Tennessee does not need the prolific genius of the romanticist to embellish and invest with thrilling interest the narrative of her origin and development, of the hardships and endurance of her pioneers, of the heroism and triumphs of her builders and defenders; but, looking backward, with more than a century between us and the Revolutionary War, we would be unmanly not to admit that at times we were a little too vindictive and remorseless in pursuing those whose reverence and love for the “mother country” were stronger than their desire for a change and greater than their faith in the young dream of American liberty. Whilst separation and independence were imposing theories, so fascinating to the wild and restless spirits who had founded and were building up a vast empire in the western world, advocating their bold measures with absorbing zeal and desperate earnestness, there was a minority, many of whom were staid and sturdy, honest in purpose and courageous in conviction, who regarded the movement as unwarranted, and fraught with immediate peril and ultimate ruin. Despite persuasion, remonstrance, threats, social ostracism and what seemed to them persecution, they held allegiance to the Crown as a paramount duty, and regarded the war that must inevitably follow, in its destruction of the flower of the new country, as a twin horror of the Cretan Minotaur that fed on the Athenian youth. At the close of the Revolutionary War, these tories (“loyalists,” as they called themselves) were universally execrated; and the most popular victor, with many of the patriots, was he who could suggest the most humiliating punishment for these unfortunates: they were put in stocks, chained to the public pillories, cast into prison, and beggared by the confiscation of their property, “without benefit of clergy.” These and other punishments inflicted on the tories were justified during the times as retaliatory for outrages committed upon the patriots by the British and some of their American allies. Then, too, some extenuation must be found for the victorious revolutionists in the riot of frenzy and demoralization that always follows war.[F] In the perspective of this group of terrible scenes, heartaches, desolation of homes and disruption of families that the “common cause of liberty” might not perish, stands out a tragedy which, while it is of itself a melancholy picture of misfortune, suffering, despair and absolute want, is yet luminous with courageous manhood and the transcendent glory and conquering heroism of a pure and noble womanhood. Novr Term 1780. Ordered that the Commissioners advertise and sell the property of James Crawford & Thomas Barker, they the said James Crawford and Thomas Barker being found and taken in Arms Against the State.