The State of Franklin

In the summer of seventeen eighty-four, the settlers of the western counties of North Carolina found themselves in an awkward position. North Carolina had just ceded those western lands to the federal government to help pay Revolutionary War debts, then changed its mind and reclaimed them, leaving the people who actually lived there in legal limbo. Tired of waiting for distant governments to decide their fate, the settlers of what is now upper East Tennessee decided to govern themselves.

They called their new state Franklin, after Benjamin Franklin, whose endorsement they hoped to obtain. Franklin had its own governor, John Sevier, its own legislature, its own court system, and its own currency, which, in the cash-poor frontier, sometimes meant payments in deer hides and other goods. They petitioned the Continental Congress for admission to the union.

They needed nine votes. They got seven. For four years, the State of Franklin operated in an uncertain middle ground, its settlers simultaneously courted and contested by North Carolina, threatened by Cherokee who had signed no treaties with this improvised government, and ignored by a federal Congress that had other problems.

A rival government loyal to North Carolina operated in some of the same territory. By seventeen eighty-eight the enterprise had effectively collapsed. John Sevier was arrested by North Carolina in seventeen eighty-eight, later swore allegiance to the state, and went on to become the first governor of Tennessee.

The State of Franklin never made it onto any permanent map. But it is remembered here as evidence of something stubborn and particular in the East Tennessee character, a willingness to act before anyone gives permission.