The State of Franklin, the Southwest Territory, and Tennessee
*Draw
Tennessee circa 1780 on the side board, showing the areas of white
settlement and Indian control, labelling things as needed.
*Tennessee (before it was Tennessee) was a pretty backwards
place. With so little access to the outside world, people had to
be reasonably self-sufficient, although the wealthy could import some
goods in the 1770s and 1780s, and most major settlements (and some
minor ones) did have stores that brought in goods from the
outside. Still, most people lived in log cabins built with their
own hands and axes. The first frame house west of the Appalachian
Mountains was probably the Carter Mansion, finished about 1781--it even
had glass windows, a luxury added to Rocky Mount and a few other
existing houses at the time.
*Many people still hunted for food and, more importantly, furs.
Furs and other trade goods often took the place of money, and a much of
the economy was a barter system. The most common crop was corn,
as it was easy to grow, easy to harvest, and any extra could be made
into corn liquor, a valuable commodity. People also grew flax for
linen, and a little cotton, although it did not do well in East
Tennessee, and some tobacco, although mostly for personal use.
*Slavery existed in Tennessee pretty much from the beginning—the great
mansions such as the Carter Mansion and Rocky Mount were built with
slave labour, although compared to other parts of the south, the number
of slaves and slave-owners was fairly small: in 1779 Washington
County had 292 taxpayers (adult males), but only 31 (just over 1%)
owned slaves, with 102 among them. As Tennessee grew, Middle
Tennessee ended up having a larger percentage of its population being
slaves than did East Tennessee, although for many years East Tennessee
would have larger free and slave population, simply because it had more
people in total.
*A surprising number of the people on the frontier were literate, and
most households included a number of books, often, but certainly not
always, religious books.
*Education was also important, and schools were founded pretty early
on: the first was Martin Accademy, founded in 1783 by Rev. Samuel
Doak named for the Governor of North Carolina. It was later
renamed Washington College, and remained as a college and a private
school into the 21st century.
*Religion was not as important to the earliest Tennesseans as it would
be later—the great revivals would have to wait for the later 18th and
early 19th centuries—but there were several notable churches and
preachers. Sinking Creek Baptist Church (Carter County) is
thought to be the oldest church in Tennessee (1775), and is certainly
the oldest still operating, but we don’t know for sure who its first
minister was. The first Presbyterian minister was Samuel Doak,
who arrived in 1777 and immediately founded several churches. By
1786 there were at least three Methodist circuit-riders in East
Tennessee, and the first Methodist church was built in that year.
In 1788 Bishop Francis Asbury, one of the co-superintendents of Methody
in the United States, visited Tennessee on the first of his many
mission trips around the United States.
*Back at Fort Nashborough, the Revolutionary War did not touch the
settlers of the Nashville Basin as it had those of the Washington
District. Still, they needed a government too, in part so that
Henderson (who had joined the settlers) would have someone to register
his land sales.
*They formed the Cumberland Compact on 1 May, 1780. This was
partly a business contract, in which Henderson sold them their land at
the exorbitant price of £26 per hundred acres, and they agreed to
pay his chosen entry-taker $12 for each entry made. However, it
also created a governing council of 12 judges, elected by the 8
stations, and able to be recalled by a new election at any time.
All free males aged 21 and older could vote, regardless of wealthy or
(probably) race. The compact also created a militia for the
region, with all males aged 16 and over obligated to serve, but gave
them the right in return to buy land from the company in their own
names. Henderson soon left, never to return.
*In 1782, North Carolina gave everyone who settled in Middle Tennessee
the right to buy 640 acres of land, and also set aside a large area for
veterans who had been promised land for their service. Many of
them did not want to move to the Cumberland, so they sold their grants
cheap to speculators.
*Speculation increased still more in 1783 with the passage of the ‘Land
Grab Act.’ North Carolina offered to sell all unclaimed lands
west of the Appalachian Mountains (except the land in the Military
Reserve and the Cherokee Reservation south of the French Broad River)
for only £10 per hundred acres, and allowed people to buy as much
as they could mark off between October 1783 and May 1784.
*This was great for wealthy local men like John Sevier and powerful
North Carolinians like William Blount, who bought thousands of acres
cheap, especially as many of them were warned ahead of time that it
would become available, but for the average person it did not do much,
since they could not afford to hire the surveyors needed to really take
advantage of the opportunity. Henderson also found that North
Carolina had invalidated most of his claims at this time, but he was
given two hundred thousand acres in Powell’s Valley to make up for it.
