As for young Kirk all that need be said is that he stands in the same category with Slim Tom, the Indian murderer.  He was a fair type of the low-class, brutal white borderer, whose inhumanity almost equalled that of the savage.  But Sevier must be judged by another standard.  He was a member of the Cincinnati, a correspondent of Franklin, a follower of Washington.  He sinned against the light, and must be condemned accordingly.  He sank to the level of a lieutenant of Alva, Guise, or Tilly, to the level of a crusading noble of the middle ages.  It would be unfair to couple even this crime with those habitually committed by Sidney and Sir Peter Carew, Shan O’Neil and Fitzgerald, and the other dismal heroes of the hideous wars waged between the Elizabethan English and the Irish.  But it is not unfair to compare this border warfare in the Tennessee mountains with the border warfare of England and Scotland two centuries earlier.  There is no blinking the fact that in this instance Sevier and his followers stood on the same level of brutality with “keen Lord Evers,” and on the same level of treachery with the “assured” Scots at the battle of Ancram Muir.

    The Better-Class Frontiersmen Condemn the Deed.

Even on the frontier, and at that time, the better class of backwoodsmen expressed much horror at the murder of the friendly chiefs.  Sevier had planned to march against the Chickamaugas with the levies that were thronging to his banner; but the news of the murder provoked such discussion and hesitation that his forces melted away.  He was obliged to abandon his plan, partly owing to this disaffection among the whites, and partly owing to what one of the backwoodsmen, in writing to General Martin, termed “the severity of the Indians,” [Footnote:  State Department MSS., 150, iii., Maxwell to Martin, July 7, 1788.]—­a queer use of the word severity which obtains to this day in out-of-the-way places through the Alleghanies, where people style a man with a record for desperate fighting a “severe man,” and speak of big, fierce dogs, able to tackle a wolf, as “severe” dogs.

    It is Condemned Elsewhere.

Elsewhere throughout the country the news of the murder excited great indignation.  The Continental Congress passed resolutions condemning acts which they had been powerless to prevent and were powerless to punish. [Footnote:  Do., No. 27, p. 359, and No. 151, p. 351.] The Justices of the Court of Abbeville County, South Carolina, with Andrew Pickens at their head, wrote “to the people living on Nolechucke, French Broad, and Holstein,” denouncing in unmeasured terms the encroachments and outrages of which Sevier and his backwoods troopers had been guilty. [Footnote:  Do., No. 56, Andrew Pickens to Thos.  Pinckney, July 11, 1788; No. 150, vol. iii., Letter of Justices, July 9th.] In their zeal the Justices went a little too far, painting the Cherokees as a harmless people, who had always been friendly to the Americans,—­a