VSssffi^
 
 DROPPED STITCHES 
 
 -IN- 
 
 TENNESSEE HISTORY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ALLISON. 
 
 1897: 
 
 MARSHALL & BRUCE CO., 
 NA.SHVILLE.
 
 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 
 
 OP THE 
 
 EARLY HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PIONEERS OP 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 pos- 
 session 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. 
 
 Whre authorities consulted and information obtained in my original investiga- 
 tion 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 " il- 
 lustrious example of distinguished historians," and said, "about this time" with- 
 out 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. EABLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION 69 
 
 VI. MlBO, ALIAS "MERO" 86 
 
 VII. ANDREW JACKSON AS A ''SPORT" 100 
 
 VIII. JACKSON'S DUEL WITH AVERT 110 
 
 IX. ANDREW JACKSON, DEPUTY SHERIFF AND FIREMAN 119 
 
 X. ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN 125 
 
 "A CENTENNIAL DREAM" 136 
 
 INTERPBETATION 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 Washing- 
 ton 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 lead- 
 ing 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 busi- 
 ness 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
 
 2 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 place during the same month. Jenkins, in his "Life of Gen- 
 eral 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 difficul- 
 ties 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, pro- 
 viding 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
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW. 3 
 
 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 con- 
 tinued 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 
 
 1 788. John McNairy Esq. produced a License to practice as 
 an Attorney in the several Courts within this State with a cer- 
 tificate from the Clerk of the Court for the District of Salis- 
 bury 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 Con- 
 gress, 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, 1739, 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 serv- 
 ices as Attorney General for the District of Mero under the
 
 4 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 territorial government." Andrew Jackson never accepted 
 p.iyment 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 terri- 
 torial 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 mount- 
 ains 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 Jouesboro, 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 Wash- 
 ington 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
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW. 5 
 
 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 Pres- 
 idency 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. Jack- 
 son was first United States attorney for the " District of Mero," 
 but Roane held the same office at the same time in the Hamil- 
 ton District, while McNairy presided over both of them as 
 federal judge for ' ' the territory of the United States of Amer- 
 ica 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 Fed- 
 eral Court in Tennessee, which position he held continuously 
 until his death in 1831 or 1832, leaving his reputation as a
 
 6 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 wisp and just judge and an upright man as a heritage to Ten- 
 nesseans. 
 
 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 settle- 
 ment on the Cumberland now Nashville and engaged, I be- 
 lieve, 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 es- 
 tablished in 1792, and where he was appointed one of the Trus- 
 tees of Greeneville College in 1794. 
 
 It was while Roane was Governor, in 1802, that the memor- 
 able 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
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW. 7 
 
 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 Gov- 
 ernor, 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,
 
 8 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 but he did not m 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. Un- 
 der 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 Alli- 
 son 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 Gov- 
 ernor 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 Sevit-r. MS. jibout 
 the time of its occurrence in 1788, he was at Morganton, on a 
 visit to Colonel Waightstill Avery, on his way to the western
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW. 9 
 
 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 coun- 
 ties 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 Jones- 
 boro. There were then living in Washington and the surround- 
 ing counties several aged native-born citizens who had known
 
 10 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 sad- 
 dle-bags, while following after him and by his side was a goodly 
 pack of foxhounds. This is an inventory of his personal be- 
 longings, as given me by at least three of these old gentlemen, * 
 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 
 
 * Major Bird Brown, Abrara Taylor and John Allison.
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, ATTORNEY AT LAW. 11 
 
 part of what is now Tennessee, at the house of Christopher Tay- 
 lor (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. 
 
 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 coun- 
 sel, and exacting from every one the most respectful and cour- 
 teous treatment, whether in court, at the race-course or else- 
 where. 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 convic- 
 tion. 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 sponta-
 
 12 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 neously 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 opin- 
 ion of woman, and that he was always her champion and de- 
 fender ; but an incident which occurred at Rogersville, in Haw- 
 kins 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 gentle- 
 men, 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 re- 
 turned 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
 
 ANDRE AV JACKSON, ATTORNEX AT LAW. 13 
 
 same time displaying in Las 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 ex- 
 pressed his willingness to do this, which he did, and so the in- 
 cident closed. 
 
 In going from Jonesboro to the courts in G-reene, Hawkins 
 and Sullivan counties, Jackson always took with him his shot- 
 gun, holsters and saddlebags, 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 any- 
 where 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 com- 
 munity, 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 county. 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
 
 14 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 rider jthat 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 in- 
 terest; 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 ome 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 what- 
 ever can be said to the credit and glory of either the early set- 
 tlers 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.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 THE first settlers in Tennessee: what did they do? 
 They founded and administered the first free and inde- 
 pendent 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 de- 
 termined 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.* 
 
 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 set- 
 tled 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 love- 
 liness and awe-inspiring sublimity silver threads of river and 
 
 * The almanac-groundhog and goose-bone theories were adopted by a later and 
 wiser generation.
 
 16 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 streamlet, and gem of valley set in emerald of gorgeous luxuri- 
 ance; waters murmuring and thunderous, striking every note 
 in the gamut of nature's weird minstrelsy, dashing and bound- 
 ing 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, ter- 
 raced 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 
 Elizabeth ton 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 dis- 
 astrous 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 battlefield of the Alamance that first con- 
 test of the revolution which eventuated in American independ- 
 ence. They left their homes because of the disastrous result 
 of that battle, in which many of them had participated, and be- 
 cause of their unconquerable hatred of the British government
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 17 
 
 and their open revolt against British authority and the oppres- 
 sion of British officials. 
 
 The following letter from Hon. G-eorge Bancroft, the histo- 
 rian, 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 Mecklen- 
 burg. A glance at the map will show you that in those days 
 the traffic in that part of North Carolina took a southerly direc- 
 tion, 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 let- 
 ter of the 20th of June, 1775. The newspaper thus transmit- 
 ted is still preserved, and is the number 498 of the South Car- 
 olina Gazette and Country Journal, Tuesday, June 13, 1775. 
 I read the Resolves, you may be sure, with reverence, and im- 
 mediately 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 be- 
 tween 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
 
 18 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 am- 
 bushed 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 pre- 
 cision 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 indus- 
 trial pursuits. The creaking clang of the loom and the whir
 
 THE PICKETS OP CIVILIZATION. 19 
 
 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 highwaj^s "viewed out" and opened up 
 in the wilderness. 
 
 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 handi- 
 work, 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 ala- 
 baster 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.
 
