[Pioneers of the Old Southwest by Constance Lindsay Skinner]@TWC D-Link bookPioneers of the Old Southwest CHAPTER X 7/58
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. The North Carolina Assembly did not confine itself to impolite remarks. It proceeded to get rid of what it deemed western rapacity by ceding the whole overmountain territory to the United States, with the proviso that Congress must accept the gift within twelve months.
And after passing the Cession Act, North Carolina closed the land office in the undesired domain and nullified all entries made after May 25, 1784.
The Cession Act also enabled the State to evade its obligations to the Cherokees in the matter of an expensive consignment of goods to pay for new lands. This clever stroke of the Assembly's brought about immediate consequences in the region beyond the hills.
The Cherokees, who knew nothing about the Assembly's system of political economy but who found their own provokingly upset by the non-arrival of the promised goods, began again to darken the mixture in their paint pots; and they dug up the war hatchet, never indeed so deeply patted down under the dust that it could not be unearthed by a stub of the toe.
Needless to say, it was not the thrifty and distant Easterners who felt their anger, but the nearby settlements. As for the white overhill dwellers, the last straw had been laid on their backs; and it felt like a hickory log.
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