyed to
McGillivray by the deputies on the fermentation existing in Kentucky,
with regard to a separation from the Union. Concerning the proposition
made to McGillivray by the inhabitants of Cumberland to become the
vassals of His Majesty, I have refrained from returning any precise
answer.
McGillivray was no doubt, at the very time he was writing to Miro,
also in the service and pay of the British; for, in April, 1788, in a
letter dated at “Little Tellisee, Upper Creek Nation,” and addressed
to Colonels Anthony Bledsoe and James Robertson, he says, among other
things:
Mr. Hackett arrived here a few Days ago and Delivered me your letter,
together with one from Col. Hawkins. Agreeably to your request I will
be Explicit and Candid in my answer to yours, and will not deny that
my Nation had waged war against your Country for several years past,
but that we had no motives of revenge, nor did it proceed from any
Sense of Injurys Sustained from your people, but being warmly attached
to the British, and being under their Influence, our operations were
directed by them against you in common with other Americans.
The letter from which the foregoing is quoted is of considerable
length. I have seen the original, with two others, and have “true and
perfect copies” of all three.[L] That from which I have quoted above
bears entirely upon the subject of a peace proposed between the Creek
nation and Cumberland in the letter of Colonels Bledsoe and Robertson
to which it is an answer; and there is not one word in McGillivray’s
letter which indicates, even remotely, that Robertson and Bledsoe had
made any such proposition to him as he had communicated to Miro. Col.
Robertson had written him, telling him, among other things, that a
number of the settlers on Cumberland had been killed recently by his
warriors--“among those unfortunate persons,” says Robertson, “were my
third son.”
Further along in McGillivray’s letter to Bledsoe and Robertson,
he says: “I had received his Excel. Governor Caswell’s letter and
Duplicate only a short time before the unlucky affair--so that I
Differred writing an answer until I could be satisfyed in my own mind
that he might Depend on what I should say to him, as I abhor every
Species of Duplicity, I wish not to deceive.” He concludes as follows:
“I have endeavored to make everything as agreeable as my Situation
permits to Messrs. Hackett & Ewing”--which shows that the men named
are the “two delegates from the district of Cumberland” referred to in
his letter to Miro; and these two letters, taken together, show what a
treacherous villain and liar he was, notwithstanding his abhorrence of
“every Species of Duplicity.”
In April, 1789, writing to General Wilkinson of Kentucky, who was his
confederate in the undertaking to separate Kentucky, Miro says:
I have just received two letters, one from Brig. Gen. Daniel Smith,
dated on the 4th of March, and the other from Col. James Robertson,
with date of the 11th of January, both written from the district of
Miro. The bearer, Fagot [Hackett?], a confidential agent of Gen.
Smith, informed me that the inhabitants of Cumberland, or Miro, would
ask North Carolina for an act of separation the following fall, and
that as soon as this should be obtained other delegates would be
sent from Cumberland to New Orleans, with the object of placing that
territory under the domination of His Majesty. I replied to both in
general terms.
On the next day after writing this letter, Governor Miro wrote to Gen.
Daniel Smith and Col. James Robertson, saying, among other things:
The giving of my name to your district has caused me much
satisfaction, and I feel myself highly honored by the compliment. It
increases my desire to contribute to the development of the resources
of that province and the prosperity of its inhabitants. I am extremely
flattered at your proposition to enter into correspondence with me,
and I hope that it will afford me the opportunity to be agreeable to
you.
These letters, messages and communications between Governor Miro and
leading citizens of Miro District are more simple and straightforward
than diplomatic. The reader of this part of our history, however, must
keep in mind the precarious condition of the citizens of the Miro
District at this period: a vast wilderness of more than two hundred
and fifty miles behind them, savage Indians on both sides and the
Spanish in front of them; with their state government and Congress
both so weak that neither was able to extend them the slightest aid or
protection--thus situated, they very naturally turned in the direction
that not only had the power but gave the promise of protection and
assistance. Miro, in acknowledging the compliment conveyed by bestowing
his name on the new court district, said: “It increases my desire to
contribute to the development of the resources of that province and the
prosperity of its inhabitants.” In the year 1790, the Spanish court,
contrary to the advice of Governor Miro, made a formal order levying a
tax or duty of fifteen per cent. on all produce or freight carried down
the Mississippi river. This order so inflamed the people of Kentucky
and Miro District that it had the effect feared by Miro, of practically
breaking off and forever ending further negotiations between him and
the people of Miro District on the subject of the Cumberland country
becoming a Spanish province.
Judge Martin, in his history of Louisiana, says that, at about the
period of time when these letters were passing, there were five
parties in the western country--one in favor of the formation of a
new republic unconnected with the United States, and a close alliance
with Spain; another that wished the western part of the United States
to become a portion of the province of Louisiana and to submit to the
laws of Spain; a third, desirous of war with Spain, an open invasion
of Louisiana and the seizure of the Mississippi and New Orleans; a
fourth, proposing by a show of war to prevail on Congress to extort
from Spain the right to the free navigation of the Mississippi; the
fifth, as unnatural as the second, was to solicit France to procure a
retrocession of Louisiana and to extend her protection to Kentucky and
Cumberland.
The administration of Miro in Louisiana terminated with the year 1791.
In a letter to the Spanish court, written in the previous year, asking
permission to return to Spain, he says: “I have now had the honor of
serving the King, always with distinguished zeal, for thirty years and
three months, of which twenty-one years and eight months in America,
until the state of my health requires my return to Europe.” He returned
to Spain, where he continued his military career, being promoted from
the rank of brigadier to that of lieutenant-general. “He carried with
him,” says Judge Martin, “the good wishes and regrets of the colonies.”
The character of Miro was that of a kind-hearted, benevolent, upright
gentleman. Leprosy prevailed in Louisiana, and one of Miro’s first
acts, on being appointed Governor, was to erect a hospital for the
unfortunate victims of that disease, on a ridge lying between the
Mississippi river and Bayou St. John, which was called “Leper’s Land.”
Instances were related in which Miro would intercede with a creditor to
give further time to an unfortunate debtor, and on failing to obtain
such indulgence, he would satisfy the debt out of his private funds.
In April, 1786, the king of Spain issued a royal order, approving the
course and conduct of Miro, who, in the preceding year, had granted
the former British subjects in Baton Rouge and Natchez, which had been
conquered by the Spanish, ample time to sell their property, collect
their debts and remove their persons and effects.
Don Estevan Miro left his name on the judicial records and reports
of Tennessee, where it remained until November 4, 1809, when, by act
of the general assembly, the state was divided into five judicial
circuits, to which the act affixed numbers instead of names. Miro
District, in addition to Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee counties,
included at one time the counties of Smith, Wilson and Williamson.
When “the territory of the United States of America south of the river
Ohio” was admitted into the Union as the state of Tennessee, the county
of Tennessee, at the first session of the general assembly, by an
act passed April 9, 1796, was divided into Montgomery and Robertson
counties. Thus the “District of Mero” and “Tennessee county” appeared
on and then disappeared from the face of the map and the public records
of the state of Tennessee.
The “Superior Courts of Law and Equity” for the Miro District were held
in Nashville. An act of the first session of the first general assembly
of Tennessee, passed April 22, 1796, recites that the court house, or
the “office of the clerk and master of the District of Mero was lately
destroyed by fire, and the books, records and papers thereof lost,”
etc., and then provides for setting up the records.
While the capital and the state treasury were located at Knoxville,
there was a branch treasury kept in the Miro District at Nashville.
The present chief justice of the United States, Hon. Melville W.
Fuller, in an opinion on the constitutionality of a recent law of the
state of Michigan, providing for the selection of presidential electors
by a vote of each congressional district separately taken, refers to an
act of the general assembly of the state of Tennessee, which appointed
a committee of citizens in the District of Miro and empowered it to
elect presidential electors--the chief justice, as I understand him,
approving both these methods as a compliance with the constitution.
The act referred to is worthy of acquaintance, and I therefore embody
the substance of it in this chapter, as I presume that there are very
few persons familiar with its provisions. The act was passed August 8,
1796, and is as follows:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, that
three electors shall be elected, one in the district of Washington,
one in the district of Hamilton and one in the district of Mero, as
directed by this Act, to elect a president and vice president of the
United States, and that the said electors may be elected with as
little trouble as possible to the citizens.
Sec. 2nd. Be it enacted that John Carter, John Adams, and John
McCollester of the County of Washington; John Rhea, John Spurgeon and
Robert Allison of Sullivan County; Daniel Kennedy, Joseph Hardin and
James Stinson of the county of Greene; and Richard Mitchell, John
Young and Bartlet Marshall of the county of Hawkins, are appointed
electors to elect an elector for that purpose for the district of
Washington; John Adair, Charles McClung and Samuel Flonnagan of the
County of Knox; Andrew Henderson, Josiah Jackson and Christopher Hains
of the County of Jefferson; Samuel McGahey, Josiah Gist, Alexander
Montgomery of the County of Sevier; and Robert Boid, William Lowry
and David Caldwell of Wells Station of the County of Blount, are
appointed electors to elect an elector for the purpose aforesaid for
the district of Hamilton; Thomas Molloy, William Donelson and George
Ridley of the County of Davidson; Kasper Mansco, Edward Douglass and
John Hogan of the County of Sumner; George Nevill senior, Josiah Fort
and Thomas Johnson of the late county of Tennessee, are appointed
electors to elect an elector in the District of Mero, for the purpose
aforesaid.
Sec. 4. The electors in this Act before named shall convene, those for
the District of Washington at Jonesborough, those for the District
of Hamilton at Knoxville, and those for the District of Mero at
Nashville, on the Second Monday of November in the year 1796, and
being so convened, they, or so many of them as shall attend on said
day, proceed to elect by ballot an elector qualified as by this Act
directed, for the purpose aforesaid.
The act further provides that, “if two or more persons shall have the
same number of votes, it shall be decided in the same manner as Grand
Jurors are drawn for, in the Superior Courts”--that is, the names of
such persons as received the same number of votes were to be written on
slips of paper and put into a box or hat; a boy under twelve years of
age then drew out one of the slips, and the person whose name appeared
thereon received the certificate of election.
The electors chosen received certificates of election signed by the
committee, and the three electors thus chosen were directed by the act
to “convene at Knoxville on the first Wednesday in December, 1796, and
proceed to elect a president and vice-president of the United States.”
This act, or method of selecting presidential electors, was re-enacted
by the general assembly of Tennessee, October 26, 1799, for the
presidential election to occur in 1800. I am not aware that this method
of selecting presidential electors was ever adopted by any other state.
This seeming digression from the main subject will be pardoned, in view
of the fact that Chief Justice Fuller, as I understand him, refers to
the act under consideration as applicable only to the Miro District.
The method of choosing presidential electors prescribed in this
act shows how implicitly the people at that time trusted their
representatives, and also the confidence the representatives reposed in
the judgment and patriotism of the citizen, as well as the confidence
which the people then had in the honor and patriotism of each other.
FOOTNOTES:
[J] Haywood, Ramsey, Putnam and Phelan unanimously and
invariably so spell it.
[K] Haywood’s History of Tennessee.
[L] This “big Injun” seems to have written his name as the
fancy struck him. The signature to one of the letters is “McGillivray,”
while the other two are signed “McGilveray.” All are in the same
handwriting, and all are evidently autographic.
CHAPTER VII.