 20 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 as- 
 sociation formed for Kentucky, ' ' under the great elm tree out- 
 side the fort at Boonsboro " this also in 1775 was the first. 
 I propose to show that neither one of these associations, decla- 
 rations or formations of government was the first ' ' free and in- 
 dependent 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 govern- 
 ment had been entered into by the settlers of Watauga, John 
 Sevier, in a memorial to the North Carolina legislature explain-
 
 THE PICKETS OP CIVILIZATION. 21 
 
 ing 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 credit- 
 ors; 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 b} T the authori- 
 ties of North Carolina, as to what kind of a government this was 
 which had been set up within their jurisdiction, and which es- 
 tablished courts that took the laws of Virginia as their guide. 
 
 The "written association and articles for their conduct," en- 
 tered 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 Kobertson, 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 supe- 
 rior to that which they had voluntarily vested in the five com- 
 missioners 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 volun- 
 tarily entered into by the whole people, ' ' by consent of every 
 individual. " 
 
 The settlers lived, prospered and were happy, under the gov- 
 ernment 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
 
 22 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 of deeds, recorded the same, issued marriage licenses and hanged 
 horse thieves, with much zest and great expedition the ar- 
 raignment, trial, conviction, condemnation and execution of a 
 horse thief all occurring within an hour or so after he was ar- 
 rested, 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 organ- 
 ized 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, politi- 
 cal, 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
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 23 
 
 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 Let- 
 ter, 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 In- 
 force 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 Con- 
 tinuation therein will faithfully, Truly and Justly according to 
 the best of my (Jud) skill and Judgment do equal and Impar- 
 tial 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, W'oods, Richd. White, Benjamin Wilson, Charles Rob- 
 erson, 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 pend-
 
 24 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 ing 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 compensa- 
 tion allowed by law ; to keep an account of fines and to enter 
 them without concealment; and, finally, to "do equal and im- 
 partial 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 juris- 
 diction of all matters relating to the public good, and disposed 
 of all questions summarily, as will be more fully and particu- 
 larly 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
 
 T^^lYf < 
 
 w 1 
 
 c is 
 
 fe o 
 
 
 
 1 = 
 
 H
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 25 
 
 Princeton, then uiider 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 daunt- 
 less 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 Washing- 
 ton 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. 
 
 The settlers lived and their public affairs were conducted un- 
 der 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 organ- 
 ized the first "free and independent government," their dream
 
 26 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 profusion 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 pov- 
 erty, 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 mili- 
 tary services, supplies, etc., in the campaigns against the 
 Indians, were presented to the state government from the settle- 
 ments west of the Alleghanies. North Carolina was impover- 
 ished ; and, notwithstanding the fact that these claims 'were 
 just, reasonable and honest, it was suggested, and perhaps be- 
 lieved, ' ' that all pretences were laid hold of (by the settlers) 
 to fabricate demands against the government, and that the in- 
 dustry and property of those who resided on the east side of 
 the mountains were becoming the funds appropriated to dis- 
 charge 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 ter- 
 ritory until it should have been accepted by Congress. Im- 
 mediately 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
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 27 
 
 claim to certain lands. The failure to deliver these goods nat- 
 urally 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 col- 
 lect them, and vested in Congress power to levy a duty on for- 
 eign merchandise. 
 
 The general opinion among the settlers west of the Allegha- 
 nies 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 cir- 
 cumstances, the great body of the people west of the Allegha- 
 nies 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 conven- 
 tion. 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
 
 28 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 country. " This committee appointed Messrs. Cocke and Har- 
 din a sub-committee to draft a report, which they did. This 
 report was in the nature of an address to the people. The con- 
 vention then adjourned, to meet again in Jonesboro, Septem- 
 ber 16. It did not, however, assemble on that date. In Octo- 
 ber, 1784, the North Carolina assembly repealed the act of 
 cession. In the following November, the delegates again 
 assembled at Jonesboro, but failed to dopt a constitution, and 
 broke up in confusion, because of the repeal of the act of ces- 
 sion. John Sevier, having received official information that 
 the cession act had been repealed, courts established, an attor- 
 ney 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 Jones- 
 boro, and adopted a constitution, which was to be ratified or 
 rejected by a convention called to meet at Greeneville, Novem- 
 ber 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 Su- 
 perior 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 Sur- 
 veyor General, and Daniel Kenne/ly and William Cocke were 
 appointed Brigadiers General. The assembly elected all other 
 officers, civil and military, being careful to choose those who
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 29 
 
 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 in- 
 tersected by the parallel of thirty-seven degrees north latitude; 
 west along that latitude to a point where it is met by a merid- 
 ian 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 Ten- 
 nessee to the most southwardly part or bend in said river; a 
 direct line from thence to that branch of the Mobile called Don- 
 bigbee [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 Appa- 
 lachian mountains, to the beginning." 
 
 I am not prepared to say whether or not these people in- 
 tended their new state to become part of the Union, as one of
 
 30 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Frank- 
 lin." 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 Frank- 
 lin 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, cop- 
 per, 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 independ- 
 ence 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 in- 
 habitants. 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 util- 
 ities of a grand civilization.
 
 THE PICKETS OP CIVILIZATION. 31 
 
 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 afore- 
 said 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 hun- 
 dred 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 treas- 
 urer, 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 coun- 
 try 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.
 
 32 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Attor- 
 ney 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 assist- 
 ant 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. 
 
 I can not now notice the various sessions held by the assem- 
 bly 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. " Count}- 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 author- 
 ity 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
 
 HOUSE USED AS CAPITOL OF THE STATE OF FRANKLIN, 
 
 In Greeneville, Tennessee. From a photograph taken in April, 1897.
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 33 
 
 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 rec- 
 ords 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 un- 
 questionably 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: 
 3
 
 34 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 any- 
 thing, 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 "eject- 
 ment " 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
 
 THE PICKETS OF CIVILIZATION. 35 
 
 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 terri- 
 ritory 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, cov- 
 ering 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 As- 
 sembly. 
 
 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 per- 
 son 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.
 
 36 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 pro- 
 visions 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 fol- 
 lowing October, Governor Blount organized the territorial gov- 
 ernment, 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 pop- 
 ulation of the territory in July, 1791, was 36,043, including 
 3,417 slaves. The whole population of the Cumberland settle- 
 ment 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 Rog- 
 ersville, by Mr. George Roulstone.
 
