“Members of the Assembly, per diem, three raccoon skins.
“Justice fees for serving a warrant, one mink skin.”
Crude enough seem such devices to us to-day, yet we must remember that we are in close chronological touch with those very times. Nor did the new state seem to do ill with its self-established machinery of government. Just as the people of America retained something of the vital and useful customs and standards of old England, discarding the ancient and outworn, so did the people of the state of Franklin cling to the standards of their mother state of North Carolina. The constitution of North Carolina was adopted without very great change.
“For some time,” goes on our writer, “the state of Franklin moved on serenely, until Governor Sevier officially notified Governor Martin of North Carolina that his people would no longer recognize the authority of that state. Governor Martin replied explaining the cession act, and threatening the ‘revolters’ with armed invasion unless they returned to their allegiance. This letter, largely circulated, was not without effect, though in the main the people adhered to the new state.
“North Carolina then passed an act of amnesty for those that cared to avail themselves of it, which provided for the election of members to her own legislature. The same act appointed civil and military officers for the district. Thus there was to be seen the strange spectacle of two sets of officers over one and the same set of people, ‘Hurrah for Franklin!’ being the battle cry of one, and ‘Hurrah for North Carolina!’ the watchword of the other. Great confusion followed. Franklin held courts at Jonesboro, and North Carolina held hers near by, each denying the authority of the other. The rival officials quarreled and fought over their supposed rights. The victors turned the vanquished neck and crop out of doors, and retained possession of the records, such as they were.
“Failing to obtain recognition from North Carolina and an admission of the independence of the state of Franklin, Sevier laid the matter before Congress. Here he failed. He turned to Georgia, and was told by that state that Franklin and the old state of North Carolina must settle their own affairs themselves. Day by day the Franklin party became weaker, and on the expiration of Sevier’s term as governor no election was held, and the state of Franklin therefore ceased to exist. Indeed it is a matter of surprise that it survived four years of such constant and irritating opposition. The explanation, lies in the fact that no other man in Tennessee before or since has had so firm a hold upon the popular heart as did John Sevier. In one instance at least the fickle multitude was constant.
“Soon after Franklin’s downfall, Sevier was arrested by North Carolina officers on the charge of treason, the warrant having been granted by Judge Spencer of the old state, and he was taken over the mountains for trial at Morganton. There he was at once surrounded by many of his old King’s Mountain comrades, and after a short sojourn returned home without trial and without interference. He was soon elected to the North Carolina senate, where he took his seat, that section of the legislature restoring to him all his old-time privileges. Almost immediately thereafter he was elected to Congress (in 1789) from the ‘Washington District of North Carolina,’ thus becoming the first member of that body from the valley of the Mississippi.”
All this turmoil as to the bestowal of governmental allegiance was going forward at the same time that the settlers of Kentucky were raising their corn under rifle guard, and constantly fighting back the savage population that hemmed them in. They too were clamoring for national support, or individual independence. Meantime, too, the intrigues of Wilkinson in the Mississippi valley were continuing, and the men of the Free State of Franklin even looked southward for an alliance with the nation holding control of the mouth of the great Mississippi highway.
The formation of the new state was a blow not so much at the government at Washington as at the mother state of North Carolina; and the latter was at first willing enough to have the separation take place, for she was tired of paying war debts for fighting the Indians on her far-off frontier.
The times being so far out of joint, we can scarcely wonder that the hardy Indian fighters under Sevier at one time (September twelfth, 1788) sent word to the Spanish minister Gardoquoi that they wished to put themselves under the protection of Spain—a thing to-day difficult to believe of any part of the American population, yet not wholly irrational for those times and conditions. Nor is this all of the story of these little splits and schisms and secessions, which for a time took place on the Western slope of the Alleghanies.