_ANDREW JACKSON AS A “SPORT.”_
In many respects Andrew Jackson was the most interesting, picturesque
and unique character America has produced. Scotch and Irish
blood commingling in his veins, there was a perfect blend of the
characteristics of both races, and in addition thereto he had some
traits and besetments peculiarly his own. In his calm and restful
moods, he was as tender and serene as a child, and easily accessible
by the very humblest; but when the storm of passion swept over his
soul, he was a flaming furnace of fury, almost wholly heedless of
consequences, and as much to be feared and avoided as an enraged lion.
In the face of perils he had the dauntlessness of John Knox, and was
an exact counterpart of the great reformer when he threw down the gage
of battle to the Roman hierarchy. A soldier by nature, he scoffed at
the prescribed rules of military movements, and made his own tactics,
surpassing even the Corsican prodigy in martial genius and originality,
as the trained soldiers of Pakenham, who won the bloody field of
Waterloo, testified involuntarily when they fled in defeat and dismay
before his undisciplined militia from the gates of New Orleans.
The highest order of statesmanship wrought in him its perfect work. If
he was not the founder, he was the preserver, of a great party. He was
a sturdy patriot. Love of country was the controlling emotion of his
great soul. The determination which animated him, crystallized in his
stern pronouncement, “The federal union: it must be preserved!” crushed
an incipient rebellion as a giant would crush a shell of glass.
His judicial administration was signalized by clear discernment, keen
analysis, deep penetration, ready and correct decision, and an instinct
to trail the sly and devious cunning of wrong and guilt.
Jackson lacked the refinements of fashion and the polished graces
of the courtier, but his quick grasp of every situation and his
instinctive sense of the proprieties bore him with composure and
dignity through all the social ordeals through which he had to pass.
Still, in these functions he had a will and a way of his own, and
little he recked whether others were pleased or affronted.
Jackson’s figure, like the shadow of the Brocken, grows more colossal
as we recede from it.
This is one side of Jackson’s life--the sober, serious side--an
unblurred career of honor, usefulness and triumph, for which the
truth-loving muse of history never tires of garlanding his name with
the most loving eulogies. As is usually the case with mortals, there
was a reverse side of Jackson’s character. Here we find a few spots on
the otherwise white flower of a blameless life.
In the years before honors thrust themselves so thick and fast upon
him, he was what would now be called a “sport.” The semi-civilization
of the time, his rugged environment, the lack of training consequent
upon the loss of his natural guardians, his absolute dependence upon
himself, and his high-born spirit that could brook no control, combine
to form an eloquent plea in extenuation of the few “indiscretions” that
were mingled with so many commendable traits. He loved the excitement
and wild abandon of the chase, and the deep-mouthed pack’s “heavy bay,
resounding up the rocky way” and mountain solitudes, was sweeter music
to his enraptured ear than a thunderous jumble of Dutch diapasons to a
Wagnerian devotee.
Jackson was fond of adventure and games requiring daring, alertness,
skill and strength, and engaged with the heartiest zeal in all the rude
hilarities of pioneer life; but horse-racing was his special weakness.
At the time spoken of, he knew a great deal more about the “points”
of a flyer than he did about Blackstone, the science of government or
the ten commandments. A fleet-footed horse was his idol, and when he
saw one equal or break the record made by Maggie on the night when she
outstripped the witches of Kirk Alloway with frightened Tam O’Shanter
clinging to her mane, his was the ecstasy of the swain in his earliest
love. On this “weak point” hangs an o’er-true tale, and the event gives
a true insight into Jackson’s character when he was at his worst.
It happened along in the eighties of the last century, when Jackson was
a resident of Washington county and boarded with Christopher Taylor
(familiarly known as “Kit Taylor,” and grandfather of Skelton Taylor
of Chattanooga), who lived, as stated in an earlier chapter, about one
mile below Jonesboro, on the road to the Brown settlement. At this
time, Jackson’s “weakness” was at its weakest, and horse-racing was
his most delightful occupation. He had a racer upon which he lavished
his time and his affections, and which he imagined was the fastest in
all the country; and he was eager to “back his judgment” with all the
means at his command. Col. Love, who lived in Greasy Cove, then a part
of Washington county and now of Unicoi, owned the champion flyer of the
new country, having even defeated the fastest horses over in Virginia,
about Wolf Hills, where Abingdon now stands. Jackson envied Love, and
was determined to rob him of his laurels and becloud the reputation of
his horse. He sent a challenge, which was promptly accepted.
The race was widely and graphically advertised. In all the contests
of equine speed, it would have no prototype in the past and no rival
in the future. All upper East Tennessee was stirred into a ferment of
excitement, which grew more intense every day, from the time of the
announcement until the event took place. The coming horse-race became
the absorbing, exclusive topic of conversation at the log-rollings,
house-raisings, quiltings, distilleries, stores, school-houses,
firesides, inns and before and after “meetin’.” Children caught the
infection from the adults, and the dogs, if they have the intelligence
with which they are credited, doubtless cast knowing winks at each
other when their respective owners discussed the universal theme and
speculated upon the outcome of the to-be-incomparable event.
The place selected for the race was in Greasy Cove, on the farm now
owned by the Loves. Tall mountains looked down on lower heights, and
these in turn on the spot to be made historic--a poem of nature, a
dream of beauty in a setting of scenic grandeur, embroidered with the
silver fretwork of the Nolichucky’s restless billows.
The track was a half-circle, half a mile long.
The advertised day, in the summer or early fall of 1788, came at last,
and with it the popular excitement pitched to the highest tension. And
such a heterogeneous mass as swarmed into that sequestered valley--the
old, the young, farmers, workers in wood and iron, lawyers, doctors,
saints, sinners, and even preachers; on foot and horseback, singly,
in groups and in vast cavalcades, from Washington, Greene, Hawkins,
Sullivan, and from the Wolf Hills of Virginia. Civilization had not
yet reached a sufficient development to produce a “moonshiner,” but
“the rosy” flowed as copiously as if some magician had changed the
neighboring streamlets into the crystal elixir, and the number of
fisticuffs was in proportion to its consumption. As was the custom of
the day, the fellows “spilin’ for a fight” stripped to the waist line
and fought in a ring, and when one cried, “Take him off!” the mill
ended, the bitten, gouged and bleeding combatants “made up,” washed,
dressed, and sealed the pact of peace with a drink of whiskey from the
same gourd. The men who met at Sycamore shoals, followed “the sword
of the Lord and of Gideon” across the Alleghanies under Sevier and
Shelby, drove the Hessian hordes from King’s Mountain and closed the
final chapter of the Revolution with one of its grandest triumphs, were
there. The pioneer who built his fort-cabin in the wilderness and shot
the prowling savage through a chink in the wall, was there, with his
faithful spouse and the rest of the family. The lovesick swain in his
flax linen, with his bonnie lass in a gown of snowy cotton, who caused
the mountain roses to pale with envy as she glided like a sylph among
them, was there also. But the horse-race overshadowed everything else
in interest and importance.
Jackson had been training his horse for months in advance in “Kit”
Taylor’s neighborhood, and the racer knew his master’s imperious will
perfectly. He “smelt the battle afar off,” and perhaps at the same time
“danger in the tainted air”; but when the test came, the determination
to be first under the string thrilled every fiber and sinew in his
lithe and wiry body.
The betting was fast and furious, and the reckless readiness of the
gamblers, following the example of the contestants, to risk all on
their favorite steed, would have taken away the breath of even the
“plunger” of today. Guns, furs, iron, clothing, cattle, horses,
negroes, crops, lands and all the money procurable were staked on the
result. No “boom” period in that section saw so much property change
hands in so short a time.
A week or ten days before the race, Jackson was overtaken by a serious
disappointment. His jockey, a negro boy belonging to Taylor, was taken
down with a violent fever. Jackson announced his determination to ride
the race himself, and Love readily agreed to the proposition. When this
arrangement became known, the throng became delirious with enthusiasm
and delight. The judges, who had been selected after a good deal of
finesse and some wrangling, were stationed half and half at each end of
the semicircular track. Jackson appeared on his restless and impatient
flyer, with a haughty air of confidence and self-possession, the
rival steed prancing at his side, under the control of a born jockey,
who well knew the responsibility resting upon him and how to act his
part on the momentous occasion. They were started with a shout that
shook the azure vault above and reverberated in answering echoes from
the surrounding mountains. The horses were marvels of symmetry and
beauty, and in fine condition for speed and endurance. At the word
“Go!” they shot out on the smooth track as if they had been hurled
from two monster mortars. On they sped, neck and neck. The jockey was
the hazy outline of a boy printed on the air: Jackson rode as if he
were part of his spectral horse. The yells of the onlookers packed
around the crescent course would have drowned the blending screams of
a hundred steam-whistles. All at once, the Love horse spurted ahead.
The partisans of Jackson got their breath in gasps. The victor whizzed
under the string like an arrow, leaving Old Hickory to make the goal at
his leisure. If Jackson’s horse was a wind-splitter that left a blue
line behind him, Love’s was the same as a belated streak of lightning
chasing a hurricane that had outrun it. Just for a moment there was
the deep, ominous hush that precedes the crash of the tempest; then
a pandemonium of noise and tumult that might have been heard in the
two neighboring states broke loose. It awoke the black bear from his
siesta, and the frightened red deer “sprang from his heathery couch
in haste” and sought the distant heights. The loud, long and deep
profanity would have discounted the “army in Flanders.” Jackson was the
star actor in this riot of passion and frenzy. His brow was corrugated
with wrath. His tall, sinewy form shook like an aspen leaf. His face
was the livid color of the storm-cloud when it is hurling its bolts
of thunder. His Irish blood was up to the boiling-point, and his eyes
flashed with the fire of war. He was an overflowing Vesuvius of rage,
pouring the hot lava of denunciation on the Love family in general
and his victorious rival in particular. Col. Love stood before this
storm unblanched and unappalled--for he too had plenty of “sand,” and
as lightly esteemed the value of life--and answered burning invective
with invective hissing with the same degree of heat and exasperation.
Jackson denounced the Loves as a “band of land pirates,” because they
held the ownership of nearly all the choice lands in that section. Love
retorted by calling Jackson “a damned long, gangling, sorrel-topped
soap-stick.” The exasperating offensiveness of this retort may be
better understood when it is explained that in those days women
“conjured” their soap by stirring it with a long sassafras stick.
The dangerous character of both men was well known, and it was ended by
the interference of mutual friends, who led the enraged rivals from the
grounds in different directions.
It is probable that this crushing defeat, with its intense
mortification and odious memories, gave Jackson a profound distaste for
the turf and other time-wasting sports of pioneer life. At all events,
he turned his attention to the sober and “weightier matters” of life,
and eagerly embraced the “tide in the affairs of men” which led to fame
and fortune, and enabled him, on the field of battle, in the forum of
law, in the council hall and at the head of a great nation, to make for
himself
“One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die.”
The incidents and results of this celebrated horse-race did not in
the least discredit Jackson in the estimation of the people where
it occurred, as was shown long afterward. While it was difficult to
exaggerate the great victory gained over the British at New Orleans by
Gen. Jackson, still it was somewhat exaggerated by the time the news
of it reached Jonesboro. Some few days after the first account of the
battle had reached the town--in a letter from a Knoxville gentleman
to a friend in Jonesboro--some court day or other public occasion had
caused quite a crowd to collect in town, and the gentleman who had
received the letter was requested to make a public announcement of its
contents to the anxious and excited populace. This he did in front of
the court-house. The excitement was at blood heat, but perfect silence
and order prevailed while the gentleman was making his speech--for such
it was, as he did not actually read the letter. The substance of the
speech was that Gen. Jackson had killed the whole of the British army
on the battle-field, except a few who were driven into the Mississippi
river and drowned; that he had captured all of their arms and ships,
and had taken his own army on board the vessels, and was then on the
high seas on his way to take possession of England. At this point,
which was the conclusion of the speech, an old man of sixty, standing
near the speaker, threw his hat into the air, and jumping excitedly
up and down, shouted: “Whoop-pee! hurrah for Andy Jackson, hell and
thunder! I knowed, the day I seed him ride that hoss-race in Greasy
Cove, that he could whup anybody!” The scene that followed was without
a precedent in the history of the town, not even the return of Sevier
with his conquering heroes from King’s Mountain having caused more
rejoicing and celebrating. From and after that time, the exclamation
of Gen. Jackson’s enthusiastic admirer became a saying in the country
round about; and when news of an earthquake, the burning of a town or
city, the sinking of a ship at sea with all on board, would be told to
some not over-reverent citizen, he would exclaim, “Andy Jackson, hell
and thunder!” as the only words adequate to express his feelings on the
reception of news of such a catastrophe.
