sions 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."

There is something refreshing in the solemnity with which these
decisions are recorded, and the evident lack of perception on the part
of the judges that their records would, to their grandchildren, have a
distinctly humorous side. To tories, and evil-doers generally, the humor
was doubtless very grim; but as a matter of fact, the decisions, though
certainly of unusual character, were needful and jus