 THE PICKETS OP CIVILIZATION. 37 
 
 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; partici- 
 pated 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 newspa- 
 per in the "New World west of the Alleghanies ; " met and 
 fought the British in half a dozen battles, from King's Moun- 
 tain to the gates of Charleston, gaining a victory in every bat- 
 tle; 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 achieve- 
 ments he must have received some little degree of inspiration. 
 
 Passing from the scene of their toil and trials, their strug- 
 gles 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.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A UNIQ UE CO VET. 
 
 /F\HERE 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 commu- 
 nication 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 en- 
 titled to be credited, without taking much risk of being con- 
 tradicted. 
 
 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 im- 
 agination that it has appeared in print as a very readable but 
 colossal falsehood. It is also lamentable that the plain, un- 
 varnished 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 infor- 
 mation in the way of simple facts have not done so, because of 
 a lack of that faculty of imagination which some writers pos- 
 sess to such a degree that they can inform you beforehand that
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 39 
 
 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, how- 
 ever, 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 rela- 
 tions of life, and indeed on all matters which, in their judg- 
 ment, 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 Washing- 
 ton county the quotations being taken from the records of that 
 county only, for the reason that it was the first county estab- 
 lished 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 Sul- 
 livan, 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.
 
 40 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Waight- 
 sell 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 representa- 
 tive 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 evi- 
 dence 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
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 41 
 
 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 ses- 
 sions 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;* and while fines were im- 
 posed 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, f 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. 
 
 
 
 'Continental currency. 
 
 tThis was the father of Catherine Sherrill, the " Bonnie Kate " of John Sevier.
 
 42 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 So far as the record shows, they never caught any of the de- 
 fendants, 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 im- 
 prisoned during the present war with Great Britain, and the 
 Sheriff take the whole of his estate into custody which must be 
 valued lay 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 satisified 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 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
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 43 
 
 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 Is. 
 6d: Rum Wine or Brandy 3L.4s.O: Toddy pr Quart, & sprts 
 of Rum therein 8s. 0. and so in proportion. Corn or Oats per 
 Gal 4s. : Stabledge with hay or fodder 24 hrs 4s. : Pastur- 
 age 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 follow- 
 ing 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 intelli- 
 gent 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 pro- 
 ceeds of confiscated property. These patriots were in earnest.
 
 44 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 At the May term, 1779, two entries appear as having been 
 made on the same day, which show two sides of this remark- 
 able court. The first entry is as follows : 
 
 STATE ~) 
 
 v. V For stealing a Plougkshear, 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 111 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 judg- 
 ment 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 "111 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 
 His: 
 
 On motion of E. Dunlap State Attorney it is ordered that 
 John Holly for his 111 practices in Harboring and Abetting dis- 
 orderly persons who are prejudicial and Inimical to the Com- 
 mon Cause of Liberty and Frequently Disturbing our public 
 Tranquility in Genl. be Imprisoned for the Term & Time of 
 One Year.
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 45 
 
 Up to the date of the entry of this order imprisoning John 
 Holly "for the term and time of one year," on the mere mo- 
 tion of the state's attorney, the record shows a little more for- 
 mality in convictions for treason and the confiscation of prop- 
 erty, as it will appear from the recitals that the court, "on 
 considering the facts, "or " on hearing the witnesses [or evi- 
 dence]," "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 sup- 
 port 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 con- 
 test 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.
 
 46 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 en- 
 tered 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 Circu- 
 lation 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 suppressors " of spurious or counter-
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 47 
 
 feit "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 dis- 
 charge 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 com- 
 mission. 
 
 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 impo- 
 sitions 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,
 
 48 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 commis- 
 sion, and its finding or judgment not only settled the question 
 of the guilt or innocence of the accused, but made, the par- 
 ticular 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 be- 
 tween 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 free- 
 dom 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 through- 
 ing Out Speeches Against the Court, to- wit, Saying that the 
 Court was purjured and would not do Justice, and Other Glare- 
 ing Insults. The Court On Considering the matter are of 
 Opinion that the said James Gibson is guilty of a flagrant
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 49 
 
 Breach of The peace & for the same and the glareing and Dare- 
 ing 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 be- 
 fore the court. " When and where he assailed this august body 
 does not appear. This did not matter to them: their jurisdic- 
 tion 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 beat- 
 ing 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 pun- 
 ish 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 hav- 
 ing its powers limited and defined or its jurisdiction circum- 
 scribed. 
 
 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* 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 
 
 * It must constantly be kept in mind that these apparently enormous sums were 
 in Continental currency. 
 
 4
 
 50 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 
 D3*ckes" 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 judg- 
 ment for the value of the property detained from her, issue 
 execution, levy on and sell the property to satisfy the judg- 
 ment; they made use of a much more direct method, by hold- 
 ing Mr. Greer liable for contempt, and resorting to their favor- 
 ite mode of administering justice without delay to-wit, "on 
 motion " and ' ' ordered. " 
 
 At the May term, 1782, nothing of any considerable conse- 
 quence 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 peaceabl}' in this County. On pro- 
 viso, that he comply with the Laws provided for persons being 
 inimical to the State and have Rendered Service that will ex- 
 piate 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
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 51 
 
 loyalty of the members of th*e 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 in- 
 dividual. 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 Terrn- 
 iner & Genl. Gaol Delivery," as well as for other county pur- 
 poses. At this term it was presided over for the first time by 
 a judge "the Honl. Spruce McCay Esqr Present and Presid- 
 ing." 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 guilt}* of horse-stealing; and, on the last day of the term 
 (August 20), Judge McCay disposes of all three of these crim- 
 inals in one order, as follows : ' ' Ord that John Vann Isaac 
 Chote & Win White now Under Sentence of Death be executed 
 on the tenth da}' 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
 
 52 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 his- 
 tory. 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 "exe- 
 cuted" 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 execut- 
 ing the three criminals he does not say whether they shall be 
 hanged, shqt, 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 al- 
 ways 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 intimi- 
 dated 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
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 53 
 
 more during that term of court. In a case styled ' ' State vs 
 Taylor," the record shows that the jury was sworn and the de- 
 fendant put on "Tryal. " Nothing more appears except the 
 following significant entry: "State vs. Taylor. The jury hav- 
 ing 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 dis- 
 charging 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 imme- 
 diately 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 
 P} 7 bourn 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 Re- 
 turn 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
 
 54 DROPPED STITCHES IN' TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 llight clieek with 
 the letter H, and on his left cheek with the letter T. and that 
 the Sheriff of Washington County put this sentence in execu- 
 tion 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) in- 
 human punishment meted out to Pybourn, is one that suggests 
 the horror that came over one Joseph Culton, when he discov- 
 ered, 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 an- 
 noyed 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:
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 55 
 
 Joseph Culton comes into Court and Proved by Oath of Alex- 
 ander 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 rec- 
 ord. Ordered therefore that the same be Admitted Accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 It is not probable that any one ever examined this entr}*, and 
 demanded to see the page whereon the lost ear had been for- 
 mally 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 se- 
 curity for his behavior, and return to his family within five 
 months, as the said Clary is without any pass or recommenda- 
 tion 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 dam- 
 aging 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 order- 
 ing him to return to his family within a stated time.
 
