John Sevier

“ Among the most important of these was his command of 4,000 Kentucky volunteers in the American army of Gen. William Henry Harrison, during the Canadian campaign in 1813. He was stricken with paralysis in 1820 and died of apoplexy 6 years later.
Shelby’s friend and associate John Sevier (whose name was anglicized from Xavier) , likewise was well suited to frontier life. Sevier, 32 born to Valentine and Joana Goode Sevier on September 23, 1745, was of Huguenot ancestry. The Sevier family lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where they farmed and traded with the Indians. ”

“ John Sevier, or Chucky Jack, as he was commonly called after the Nolichucky River he lived on, stepped round the corner of the tavern before Jackson could reply to the girl’s contradictory statement and brusquely called out:
“Come along, Miss Tonpit. And you, sir; this is no place for an honest man to linger in.” ”

“ Laura has put two more leaves into her dining-table. Children fill three seats. Alice has another. It is she, now, not her chair, that is tall—and fair. Mary, too, has a seat at the same board. This is their home now. Her hair is turning all to silver. So early? Yes; but she is—she never was—so beautiful! They all see it—feel it; Dr. Sevier—the gentle, kind, straight old Doctor—most of all. And oh! when they two, who have never joined hands on this earth, go to meet John and Alice,—which God grant may be at one and the same time,—what weeping there will be among God’s poor! ”

“ I’ll face my duty and think of Mary.”
He laughed.
“Excellent pastime,” responded Dr. Sevier.
They rode on in silence.
“As to”—began Richling again,—“as to such matters as these, once a man confronts the question candidly, there is really no room, that I can see, for a man to choose: a man, at least, who is always guided by conscience.”
“If there were such a man,” responded the Doctor.
“True,” said John.
“But for common stuff, such as you and I are made of, it must sometimes be terrible.”
“I dare say,” said Richling. “It sometimes requires cold blood to choose aright.” ”

“ James Sevier was clerk of Washington county under the Franklin government, as he had been under North Carolina. Tipton went to Sevier’s house and took the old records away from him by force. Shortly afterward, the same records were recaptured, and James Sevier hid them in a cave. During these captures and removals many of the records were lost. Of the Franklin records all save one were either lost or destroyed. ”

“ Sevier was equally devoted. The life of her husband was one of incessant action, adventure, and contest, and the history of the Indian wars of east Tennessee and of the settlement of the country, and the organization of the state government, furnish a record of the deeds of his life. Mrs. Sevier's influence was widespread and evenly exerted, and was resultant of good even among the captive Indian prisoners. The Tories gave Colonel Sevier more personal trouble than even the Indians, as they endeavored to confiscate his property, and Mrs. ”

“ Come, Doctor Sevier; come out and close the door.
“Strangest thing on earth!” I once heard a physician say,—“the mysterious power that the dying so often have to fix the very hour of their approaching end!” It was so in John Richling’s case. It was as he said. Had Mary and Alice not come when they did, they would [Pg 453] have been too late. He “tarried but a night;” and at the dawn Mary uttered the bitter cry of the widow, and Doctor Sevier closed the eyes of the one who had committed no fault,—against this world, at least,—save that he had been by nature a pilgrim and a stranger in it. ”

“ Colonel Sherrill took an active part with the Bledsoes against the Cherokee Indians, in 1776. In the attack on the fort, one of the men seeking shelter was killed. A story is told of Miss Sherrill, who was distinguished for her nerve and fleetness of foot. When scrambling over the stockade in her effort to gain an entrance to the fort, she found she was being assisted by some one on the other side. The savages were gaining so rapidly and were then so close upon her that she decided she must leap the wall or die. In leaping over, she fell into the hands of her rescuer, Captain John Sevier. ”

“ Sevier, on reaching Morganton, was met by Generals Charles McDowell and Joseph McDowell, who became his bondsmen until he could make a visit to a brother-in-law who resided some miles from the town. Sevier made this visit, returning to Morganton on the second day after leaving, and reported to the sheriff of Burke county, who permitted him to go where he pleased without requiring bond. ”

“ He settled on the Watauga on the western slope of the Alleghanies in 1772, and served as a captain in Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. Early in 1776 the Watauga settlements were annexed to North Carolina, and Sevier, who from the beginning had been a member of the Watauga government, now represented the district in the provincial congress, which met at Halifax in November-December 1776 and adopted the first state constitution, and in 1777 he was a member of the state House of Commons. ”

