em. [Footnote: _Knoxville
Gazette_, August 13, 1792.] When the Territorial Legislature met in 1794
it petitioned Congress for war against the Creeks and Cherokees,
reciting the numerous outrages committed by them upon the whites;
stating that since 1792 the frontiersmen had been huddled together two
or three hundred to the station, anxiously expecting peace, or a legally
authorized war from which they would soon wring peace; and adding that
they were afraid of war in no shape, but that they asked that their
hands be unbound and they be allowed to defend themselves in the only
possible manner, by offensive war. They went on to say that, as members
of the Nation, they heartily approved of the hostilities which were then
being carried on against the Algerines for the protection of the
seafaring men of the coast-towns, and concluded: "The citizens who live
in poverty on the extreme frontier are as much entitled to be protected
in their lives, their families, and their little properties, as those
who roll in luxury, ease, and affluence in the great and opulent
Atlantic cities,"--for in frontier eyes the little seaboard
trading-towns assumed a rather comical aspect of magnificence. The
address was on the whole dignified in tone, and it undoubtedly set forth
both the wrong and the remedy with entire accuracy. The Tennesseeans
felt bitterly that the Federal Government did everything for Kentucky
and nothing for themselves, and they were rather inclined to sneer at
the difficulty experienced by the Kentuckians and the Federal army in
subduing the Northwestern Indians, while they themselves were left
single-handed to contend with the more numerous tribes of the South.
They were also inclined to laugh at the continual complaints the
Georgians made over the comparatively trivial wrongs they suffered from
the Indians, and at their inability either to control their own people
or to make war effectively. [Footnote: _Knoxville Gazette_, Feb. 26,
1794, March 27, 1794, etc., etc.]

The Situation Grows Intolerable.

Such a state of things as that which existed in the Tennessee territory
could not endure. The failure of the United States authorities to
undertake active offensive warfare and to protect the frontiersmen
rendered it inevitable that the frontiersmen should protect themselves;
and under the circumstances, when retaliation began it was certain
sometimes to fall upon the blameless. The rude militia officers began to
lead th