The deep-rooted, heartfelt, undying hatred of the British which these
people nursed, kept alive and handed down, may be illustrated by
the recital of a few facts which came within my own knowledge and
observation. During the recent war between the states, there was
much said and written, at one period, about England recognizing the
independence of the Southern Confederacy, and entering into diplomatic
or friendly relations with the Confederate government. While this
subject was under discussion, I heard old men, who were intense in
their loyalty to the Southern cause, and who had sent their sons all
into the Confederate army, declare openly and vehemently that, if
the Southern Confederacy “made friends with the British,” they would
renounce their allegiance to it and bring their boys home; that they
had rather be subjugated by the Yankees than to conquer with the aid of
“the British”!
So late as 1882-3, Sir Thomas Watson, an Englishman, spent several
months in Jonesboro, examining and negotiating for a valuable piece
of iron property in Washington county. He would come to my office
occasionally, and would sit and talk with me. On one of these
occasions, an old friend of mine, some seventy years of age, came in,
and I introduced him to Sir Thomas, telling him that the latter was
from England. My old friend sat down, but did not address a word
to the gentleman to whom I had introduced him during the half or
three-quarters of an hour which ensued; but I noticed him more than
once looking at the Englishman very much as if he was “drawing a bead”
on him along the barrel of a rifle. When Watson left the office, the
old gentleman’s eyes followed him. As the door closed after him, my old
friend drew a breath of relief, and asked, “What’s _he_ doing here?”
When I told him, he appeared incredulous. “I don’t believe he’s after
any good,” he said; “better have nothing to do with a Britisher. This
one may be a spy. If Andy Jackson was alive, and was to hear of that
man being here, I’ll bet he would drive him out of this country!”
The race-horse in Greasy Cove, in the shadow of the mountain over
which Jackson had crossed a few months before, and in the midst of the
early settlements of Tennessee, was not the last time he appeared on
horseback in the presence of his admiring and applauding countrymen.
In 1833 President Andrew Jackson rode on horseback along Broadway in
the city of New York, in a “roaring wave” of shouts that came from a
“sea of upturned faces” which lined the whole way of his triumphal ride
through the great thoroughfare of the great city, where men, women
and children had gathered to get even a passing glimpse of the hero
of the hour. He was then sixty-six years old, but his horsemanship,
acquired in part at the celebrated race in Greasy Cove, prevented on
this occasion a serious accident to the President of the United States.
It was said by those who witnessed the manner in which he sat upon and
controlled the spirited and frightened charger which he rode, that the
horse would have dashed any other man headlong from the saddle; but
Jackson was as cool and calm as he was skillful, and soon brought the
animal under perfect control--as he soon afterwards did Nicholas Biddle
and the United States Bank.
CHAPTER VIII.
_JACKSON’S DUEL WITH AVERY._
Waightstill Avery was the most prominent man and the leading lawyer in
Western North Carolina when Andrew Jackson came to the bar. At that
time, and indeed from the time of the organization of the first court
west of the Blue Ridge, Avery had the most extensive practice of any
lawyer attending the courts east or west of the mountains. He began
his professional life west of the Alleghanies with the organization of
the first court in Washington county, and was therefore a well-known,
as he was a reputable and highly respected, lawyer before Jackson’s
appearance there. “He was born in Norwich, Connecticut, and was
educated at Princeton, from which he graduated in 1766. He was a
tutor in that college for a year, when he removed to Maryland, and
studied law under Littleton Dennis. He emigrated to North Carolina,
and was licensed to practise law in 1769. He encouraged education and
literature, and was a most devoted friend of liberty. He led the bold
spirits of his day in his patriotic county, and was a member of the
convention in 1775, at Mecklenburg, that declared for independence. The
minutes of the proceedings show his zeal in the cause of liberty, and
the confidence of his countrymen in his talents and integrity is proved
by the important duties he was engaged to perform. This called down
upon him the vengeance of the enemy; for, when Lord Cornwallis occupied
Charlotte, the law office of Col. Avery, with all his books and papers,
was burnt. In 1775, he was a delegate from Mecklenburg in the state
Congress at Hillsboro which placed the state in military organization.
In 1776, he was a delegate of the same to the same, which met at
Halifax and formed the state constitution. He was appointed one of the
signers to the proclamation bills. In 1777, he was sent by the council
(of state) with orders to Gen. Williamson, at Keowee, South Carolina.
He was appointed by Governor Alex. Martin (1777), with Brig.-Gen. John
McDowell and Col. John Sevier, to treat with the Cherokee Indians. He
was elected the first attorney general of North Carolina, in 1777,
which he resigned on account of his health, and removed to Burke county
in 1781, which he represented for many years, and where he, enjoying
peace and plenty and the love and regard of his neighbors, died in
1821. He was at the time of his death the ‘patriarch of the North
Carolina bar,’ and an exemplary Christian, a pure patriot and an honest
man.” Such is the brief account given by the North Carolina historian,
Wheeler,[M] of the man with whom Jackson fought the duel at Jonesboro,
which shows that Avery was no ordinary man.
Avery graduated from Princeton in 1766; Jackson was born March 15,
1767. Hence, Avery must have been at least twenty years older than
Jackson. The records at Jonesboro show that Avery attended the various
courts up to about the time Tennessee was admitted into the Union, and
that he was on one or the other side of nearly all the cases in the
courts held there.
More than one version of the duel, and the cause of it, have been
given. I have read and heard two of these.
Parton, in his life of Jackson,[N] gives an account of this duel, as
detailed by Col. Isaac T. Avery, son of Col. Waightstill Avery, and it
would seem that this version of the affair ought to be accepted. It
will be noticed, however, that Parton’s account omits to state any fact
or facts that caused or led up to the challenge--he merely states that
the two attorneys were on opposing sides in a case at Jonesboro; that
the cause was going rather against Jackson, that he became irritated,
and that Avery rather exultingly ridiculed some legal position taken
by Jackson, using language that was more sarcastic than was called for
(as he afterwards admitted), which stung Jackson, who snatched up a
pen, wrote a peremptory challenge on the blank leaf of a law book and
delivered it then and there to Avery, by whom it was promptly accepted.
In my search after the facts, made years ago, among the old men of
Washington and Sullivan counties, I ascertained that Jackson fought two
duels at Jonesboro. When I began my investigation, I had never heard
of any except that with Col. Avery, and therefore, when asking some
one about the matter, I would say something to this effect: “What do
you remember, or what have you heard, about Jackson’s duel fought at
Jonesboro?” The answer, four times out of five, would be: “Which one do
you mean--the one with Avery, or the one fought in the hollow?” They
nearly all remembered the fact that there were two duels, or said that
they did; they recollected all about the duel with Avery, and that it
was fought on the hill on the south side of the town (not on the north
side), and that the other one was fought in “the hollow” (as it was
then called) north of the town; but they could not recall the name of
the man with whom the latter duel was fought, nor the cause of it. I
suggested to some of them that probably there was no duel fought with
pistols in the meadow or hollow, but that it must have been a plain,
old-fashioned fight with fists, as I had heard that the hollow in
question was a favorite place for the fisticuff champions of the time
to retire to and “fight it out fair.” This suggestion was invariably
met with ridicule at the mere idea of Andrew Jackson fighting with
anything else than a pistol, a dirk or a sword; and I gave up the duel
in the hollow with much regret at not being able to learn anything at
all about it, beyond the fact that Jackson did fight one there, with
some one whose name they could not remember, and the cause of which
they had heard but could not recall.
The account of the duel between Jackson and Avery, as given me and
as I heard it given to others, twenty, twenty-five and as far back
as thirty years ago, by very old native-born citizens, agrees in the
following particulars with that given by others: Jackson and Avery
were opposing counsel in a suit being tried in the afternoon; the case
was going apparently against Jackson’s view and client; Jackson was
exerting himself in an effort to escape from authorities relied on by
Avery; and the latter did ridicule severely some legal position taken
by his opponent. If, however, the account given me be a true one, as
I have every reason to believe that it is, there is much that must
be interlined in or added to the foregoing, although it can be done
briefly.
Avery’s favorite authority was “Bacon’s Abridgment.” This he carried
with him from court to court, and from the tavern to the court house
and back. It was always in his “green bag,” and the latter, when not
in his saddle-bags, was in his hand or swinging from his arm. The book
was carefully wrapped up in a piece of buckskin, to preserve it from
wear. Avery quoted from and referred to “Bacon’s Abridgment” in every
case and on all occasions, and of course had done so on the trial of
the case out of which grew the duel; and Jackson had ridiculed Avery’s
pet authority, but had not said anything derogatory to his opponent
as a lawyer or a gentleman. Avery, in his retort, grew sarcastic; he
not only criticised legal positions taken by Jackson, but intimated
pretty strongly that he did not know anything about the law of that
case or of any other, and that he had much to learn before he would be
justified in criticising a law book written by anyone. This was enough
to inflame Jackson, and it did. Jumping to his feet, he exclaimed: “I
may not know as much law as there is in Bacon’s Abridgment, but I know
enough not to take illegal fees!” Avery at once turned on Jackson,
and demanded fiercely to know whether he meant to charge him with
taking illegal fees. Jackson answered, “I do, sir,” and started to say
more; but Avery, pointing and shaking his finger at his adversary,
hissed through his teeth, “It’s as false as hell!” whereupon Jackson
immediately sat down, picked up a law book, tore a blank leaf from it,
wrote a challenge, delivered it to Avery, bowed to him ceremoniously,
and walked out of the court house. Avery seated himself, wrote an
acceptance of the challenge, walked out of the court house and, meeting
John Adair, requested him to act as his second, and to deliver his note
to Jackson. The latter, in the mean time, had met a friend, whom he
asked to act as his second, and to whom he said that he did not wish
to kill Avery; that Avery had interrupted him without hearing all that
he had intended to say, which was that he (Avery) had taken illegal
fees because of his ignorance of the latest law fixing a schedule of
fees,[O] and not that he had done so corruptly; but that Avery’s manner
and language were such as to prevent this intended explanation, which
he could not afford to make afterward without the probability of being
suspected of fearing Avery, and that he would rather be killed by his
antagonist than suspected of cowardice. Jackson’s second (whose name
I was never able to ascertain) unquestionably communicated to Adair,
during the subsequent negotiations between them as to weapons, etc.,
the substance of what Jackson had said; and the two seconds determined
that there should be no duel in earnest, or “shooting to kill,” as
one of my informants expressed it. This agreement must have been
communicated to both principals, before they left the town for the
“field of honor,” as subsequent events clearly indicate.
