It was not likely that any jail in the western country could hold Nolichucky Jack overnight. Tipton feared a riot; and it was decided to send the prisoner for incarceration and trial to Morgantown in North Carolina, just over the hills.
Tipton did not accompany the guards he sent with Sevier. It was stated and commonly believed that he had given instructions of which the honorable men among his friends were ignorant. When the party entered the mountains, two of the guards were to lag behind with the prisoner, till the others were out of sight on the twisting trail. Then one of the two was to kill Sevier and assert that he had done it because Sevier had attempted to escape. It fell out almost as planned, except that the other guard warned Sevier of the fate in store for him and gave him a chance to flee. In plunging down the mountain, Sevier's horse was entangled in a thicket. The would-be murderer overtook him and fired; but here again fate had interposed for her favorite. The ball had dropped out of the assassin's pistol. So Sevier reached Morgantown in safety and was deposited in care of the sheriff, who was doubtless cautioned to take a good look at the prisoner and know him for a dangerous and a daring man.
There is a story to the effect that, when Sevier was arraigned in the courthouse at Morgantown and presently dashed through the door and away on a racer that had been brought up by some of his friends, among those who witnessed the proceedings was a young Ulster Scot named Andrew Jackson; and that on this occasion these two men, later to become foes, first saw each other. Jackson may have been in Morgantown at the time, though this is disputed; but the rest of the tale is pure legend invented by some one whose love of the spectacular led him far from the facts. The facts are less theatrical but much more dramatic. Sevier was not arraigned at all, for no court was sitting in Morgantown at the time. ¹ The sheriff to whom he was delivered did not need to look twice at him to know him for a daring man. He had served with him at King's Mountain. He struck off his handcuffs and set him at liberty at once. Perhaps he also notified General Charles McDowell at his home in Quaker Meadows of the presence of a distinguished guest in Burke County, for McDowell and his brother Joseph, another officer of militia, quickly appeared and went on Sevier's bond. Nolichucky Jack was presently holding a court of his own in the tavern, with North Carolina's men at arms—as many as were within call—drinking his health. So his sons and a company of his Wataugans found him, when they rode into Morgantown to give evidence in his behalf—with their rifles. Since none now disputed the way with him, Sevier turned homeward with his cavalcade, McDowell and his men accompanying him as far as the pass in the hills.
[¹] Statement by John Sevier, Junior, in the Draper MSS., quoted by Turner, Life of General John Sevier, p. 182.
No further attempt was made to try John Sevier for treason, either west or east of the mountains. In November, however, the Assembly passed the Pardon Act, and thereby granted absolution to every one who had been associated with the State of Franklin, except John Sevier. In a clause said to have been introduced by Tipton, now a senator, or suggested by him, John Sevier was debarred forever from “the enjoyment of any office of profit or honor or trust in the State of North Carolina.”
The overhill men in Greene County took due note of the Assembly's fiat and at the next election sent Sevier to the North Carolina Senate. Nolichucky Jack, whose demeanor was never so decorous as when the ill-considered actions of those in authority had made him appear to have circumvented the law, considerately waited outside until the House had lifted the ban—which it did perforce and by a large majority, despite Tipton's opposition—and then took his seat on the senatorial bench beside his enemy. The records show that he was reinstated as Brigadier General of the Western Counties and also appointed at the head of the Committee on Indian Affairs.
Not only in the region about Watauga did the pioneers of Tennessee endure the throes of danger and strife during these years. The little settlements on the Cumberland, which were scattered over a short distance of about twenty-five or thirty miles and had a frontier line of two hundred miles, were terribly afflicted. Their nearest white neighbors among the Kentucky settlers were one hundred and fifty miles away; and through the cruelest years these could render no aid—could not, indeed, hold their own stations. The Kentuckians, as we have seen, were bottled up in Harrodsburg and Boonesborough; and, while the northern Indians led by Girty and Dequindre darkened the Bloody Ground anew, the Cumberlanders were making a desperate stand against the Chickasaws and the Creeks. So terrible was their situation that panic took hold on them, and they would have fled but for the influence of Robertson. He may have put the question to them in the biblical words, “Whither shall I flee?” For they were surrounded, and those who did attempt to escape were “weighed on the path and made light.” Robertson knew that their only chance of survival was to stand their ground. The greater risks he was willing to take in person, for it was he who made trips to Boonesborough and Harrodsburg for a share of the powder and lead which John Sevier was sending into Kentucky from time to time. In the stress of conflict Robertson bore his full share of grief, for his two elder sons and his brother fell. He himself was often near to death. One day he was cut off in the fields and was shot in the foot as he ran, yet he managed to reach shelter. There is a story that, in an attack during one of his absences, the Indians forced the outer gate of the fort and Mrs. Robertson went out of her cabin, firing, and let loose a band of the savage dogs which the settlers kept for their protection, and so drove out the invaders.
The Chickasaws were loyal to the treaty they had made with the British in the early days of James Adair's association with them. They were friends to England's friends and foes to her foes. While they resented the new settlements made on land they considered theirs, they signed a peace with Robertson at the conclusion of the War of Independence. They kept their word with him as they had kept it with the British. Furthermore, their chief, Opimingo or the Mountain Leader, gave Robertson his assistance against the Creeks and the Choctaws and, in so far as he understood its workings, informed him of the new Spanish and French conspiracy, which we now come to consider. So once again the Chickasaws were servants of destiny to the English-speaking race, for again they drove the wedge of their honor into an Indian solidarity welded with European gold.
Since it was generally believed at that date that the tribes were instigated to war by the British and supplied by them with their ammunition, savage inroads were expected to cease with the signing of peace. But Indian warfare not only continued; it increased. In the last two years of the Revolution, when the British were driven from the Back Country of the Carolinas and could no longer reach the tribes with consignments of firearms and powder, it should have been evident that the Indians had other sources of supply and other allies, for they lacked nothing which could aid them in their efforts to exterminate the settlers of Tennessee.