ortant, they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led
them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way
best serve their needs, without bothering their heads over mere
high-sounding abstractions.[26]

The court or committee held their sessions at stated and regular times,
and took the law of Virginia as their standard for decisions. They saw
to the recording of deeds and wills, settled all questions of debt,
issued marriage licenses, and carried on a most vigorous warfare against
lawbreakers, especially horse-thieves.[27] For six years their
government continued in full vigor; then, in February, 1778, North
Carolina having organized Washington County, which included all of what
is now Tennessee, the governor of that State appointed justices of the
peace and militia officers for the new county, and the old system came
to an end. But Sevier, Robertson, and their fellow-committeemen were all
members of the new court, and continued almost without change their
former simple system of procedure and direct and expeditious methods of
administering justice; as justices of the peace they merely continued to
act as they acted while arbitrators of the Watauga Association, and in
their summary mode of dealing with evil-doers paid a good deal more heed
to the essence than to the forms of law. One record shows that a
horse-thief was arrested on Monday, tried on Wednesday, and hung on
Friday of the same week. Another deals with a claimant who, by his
attorney, moved to be sworn into his office of clerk, "but the court
swore in James Sevier, well knowing that said Sevier had been elected,"
and being evidently unwilling to waste their time hearing a contested
election case when their minds were already made up as to the equity of
the matter. They exercised the right of making suspicious individuals
leave the county.[28] They also at times became censors of morals, and
interfered with straightforward effectiveness to right wrongs for which
a more refined and elaborate system of jurisprudence would have provided
only cumbersome and inadequate remedies. Thus one of their entries is to
the effect that a certain man is ordered "to return to his family and
demean himself as a good citizen, he having admitted in open court that
he had left his wife and took up with another woman." From the character
of the judges who made the decision, it is safe to presume that the
delinquent either obeyed it or else promptly