The young Virginian shifted his attention to Chucky Jack. Sevier perused the message for the second time, crumpled it into a ball as if to hurl it from him, thought better of it and tucked it inside his buckskin shirt and called to the assemblage:
“Women and men of the Watauga, North Carolina will have none of us. We’re shoved through the door and told to shift for ourselves. To be exact, we’re told to look to the central Government for protection. And, as you know, the ink is scarcely dry on the petition I was about to send to the Legislature, asking for courts and militia.
“Without consulting one of the twenty-five thousand settlers on this side of the mountains, North Carolina chooses to pay her share of the national debt by the simple process of ceding us to Congress. She proposes to pay her debts with lands we won by rifle and ax. The act was passed by the Legislature a month ago, and for thirty days, while the messenger was bringing the news, we have been set off from North Carolina.
“During those thirty days our plight has been as serious as it is now, only, not knowing the truth, we worried but little. This fact should teach us that we can care for ourselves during the next thirty days, and so on, until there is no danger from the Indians along our border. So I ask you to be of brave heart and to remember the Watauga people always have had to hoe their own row. Please God we can keep on.
“A year or two ago this message would have worried me none. I could send out the call, and my old friends would respond overnight, as fast as horseflesh could fetch them. If an Indian war comes now, it will be more serious than what we’ve experienced in the past but nothing that our rifles can not blast away. I still can count on my friends and old companions-in-arms. Of the newcomers who have come to us in such numbers I am not so sure.”
And he paused to dart a lightning glance at Polcher and his cronies pressed about the tavern door.
“The national Congress oughter help us,” piped up an old man.
“It would be glad to. But the national Government, while empowered to levy armies, can not compel a single State to furnish a soldier,” Sevier reminded. “The national Government can do only what the States will permit it to do. Last year several hundred soldiers stormed the very doors of Congress and demanded their over-due pay, and Congress was unable to escape the mob’s demands. There will come a time when our Congress will have the power to protect its citizens in this, or in any other, land. But not now.”
“If not now, then by the Eternal, men of Watauga, there is one power that can defend us!” cried Polcher from the tavern doorway. “And we have only to ask to be freed from either Creek or Cherokee.”
“Aye! Aye! Spain looks after its own!” cried another of the tavern coterie.