 56 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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. lOd. pd: Pharoh Cobb four prophane 
 oaths 10s. 8d. pd: Buckner Nantz One prophane swearing Oath 
 prays mercy Granted: Valentine Sevier for prophanely swear- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 tended 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
 
 ^i^iffi 
 
 %*.$$$
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 57 
 
 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. 
 
 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 Ten- 
 nessee, 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 in- 
 valuable service in laying the foundations of our state, and its 
 civil as well as military institutions, I have hadiit 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 occur- 
 ring 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 ad-
 
 58 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY 
 
 miration 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 pro- 
 portion 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" calcu- 
 lated to destroy the influence of the court for good, J T OU 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 he- 
 roes, one and all, but history, it seems, has long since given 
 them over to oblivion. 
 
 Although, in 1788, they had passed through a "general in- 
 surrection of the times," as chronicled by the clerk of the court 
 under the state of Franklin, and had no doubt come out some- 
 what demoralized, still the habit of doing what they believed
 
 A UNIQUE COURT. 59 
 
 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 col- 
 lected 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 (out- 
 side the old court records alluded to) of many of these men, 
 every one of whom was a giant in morals and a colossus in in- 
 tellect, 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 founda- 
 tions 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.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A TRAGIC EPISODE. 
 
 /I\ENNESSEE does not need the prolific genius of the ro- 
 manticist 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 rever- 
 ence 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, advo- 
 cating 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, re- 
 monstrance, 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 ("loy- 
 alists," as they called themselves) were universally execrated;
 
 A TRAGIC EPISODE. 61 
 
 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 revolution- 
 ists in the riot of frenzy and demoralization that always fol- 
 lows war.* 
 
 In the perspective of this group of terrible scenes, heart- 
 aches, 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 lumi- 
 nous 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 Confis- 
 cated 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. 
 
 *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%iow who could not make mouths at their 
 memories.
 
 62 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 con- 
 tain 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 fur, 
 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 by- 
 gone 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 pur- 
 pose 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, trea- 
 son, 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 en- 
 tries 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, undutif ul and discrediting to my 
 
 * 
 
 ancestors.
 
 A TRAGIC EPISODE. 63 
 
 Thomas Barker came to the Watauga country immediately pre- 
 ceding or just after the formal Declaration of Independence was 
 made by the colonies. He came from either southeastern Vir- 
 ginia 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 pur- 
 pose 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 ultimate!}' crush out all oppo- 
 sition, 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 peo- 
 ple, offensive and defensive; that no matter what form of gov- 
 ernment 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 en- 
 joy 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 
 1 ' 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
 
 64 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 cap- 
 tain, and, according to tradition, commanded a company of 
 tories at the battle. He was not only a man of personal cour- 
 age, 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 deser- 
 tion 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 in-
 
 A TRAGIC EPISODE. 65 
 
 flicted 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 bear- 
 ing, 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 in- 
 capable of committing, then he was no judge of men. 
 
 This speech infuriated SQme of the men from Washington 
 and Sullivan counties and Virginia, and they made some demon- 
 strations 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 McNab, Charles Allison 
 and John Allison, * 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 Shelb}', 
 which of course settled it. Barker "was brought back to Jones- 
 boro 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 re mem - 
 
 * Grandfather of the writer. 
 5
 
 66 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 bered 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. * 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. An- 
 toinette Barker, wife of Thomas Barker, walked into court, 
 with two (possibly three) small children with her. Their ap- 
 pearance 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 appear- 
 ance, 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 supe- 
 rior 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 Inde- 
 pendence 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 
 
 * See chapter iii.
 
 A TRAGIC EPISODE. 67 
 
 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 neigh- 
 bors 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 McNab, 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 un- 
 doubtedly 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 sug- 
 gested 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 dis- 
 close the presence of an attorney as counsel for a single one of 
 the various defendants who were tried by the court on a charge
 
 68 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 busi- 
 ness 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.
 
 T 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 
 
 1HE 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, Jeffer- 
 son and Knox. " This act was passed June 11, 1792, and de- 
 scribes 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 Monday's 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 re- 
 pairing 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
 
 70 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 pro- 
 duction of statesmen, the building up of a name, the develop- 
 ment of her natural resources, and advancement in education 
 and the very highest order of civilization, for the first half cen- 
 tury of her existence, have but to study the legislative history 
 of that period. 
 
 ; ' The Governor, Legislative Council and House of Kepresent- 
 atives 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 applj' to and establish their right to an al- 
 lowance, 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
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 71 
 
 year and so long as such court shall certify such person to con- 
 tinue under the description aforesaid"; that when such certifi- 
 cate 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 con- 
 tinuance 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 in- 
 valids. 
 
 The act of April 30, 1790, provides for one-half pay pen- 
 sions 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 re- 
 spectively 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-
 
 72 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 legis- 
 lative authority of the territorial government and by the earliest 
 sessions of the general assembly of the state. Believing, how- 
 ever, 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, sub- 
 stance, objects, etc. 
 
 The first of the policies indicated was that counties and mu- 
 nicipalities should not contract interest-bearing debts and post- 
 pone their payment for a long period of years. This policy 
 was fixed and not deviated from; for in every act which au- 
 thorized a county or municipality to expend money for the
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 73 
 
 erection of public buildings of any kind, or for any other pur- 
 pose, such county or municipalit}' was also required to levy u 
 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 col- 
 lected. Was this because they were wiser than we are? Xo. 
 The}- 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 incorpo- 
 rated towns in this state to impose taxes for county and corpo- 
 ration 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 assembh' 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 cour- 
 ageous 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
 
 74 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY 
 
 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 man- 
 ner 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 Gen- 
 eral 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, con- 
 tracts 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
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 75 
 
 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 notwith- 
 standing. 
 
