Sevier’s Manifesto to North Carolina.

While the memorial was being presented to Congress, Sevier was publishing his counter-manifesto to Governor Martin’s in the shape of a letter to Martin’s successor in the chair of the chief executive of North Carolina.  In this letter Sevier justified at some length the stand the Franklin people had taken, and commented with lofty severity on Governor Martin’s efforts “to stir up sedition and insurrection” in Franklin, and thus destroy the “tranquillity;” of its “peaceful citizens.”  Sevier evidently shared to the full the horror generally felt by the leaders of a rebellion for those who rebel against themselves.

The new Governor of North Carolina adopted a much more pacific tone than his predecessor, and he and Sevier exchanged some further letters, but without result.

    Treaty with the Cherokees.

One of the main reasons for discontent with the parent State was the delay in striking an advantageous treaty with the Indians, and the Franklin people hastened to make up for this delay by summoning the Cherokees to council. [Footnote:  Virginia State Papers, IV., 25, 37, etc.] Many of the chiefs, who were already under solemn agreement with the United States and North Carolina, refused to attend; but, as usual with Indians, they could not control all their people, some of whom were present at the time appointed.  With the Indians who were thus present the whites went through the form of a treaty under which they received large cessions of Cherokee lands.  The ordinary results of such a treaty followed.  The Indians who had not signed promptly repudiated as unauthorized and ineffective the action of the few who had; and the latter asserted that they had been tricked into signing, and were not aware of the true nature of the document to which they had affixed their marks. [Footnote:  Talk of Old Tassel, September 19, 1785, Ramsey, 319.] The whites heeded these protests not at all, but kept the land they had settled.

In fact the attitude of the Franklin people towards the Cherokees was one of mere piracy.  In the August session of their legislature they passed a law to encourage an expedition to go down the Tennessee on the west side and take possession of the country in the great bend of that river under titles derived from the State of Georgia.  The eighty or ninety men composing this expedition actually descended the river, and made a settlement by the Muscle Shoals, in what the Georgians called the county of Houston.  They opened a land office, organized a county government, and elected John Sevier’s brother, Valentine, to represent them in the Georgia Legislature; but that body refused to allow him a seat.  After a fortnight’s existence the attitude of the Indians became so menacing that the settlement broke up and was abandoned.

    The Greenville Constitutional Convention.