Difficulties that led to a challenge and its acceptance, in the olden
times, were rarely ever adjusted before the combatants arrived on
the field. The distinguished duellists followed the custom on this
occasion; and, with their seconds and others who knew of the affair,
went to the ground selected--the hill on the south side of Jonesboro,
and not “the hollow” north of town. The distance was measured off, the
principals stationed and the word given--and Jackson and Avery both
fired in the air, to the great gratification of their friends.
The two principals approached each other with extended hands. While
holding his recent antagonist by the hand, Jackson said: “Col. Avery, I
knew that, if I hit you and did not kill you immediately, the greatest
comfort you could have in your last moments would be to have ‘Bacon’s
Abridgment’ near you; and so I had my friend bring it to the ground.”
Thereupon, Jackson’s second unrolled the package in his hand, which was
about the size of a law book, and out fell a piece of old, well-cured
_bacon_!
Parton, in a note appended to his account of the duel, says that
there was a comic incident connected with it, which Jackson would not
tell and Adair did not. The version here given was told me by three
different old men, in Washington county, years ago. They were Abram
Gregg, Micajah (or Michael) Hodges and John Fullmer, each of whom had
been a soldier in the war of 1812, Gregg having been, I believe, a
captain. The last time that I talked with Fullmer and Hodges on this
subject was in 1879, and they were both clear in their recollection,
without any consultation with each other, residing in different parts
of the county, Fullmer on the Watauga river and Hodges on the Holston,
eight miles distant.[P]
The foregoing version of this duel is supported by the old court
records at Jonesboro. Years ago I read and copied therefrom the
following entry: “Waightsell Avery having for want of Acts of Assembly
Crept into an Error in Taking Two pounds instead of One pound Six
Shillings and Eight pence Was by the Court freely Pardoned at his Own
Request.” It is also borne out by the fact that, when Jackson was
President, this duel was mentioned to him by Samuel P. Carron, then a
member of Congress from the district in North Carolina in which Col.
Avery died, whereupon the President, according to Parton, asked Carron,
“Who told you about it?” “Gen. Adair,” was the answer. “Did he tell
you what happened on the ground?” “No.” “Well, then, I sha’n’t,” said
Jackson, laughing. This would indicate that the duel had had some comic
ending, and not a comical beginning.
The other version of the duel, which I never heard in upper East
Tennessee, agrees with the one before given, except in the following
particulars. It was said that, in the course of the trial, Jackson
was rather getting the best of Avery, and as it was near adjourning
time, and Col. Avery, strange to say, had forgotten his green bag with
“Bacon’s Abridgment” in it, when returning from dinner, he said to
the court that he would produce next morning the authority in support
of his position; that Bacon’s Abridgment would show how little the
opposing counsel knew about the law in the case, etc. Next morning,
Jackson went into Avery’s room during the latter’s absence, took the
“Abridgment” out of the green bag, and substituted a piece of bacon
about the size of the book, wrapped first in paper and then in the
buckskin which Avery used as a wrapper for his precious volume. When
Avery came into court with his green bag, and proceeded to produce
his authority, out tumbled the piece of bacon, in the presence of the
court and the lawyers, as well as the spectators who had been invited
to witness the fun. This practical joke so incensed Avery that he
challenged Jackson on the spot; the challenge was accepted, and the
combatants immediately proceeded to the duelling ground, fired at
each other, both missing, whereupon each expressed himself satisfied,
and the affair ended. This latter version does not accord with what
Jackson said to Carron about the comic incident, when he asked if Adair
had told him what happened _on the ground_--not at the court house or
before the duel.
I gathered from the old men alluded to above that public sentiment, as
they understood, was rather with Avery at the time of the duel, as the
people had more confidence in his law knowledge than that of “young
Jackson;” but they all believed both of them to be brave and honest,
although Jackson was “a little too fractious.”
Did Jackson fight another duel at Jonesboro? I do not know; but it is
certain that the three old gentlemen whom I have named, as well as
others, asserted most positively that he did. When asked whom the duel
was fought with, when it occurred, what caused it, etc., they could not
remember; but they all agreed that the affair took place in the “long
meadow,” as it was then called (formerly the “hollow”), on the north
side of town, and they all asserted that the duel with Avery was fought
on the hill on the south side. Capt. Abram Gregg was of the opinion
that the duel occurred in the year after Jackson came to Jonesboro,
which would fix it in 1789. He said that Jackson hit his man, but he
was not seriously wounded, and soon recovered and left the community;
that Jackson was not touched. It can be seen from this statement how
the facts of the duel might have been forgotten, if it took place, as
the other party to it left the country soon afterward, whereas Col.
Avery continued to attend the courts of the county for years after his
duel with Jackson. This would naturally keep the matter fresh in the
minds of the people, although Jackson left the county permanently about
October or November, 1790.
FOOTNOTES:
[M] History of North Carolina, part ii, page 56.
[N] Parton’s Life of Jackson, I, 162.
[O] Attorneys’ fees were then fixed by statute, in both civil
and criminal cases.
[P] Hodges died in June, 1881, at the age of eighty-six.
Fullmer died in November, 1883, ninety years old. Gregg was much older
than either of the others, and died early in the seventies, a very old
man. There were living in the Boon’s creek civil district of Washington
county, after the close of the late war, as many as seven old gentlemen
who had been soldiers in the war of 1812, besides others then living in
different parts of the county.
CHAPTER IX.
_ANDREW JACKSON, DEPUTY SHERIFF AND FIREMAN._
Russell Bean was not distinguished alone because he was the first white
child born within the limits of what is today the state of Tennessee:
he was said to have been the most perfect specimen of manhood in the
whole country, without an equal for strength, activity and physical
endurance, and absolutely devoid of fear. He was a genius, also: he was
a gunsmith by trade, and it was said that he could make more implements
of war and other things of utility, with fewer tools, than any other
man ever known in that day and country. He went to Connecticut, soon
after he reached manhood, and brought back with him to the western
world a supply of what were then modern tools and supplies, with which
he established a kind of manufactory of arms, etc.
Bean had a flat-bottomed boat built under his directions, and with a
cargo of arms of his manufacture, consisting of rifles, pistols, dirks,
etc., he went alone down the Nolichucky to the Tennessee, thence to the
Ohio, and down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where he remained for
about two years, engaged in foot races, horse racing, cock-fighting
and other sports of the times in that then great city. On returning
to Jonesboro, he found his wife--who was a daughter of Col. Charles
Roberson, and had borne him several children--nursing an infant. Her
seducer, it was said, was a merchant of the town named Allen. Bean
left the house without a word, got drunk, came back, took the baby out
of the cradle, and deliberately cut off both its ears close up to its
head, saying that he “had marked it so that it would not get mixed up
with his children.” He was arrested and, court being in session, he
was tried and convicted of this act of inhuman cruelty, and sentenced,
in addition to other punishment, to be branded in the palm of the
hand. This was done; whereupon he immediately bit out of his hand the
part containing the brand, and spat it upon the ground. He was also
imprisoned, but soon escaped from jail, and was allowed to remain at
large, for the reason that the officers were afraid of him. His wife
soon got a divorce from him; but he was determined to kill Allen, and
it was known that on several occasions he had secretly watched for
him. Failing to get a chance at Allen, who was really in hiding, Bean
sought a difficulty with Allen’s brother, whom he assaulted and beat
unmercifully. For this he was indicted; but, up to the time that court
met with Jackson on the bench, the officers had not been able to arrest
him, or at all events they had not arrested him. They reported to Judge
Jackson that they could not take Bean; that he was out at his cabin, on
the south side of the town, armed, sitting constantly, when at home,
in the door, with his rifle by his side and his pistols in his lap,
defying arrest and threatening to kill the first man who approached his
house. Such was the report made in open court to Judge Jackson, who
immediately ordered: “Summon every man in the court house, and bring
Bean in here dead or alive.” Thereupon the sheriff, with a grim humor
which does him infinite credit, responded, “Then I summon your honor
first!” Jackson at once left the bench, exclaiming, “By the Eternal,
I’ll bring him!”--and he did. He found Bean sitting in his door, as
described by the officers. Jackson approached, pistol in hand, followed
by the crowd at a respectful distance. When he got within shooting
distance. Bean arose, called out, “I’ll surrender to you, Mr. Devil!”
and laid down his arms. Jackson took him to the court room, where he
was tried and fined heavily.
This is the story of the Bean incident, as always told by the old
people in Washington county. Russell Bean was a man of fine appearance
and engaging manners. He was not only a genius, but he was “well
read” for that era, and had picked up, on his trip to Connecticut and
at New Orleans, a great deal of information with reference to other
nations and their affairs. He could have been a leader, but for some
infirmities and peculiarities.
When Parton was preparing his life of Jackson, some one gave him the
information that Col. Charles Roberson, Bean’s father-in-law, was “an
illiterate old man, who had fought under Sevier at King’s Mountain and
made campaigns against the Indians.” This statement, unqualified, does
Col. Roberson injustice. He was one of the heroes of King’s Mountain,
and had engaged in many campaigns against the Indians. He was not an
educated man, but the various responsible positions to which he was
appointed, including that of chairman of the Court of Pleas and Quarter
Sessions, according to early records at Jonesboro, and speaker of the
Senate in the last General Assembly of the State of Franklin, 1787,
testify to his intelligence, as well as the esteem and confidence in
which he was held by his countrymen.
Bean’s divorced wife married again, and moved to Knoxville, where the
unfortunate child died, as did also her second husband. In the course
of a few years, Bean himself drifted to Knoxville, where Jackson met
him and, it is said, brought about a reconciliation between him and his
former wife. They were remarried, and lived happily until the death of
Bean.
Parton fixes the date of the fire incident at Jonesboro at the time of
the Bean incident--after Jackson had been appointed judge. The date
is not material, but Parton’s information must have been incorrect,
or the date of the fire incident, as recollected and given by aged
persons who remembered it and recounted it as late as twenty years ago,
was wrong. According to these old citizens, the fire in which Jackson
distinguished himself was in 1798, while he was stopping in Jonesboro
on his way to Nashville from Philadelphia, after he had resigned the
position of United States Senator. Court was in session, however, when
the fire occurred, as stated by Parton, and Jackson was there mingling
with his friends. He had been there for a few days previous to the
fire, and continued his stay in town for a few days afterward. He was
not stopping at the tavern, but was the guest of one of the families.
The fire originated, near midnight, in the stable that belonged to and
was near the Rawlings tavern. It was soon in a blaze throughout, and
there was no thought of an effort to save it, as it was filled with
hay, oats, fodder, etc. Attention was turned to the tavern, which stood
some two hundred and fifty feet from a creek which runs through the
center of the town. The alarm of fire and the call for help brought
out the entire population, filling the few streets of the village
with men, women and children. When Jackson appeared on the scene, Ben
Boyd, an Irish coppersmith, was calling loudly for buckets and yelling
to the crowd to form a line to the creek; but nobody was paying any
attention to him. Jackson, as was his custom, immediately took command,
and began ordering everybody to get into line, actually taking hold of
men and women and putting them in position, calling for buckets, and
directing the keeper of the tavern to get all of the blankets in the
house and spread them all over the roof. In a few minutes Jackson had
formed two lines from the house to the creek, the lines facing each
other and six or eight feet apart; along one line empty buckets were
passed to the creek, and the full buckets back up the other line to the
tavern, which was the only house in immediate danger. Jackson would
appear, one moment, on the roof, calling down to those in the lines to
stand firm and hurry up the water, and the tavern and town would be
saved; the next seen of him, he would be passing up and down the lines,
urging order and discipline. He was everywhere, and always at the
place where his presence seemed most needed. The tavern was saved, and
nothing burned but the stable. “Jackson saved the town with his bucket
brigade,” was on every lip.
