🌅 The Failed State of Franklin

SOURCE

Jason Farr (2011)

WHAT TO KNOW

• In August 1784, colonial settlers in what was then western North Carolina organized the State of Franklin, filling a political vacuum created when North Carolina ceded its western territory to the federal government in June of the same year. Franklin leaders hoped their territory would become the 14th state in the union, however, Congress rejected its admission and North Carolina eventually retracted its cession. After years of bitter internal division and a failed attempt to ally with Spain—which held vast territories in the Americas at the time, including most of what would become the modern U.S. mainland—Franklin leaders decided to rejoin North Carolina in 1789. North Carolina again ceded the land to the federal government and, in 1790, Congress officially made it part of the Southwest Territory, which would go on to become the state of Tennessee.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Experts say the story of Franklin is a reminder that the U.S. was never pre-destined to look as it does today. After the Treaty of Paris brokered peace between Great Britain and the 13 original colonies in 1783, communities west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi River had a few options: they could join an existing state, form their own independent state, or establish their own sovereign nation. Franklin’s leaders took the second option after North Carolina ceded its western land and created what they viewed as an opening and a chance at statehood.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• One of Franklin’s death knells was a brief skirmish in 1788 between militias led by Franklin’s governor John Sevier and John Tipton, an American statesman at the forefront of the opposition to the State of Franklin movement. After Tipton had some of Sevier’s slaves seized as part of a legal action, Sevier marched 150 troops to Tipton’s home. The clash ended quickly and was largely uneventful, however, Franklin’s prospects began unraveling soon after. Things didn’t turn out badly for Sevier: in 1796, he was elected as the first governor of Tennessee.