 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 Ephraiin Dunlap specie"; or if a 
 note, due-bill or other obligation, the tei*m "specie" usually
 
 76 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 em- 
 ployed by the ai'tful and designing, these several acts are 
 amusing first suspending a particular section, then suspend- 
 ing it again, then repealing part of it, and finally accomplish- 
 ing the repeal of the whole section. Now, note. The first 
 repealing act excepted from its provisions ' ( merchants, physi- 
 cians and inn-keepers"; that is, the repealing act was so art- 
 fully worded as to leave the original act in full force against 
 the three classes mentioned about the only people who trans- 
 acted 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 ac- 
 cept payment in the currenc}' 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 origi- 
 nal 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 
 (::ul it passed became, no doubt, exceedingly solicitous for the 
 well-being, prosperity and "business interests" of the "mer- 
 chants, physicians and inn-keepers " and therefore came for- 
 ward at the next meeting of the general assembly, in 1805, 
 with an act repealing the whole of the second section of the
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 77 
 
 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" whei'e 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 intel- 
 lectual treat it must have been to hear the man (not the mem- 
 ber 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 accme to the " merchants, physicians and inn-keepers" of 
 the country by its passage ; and also to note with what rever- 
 ential 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 ever} r min- 
 ute, his greedy, covetous little soul was becoming more con- 
 tracted, 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 eman- 
 cipation of a black man named Jack. " The preamble recites
 
 78 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 for- 
 ever set free from all manner of servitude and slavery what- 
 ever, the said negro Jack. " The Act then confirms the eman- 
 cipation, 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 eman- 
 cipate 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 ' < Man- 
 umission Intelligencer" and "The Emancipator" were pub- 
 lished at Jonesboro and the < ' Genius of Universal Emancipa- 
 tion" at Greeneville. They show another fact, viz., that long 
 before Elihu Embree, * Benjamin Lundy, William L. Garrison 
 
 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 1S33JI 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,
 
 LIMKSTOXK HOUSK. 1780. 
 
 Home of Klihu Rinbree. the founder and editor of the first abolition paper published in the 
 United States. Krecled by his brother. Thomas Kmbree. alxxit five miles west of Jones- 
 l>oro. now near Telford's Station, on Southern Railway. From a photograph taken in 
 April, 1897.
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 79 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion that ultimately shook the pillars of the American repub- 
 lic, and earthquaked a continent when the shock of war came 
 these people were not only teaching but practising emancipa- 
 tion. 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. 
 
 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 advocac} 7 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 dis- 
 closed the fact that these people were practising what they ad- 
 vocated, 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 manumit- 
 ting their slaves, with the doctrine of forcible abolition, or of 
 
 and had James Dihvorth of .Tonesboro 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 emancipation- 
 ists 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. .
 
 80 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 (terri- 
 tory) were presented to the Constitutional Convention in 1796, 
 asking that a provision be embodied in the constitution prohib- 
 iting slavery in the state after the year 1864. This was the 
 voice of prophecy coming up out of the Western Wilderness. 
 
 True philanthrophy liberates its own slaves, and not other 
 people's without their consent. 
 
 The first private corporation chartered by the general assem- 
 bly of Tennessee was the "Nolichucky River Company," No- 
 vember 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 cus- 
 tom 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 sevent} r -five cents 
 per ton ; and any boat, craft or other vessel, entering in be- 
 tween 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 corpora- 
 tion chartered in Tennessee. What a model it was and is for 
 the guidance of all future general assemblies, and how free we
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 81 
 
 would be today fcom the many questions that now vex courts 
 and legislative bodies, if we had only followed this wise prece- 
 dent. 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 corpora- 
 tion, these provisions being part and parcel of the charter. 
 The act referred to was passed November 14, 1801, and incor- 
 porated 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 moun- 
 tains 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 incon- 
 sistent 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 Tvidth 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 
 6
 
 82 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Gov- 
 ernor. 
 
 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 cha/ter 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 conceiv- 
 able phase of the questions which have arisen between the peo- 
 ple and such corporations, to annoy both and vex courts and
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 83 
 
 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 con- 
 stitution in 1796, that "perpetuities and monopolies are con- 
 trary 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 gen- 
 eral assemblies, is the retention in its face of the right and 
 power of the state to regulate and control the road, in its con- 
 dition 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 partic- 
 ulars. 
 
 Here again, in this second charter of a private corporation 
 for profit, is given unmistakable evidence that these early leg- 
 islators 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, re-
 
 84- DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 form 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 exist- 
 ence an invisible, intangible, incorporeal entity which the peo- 
 ple 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 an}' 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
 
 EARLY TENNESSEE LEGISLATION. 85 
 
 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 cor- 
 poration might dissolve, become bankrupt, go out of business 
 but the bond and security remained. 
 
 What a monument is this charter, granted to a private cor- 
 poration 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 en- 
 grafted 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?
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MI BO, ALIAS "ME EO." 
 
 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 mount- 
 ains, " 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, Hum- 
 phreys 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,
 
 MIRO, ALIAS "MERO. " 87 
 
 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 cor- 
 rect orthography. The error, once committed, was perpetu- 
 ated; and " Mero" it continued to be, not only in contemporary 
 records and legal documents, but in subsequent histories. * 
 
 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, with- 
 out 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 govern- 
 ment, who was not and had never been in our service, should 
 
 *Huy\vood, Ramsey, Putnam and Phelun unanimously and invariably so spell it.
 
 88 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 be given to a political division of our country and perpetuated 
 on our public records. They wished to know what this meant. * 
 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 men- 
 tion 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 na- 
 tion unjustly withholds from us the free navigation of the Mis- 
 sissippi river, and when this very Don Estevan Miro is the in- 
 strument 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 Span- 
 ish 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 
 
 * Hayvvood's History of Tennessee.
 
 MlllO, ALIAS "MERO. " 89 
 
 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* countiy, about this time, would 
 read rather curiously if offered in court to vindicate the Ken- 
 tucky 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 Cumber- 
 land who were in correspondence with Governor Miro was, in 
 view of their unanswered appeals to Congress for help and pro- 
 tection, ' ' 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 Missis- 
 sippi 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.
 
