Nancy Ward was in the secrets of the Cherokee leaders, and every word uttered in their councils she faithfully repeated to the trader Isaac Thomas, who conveyed the intelligence personally or by trusty messengers to Sevier and Robertson at Watauga.  Thus the settlers were enabled to circumvent the machinations of Cameron until a more powerful enemy appeared among the Cherokees in the spring of 1776.  This was John Stuart, British superintendent of Southern Indian affairs, a man of great address and ability, and universally known and beloved among all the Southwestern tribes.  Fifteen years before, his life had been saved at the Fort Loudon massacre by Atta-Culla-Culla, and a friendship had then been contracted between them which now secured the influence of the half-king in plunging the Cherokees into hostilities with the settlers.

The plan of operations had been concerted between Stuart and the British commander-in-chief, General Gage.  It was for a universal rising among the Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Shawnees, who were to invade the frontiers of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas, while simultaneously a large military and naval force under Sir Peter Parker descended upon the Southern seaboard and captured Charleston.  It was also intended to enlist the co-operation of such inhabitants of the back settlements as were known to be favorable to the British.  Thus the feeble colonists were to be not only encircled by a cordon of fire, but a conflagration was to be lighted which should consume every patriot’s dwelling.  It was an able but pitiless and bloodthirsty plan, for it would let loose upon the settler every savage atrocity and make his worst foes those of his own household.  If successful, it would have strangled in fire and blood the spirit of independence in the Southern colonies.

That it did not succeed seems to us, who know the means employed to thwart it, little short of a miracle.  Those means were the four hundred and forty-five raw militia under Moultrie, who, behind a pile of palmetto logs, on the 28th of June, 1776, repulsed Sir Peter Parker in his attack on Sullivan’s Island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, and the two hundred and ten “over-mountain men,” under Sevier, Robertson, and Isaac Shelby, who beat back, on the 20th and 21st of July, the Cherokee invasion of the western frontier.

As early as the 30th of May, Sevier and Robertson were apprised by their faithful friend Nancy Ward of the intended attack, and at once they sent messengers to Colonel Preston, of the Virginia Committee of Safety, for an additional supply of powder and lead and a reinforcement of such men as could be spared from home-service.  One hundred pounds of powder and twice as much lead, and one hundred militiamen, were despatched in answer to the summons.  The powder and lead were distributed among the stations, and the hundred men were sent to strengthen the garrison of Fort Patrick Henry, the most exposed position on