*In 1783 North Carolina designated all of the Cumberland Settlements as
Davidson County, established courts, and allowed elections—James
Robertson and Anthony Bledsoe were elected to the North Carolina
legislature, although Bledsoe would later be killed by the Creek.
*This was but one of many problems facing Tennessee: although the
Revolution was over, Spain still controlled Louisiana, and had been
given Florida by Britain in 1783. The Spanish tended to incite
the Indians to attack the settlers in Tennessee in order to discourage
them from settling there, as the Spanish feared they might eventually
try to claim Florida or Louisiana, and, in any event, Spain still kind
of wanted Tennessee, having claimed it during De Soto’s expedition in
1540. Consequently, Davidson County suffered from repeated
attacks by the Chickasaw, Creek, and Chickamauga Indians.
*Perhaps even worse, starting in 1784, Spain decided to close the
Mississippi River to American trade. Davidson County, and even
Washington County, depended on being able to ship their furs and other
produce down the rivers to the Mississippi to sell at New Orleans, as
there was no good way to ship large quantities of stuff overland to the
East Coast. Cutting off the Mississippi would destroy the
livelihoods of many Tennesseans.
*This was even seen as a good thing by many officials in the United
States, some of whom feared that the West was being populated too
rapidly and that if it ever ceased to be dependent on the East, it
would secede and form a separate nation or nations. Others
opposed it, of course, but John Jay, America’s ambassador to Spain,
agreed to it in principal, and it appeared to many westerners that
their trade would be completely cut off and, moreover, that the Eastern
powers were abandoning them.
*In hopes of making peace with Spain, the people of Middle Tennessee
actually named their region the Mero District (after Davidson County
was divided into three parts) in honour, not of any American, but of
the Spanish Governor of Spain, Don Estevan Miro.
*The Eastern Counties did not try to curry favour with Spain, nor with
anyone else. Instead, they tried to form their own state.
*Following the Revolution, the US Government under the Articles of
Confederation had asked all the states that claimed lands west of the
Appalachian Mountains to give them to the Congress. This land
would then be sold to pay off the national debt and to fund the
government’s activities, since under the Articles, Congress could not
levy a regular tax (it could just ask for donations from the states).
*Once North Carolina had already sold most of its land, and decided it
was too much trouble to keep the westerners around—they always wanted
new things, like roads and courthouses, but they only caused trouble by
fighting with the Indians and doing business with the Spanish—the
legislature (supported by most of the delegates from the western
counties) decided to cede the land to Congress in May 1784. There
were only 4 stipulations: existing land entries would remain
valid, North Carolina could give away additional land to veterans if
the Military Reserve turned out not to be big enough, slavery would not
be abolished without the consent of the people in the territory, and
North Carolina law would be enforced until a new state was
created. Local leaders took that last stipulation as a call to
action.
*The people of the Washington District had long resented North
Carolina’s government, which did not seem to offer them the services
they wanted—they wanted a local district court, local control of the
militia, and better protection from the Indians, whom North Carolina
had promised to pay for peace, but without producing the promised
goods. Now, however, North Carolina was gone, yet Congress had
not yet officially accepted the cession. Still, some form of
government was needed, and it seemed like it was only a matter of time
before Congress would want them to form one, so they got on with it.
*To maintain law and order, and to defend themselves from the Cherokee,
the abandoned people sent delegates (elected by the militia, 2 per
company) to Jonesborough (Tennessee’s oldest town) in August
1784.
*Their convention decided to retain the laws of North Carolina for the
moment, but also to petition Congress to accept North Carolina's
cession and to permit the people in the ceded land to form a separate
government. For that purpose, the convention also resolved to
frame a temporary or permanent constitution, and to furnish a person to
negotiate with Congress for the benefit of the new state.
*In order to create a new constitution, the August 1784 convention in
Jonesborough decided to hold a new convention, attended by five members
chosen from each county, the same number elected in 1776 to form North
Carolina's constitution. This convention was meant to be held in
September, 1784. For reasons yet unknown, it was delayed until
December, by which time North Carolina had already opposed herself to
the independence of her western counties.