Parton brings Benjamin Boyd to the attention of the nation, in
connection with this fire incident, by saying that, “while Gen. Jackson
was strengthening that part of his line near the creek, a drunken
coppersmith named Boyd, who said that he had seen fires at Baltimore,
began to give orders and annoy persons in the line. Jackson shouted
at Boyd to fall in line, who continued jabbering. Jackson seized a
bucket by the handle, knocked him down, and walked along the line
giving orders as coolly as before.” Ben Boyd’s part in and connection
with the fire incident, as detailed to me “often and again” by persons
who knew all the facts, does not agree with Parton’s account in some
particulars. What is believed to be the true narrative is here given.
Benjamin Boyd was an Irishman, as was Andrew Jackson. He was a
coppersmith by trade, got drunk occasionally, and was drunk on the
night of the fire. He was somewhat chagrined at the idea of Jackson
appropriating his suggestion of a bucket-line to the creek; and after
Jackson had succeeded in doing what he could not do, and, as Boyd said,
was “strutting around giving orders,” the two men met near the creek.
Boyd said to Jackson, “I have seen and fought fires in Philadelphia
before you were born,” and continued to growl at Jackson, who ordered
him to “get in line or get out of the way.” Boyd, who was a fearless
man, made some insolent reply, when Jackson, seizing a bucket of
water, threw its contents on the irate Irishman, and passed along the
line, leaving Boyd swearing, “By the Holy Virgin, I’ll whip you before
you leave this town!” John Chester, with whom Boyd lived and died at
Jonesboro, made him go to his little house, which stood in the corner
of Chester’s yard; and this ended the matter.[Q]
“Jackson’s bucket brigade” has often saved property in the ancient
town, within the century, now almost rounded out, that followed its
organization and first service.
FOOTNOTES:
[Q] My greatgrandfather, Robert Johnston Chester, brought
Benjamin Boyd from Limerick, Ireland, to America. My grandfather, John
Chester, brought him from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to Jonesboro, in
December, 1796. Boyd was then an old man. I am the possessor of one of
Boyd’s books, an “Arithmetick,” “printed in Belfast, Ireland, by James
Magee, at the Bible and Crown, Bridge street,” in 1775.
CHAPTER X.
_ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN._
Andrew Jackson was a more courageous man, as well as a much greater
man, than many of his most ardent admirers knew of. At the time of
his duel with Avery, if the version which I believe to be true is
correct, he was afraid of public opinion--that is, he believed that,
if he made an explanation, somebody might think that he feared Avery,
and so, rather than run the risk of being suspected of cowardice, he
was willing to give Avery a chance to kill him. But later in life he
had outgrown this, and had no master except his convictions of duty,
his own sense of right and wrong. He did not care what anybody might
believe or suspect him of, so long as his course had the approval of
his judgment and his conscience.
This was established beyond doubt, in the minds of a few old gentlemen
(who afterward learned the actual facts), by an incident which happened
in 1832--probably in the early part of October--at the public house
or tavern kept by Capt. Bell at Bean’s Station, in Grainger county.
President Jackson had left Washington, in the early part of August,
1832, in company with Francis P. Blair and others, to visit the
Hermitage; and the incident about to be related occurred on the return
trip to Washington. Before leaving the Hermitage, the itinerary or
schedule of travel and stopping-places on the route had been made out.
Bell’s tavern had been fixed upon as a point for dinner and rest, and
Capt. Bell had been notified of the date. Bell had been a friend and
admirer of Jackson for many years, and he and his wife naturally made
great preparations to receive and entertain the President and his
accompanying friends. Quite a number of leading citizens, acquaintances
and adherents of Jackson, who had been apprised of the day he would
arrive, were on hand to greet their old friend and leader, the
President of the United States.
The party arrived on time, and the President’s carriage stopped in the
public road in front of the tavern, which stood at some little distance
back from the highway. Capt. Bell and others were at the carriage door
to receive President Jackson, who got out immediately and “shook hands
all round.” Bell, however, observed that Jackson, with an ominous
storm-cloud gathering on his face, was looking intently toward a broad
porch which extended along the front of the tavern, his eyes evidently
fixed upon a gentleman who was walking back and forth on this porch,
and who was evidently in turn eyeing Jackson with equal intensity.
Suddenly, Jackson turned toward the conveyances which were accompanying
him with friends, some of whom had already gotten out, and said, “Don’t
get out--we will not take dinner here.” Then, turning to Capt. Bell,
he said, “I regret that I can’t stop, rest awhile and take dinner with
you. Tell Mrs. Bell that I could not stop.” The latter remark was made
in an undertone to Capt. Bell, after which President Jackson got into
his carriage and ordered his driver to go on, and his friends followed.
Capt. Bell’s curiosity was as great as his disappointment at the turn
things had taken. He did not know what had caused it, but suspected
that the presence of the gentleman walking on the porch had something,
if not everything, to do with it. This gentleman had only stopped for
dinner, and left immediately after it was over, without alluding to the
Jackson incident. Indeed, no one then knew whether or not he knew who
Jackson was; but Capt. Bell, during the hour or so that he remained,
learned what afterward proved to be three important facts--the name
of the gentleman, that he was from North Carolina, and that he was
on his way to Kentucky. At that time, the thoroughfare from all East
Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia was by way of
Bean’s Station through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky.
Some months later, Capt. Bell learned that the gentleman in question
was one of President Jackson’s most bitter and unrelenting enemies;
that he was in fact the leader of the opposition to Jackson in North
Carolina; that he had made public speeches in North Carolina and
elsewhere against him, in the campaigns of 1824 and 1828, and was then
(1832) most active in his opposition; and that he was at that time
probably on his way to Kentucky to consult with Jackson’s opponents in
that state. He, as Bell afterwards learned, had rehashed in his public
speeches all the slanders which had been invented against Jackson,
including no doubt the one which had cost Dickinson his life in 1806.
After learning these facts, Capt. Bell said that he well knew the
terrific struggle which Jackson had then and there, to control the
storm rising within his breast as he saw, within a few yards of him, a
hated foe who had committed a crime which, in Jackson’s judgment, ought
to bar him out of heaven. But Bell’s idea was that Jackson--the man
with a temper like a tornado, and whose very nature, as some professed
to believe, was nothing but a raging torrent of fury--said to himself,
“I am President of the United States; and I can not afford to bring
reproach upon the people who elected me, or to degrade the highest
office on earth by a scene, or a difficulty with that man, which is
certain to follow if I stop here”; and he therefore immediately got
into his carriage, and left without any explanation except the words
given above. When Capt. Bell met Jackson again, a few years afterward,
no explanation was necessary--he knew all.
Capt. Bell’s son, who as a young man was present when the incident
occurred, is authority for the account given above, and for his
father’s views and recollections of it. So far as I know, it has not
been published hitherto.
Those who knew Andrew Jackson would agree with Bell that it took
a superhuman effort even to remember, at the moment, that he was
President of the United States, and to control the passion that the
sight of this man aroused in him; but he did it, and, in doing it,
proved himself a greater man, if possible, than many of his friends
ever believed him to be. The struggle that the President of the
United States had with Andrew Jackson, on this occasion, can better
be understood when it is remembered that the man walking on the porch
had repeated statements which, it is said, was the origin of Jackson’s
trouble with Sevier and others, and which also caused Jackson, in his
duel with Dickinson, after the latter had fired and hit him, to place
his left hand tightly on the spot where the ball had entered, take
deliberate aim with the other hand and pull the trigger; and then, when
the weapon failed to fire, the hammer having caught at the half-cock
notch, to examine it carefully, recock it, aim carefully again, and
fire again--this time to see his enemy fall mortally wounded, dying in
a few moments afterward. Jackson’s act at Bean’s Station, in leaving
abruptly the presence of a calumniator of the memory of the wife whom
he had worshipped in life, and at the very mention of whose name after
her death tears came into his eyes and a tremor in his voice, was an
exhibition of courage and self-control showing greatness in a direction
and to a degree not often met with in the very greatest of great men.
On this same journey from Washington to the Hermitage, in 1832,
President Jackson was given an ovation and reception which, it is
believed, was the most pleasing and gratifying to him of any of the
numerous public demonstrations of popular esteem theretofore shown him.
This affair had its beginning four miles northeast of Jonesboro, on the
public highway--the old state road--on each side of which, at the point
mentioned, was an old-fashioned crooked rail fence, and also large oak
and other native forest trees. It was in the latter part of August, or
early in September, and the day was an ideal one. The road was on and
along the top of a high ridge, with the Iron Mountain in plain view
across the valley to the south. At this point, the President was met by
one hundred picked men, uniformed, and mounted on a hundred of the very
finest dapple-grey saddle horses that could be found in the country, to
escort him into Jonesboro. This column of horsemen was under command
of Samuel Greer, a life-long friend of Jackson. As it approached the
carriage of the President, who had had no intimation of its approach,
and got within about a hundred feet, a hundred stentorian voices
simultaneously shouted: “Three cheers for Andrew Jackson, the greatest
man on earth!” and the cheers which followed made the welkin ring and
woke the echoes of three commonwealths.
The carriage was pulled to the right of the road, under the shade of a
large oak (which was still standing as late as 1884), and the President
alighted, removing his hat as he did so, and bowing three several
times to the horsemen. This act of course caused another burst of
applause. When quiet was restored, the column, at the command of Greer,
dismounted and passed to the rear, where he introduced each one to the
President. It is said that the latter, in as many as forty or more
instances, while holding some young man by the hand, would tell him
who his mother was before her marriage, what his father’s given name
was, and in what part of the county he had lived--whether on Watauga,
Nolichucky or Holston river, or on Limestone, Cherokee, Boon’s, Brush
or Knob creek. After this, Jackson turned in the direction of the Iron
Mountain, and as he pointed to it, said in substance: “Forty-four
years ago last spring, I crossed that mountain, and settled, as I
then thought, in this country permanently, amongst your fathers and
ancestors; but Providence had decreed that I should not spend my life
in this particular part of our great state, and took me elsewhere.
Every time, for the last few days, that my carriage has been where I
could see that mountain, I have been looking out at it, and letting my
mind run back over my stormy and eventful life; and, at the moment you
approached and gave me the first notice I had of your coming by your
cheers and applause, I was thinking of whom I would meet and whom I
would miss of my old friends at the old town just ahead of us, where I
began life. I wish to say, before we resume the journey to the town,
that in all my career I have not been the recipient of a demonstration
more greatly appreciated than this one, here under the old trees, in
this old road that I used to travel so often, by the sons of my old
friends and acquaintances.” Then, with Greer and ten of the escort
some little distance in front of the carriage, and ninety in the rear,
the journey was resumed. It was understood throughout the country that
Jackson would arrive in Jonesboro that afternoon, and also that he
would spend the next day in the old town. This had brought thousands
of people to Jonesboro; men, women and children came, on foot, on
horseback and in every kind of vehicle. There was no way to house and
feed the multitude that had arrived and filled the town when Jackson
reached it late in the afternoon. The sides of the road were lined with
people for a mile outside the town, the streets were packed, the
tops of many of the houses were covered, and the President was received
with waving of hats, bonnets, aprons, handkerchiefs and improvised
flags and with shouts from the multitude, from the time he came in
sight until he got out of his carriage and went into the hotel.
[Illustration: CHESTER HOTEL, JONESBORO, TENNESSEE.
On the porch of which Jackson held the reception in 1832. From a
photograph taken in 1881.]