“ Little John is a brave man, but he can not shoot his rifle across the big water. Spain speaks, and her voice comes across the water, and she is obeyed. Let us go to no grand council until the whites have left our lands.” Then whirling on Sevier he cried, “I have said you are a brave man. I meant the days when we fought each other on the border. I do not mean now—today. For you have sneaked through the woods and kept from sight until safe in a peace town. You would talk soft if you were in Little Talassee, face to face with McGillivray.” ”

“ Sevier gently nudged Jackson to stand aside and, leaning from the window, muttered:
“Major, times are ticklish. Any little break will mean ruin to many cabins. Remember!”
Hubbard made some reply inaudible to Jackson. In a freer tone Sevier asked—
“What is the latest news?”
“That —— mixed-blood, John Watts, and his Chickamaugas have gone to water. They’ll be raiding the French Broad and Holston next.”
Sevier pursed his lips musingly and said:
“We must have more men, more arms and money. North Carolina must act on my petition.” ”

“ Don’t think I am going to be foolish. I remember that I’m brother to the rich too; but I’ll be the other as well. How wisely has God—what am I saying? Poor fools that we humans are! We can hardly venture to praise God’s wisdom to-day when we think we see it, lest it turn out to be only our own folly to-morrow.
But I find I’m only writing to myself, Doctor, not to you; so I stop. Mary is well, and sends you much love.
Yours faithfully,
John Richling.
[Pg 251] “Very little about Mary,” murmured Dr. Sevier. ”

“ And Mary wept. And when she and John reëntered their denuded house she fell upon his neck with fresh tears, and kissed him again and again, and could utter no word, but knew he understood. Poverty was so much better than sorrow! She held him fast, and he her, while he tenderly hushed her, lest a grief, the very opposite of Mrs. Riley’s, should overtake her.
[Pg 94]
CHAPTER XIV. HARD SPEECHES AND HIGH TEMPER.
Dr. Sevier found occasion, one morning, to speak at some length, and very harshly, to his book-keeper. He had hardly ceased when John Richling came briskly in. ”

“ How did others fare? Ristofalo had, time and again, sailed with the fever, nursed it, slept with it. It passed him by again. Little Mike took it, lay two or three days very still in his mother’s strong arms, and recovered. Madame Ristofalo had had it in “fifty-three.” She became a heroic nurse to many, and saved life after life among the poor.
The trials of those days enriched John Richling in the acquaintanceship and esteem of Sister Jane’s little lisping rector. And, by the way, none of those with whom Dr. Sevier dined on that darkest night of Richling’s life became victims. ”

“ He tells me to say to Tsan-usdi (Little John) that he is an old man. He says he is standing on slippery ground. He says his elder brother’s people are building houses in sight of Cherokee towns and that his young warriors grow nervous. He says the white people living south of the French Broad have no right there, and he asks his elder brother to take them away.”
Sevier waited for a minute, then replied:
“This is the talk I send back to Old Tassel. I will meet the Cherokee chiefs in a grand council and fix a place beyond which no settler shall go south of the French Broad and the Holston. ”

“ Sevier.
Richling flamed up.
“Don’t you think,” he began to say with visible restraint and a faint, ugly twist of the head,—“don’t you think it’s a better place for a poor man than a great, heartless town?”
“This isn’t a heartless town,” said the Doctor.
[Pg 153] “He doesn’t mean it as you do, Doctor,” interposed Mary, with alarm. “John, you ought to explain.”
“Than a great town,” said Richling, “where a man of honest intentions and real desire to live and be useful and independent ”

“ He received the advertisement in an envelope, whipped his shoes a little with his handkerchief, and went out. One would think to hear him thundering down the stairs, that it was twenty-five cents’ worth of ice.
“Hold o—” The Doctor started from his seat, then turned and paced feebly up and down. Who, besides Richling, might see that notice? What might be its unexpected results? Who was John Richling? A man with a secret at the best; and a secret, in Dr. Sevier’s [Pg 117] eyes, was detestable. Might not Richling be a man who had fled from something? “No! no!” The Doctor spoke aloud. ”

