r 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 statement which General
Martin, although he too condemned the outrages openly and with the
utmost emphasis, felt obliged to correct, pointing out