The hotel at which he stopped was on the main street, and had a broad
porch that extended the full length of the house. This was about eight
or ten feet high, projecting out over the sidewalk, and was reached
by a stairway at each end. On the following day, the President held a
reception on this porch, and there shook hands with all of the people
who had assembled to see him, they passing up at one end of the porch
and down at the other. On this porch, on this day, was dispelled
from the minds of some of his friends every vestige of the slight
suspicion which had been produced by vile hired slanderers, that his
fierce nature, turbulent spirit and stormy life had sapped his mental
powers, judgment and reason, and that he was no longer the real Andrew
Jackson of New Orleans, but was surrounded and controlled by designing,
unscrupulous scoundrels, who were feeding the vanity of the old man
in his dotage on flattery which he was then unable to detect and
resist. President Jackson stood on the hotel porch at Jonesboro, and,
possibly at the very moment when public speakers and editors in other
parts of the country were lamenting(?) the loss of his former “energy
of character” and the decay of his mind and judgment, gave to those
people the very highest evidence that he was the Andrew Jackson of old:
his form, although he was sixty-five years old, was “straight as a
gun-barrel,” and his eyes as flashing and his mind as clear as on the
night of the fire, or on the day when he left the bench and arrested
Russell Bean, in that very town. As his old friends would approach him
in their plain and simple garb, with their wives and children,[R] he
would call out their names, grasp their hands, put an arm around them,
kiss their daughters, compliment their younger children, and tell the
wife that the good-looking boys and girls “favored her” more than they
did the father. Incidents of his early life would suggest themselves to
his mind--a lawsuit, a fox chase, a deer drive or something else--as
they came up, and he would refer to it in some way, in the few moments
which he could spare to that particular individual. His famous
horse-race with Col. Love in Greasy Cove was mentioned; and it came
very near bringing down the porch when a kinsman of Col. Love, by the
same name, grasped the old hero by the hand and asked him if he had
any better race horses at the Hermitage than he had when he lived in
that country; to which he promptly and laughingly replied: “Yes, better
than either one of us had that day; come over to the Hermitage, and you
shall have one.” Such were the scenes and incidents of that memorable
day on the hotel porch in the historic old town of Jonesboro.[S]
The “bank conspirators,” as they were called, had been at work
incessantly, and they had a few--a very few--helpers in that country,
who had been furnished with and had repeated (with great regret?) this
charge of imbecility of old age, which rendered it dangerous to the
liberties of the people and perilous to the government to re-elect the
once great man, then a mental wreck. It may, even at this late day, be
of benefit to reproduce in part an editorial from one of the newspapers
of the period--a strong and powerful one--which, it was said, had been
hired to desert and slander President Jackson, and to wait until he
was in the midst of his journey through the country to the Hermitage,
before it made its first assault on him. This editorial, among other
things, said:
Since 1823 I have been the firm, undeviating friend of Andrew Jackson,
through good and through evil report. I have defended his reputation
and advocated his cause; and, for the last five years, my exertions
in his behalf, as the conductor of a public journal, have been known
to this country. But the time has now arrived when I owe it to the
people, to the institutions of the country and to myself to declare
my deliberate conviction that he has not realized the high hopes
which his reputation and previously written and declared opinions
promised, nor redeemed the sacred pledges which he voluntarily gave
on his election to the first station in the world. Let us not be
misunderstood: I do not--I never will--impeach his patriotism or his
integrity; but as a sentinel at my post, true to the duty which I
voluntarily assumed when I became the editor of a public journal, I
feel called upon to proclaim to the people that Andrew Jackson is
not their President; that, enfeebled by age and the toils, cares and
anxieties of an active and laborious life, he no longer possesses his
former energy of character or independence of mind, but, confiding
in those who have wormed themselves into his confidence, he has
entrusted the affairs of this great nation and the happiness of
thirteen millions of freemen to the hands of political gamblers and
money-changers, time-serving politicians, who, in the pursuit of
their unhallowed purposes, threaten ruin to the country and to that
sacred charter of our liberties which was maintained by the wisdom
of our fathers, after having been purchased with their blood and the
sacrifice of every selfish motive on the altar of public good.[T]
The foregoing is from a three-column editorial which appeared during
the very week that Jackson was in Jonesboro, and only about two days
previous to his reception in that town. Eight newspapers that had
theretofore supported Jackson immediately followed the lead of the
_Courier and Enquirer_, took the names of Jackson and Van Buren from
their mast-heads, and went over to the support of Nicholas Biddle and
the banks, on the ground that the President had lost his mind and his
“former energy of character”; but they all lived long enough to find
out how the people of Jonesboro received the slander,[U] and also to
learn that the whole country knew that they had been hired to traduce
the life, character, abilities and public services of this great
soldier, statesman and patriot, and to have the finger of indignant,
honest scorn point them out as traitors to the cause and slanderers of
Andrew Jackson.
Space has been given to this reception at Jonesboro for the reason
that it took place during the period of ten days within which nine or
ten of the newspapers in the east which had been supporting Jackson
suddenly discovered that he had “lost his former energy of character
and independence of mind,” and was so “enfeebled by age” that his
re-election would endanger the happiness of the people and the “sacred
charter of liberty.” This was nothing more nor less than the first
move in the conspiracy that was formed to defeat his re-election and
destroy him. These newspapers had been bought, the price paid and the
trade closed, some time after Jackson’s nomination on the 21st of May
preceding, at Baltimore; but they were instructed to reserve their
opening fire upon him until an opportune time. It was ascertained that
he was about to visit the Hermitage, and that he was going “overland”
down across Virginia and on through Tennessee. When he was about
midway on this journey, with no telegraph or fast mail communication
to give him information, these “bushwhackers” fired on his character,
his integrity and his administration, and yet protested in the same
editorials that they did not intend to “impeach his patriotism or his
integrity.”
The cold-blooded, savage brutality of this conspiracy; its “lying in
wait,” concealment in ambush for weeks, to catch the victim away from
home, out in the interior on a long journey, and then assault and
attempt to assassinate his character, is without parallel in American
political warfare. But the people could not be bought, deceived, driven
nor intimidated. Of the popular vote cast in the election, that year,
Jackson received 687,502, and Clay 530,189. Jackson carried seventeen
out of twenty-four states, and received 219 out of 288 electoral votes.
If the men who became the tools of this conspiracy to ruin his
usefulness, and to cloud his former fair name and fame, had any
sensibilities left, what must have been the depth of their humiliation
when, in June, 1833, Andrew Jackson, then President of the United
States for a second term, and sixty-six years of age, rode on horseback
along Broadway in the city of New York. Parton describes it in a few
words:
And what a scene was that, when the Old Man, victorious over
nullification, and about to deal his finishing blow at the bank,
visited New York, and was borne along Broadway on one roaring wave of
upturned faces and flashing eyes; when it seemed, said a spectator, as
if he had but to speak the word, and they would have proclaimed him on
the spot a king.[V]
This ovation in New York was after he had been elected; the other
mentioned was before he was elected, and was given to _the man_, in
a country road, between crooked rail fences, under the shade of the
native oaks.
President Jackson, during his second term, carried out his “previously
written and declared opinions and promises,” and “redeemed the sacred
pledges which he voluntarily gave,” by crushing the United States Banks
and freeing the people, commerce and trade from their domination,
bringing shame and disgrace upon the conspirators and the hired
traducers of this great man, whose name and fame will not perish until
the departed spirit of American Independence shall shake hands with the
ghost of Liberty across the grave of the greatest republic that has
ever existed.
FOOTNOTES:
[R] During the progress of this reception, on the porch of the
old Chester Hotel, a lady--an old friend and admirer of Jackson--came
up to him, and after a cordial greeting, she presented her little son
and namesake of the President. President Jackson was so impressed with
the manner and appearance of the little fellow, that he gave him a
“five-dollar gold piece.” This little fellow grew up to manhood, became
a teacher and then a lawyer. During the late war he was Lieutenant
Colonel of the 8th Tennessee Federal Cavalry; then a State Senator
some years ago from the first district; then Circuit Judge of the
First judicial circuit, which position he held for eight years; now
resides at Greeneville, Tenn., an honored and respected lawyer, citizen
and gentleman, and still has the five-dollar gold piece--Hon. Andrew
Jackson Brown.
[S] My mother, whose maiden name was Mary M. Chester, married
for her first husband Richard Gammon, Jr., and they resided at
Blountville, Sullivan county, where Jackson was their guest on this
trip from Washington, for the night preceding his arrival at Jonesboro.
Mr. Gammon and my mother accompanied the President from Blountville to
Jonesboro, where my mother was born and reared, and she was present on
the hotel porch during this reception.
[T] New York _Courier and Enquirer_, quoted by Parton, III,
428.
[U] The _Courier and Enquirer_ which contained this editorial,
reaching Jonesboro a few days after Jackson’s reception, was torn in
pieces, trampled and burned in the street.
[V] Life, preface.
APPENDIX
A CENTENNIAL DREAM.
BY DR. R. L. C. WHITE.
(_Nashville American, March 7, 1897._)
Having spent an afternoon in wandering about the Centennial grounds,
I had devoted the evening to Haywood, Ramsey and other chroniclers
of early Tennessee history. These two circumstances combined were
doubtless the cause of a singular dream which I had that night. I
thought that I stood in the Auditorium, and saw congregated within
its walls many of the famous men and women of the past whose names
are closely interwoven with the history of our state. They seemed to
constitute a convention of some kind; and, although the assemblage
had not yet been called to order, the chair had already been taken,
very appropriately, by the illustrious patriot whom Andrew Jackson
styled “the Father of Tennessee” (1), while the publisher of the first
newspaper issued in the state (2) acted as secretary, assisted by the
first native historian of Tennessee (3), the founder of the first
“campaign paper” established west of the Alleghanies (4), and the
editor of the first abolition paper issued in the south (5).
Seated upon the platform were several persons who seemed to have been
designated as vice presidents of the meeting. There were the statesman
who defeated another eminent Tennessean for speaker of the national
House of Representatives, and was in turn defeated by him (6); the only
two United States Senators from Tennessee who were ever expelled (7,
8); the only Confederate States Senators from Tennessee (9, 10); the
man of whom an ex-President of the United States said that he was “the
greatest natural orator in Congress” (11); the United States Senator
who published the first map of Tennessee (12); “Old Bullion” (13); and
the patriot who, on resigning his seat in the Senate because he could
not conscientiously obey the instructions of the legislature, said:
“For myself, I am proud that my state can, in my person, yet produce
one man willing to be made a sacrifice rather than sacrifice his
principles” (14).
An interesting quartet, near the stage, consisted of the member of the
first constitutional convention who proposed the name “Tennessee” for
the infant commonwealth (15); the eminent statesman who said of the
first constitution of Tennessee that it was “the least imperfect and
most republican” of any which had been adopted up to that time (16);
and the presidents respectively of the second and third constitutional
conventions (17, 18).
Seated together, a little farther back, were the two men who signed the
act ceding “the territory south of the Ohio” to the United States (19,
20); the Virginia statesman in whose honor, at the suggestion of Andrew
Jackson, a county was named, in recognition of his earnest advocacy
of the admission of Tennessee to the Union (21); the man who gave in
the Senate the casting vote which secured that admission (22); and the
commissioner who was sent by the Confederate government to effect the
withdrawal of Tennessee from the Union (23).
Chatting pleasantly together, in one corner of the hall, was a notable
group of women, comprising the wife of whom her husband left the
record that she was “a being so gentle and yet so virtuous, slander
might wound, but could not dishonor” (24); the only female for whom a
Tennessee county has ever been named (25); the pioneer maiden who, in
endeavoring to escape from Indians, fell into the arms of the soldier
who afterwards became her husband (26); and the beautiful Irish girl
who was the cause of the disruption of a President’s cabinet (27);
while near them “the Pocahontas of the West” (28) stood silently
listening.