“ The grandson of this man, Valentine Sevier, emigrated to Shenandoah County, Virginia, shortly prior to 1740; and this is the gentleman who, with his four sons, had now settled in the valley of the Watauga.
Each of these young men displayed qualities in after-life that would have rendered him worthy of notice in the annals of any community; but the oldest, John, born in 1744, is the one whose life and exploits will demand much the larger space in the following pages. ”

“ Mary turned to John with dancing eyes, but he passed the utterance as a mere compliment, and said, through his smiles:—
“Just see how it is to-day. I have been overseeing the unloading of a little schooner from Ruatan island loaded with bananas, cocoanuts, and pine-apples. I’ve made two dollars; he has made a hundred.”
Richling went on eagerly to tell about the plain, lustreless man whose one homely gift had fascinated him. The Doctor was entertained. The narrator sparkled and glowed as he told of Ristofalo’s appearance, and reproduced his speeches and manner. ”

“ Richling fed his hope on the possibilities that might follow Ristofalo’s return. His friend would want him to superintend the gathering and shipment of those crops—when they should be ripe—away yonder in November. Frantic thought! A man and his wife could starve to death twenty times before then.
Mrs. Riley’s high esteem for John and Mary had risen from the date of the Doctor’s visit, and the good woman thought it but right somewhat to increase the figures of their room-rent to others more in keeping with [Pg 175] such high gentility. ”

“ She pulled his arm down tenderly.
“I go by the alley,” said John. Silence followed. The young pair contrived to force a little laugh, and John made an apologetic move.
“Doctor,” he exclaimed, with an air of pleasantry, “the whole town’s asleep!—sound asleep, like a negro in the sunshine! There isn’t work for one man in fifty!” He ended tremulously. Mary looked at him with dropped face but lifted eyes, handling the fan, whose rent she had made worse.
“Richling, my friend,”—the Doctor had never used that term before,—“what does your Italian money-maker say to the idea?” ”

“ John laughed.
“What I mean, Mistoo Itchlin,” resumed Narcisse, preferring to avoid Mary’s aroused eye,—“what I mean—Doctah Seveeah don’t un’stan’ that kine of business co’ectly. Still, ad the same time, if I was you I know I would ’ate faw my money not to be makin’ me some inte’es’. I tell you what I would do with you, Mistoo Itchlin, in fact: I kin baw’ that fifty dollah f’om you myseff.”
Richling repressed a smile. “Thank you! But I don’t care to invest it.”
“Pay you ten pe’ cent. a month.”
“But we can’t spare it,” said Richling, smiling toward Mary. “We may need part of it ourselves.” ”

“ Still, I lose patience with myself to find myself taking Mary’s absence so hard.”
“All hardships are comparative,” said the Doctor.
“Certainly they are,” replied Richling. “I lie sometimes and think of men who have been political prisoners, shut away from wife and children, with war raging outside and no news coming in.”
“Think of the common poor,” exclaimed Dr. Sevier,—“the thousands of sailors’ wives and soldiers’ wives. Where does that thought carry you?”
“It carries me,” responded the other, with a low laugh, “to where I’m always a little ashamed of myself.” ”

“ He craved and got the little man’s release on parole. A fortnight later, as Dr. Sevier was sitting at the breakfast table, with the little rector at its opposite end, he all at once rose to his full attenuated height, with a frown and then a smile, and, tumbling the chair backward behind him, exclaimed:—
“Why, Laura!”—for it was that one of his two gay young nieces who stood in the door-way. The banker’s wife followed in just behind, and was presently saying, with the prettiest heartiness, that Dr. Sevier looked no older than the day they met the Florida general at dinner years before. ”

“ Riley’s large hands there rested a blue-edged soup-plate, heaping full of the food that goes nearest to the Creole heart—jambolaya. There it was, steaming and smelling,—a delicious confusion of rice and red pepper, chicken legs, ham, and tomatoes. Mike, on her opposite arm, was struggling to lave his socks in it.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Riley, with a disappointed lift of the [Pg 202] head, “ye’re after eating breakfast already! And the plates all tleared off. Well, ye air smairt! I knowed Mr. Richlin’s taste for jumbalie”—
Mary smote her hands together. “And he’s just this instant gone! John! John! ”