The answer to the army was posted in the Knoxville Gazette. The names of the men that wrote the letter are not familiar names to this researcher. They were evidently scholars of the English language and the skilled in understanding the current laws of the new state of Tennessee that existed at that time. ------------------------- February 27, 1797 Knoxville Gazette To Captains Richard Sparks and John Wade. Citizen Soldiers, Your address of February 2d, 1797, to the people residing on lands to which the Indian claim is not extinguished, we have seen, and considered with all the attention that a subject of so much magnitude and delicacy requires. The civil manner, gentlemen, in which you have begun, and we hope will continue to execute your orders, excites sweet emotions I our breasts. We cannot help expressing our warm acknowledgments to you, for the pains you take to convince us, that our settlements are not tenable on the principles of law. Your amiable characters have preceded you -- we know you are the brave Captains Sparks and Wade who fought and conquered our savage enemies of the north, under the banners of the heroic Generals Wayne and Wilkinson. It was not from refractory or disorderly dispositions we were influenced to take possession of the lands we now occupy. We had regard to the laws of nature, of nations, the statutes of North Carolina (the state from which ours emanated) and to our own civil code. The constitution of the state of Tennesssee, in the 31st Article of the bill of rights, guarantees to the people residing south of French Broad and Holston, between the rivers Tennessee and ig Pigeon, the right of pre-emption and occupancy in that tract. Congress recognized that constitution in all its parts, by receiving the state into the federal union. Many of us hold grants for our lands, legally obtained from the state of North Carolina, whilst under her jurisdiction. Under these plausible claims, we settled ourselves on the lands from which you command us to remove. Although we anticipate the pungent grief we shall feel, on being obliged to leave our little farms, and on hearing the cries of our children forspread, which we shall not be able shortly to [illegible] for them, yet we mean to bear with all the fortitude we can, the wrongs of the general government, hoping they will ere lng become more just and generous to her suffering citizens. Oh! how we long for such wise, humane, and well-informed men as Jefferson and …………, we know not who to place with him at the helm, to steer the ship of the commonwealth. In discussing the scheme of the federal government in America, in which, by the most admirable contrivances, justice seems to be so impartially administered, property so well guarded, and liberty so effectually secured, that in theory it seems impossible that any people under such wise regulations, can possibly fail of being happy, virtuous, and free; but experiment convinces us, that they are adequate to these salutary purposes; our errors have arose from reasoning on false premises, that is, from supposing that Congress and her ministers would act on principles incompatible with the vices, the follies, and passions of human nature. By the funding system, wealth is collected into the hands of the few, By the land laws of the United States, those few are enabled to monopolize all the lands, and the poor must become tenants at will. Was it for such regulations and laws as these, oh Americans! you fought and bled? Congress of the United States, learn to do justice, and we will then reverence your laws. Suffer us to possess the property we have legally paid for. Permit us to hold lands I fee, without being tenants at will of domineering landlords. Legislators of the great American republic, is it nothing to you to see our wives and children, who, by their industry, have hitherto lived in affluence on their own farms, beggared by your unconstitutional laws? We say your laws are unconstitutional, because they deprive us of property for which we had a legal right before the treaty of Holston. Do you feel no remorse at our impending ruin? Are you callous to our sufferings? Accustomed to wallow in luxury -- you cannot feel for the distresses of the poor. Legislators and ministers of the American government, if you cease not your land monopolies, and other oppressive acts, a reform will take place, which, by its convulsions, may involve you in its ruins. You are making large strides to aristocracy. The name of landlord sounds harsh and grating to the ear of republican. When any public business is to be transacted in this country, you neglect to appoint citizens of our state. This is degrading, as if we had neither men of virtue or business among us. In this you are mistaken. We have philosophers, politicians, and soldiers. In a matter which so nearly concerns us, as the running the boundry line between us and the Indians, you ought to have appointed commissioners, on our part, out of the state of Tennessee. We cannot have confidence in foreigners, and perhaps some o fhtem holding commissions in the Indian department. We have now, gentlemen, delineated to you the outlines of our claims. We have also stated, in miniature, the wrongs we are about to sustain from the operations of the general government. A volume would not contain the reasonings we cold [could] advance on the justice of our claims. The earth was created for the use of man. We could plead purchase, occupancy, conquest, and relinquishment by the aborigines; but all those reasonings we suppose would be in vain. Power is in the hands of the general government, and we are disposed to obey her will for the present. ------------------