 90 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 alli- 
 ance, and particularly to insist on the free navigation of the Mis- 
 sissippi 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 settle- 
 ments of the former British provinces, according to the procla- 
 mation 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 ad- 
 mitted 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 Rob-
 
 MIRO, ALIAS MERO." 91 
 
 ert Hays, the courtesy shown him and the friendly and respect- 
 ful 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 circum- 
 stances 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 
 andi 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 hav- 
 ing 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,
 
 92 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY 
 
 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 ex- 
 planation 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 in- 
 tendant of Louisiana and West Florida. In this year McGil- 
 livray wrote him that two delegates from the district of Cum- 
 berland had just visited him with proposals of peace; that they 
 were in extremities on account of the incursions of his (McGil- 
 livray'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 protect- 
 ing them. They desired to know my sentiments on the propo- 
 sitions, 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. Con- 
 cerning 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 Na- 
 tion," and addressed to Colonels Anthony Bledsoe and James 
 Robertson, he says, among other things:
 
 MlRO, ALIAS "MERO. " 93- 
 
 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 j'ears past, but that we had no mo- 
 tives 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 consider- 
 able length. I have seen the original, with two others, and 
 have "true and perfect copies" of all three.* 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 Robert- 
 son, he says: "I had received his Excel. Governor Caswell's 
 letter and Duplicate only a short time before the unlucky affair 
 so that I Diff erred 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 de- 
 ceive. " 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 
 
 *This "big Injun" seems to have written his name as 4he 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.
 
 94 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Ken- 
 tucky, 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 llth of January, both 
 written from the district of Miro. The bearer, Fagot [Hack- 
 ett?], a confidential agent of Gen. Smith, informed me that 
 the inhabitants of Cumberland, or Miro, would ask North Car- 
 olina 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 compli- 
 ment. It increases my desire to contribute to the development 
 of the resources of that province and the prosperity of its in- 
 habitants. 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 wilder- 
 ness 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 pro-
 
 MlRO, ALIAS "MfiRO." 95 
 
 tection thus situated, they very naturally turned in the direc- 
 tion that not only had the power but gave the promise of pro- 
 tection 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 in- 
 Imbitants. " 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 Dis- 
 trict 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 forma- 
 tion 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, de- 
 sirous of war with Spain, an open invasion of Louisiana and 
 the seizure of the Mississippi and New Orleans; a fourth, pro- 
 posing 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 pro- 
 cure 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 pre- 
 vious year, asking permission to return to Spain, he says : "I
 
 96 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 have now had the honor of serving the King, always with dis- 
 tinguished 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, benevo- 
 lent, 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 Baj'ou 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 indul- 
 gence, 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 per- 
 sons 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 in- 
 stead of names. Miro District, in addition to Davidson, Sum- 
 ner 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 ad- 
 mitted into the Union as the state of Tennessee, the county of
 
 MlRO, ALIAS "MERO. " 97 
 
 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 "Ten- 
 nessee 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 Knox- 
 ville, 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 em- 
 body 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 Ten- 
 nessee, 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 
 7
 
 08 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Stinsou of the county of 
 Greene; and ^Richard Mitchell, John Young and Bartlet Mar- 
 shall of the county of Hawkins, are appointed electors to elect 
 an elector for that purpose for the district of Washington; 
 John Adair, Charles McClung ancT Samuel Flonnagan of the 
 County of Knox; Andrew Henderson, Josiah Jackson and 
 Christopher Hains of the County of Jefferson; Samuel Mc- 
 Gahey, Josiah Gist, Alexander Montgomery of the County of 
 Sevier; and Robert Boid, William Lowry and David Caldwell 
 of Wells Station of the Count}' of Blount, are appointed elect- 
 ors 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 No- 
 vember 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 pur- 
 pose 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 num- 
 ber 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 re- 
 ceived the certificate of election. 
 
 The electors chosen received certificates of election signed by 
 the committee, and the three electors thus chosen were directed
 
 MIRO, ALIAS MERO." 99 
 
 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 par- 
 doned, in view of the fact that Chief Justice Fuller, as I under- 
 stand 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 representa- 
 tives 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.
 
 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 ad- 
 dition 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 conse- 
 quences, 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 per- 
 fect 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 incip- 
 ient rebellion as a giant would crush a shell of glass.
 
 JACKSON AS A "SPORT." 101 
 
 His judicial administration was signalized by clear discern- 
 ment, keen analysis, deep penetration, ready and correct de- 
 cision, and an instinct to trail the sir 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 com- 
 posure 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 guard- 
 ians, 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 min- 
 gled with so many commendable traits. He loved the excite- 
 ment and wild abandon of the chase, and the deep-mouthed 
 pack's "heavy bay, resounding up the rocky waj r " arid mount- 
 ain solitudes, was sweeter music to his enraptured ear than a 
 thunderous jumble of Dutch diapasons to a "Wagner ian devotee.
 
 102 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 command- 
 ments. A fleet-footed horse was hjs 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 fright- 
 ened Tarn O'Shanter clinging to her mane, his was the ecstacy 
 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 Jones- 
 boro, 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 Wash- 
 ington 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
 
 ANDREW JACKSON AS A v ' SPORT. " 103 
 
 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 his- 
 toric a poem of nature, a dream of beaut} r 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 crys- 
 tal elixir, and the number of fisticuffs was in proportion to its
 
 104 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Revo- 
 lution 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 im- 
 portance. 
 
 Jackson had been training his horse for months in advance 
 in "Kit" Taylor's neighborhood, and the racer knew his mas- 
 ter'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.
 
 ANDREW JACKSON AS A '-SPORT." 105 
 
 A week or ten clays before the race, Jackson was overtaken 
 by a serious disappointment. His jockey, a negro boy belong- 
 ing 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 be- 
 came 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 sur- 
 rounding 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 spec- 
 tral horse. The yells of the onlookers packed around the cres- 
 cent course would have drowned the blending screams of a hun- 
 dred 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 neigh-
 
 106 DROPPED STITCIIES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 boring 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 ( ' arnry 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 de- 
 nounced 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 en-
 
 ANDREW JACKSON AS A ' SPORT." 107 
 
 abled 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 ex- 
 aggerated 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 pop- 
 ulace. This he did in front of the court-house. The excite- 
 ment 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, and 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 Jack- 
 son, hell and thunder ! I knowed, the day I seed him ride 
 that hoss-race in Greasy Cove, that he could whup anybody !"
 
 108 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 adquate 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
 
 ANDREW JACKSON AS A "SPORT." 109 
 
 old friend sat down, but did not address a word to the gentle- 
 man 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 "draw- 
 ing 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 mount- 
 ain 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 ad- 
 miring 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 acci- 
 dent 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 D UEL WITH A VER Y. 
 
 fAIGHTSTILL AVERY was the most prominent man and 
 the leading lawyer in Western- North Carolina when An- 
 drew 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 law- 
 yer attending the courts east or west of the mountains. He 
 began his professional life west of the Alleghanies with the or- 
 ganization of the first court in Washington county, and was 
 therefore a well-known, as he was a reputable and highly re- 
 spected, 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 edu- 
 cation 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 im 
 portant duties he was engaged to perform. This called down 
 upon him the vengeance of the enemy; for, when Lord Corn- 
 wallis 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
 
 JACKSON'S DUEL WITH AVERY. Ill 
 
 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 
 attorne} r 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, en- 
 joying peace and plenty and the love and regard of his neigh- 
 bors, 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,* 
 of the man with whom Jackson fought the duel at Jonesboro, 
 which shows that A very was no ordinary man. 
 
