of North Carolina. [Footnote:  The petition, drawn up in the summer of ’76, was signed by 112 men.  It is given in full by Ramsey, p. 138.  See also Phelan, p. 40.] The legislature of the State granted the prayer of the petitioners, Washington District was annexed, and four representatives therefrom, one of them Sevier, took their seats that fall in the Provincial Congress at Halifax.  But no change whatever was made in the government of the Watauga people until 1777.  In the spring of that year laws were passed providing for the establishment of courts of pleas and quarter sessions in the district, as well as for the appointment of justices of the peace, sheriffs, and militia officers; and in the fall the district was made a county, under the same name.  The boundaries of Washington County were the same as those of the present State of Tennessee, and seem to have been outlined by Sevier, the only man who at that time had a clear idea as to what should be the logical and definite limits of the future State.

    Upholding the Law.

The nominal change of government worked little real alteration in the way the Holston people managed their affairs.  The members of the old committee became the justices of the new court, and, with a slight difference in forms, proceeded against all offenders with their former vigor.  Being eminently practical men, and not learned in legal technicalities, their decisions seem to have been governed mainly by their own ideas of justice, which, though genuine, were rough.  As the war progressed and the southern States fell into the hands of the British, the disorderly men who had streamed across the mountains became openly defiant towards the law.  The tories gathered in bands, and every man who was impatient of legal restraint, every murderer, horse-thief, and highway robber in the community flocked to join them.  The militia who hunted them down soon ceased to discriminate between tories and other criminals, and the courts rendered decisions to the same effect.  The caption of one indictment that has been preserved reads against the defendant “in toryism.”  He was condemned to imprisonment during the war, half his goods was confiscated to the use of the State, and the other half was turned over for the support of his family.  In another case the court granted a still more remarkable order, upon the motion of the State attorney, which set forth that fifteen hundred pounds, due to a certain H., should be retained in the hands of the debtor, because “there is sufficient reason to believe that the said H’s estate will be confiscated to the use of the State for his misdemeanours.”