--John Sevier to Don Diego de Gardoqui, September 12, 1788. From the early settlements in the eastern parts of this Continent to the late & more recent settlements on the Kentucky in the West the same difficulties have constantly occurred which now oppress you, but by a series of patient sufferings, manly and spirited exertions and unconquerable perseverance, they have been altogether or in great measure subdued. --Governor Samuel Johnston to James Robertson and Anthony Bledsoe, January 29, 1788. A strange sham-battle, staged like some scene from opéra bouffe, in the bleak snow-storm of February, 1788, is really the prelude to a remarkable drama of revolt in which Sevier, Robertson, Bledsoe, and the Cumberland stalwarts play the leading rôles. On February 27th, incensed beyond measure by the action of Colonel John Tipton in harboring some of his slaves seized by the sheriff under an execution issued by one of the North Carolina courts, Sevier with one hundred and fifty adherents besieged Tipton with a few of his friends in his home on Sinking Creek. The siege was raised at daybreak on February 29th by the arrival of reinforcements under Colonel Maxwell from Sullivan County; and Sevier, who was unwilling to precipitate a conflict, withdrew his forces after some desultory firing, in which two men were killed and several wounded. Soon afterward Sevier sent word to Tipton that on condition his life be spared he would submit to North Carolina. On this note of tragi-comedy the State of Franklin appeared quietly to expire. The usually sanguine Sevier, now thoroughly chastened, sought shelter in the distant settlements--deeply despondent over the humiliating failure of his plans and the even more depressing defection of his erstwhile friends and supporters. The revolutionary designs and separatist tendencies which he still harbored were soon to involve him in a secret conspiracy to give over the State of Franklin into the protection of a foreign power.