Elsewhere throughout the country the news of the murder excited great indignation. The Continental Congress passed resolutions condemning acts which they had been powerless to prevent and were powerless to punish. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 27, p. 359, and No. 151, p. 351.] The Justices of the Court of Abbeville County, South Carolina, with Andrew Pickens at their head, wrote "to the people living on Nolechucke, French Broad, and Holstein," denouncing in unmeasured terms the encroachments and outrages of which Sevier and his backwoods troopers had been guilty. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 56, Andrew Pickens to Thos. Pinckney, July 11, 1788; No. 150, vol. iii., Letter of Justices, July 9th.] In their zeal the Justices went a little too far, painting the Cherokees as a harmless people, who had always been friendly to the Americans,--a statement which General Martin, although he too condemned the outrages openly and with the utmost emphasis, felt obliged to correct, pointing out that the Cherokees had been the inveterate and bloody foes of the settlers throughout the Revolution. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 150, vol. iii., Martin to Knox, Aug. 23, 1788.] The Governor of North Carolina, as soon as he heard the news, ordered the arrest of Sevier and his associates--doubtless as much because of their revolt against the State as because of the atrocities they had committed against the Indians. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 72, Samuel Johnston to Sec'y of Congress, Sept. 29, 1788.] Indian Ravages. In their panic many of the Indians fled across the mountains and threw themselves on the mercy of the North and South Carolinians, by whom they were fed and protected. Others immediately joined the Chickamaugas in force, and the frontier districts of the Franklin region were harried with vindictive ferocity. The strokes fell most often and most heavily on the innocent. Half of the militia were called out, and those who most condemned the original acts of aggression committed by their neighbors were obliged to make common cause with these neighbors, so as to save their own lives and the lives of their families. [Footnote: _Do_., Hutchings to Maxwell, June 20th, and to Martin, July 11th.] The officers of the district ordered a general levy of the militia to march against the Indian towns, and in each county the backwoodsmen began to muster. [Footnote: _Do_., No. 150, vol. ii., Daniel Kennedy to Martin, June 6, 1788; Maxwell to Martin, July 9th, etc. No. 150, vol. iii., p. 357: Result of Council of Officers of Washington District, August 19, 1788.] The Indian War.