 A very 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 Ten- 
 nessee 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,! gives an account of this 
 duel, as detailed by Col. Isaac T. Avery, son of Col. Waight- 
 still Avery, and it would seem that this version of the affair 
 ought to be accepted. It will be noticed, however, that Par- 
 ton's account omits to state any fact or facts that caused or led 
 
 * History of North Carolina, part ii, page 56. 
 t Parton's Life of Jackson, I, 162.
 
 112 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Jones- 
 boro? " 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
 
 JACKSON'S DUEL WITH AVERY. 113 
 
 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 A very, 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 : Jack- 
 son and A very 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, how- 
 ever, the account given me be a true one, as I have every rea- 
 son 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 lawj'er or a gentleman. Avery, 
 in his retort, grew sarcastic; he not only criticised legal posi- 
 tions 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 justi- 
 8
 
 114 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 fied 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! " A very 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, re- 
 quested 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, * 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 sec- 
 ond (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 Jack- 
 son had said ; and the two seconds determined that there should 
 be no duel in earnest, or " shooting to kill," as one of my in- 
 
 Attorneys' fees were then fixed by statute, in both civil and criminal cases.
 
 JACKSON'S DUEL WITH AVERT. 115 
 
 formants expressed it. This agreement must have been com- 
 municated 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 Jack- 
 son 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 1 879, and they were both clear in their recol- 
 lection, without any consultation with each other, residing in
 
 116 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 different parts of the county, Fullmer on the Watauga river 
 and Hodges on the Holston, eight miles distant.* 
 
 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 Jack- 
 son, 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, 
 
 *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 rery 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.
 
 JACKSON'S DUEL WITH AVERT. 117 
 
 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 ex- 
 pressed 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 be- 
 lieved 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 oc- 
 curred, 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
 
 118 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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.
 
 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 to- 
 day the state of Tennessee: he was said to have been the 
 most perfect specimen of manhood in the whole country, with- 
 out 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-r 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
 
 120 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 diffi- 
 culty with Allen's brother, whom he assaulted and beat unmer- 
 cifully. 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.
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, DEPUTY SHERIFF AND FIREMAN. 121 
 
 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 intelli- 
 gence, 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 hus- 
 band. 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
 
 122 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 recollected and given by aged persons who remembered it and 
 recounted it as late as twenty years ago, was wrong. Accord- 
 ing 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 re- 
 signed 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 stop- 
 ping at the tavern, but was the guest of one of the families. 
 
 The fire originated, near midnight, in the stable that be- 
 longed 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 put- 
 ting 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 imme-
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, DEPUTY SHERIFF AND FIREMAN. 123 
 
 diate 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 connec- 
 tion 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 cha- 
 grined 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 ' ' strut- 
 ting around giving orders, " the two men met near the creek. 
 Boyd said to Jackson, ' ' I have seen and fought fires in Phila- 
 delphia 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
 
 124 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 reply, when Jackson, seizing a bucket of water, threw its con- 
 tents 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. * 
 
 "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. 
 
 * 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 ex- 
 cept 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,
 
 126 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 and he and his wife naturally made great preparations to re- 
 ceive and entertain the President and his accompanying friends. 
 Quite a number of leading citizens, acquaintances and adher- 
 ents 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 Jack- 
 son, 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 to- 
 ward 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, turn- 
 ing 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 immedi- 
 ately after it was over, without alluding to the Jackson inci- 
 dent. Indeed, no one then knew whether or not he knew who
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN. 127 
 
 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 Caro- 
 lina, 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 un- 
 relenting enemies ; that he was in fact the leader of the oppo- 
 sition 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 commit- 
 ted 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.
 
 128 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 mo- 
 ment, that he was President of the United States, and to con- 
 trol 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 Jack- 
 son'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 leav- 
 ing abruptly the presence of a calumniator of the memory of 
 the wife whom he had worshipped in life, and at the very men- 
 tion 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
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN. 129 
 
 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 Mount- 
 ain 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 sad- 
 dle horses that could be found in the country, to escort him 
 into Jonesboro. This column of horsemen was under com- 
 mand of Samuel Greer, a life-long friend of Jackson. As it 
 approached the carriage of the President, who had had no inti- 
 mation 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 
 9
 
 130 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Mount- 
 ain, 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 mount- 
 ain, 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 Jones- 
 boro; 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
 
 ANDREW JACKSON. THE MAN. 131 
 
 streets were packed, the tops of many of the houses were cov- 
 ered, and the President was received with waving of hats, bon- 
 nets, 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. 
 
 The hotel at which he stopped was on the main stree^ 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 assem- 
 bled 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 slander- 
 ers, 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 re- 
 sist. President Jackson stood on the hotel porch at Jones- 
 boro, 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
 
 132 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 wives and children, * he would call out their names, grasp their 
 hands, put an arm around them, kiss their daughters, compli- 
 ment 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 in- 
 dividual. 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 Joriesboro. t 
 
 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 
 
 * 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, be- 
 came 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 itill has the five-dollar gold piece Hon. Andrew Jack- 
 son Brown. 
 
 tMy 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 preced- 
 ing his arrival at Jonesboro. Mr. Gammon and my mother accompanied the Presi- 
 dent from Blountville to Jonesboro, where my mother was born and reared, and she 
 was present on the hotel porch during this reception.
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN. 133 
 
 (with great regret?) this charge of imbecility of old age, which 
 rendered it dangerous to the liberties of the people and peril- 
 ous 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 An- 
 drew 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 insti- 
 tutions 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 prom- 
 ised, 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, en- 
 feebled 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. * 
 
 *Xew York Courier and Enquirer, quoted by Pnrton, III, 428.
 
 134 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 The foregoing is from a three-column editorial which ap- 
 peared 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 im- 
 mediately 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,* 
 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," und 
 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 con- 
 spiracy 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 
 
 *The Courier and Enquirer which contained this editorial, reaching Jouesboro 
 A few ilays after Jackson's reception, was torn in pieces, trampled aiid burned in 
 tap street.
 
 ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN. 135 
 
 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 pa- 
 triotism 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 jour- 
 ney, 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 seven- 
 teen 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. * 
 
 This ovation in New York was after he had been elected; 
 the other mentioned was before he was elected, and was given 
 
 * Life, preface.
 
 136 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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, com- 
 merce 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 de- 
 parted spirit of American Independence shall shake hands with 
 the ghost of Liberty across the grave of the greatest republic 
 that has ever existed.
 
 A CENTENNIAL DREAM 
 
 BY DR. R. L. C. WHITE. 
 
 (Nashville American, March 7, 1897.) 
 
 HAVING spent an afternoon in wandering about the Centen- 
 nial grounds, I had devoted the evening to Haywood, 
 Ramsey and other chroniclers of earh 7 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
 
 138 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 from Tennessee who were ever expelled (7, 8) ; the only Con- 
 federate 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 prin- 
 ciples" (14). 
 
 An interesting quartet, near the stage, consisted of the mem- 
 ber 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 Ten- 
 nessee 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 Ten- 
 nessee to the Union (21); the man who gave in the Senate the 
 casting vote which secured that admission (22) ; and the com- 
 missioner 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) ;
 
 APPENDIX. 139 
 
 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 i; 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 notleman whose 
 ancestral name, in abbreviated form, is borne by a Tennessee 
 county (30) ; the explorer who named the Cumberland mount- 
 ains 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 hol- 
 low tree (38); the man whom the Indians called the "fool 
 warrior" on account of his reckless bravery (39); the com- 
 mander 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
 
 140 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 child born in Nashville (43) ; and the bridegroom of the first 
 marriage ceremony performed west of the Cumberland mount- 
 ains (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 desig- 
 nate 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 an- 
 other 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 in- 
 telligent-looking men who sat together, engaged in earnest con- 
 versation. 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 class- 
 mate of Daniel Webster who founded the first academy for fe- 
 males 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 fea- 
 sibility of a submarine cable (54); the first state geologist of 
 Tennessee (55) ; a distinguished surgeon who served profession- 
 ally in the armies of three countries (56); and the young ph}^- 
 sician 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
 
 APPENDIX. 141 
 
 (58); the judge who, after having been chief justice of Ken- 
 tucky, 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 by- 
 stander, gave a new word to Tennessee politics (77). 
 
 A distinguished looking body was composed of the revolu- 
 tionary general to whom 25,000 acres of land in Tennessee 
 were granted by legislative enactment (78) ; a famous fighter
 
 142 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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 Ten- 
 nessee (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 ex- 
 changed 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 found- 
 ing 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 cir- 
 culated 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 Uni- 
 versity of Nashville, and of whom Charles Dickens has said
 
 APPENDIX. 143 
 
 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 person- 
 age 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.
 
 144 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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.
 
 APPENDIX. 145 
 
 48. Samuel Doak. 
 
 49. Tidence Lane. 
 
 50. Francis Asbury. 
 
 51. Samuel Carrick. 
 
 52. Moses Fisk (or Fiske). 
 
 53. Philip Lindslcy. 
 
 54. Matthew Fontnine Maury. 
 
 55. Gerard Troosl. 
 
 56. Paul Fitzsimmons Eve. 
 
 57. James Baxter Bean. 
 
 58. John Catron. 
 
 59. Felix Grundy. 
 
 60. David Campbell. 
 C61. 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. 
 10
 
 146 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 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, lat- 
 titude 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" in- 
 differently, the latter having been the signature to the Cumber- 
 land 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 Mc- 
 Gillivray, was almost as versatile in the matter of autographic
 
 APPENDIX. 147 
 
 variants of his family name as was Shakespeare Capt. Alli- 
 son, in his ' ' Dropped Stitches in Tennessee History, " speaks 
 of having examined two autograph letters, one of which is 
 signed ' < McGrillivray " 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 Dart- 
 mouth College as "Fiske"; and while the actual name of the 
 ' ' pretty Peggy " of Jackson's time seems unquestionably to have 
 been Margaret O'Neill, Partou invariably prints it ' ' O'Neal. " On 
 the other hand, there are several cases in which it is not at all diffi- 
 cult 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 Ten- 
 nessee 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 as- 
 sumed 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 Lou- 
 isiana unquestionable authority in all matters relating to that
 
 148 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 period. A photographic reproduction of Miro's autograph sig- 
 nature may be found in a recent issue of that valuable publica- 
 tion, 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 rela- 
 tive 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 blun- 
 der 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 Ten- 
 nessee 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
 
 APPENDIX. 149 
 
 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 pa- 
 per called ' The Emancipator ' at Jonesborough, in Tennessee ; 
 but on my way home I was informed of the death of Einbree, 
 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 Eman- 
 cipation, ' in January, 1821. . . . When the friends of 
 the deceased Embree heard of my paper they urged me to re- 
 move 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 ar- 
 rival 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. Speak- 
 ing 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 Tennes- 
 see. " 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 else- 
 where 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
 
 150 DROPPED STITCHES IN TENNESSEE HISTORY. 
 
 research, the statement is explicitly made that the congrega- 
 tion to which Goodspeed refers as having enjoyed the minis- 
 trations 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.
 
 Allison, David admitted to the bar, 4; subsequent career, 6. 
 
 Anti-slavery agitation begun early in Tennessee, 77. 
 
 Avery, Wai ghtstill 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 test 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. t 
 
 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-bearingearly 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; ap- 
 pointed 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; ju-
 
 '>SH -A 000622633 
 
 152 INDEX. 
 
 dicinl iiilminiitration, 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 Beau, 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 Jacksou 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. 
 
 MeNairy, John admitted to the bar, 5; iubsequent career, 6. 
 
 Mecklenburg "resolves" letter from Bancroft concerning, 17. 
 
 Mero district created, 87; correct orthography of the name, 87; name discon- 
 tinued, 96. 
 
 " Mink skius" 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 gov- 
 ernment, 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, 48, 
 47, 48. 
 
 Slaves, emancipation of early cases in Tennessee, 77; authority conferred on county 
 oourti, 78. 
 
 Specie contracts regulation of, 74. 
 
 Taylor, Christopher friend of Andrew Jackson, 11. 
 
 Tennssee county created, 86; divided, 96. 
 
 Treason early trials for, 42, 43, 63. 
 
 Washington college founding of, 25. 
 
 Watson, Sir Thomas visit to Wathington county, 108. 
 
 Wilson, Thomas J. quoted, 78 (note).