" The resolution concluded by
urging the recipients of the Assembly's acknowledgments to
"continue" in their noble course. In view of what followed, this
resolution is interesting!
For some time the overhill pioneers had been growing dissatisfied
with the treatment they were receiving from the State, which on
the plea of poverty had refused to establish a Superior Court for
them and to appoint a prosecutor. As a result, crime was on the
increase, and the law-abiding were deprived of the proper legal
means to check the lawless. In 1784 when the western soldiers'
claims began to reach the Assembly, there to be scrutinized by
unkindly eyes, the dissatisfaction increased. The breasts of the
mountain men--the men who had made that spectacular ride to bring
Ferguson to his end--were kindled with hot indignation when they
heard that they had been publicly assailed as grasping persons
who seized on every pretense to "fabricate demands against the
Government." Nor were those fiery breasts cooled by further
plaints to the effect that the "industry and property" of those
east of the hills were "becoming the funds appropriated to
discharge the debts" of the Westerners. They might with justice
have asked what the industry and property of the Easterners were
worth on that day when the overhill men drilled in the snows on
the high peak of Yellow Mountain and looked down on Burke County
overrun by Ferguson's Tories, and beyond, to Charlotte, where lay
Cornwallis.
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