Sevier, John

SEVIER, JOHN. (1745–1815). Pioneer, militia officer, first governor of Tennessee. Born near the site of New Market, Virginia, on 23 September 1745, Sevier worked at farming, trading, tavern keeping, and surveying before moving southward in 1773 along the mountain valleys to the Holston settlements.

In 1776 Sevier joined in petitioning that North Carolina extend its jurisdiction over the Watauga and Holston settlements, and when this request was granted he became first a representative to the Provincial Congress and then lieutenant colonel of the militia. In 1777 he was promoted to colonel. Until 1780, however, Sevier took no active part in military operations. At the head of 240 Over Mountain Men, Sevier became one of the heroes of Kings Mountain in South Carolina on 7 October 1780. Immediately after his return from that victory, he started his career as leader of punitive expeditions against the Cherokees, or to be more specific, against the Chickamauga element of that tribe. In 1781 he again moved eastward across the mountains, this time with two hundred men, to support American regulars and militia against the British and Loyalist forces, though seeing little action.

When the war ended, Sevier entered into a project to establish a colony at Muscle Shoals, and he was so engaged when his Holston and Watauga neighbors started a movement to become a separate state. He was elected governor of the state of Franklin in 1785. Three years later this "state" collapsed, and Sevier was arrested for treason. North Carolina chose the path of reconciliation, pardoning Sevier, making him a brigadier general of the militia, and accepting him into the senate upon his election from Greene County that same year. The next year he was elected to Congress. When Tennessee was admitted as a new state he became its first governor, serving from 1796 to 1801 and holding this post again from 1803 to 1809. Two years later he was reelected to Congress and served until his death near Fort Decatur on 24 September 1815.

SEE ALSO Indians in the Colonial Wars and the American Revolution; Kings Mountain, South Carolina; Over Mountain Men.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Driver, Carl. John Sevier, Pioneer of the Old Southwest. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1932.

                                   revised by Michael Bellesiles