A remarkable group was composed of the famous general whose name was
bestowed on the largest area ever embraced within the limits of a
single county (29); a nobleman whose ancestral name, in abbreviated
form, is borne by a Tennessee county (30); the explorer who named the
Cumberland mountains and river (31); the governor by whose misspelled
name a large part of Tennessee was known for many years (32); the
revolutionary soldier in whose honor the first settlement on the
Cumberland was called (33); and the famous explorer whose mysterious
death, within the limits of the county which now bears his name, has
never been satisfactorily explained (34).
A picturesque trio consisted of the leader of the first body of white
men who ever set foot on the soil of Tennessee (35); the first white
man who erected an edifice within its limits (36); and the nobleman
whose titular name was given to the first structure built therein by
English-speaking people (37).
Grouped modestly in the rear of the hall were several men whose dress
and accoutrements proclaimed them pioneers. There were the famous
“big-foot hunter” who lived in a hollow tree (38); the man whom the
Indians called the “fool warrior” on account of his reckless bravery
(39); the commander of a marvellous expedition by water, of which it
has been said that “it has no parallel in modern history” (40); the man
for whom the oldest town in the state was named (41); the first white
child born in Tennessee (42); the first white child born in Nashville
(43); and the bridegroom of the first marriage ceremony performed west
of the Cumberland mountains (44).
Just beyond these, leaning on their Deckhard rifles, stood three
men who would have attracted attention anywhere--the celebrated
backwoodsman who left an engraved record to designate the spot where he
had “cilled a bar” (45); another, equally famous, who relates in his
autobiography that he killed one hundred and five bears in less than a
year (46); and still another who shot thirty-two of these “varmints”
during one winter within seven miles of Nashville (47).
I was much interested in the appearance of a number of
intelligent-looking men who sat together, engaged in earnest
conversation. There were the man who founded the first educational
institution in the Mississippi valley (48); the first minister who
preached regularly to a Tennessee congregation (49); the bishop whose
journal forms a valuable contribution to the history of early times
in this state (50); the president of the first non-sectarian college
chartered in the United States (51); the classmate of Daniel Webster
who founded the first academy for females in Tennessee (52); and the
eminent educator who declined successively the presidency of seven
universities and colleges in other states, in order that he might
continue his chosen work in this (53).
Immediately in rear of these were the illustrious savant who first
mapped the Gulf Stream, and demonstrated the feasibility of a
submarine cable (54); the first state geologist of Tennessee (55);
a distinguished surgeon who served professionally in the armies of
three countries (56); and the young physician who, while perishing in
a snow-storm on Mont Blanc, kept a record of his sensations for the
benefit of science (57).
Just across the aisle sat the first chief justice of Tennessee (58);
the judge who, after having been chief justice of Kentucky, removed to
this state and became the greatest criminal advocate in the history of
its bar (59); the first judge who was ever impeached in Tennessee (60);
the eminent jurist who wrote President Jackson’s farewell address (61);
and the judge whose singular death from the attack of an infuriated
turkey-gobbler was regarded by the early settlers as retributive
justice for official oppression (62).
A literary group was composed of “the father of Tennessee history”
(63); the famous printer whose name a short-lived commonwealth once
bore (64); the English author who founded a colony in this state which
was named for the scene of his best-known book (65); a Tennessee editor
who was afterward elected to a seat in the British parliament (66); the
author of “Hymns to the Gods” (67); and “Sut Lovengood” (68).
In a prominent position in the center of the hall were a man who was
governor of two states of the Union (69); a governor of Tennessee
who was buried in two states (70); the first man who became governor
by virtue of his position as speaker of the Senate (71); one who was
elected governor, but never inaugurated (72); a governor who was
presented by a grand jury as a public nuisance (73); one to whom a
celebrated author referred as having given to his official station “the
ill-savor of a corner grocery” (74); the only person present at the
death of Henry Clay except the members of his immediate household (75);
the editor famous as “the fighting parson” (76); and the man who, by
casting the entire vote of the state at a national convention, although
he was merely a chance bystander, gave a new word to Tennessee politics
(77).
A distinguished looking body was composed of the revolutionary general
to whom 25,000 acres of land in Tennessee were granted by legislative
enactment (78); a famous fighter under Jackson who was said to have
been “a great general without knowing it” (79); a naval officer who
was master of a vessel at twelve years of age, and whom one of the
best-known of American poets has styled
“The sea-king of the sovereign west
Who made his mast a throne” (80);
the Tennessee postmaster to whom Andrew Jackson bequeathed a sword
(81); the colonel of the famous “Bloody First” (82); and the “grey-eyed
man of destiny” (83).
Elsewhere were to be seen the man who supplied the funds which equipped
John Sevier for King’s Mountain (84); the man who furnished Jackson
all the cannon-balls used by him at New Orleans (85); the first man
who coined silver money in Tennessee (86); the owner of the first
steamboat that ever landed at Nashville (87); the man who inaugurated
the movement for building the first railroad in Tennessee, and was
long known as “Old Chattanooga” in consequence (88); the man who
exchanged a cow and calf for the hill on which the state capitol was
afterwards built (89); the man who bought the ground on which a large
part of one of the most important cities in the state now stands, for
a rifle, a mare and a pair of leather breeches (90); the discoverer of
the Yosemite valley (91); the famous philanthropist who was chiefly
instrumental in the founding of a state asylum for the insane (92);
the author of the first bill for the establishment of a normal school
in Tennessee (93); and the patriotic citizen who erected, at his own
expense, the first monument to the memory of John Sevier (94).
A striking pair was composed of the man in whose veins circulated the
blood of four races, and who simultaneously held commissions in the
armies of three countries and was loyal to none (95); and the Choctaw
chief who was graduated at the University of Nashville, and of whom
Charles Dickens has said that he was “as stately and complete a
gentleman, of nature’s making,” as he had ever met (96). Another pair,
quite as striking, consisted of the first permanent settler at French
Lick (97), conversing volubly in his own tongue with a royal personage
who visited Nashville in his youth, and afterwards became a king (98).
Just then the presiding officer arose and gave a premonitory rap with
his gavel. As he did so, I saw slipping furtively out of a rear door
“the great western land pirate” (99), closely followed by the man who
was instrumental in bringing him to justice (100).
INTERPRETATION OF THE “DREAM.”
(_Nashville American, May 16, 1897._)
1. James Robertson.
2. George Roulstone.
3. James Gattys McGregor Ramsey.
4. Allen Anderson Hall.
5. Elihu Embree.
6. John Bell.
7. William Blount.
8. Alfred Osborn Pope Nicholson.
9. Landon Carter Haynes.
10. Gustavus Adolphus Henry.
11. Meredith Poindexter Gentry.
12. Daniel Smith.
13. Thomas Hart Benton.
14. Hugh Lawson White.
15. Andrew Jackson.
16. Thomas Jefferson.
17. William Blount Carter.
18. John Calvin Brown.
19. Charles Johnson.
20. Stephen Cabarrus.
21. William Branch Giles.
22. Samuel Livermore.
23. Henry Washington Hilliard.
24. Rachel Jackson.
25. Mary Grainger.
26. Catharine (or Katherine) Sherrill.
27. Margaret O’Neill (or O’Neal).
28. Nancy Ward.
29. George Washington.
30. Marie Jean Paul Roche Yves Gilbert Motier de Lafayette.
31. Thomas Walker.
32. Estevan Miro.
33. Francis Nash.
34. Meriwether Lewis.
35. Fernando (or Ferdinand or Hernando) DeSoto.
36. Robert Cavelier de La Salle.
37. John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun.
38. Thomas Sharpe (or Sharp) Spencer.
39. Abraham Castleman.
40. John Donelson.
41. Willie Jones.
42. Russell Bean.
43. Felix Robertson.
44. James Leiper (or Leeper).
45. Daniel Boone (or Boon).
46. David Crockett.
47. John Rains.
48. Samuel Doak.
49. Tidence Lane.
50. Francis Asbury.
51. Samuel Carrick.
52. Moses Fisk (or Fiske).
53. Philip Lindsley.
54. Matthew Fontaine Maury.
55. Gerard Troost.
56. Paul Fitzsimmons Eve.
57. James Baxter Bean.
58. John Catron.
59. Felix Grundy.
60. David Campbell.
61. Roger Brooke Taney.
62. Samuel Spencer.
63. John Haywood.
64. Benjamin Franklin.
65. Thomas Hughes.
66. John Mitchel.
67. Albert Pike.
68. George Washington Harris.
69. Samuel Houston.
70. John Sevier.
71. William Hall.
72. Robert Looney Caruthers.
73. James Knox Polk.
74. Andrew Johnson.
75. James Chamberlain Jones.
76. William Gannaway Brownlow.
77. Edmund Rucker.
78. Nathanael (or Nathaniel) Greene.
79. John Coffee.
80. David Glasgow (or Glascoe) Farragut.
81. Robert Armstrong.
82. William Bowen Campbell.
83. William Walker.
84. John Adair.
85. Montgomery Bell.
86. Charles Roberson.
87. William Carroll.
88. James Overton.
89. George Washington Campbell.
90. David Shelby.
91. Joseph Reddeford Walker.
92. Dorothea Lynde Dix.
93. Robert Hatton.
94. Albigence Waldo Putnam.
95. Alexander McGillivray (or McGilveray).
96. Peter P. Pitchlynn.
97. Timote (or Timothy) Demonbreun.
98. Louis Philippe.
99. John Arnold Murrell.
100. Virgil Adam Stewart.
In the matter of the orthography of the foregoing names, latitude
is allowed wherever it is proper to do so. For example, the famous
“backwoodsman of Kentucky” was in the habit of signing his name “Boon”
or “Boone,” as the fancy struck him; Capt. Leiper was known as “Leiper”
or “Leeper” indifferently, the latter having been the signature to the
Cumberland Compact; the surname of “Bonnie Kate” is always printed as
“Sherrill” by historians (the “Sherril” of Putnam being manifestly a
typographical error), although her father wrote his name “Sherrell”;
that romantic scoundrel, Alexander McGillivray, was almost as versatile
in the matter of autographic variants of his family name as was
Shakespeare--Capt. Allison, in his “Dropped Stitches in Tennessee
History,” speaks of having examined two autograph letters, one of which
is signed “McGillivray” and the other “McGilveray”; the middle name of
the “big foot hunter” is “Sharpe” or “Sharp,” as may be; the Moses Fisk
of history appears in the catalog of Dartmouth College as “Fiske”; and
while the actual name of the “pretty Peggy” of Jackson’s time seems
unquestionably to have been Margaret O’Neill, Parton invariably prints
it “O’Neal.” On the other hand, there are several cases in which it is
not at all difficult to determine the absolutely accurate orthography.
Instances are the Christian name of Meriwether Lewis, a facsimile of
whose autograph may be found in Appleton’s “Cyclopedia of American
Biography,” and who invariably signed his name as it is here given,
although the Tennessee legislature, with that faculty for blundering
which seems an inevitable characteristic of Tennessee legislatures
at all periods, inscribed his tombstone “Merriwether”; the Earl of
Loudoun, for any other spelling of whose name there is no shadow of
authority; John Mitchel, the Irish patriot; Willie (pronounced “Wylie”)
Jones, whose Christian name many persons seem to regard as a diminutive
of “William” (even Phelan makes this error); Demonbreun, which is the
form the name of the pioneer of French Lick assumed when its bearer,
who was “De Mont Breun” in France, came to America--the various curious
shapes in which the name is given by Haywood and Ramsey being merely
vagaries of the fancy of these worthies, who had an ingenuous habit,
where proper names were concerned, of “spelling by ear”; and notably
the “misspelled name” referred to in 32, which, given by Haywood,
Ramsey and Putnam in various forms (all of them incorrect), is rightly
given in Martin’s history of Louisiana--unquestionable authority in all
matters relating to that period. A photographic reproduction of Miro’s
autograph signature may be found in a recent issue of that valuable
publication, Professor Garrett’s “Magazine of American History.” One
name which is incorrectly printed in all the histories is that of
Charles Roberson. Capt. John Allison informs me that the old court
records at Jonesboro show that he invariably signed his name as I
have given it above. It may be well here to state that the general
belief that Charles Roberson was a relative of Gen. James Robertson is
incorrect.
