Once a number of tories attempted to surprise and murder Sevier in his own house; but the plot was revealed by the wife of the leader, to whom Sevier’s wife had shown great kindness in her time of trouble.  In consequence the tories were themselves surprised and their ringleaders slain.  Every man in the country was obliged to bear arms the whole time, not only because of the Indian warfare, but also on account of the inveterate hatred and constant collisions between the whigs and the loyalists.  Many dark deeds were done, and though the tories, with whom the criminal classes were in close alliance, were generally the first and chief offenders, yet the patriots cannot be held guiltless of murderous and ferocious reprisals.  They often completely failed to distinguish between the offenders against civil order, and those whose only crime was an honest, if mistaken, devotion to the cause of the king.

    Land laws

Early in ’78 a land office was opened in the Holston settlements, and the settlers were required to make entries according to the North Carolina land laws.  Hitherto they had lived on their clearings undisturbed, resting their title upon purchase from the Indians and upon their own mutual agreements.  The old settlers were given the prior right to the locations, and until the beginning of ’79 in which to pay for them.  Each head of a family was allowed to take up six hundred and forty acres for himself, one hundred for his wife, and one hundred for each of his children, at the price of forty shillings per hundred acres, while any additional amount cost at the rate of one hundred shillings, instead of forty.  All of the men of the Holston settlements were at the time in the service of the State as militia, in the campaign against the Indians; and when the land office was opened, the money that was due them sufficed to pay for their claims.  They thus had no difficulty in keeping possession of their lands, much to the disappointment of the land speculators, many of whom had come out at the opening of the office.  Afterwards large tracts were given as bounty, or in lieu of pay, to the Revolutionary soldiers.  All the struggling colonies used their wild land as a sort of military chest; it was often the only security of value in their possession.

The same year that the land office was opened, it was enacted that the bridle path across the mountains should be chopped out and made into a rough wagon road. [Footnote:  However this was not actually done until some years later.] The following spring the successful expedition against the Chicamaugas temporarily put a stop to Indian troubles.  The growing security, the opening of the land office, and the increase of knowledge concerning the country, produced a great inflow of settlers in 1779, and from that time onward the volume of immigration steadily increased.

    Character and Life of the Settlers.