In connection with the identity of the editor referred to in 4,
attention may here properly be called to a remarkable blunder in
Crew’s History of Nashville, where the positive assertion is made that
Jeremiah George Harris, in 1840, “issued the first campaign paper ever
issued west of the Alleghanies, named _Advance Guard of the Democracy_,
and this occasioned the issue from the office of the _Banner of The
Spirit of ’76_, a Whig campaign paper.” This statement is the exact
reverse of the fact, the first issue of _The Spirit of ’76_ (Allen A.
Hall’s paper) having made its appearance March 14, 1840, while Harris’s
paper did not see the light until the 23d of the following April, it
having evidently been suggested by, instead of suggesting, the rival
campaign paper. This blunder is the more singular from the fact that
bound volumes of both papers were easily accessible to the writer in
the library of the Tennessee Historical Society--and he does not even
give the name of Harris’s paper correctly!
There can be no doubt that Elihu Embree was really the first abolition
editor. To settle definitely a matter which all of the histories
and biographical dictionaries (so far as I have examined, without
exception) misstate--they invariably call Benjamin Lundy the pioneer
in anti-slavery journalism--I quote here a passage from an extremely
rare book--Lundy’s Autobiography. After narrating his experiences in
St. Louis, in 1819, which caused his determination to return to his
home in Ohio, Lundy says: “Before I left St. Louis I heard that Elihu
Embree had commenced the publication of an anti-slavery paper called
‘The Emancipator’ at Jonesborough, in Tennessee; but on my way home I
was informed of the death of Embree, and I determined immediately to
establish a periodical of my own. I therefore removed to Mount Pleasant
[Ohio] and commenced the publication of ‘The Genius of Universal
Emancipation,’ in January, 1821.... When the friends of the deceased
Embree heard of my paper they urged me to remove to Tennessee and use
the press on which his had been printed. I assented, and after having
issued eight monthly numbers of the ‘Genius’ I started for Tennessee.
On my arrival I rented the printing office and immediately went to work
with the paper.”
Careless reading of Ramsey has led astray a large number of people with
regard to the minister referred to in 49. Speaking of the expedition
of Col. Christian for the relief of the Watauga settlers in 1772,
Ramsey says: “The Rev. Charles Cummings accompanied the expedition as
chaplain, and was thus the first Christian minister that ever preached
in Tennessee.” Granted--but while this is doubtless true, the question
is not who “first preached in Tennessee,” but who first “preached
regularly to a Tennessee congregation,” and that this was Tidence
Lane, in 1779, is clearly demonstrated elsewhere by Ramsey. Goodspeed,
indeed, using Ramsey’s facts, but changing his language, asserts in
terms that Cummings had charge of a congregation “within the limits of
the state”; but Goodspeed is in error in this, as he is in very many
other statements. In Park’s “Historical Discourse,” a work which is
the result of the most careful and painstaking original research, the
statement is explicitly made that the congregation to which Goodspeed
refers as having enjoyed the ministrations of Cummings “in the Holston
valley as early as 1772,” was really not located in Tennessee at all.
It was “in Virginia, near the site of the present town of Abingdon.”
Dr. Park, himself a Presbyterian, would not be likely to fail to claim
for a minister of his own denomination any credit justly due him.
In order to be absolutely frank, I desire to correct an error--the only
one, I believe, in the “Dream,” and one fortunately of little moment.
The man who “founded the first academy for females in Tennessee”
(52) was not a classmate of Daniel Webster, as stated; although the
misstatement was made on what I considered good authority.
R. L. C. WHITE.
INDEX.
Allison, David--
admitted to the bar, 4;
subsequent career, 6.
Anti-slavery agitation--begun early in Tennessee, 77.
Avery, Waightstill--
duel with Andrew Jackson, 110;
life and character, 110;
his favorite authority, 113.
“Bacon’s Abridgment”--
figures in a duel, 113;
singular substitute for, 115.
Bancroft, George--letter from, 17.
Barker, Thomas--
case of, 63;
intervention of his wife, 66;
place of burial, 68.
Battle of New Orleans--unique account of, 107.
Bean, Russell--
character of, 119;
cruelty to an infant, 119;
arrested by Jackson, 120;
reconciliation with his wife effected by Jackson, 121.
Bell’s tavern--Jackson’s adventure at, 125.
Boyd, Ben--
rencontre with Andrew Jackson, 122;
his involuntary bath, 124.
British, hatred of the--its survival in East Tennessee, 108.
Brown, Andrew Jackson--President Jackson’s gift to, 132 (note).
Centennial Dream--
text of, 137;
interpretation, 143.
Church--first west of the Alleghanies, 25.
Contested election--the first case west of the Alleghanies, 40.
Conventions, early, 27, 28, 32.
Corporations, private--regulation of, 80.
_Courier and Enquirer_, New York--
quoted, 133;
burned at Jonesboro, 134 (note).
Court, the first held in Tennessee--
oath taken by the members, 22;
first session, 40;
powers and jurisdiction, 57.
Culton, Joseph--curious record concerning, 54.
Cumberland Turnpike Company--incorporation of, 81.
Currency, commissioners of, 46, 47.
Debts, interest-bearing--early policy of the state opposed to, 72.
Doak, Samuel--
arrival in Tennessee, 24;
founds Salem church and Washington college, 25.
Dream, Centennial--
text of, 137;
interpretation, 143.
Electors, presidential, in 1796--method of their selection, 97.
Emancipation of slaves--
early cases of, in Tennessee, 77;
authority conferred on county courts, 78.
Embree, Elihu--first abolition editor, 78 (note), 148.
Fees of public officers and attorneys--regulated by law, 73.
Fire at Jonesboro--
Andrew Jackson’s share in extinguishing, 121;
Ben Boyd’s rencontre with Jackson, 122.
Franklin, state of--
inception, 27;
organized, 29;
boundaries, 29;
extent, 30;
early laws, 31;
collapse, 35.
Free and independent government, the first--
its establishment, 20;
its dissolution, 22.
Fuller, Melville W.--on selection of presidential electors, 97.
Greasy cove--famous horse-race in, 102.
Hamilton, Joseph--
admitted to the bar, 5;
subsequent career, 6.
Interpretation of the Centennial Dream, 143.
Jackson, Andrew--
errors of his biographers, 1, 2;
arrival at Nashville, 1, 2, 4;
appointed United States district attorney, 3;
admitted to the bar in Washington county, 4;
contest with Sevier for Major General, 6;
not a witness of Sevier’s “rescue,” 8, 9;
advent at Jonesboro, 9;
residence there, 10;
characteristics as a lawyer, 11;
incident at the Rogersville “tavern,” 12;
love of sport, 13, 101;
judicial administration, 101;
his famous horse-race in Greasy cove, 102, 132;
his fiery temper, 106;
ovation on Broadway, 109, 135;
duel with Avery, 110;
another duel at Jonesboro, 117;
arrest of Russell Bean, 120;
as a volunteer fireman, 122;
his moral courage, 125;
ovation at Jonesboro, 128;
his wonderful memory, 129;
conspiracy against, 132.
Jenkins, J. S.--life of Jackson quoted, 2.
Jonesboro--
district court at, 2;
Andrew Jackson’s residence there, 10;
organization of the county court at, 22;
conventions at, 27, 28;
proceedings of the county court at, 39;
Jackson’s duels at, 111, 117;
fire at, 121;
ovation to Jackson at, 130.
Legislation, early--examples of 69, 70, 73, 74, 77, 80.
Love, Colonel--Jackson’s famous horse-race with, 102.
McCay, Spruce--
his summary methods as a judge, 51;
character, 52.
McGillivray, Alexander--
character of, 91, 93, 94;
quoted, 92, 93.
McNairy, John--
admitted to the bar, 5;
subsequent career, 6.
Mecklenburg “resolves”--letter from Bancroft concerning, 17.
Mero district--
created, 87;
correct orthography of the name, 87;
name discontinued, 96.
“Mink skins”--origin of the term, as applied to currency, 31.
Miro, Estevan--
character of, 88, 96;
services, 89, 92, 95;
quoted, 92, 94.
New Orleans, battle of--unique account of, 107.
Nolichucky River Company--incorporation of, 80.
Orthography of “Miro,” 87.
Ovations to Andrew Jackson--
on Broadway, New York, 109, 135;
at Jonesboro, 128.
Parton, James--life of Jackson quoted, 2, 123, 135.
Pensions to soldiers--granted by Tennessee before action by the
United States government, 70, 72.
Presidential electors in 1796--method of their selection, 97.
Printing press--first in Tennessee and second west of the
Alleghanies, established at Rogersville, 36.
Pugh, John, “Regulator” and sheriff, 18.
Pybourn, Elias--severe punishment of, 53.
Reid, John--life of Jackson quoted, 1.
Roane, Archibald--
admitted to the bar, 4;
subsequent career, 5, 6.
Roberson, Charles--
father-in-law of Russell Bean, 119;
Parton’s injustice to, 121.
Robertson, James--suggests name of Miro district, 87.
Roulstone, George--established first printing press, 36.
Salem church--founding of, 25.
School, first, west of the Alleghanies, 25.
Settlers, the early--life, habits and characteristics, 15, 16, 18, 24.
Sevier, James--
clerk of Washington county court, 33;
unique record of, 34.
Sevier, John--
contest with Jackson for Major General, 6;
subsequent career, 7;
his “rescue” at Morganton, 8;
contest for clerk, 40;
commissioner of currency, 46, 47, 48.
Slaves, emancipation of--
early cases in Tennessee, 77;
authority conferred on county courts, 78.
Specie contracts--regulation of, 74.
Taylor, Christopher--friend of Andrew Jackson, 11.
Tennessee county--
created, 86;
divided, 96.
Treason--early trials for, 42, 43, 63.
Washington college--founding of, 25.
Watson, Sir Thomas--visit to Washington county, 108.
Wilson, Thomas J.--quoted, 78 (note).
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation and formatting errors have been changed without
notice; otherwise spelling and punctuation has been retained as
published. The following Printer errors have been changed.
=CHANGED= =FROM= =TO=
Table of
Contents “136” “137”
Page 13: “holsters and saddlebags” “holsters and saddle-bags”
Page 16: “came from the “came from the
battlefield” battle-field”
Page 35: “which covered the same “which covered the same
terriritory” territory”
Page 42: “I am satisified” “I am satisfied”
Page 42: “they simply put in prison” “they simply put him in
prison”
Page 65: “John McNab” “John McNabb”
Page 67: “John McNab” “John McNabb”
Page 80: “True philanthrophy “True philanthropy
liberates” liberates”
Page 102: “his was the ecstacy” “his was the ecstasy”
Page 107: “and old man of sixty” “an old man of sixty”
Page 108: “words adquate to express” “words adequate to express”
Page 146: “foregoing names, lattitude” “foregoing names, latitude”
All other inconsistencies are as in the original.
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