*The problem was that Congress did not accept the cession immediately,
but spent time thinking about it. During the time, NC’s delegates
to Congress saw that other states that were giving up western lands
were receiving reductions in the money Congress requested from them, or
other privileges, and thought that North Carolina was getting the short
end of the stick—some of them also had speculated in land in West
Tennessee, and may have decided they could develop their land better in
North Carolina than as part of a US territory or a new state. In
any event, North Carolina said they were taking the cession back.
*The western settlers did not know this when they met in December, and
they went ahead and formed a new state, called Franklin, and drafted a
temporary Constitution based on that of North Carolina, which was
largely adopted later as the official constitution, despite some
attempts to create a wholly new document. They also elected
officers, with John Sevier as governor. Jonesborough served as
the state’s capital initially, although it was later moved to
Greeneville. Some people did oppose the creation of a new state,
among them John Tipton. Once the delegates got home, they learnt
that North Carolina had changed her mind about the cession.
*North Carolina did try to sweeten the deal for Franklin, especially
Sevier. Washington, Sullivan, and Greene Counties were organised
into the Washington District, with David Campbell as superior court
judge and Sevier as Brigadier-General of the militia, which not only
gave him a more impressive-sounding rank, but nearly gave him an
independent military command.
*Sevier nearly took them up on the deal, but his friends, including
William Cocke, talked him out of it, in part because it seemed like
Southwest Virginia, under Arthur Campbell, might secede from Virginia
and join Western North Carolina in an enlarged and independent State of
Franklin. Ultimately this proved to be a mirage, as Governor
Patrick Henry handled unrest and rebellion in his state more
efficiently than did Governors Alexander Martin or Richard Caswell (in
part because Sevier and Caswell were friends).
*One of Franklin’s first acts was to make a treaty with the Cherokee,
the June 1785 Treaty of Dumplin Creek, which allowed whites to settle
south of the French Broad River and the Tennessee River, in land that
North Carolina had reserved for the Cherokee. Settlers flooded
into the area.
*Franklin also created new counties: Spencer, Caswell, Sevier,
Wayne, and Blount, some of which still exist (although sometimes with
different names).
*In 1785, Franklin sent William Cocke to New York City, capital of the
United States, to ask that Franklin be accepted as a state. There
was a majority support for it (seven states favoured it, particularly
Georgia), but not quite the nine that were required.
*Not only did Congress not vote in favour of Cocke’s proposal (or even
for accepting the cession, although they did declare that North
Carolina couldn’t just take it back), they also signed a new treaty
with the Cherokee at Hopewell, South Carolina. The Hopewell
Treaty, much like the 1763 Proclamation, drew a line beyond which
whites could not settle.
*Unfortunately for the Franklinites, this line ignored the treaty of
Dumplin Creek, and left many white settlers and settlements beyond the
Hopewell Line, and the Treaty of Hopewell further provided that if any
settler refused to remove east of the line within six months of the
treaty's conclusion on 28 November, 1785, "the Cherokees may punish him
or not as they please.”
*It was seen as particularly galling that the Hopewell Line even cut of
Franklin’s new capital, Greeneville, particularly as the US
Commissioners did preserve questionable white settlements in both the
Kentucky district of Virginia and the Mero Distruct, which had remained
loyal to North Carolina. The Franklinites were infuriated, and
ignored the treaty, except that it encouraged them to arm for war.
*1786 and 1787 would see increased fighting between the Franklinites
and the Cherokee, and the Franklinites along with Georgia, against the
Creeks, who held valuable lands in the Great Bend of the Tennessee
River, where both Sevier and several important Georgians claimed land,
and who had been encouraged by the Spanish to raid the frontier
settlements.
*Although most of the people in Franklin had been united in hating the
Hopewell Treaty and Jay’s negotiations with Spain regarding the closure
of the Mississippi, they were badly divided over other things, and
North Carolina encouraged this.
*John Tipton was the leader of the anti-Franklin group, often called
Tiptonites. He and Sevier disliked each other so completely that
at one point when passing on the street in Jonesborough Tipton so
insulted Sevier that he struck him with his cane, to which Tipton,
considered one of the best boxers in the area, came at him with both
fists clenched. Friends pulled them apart before the battle could
be decided, but it seems that Sevier was not coming off the better.
*North Carolina supported the creation of a shadow government in
Franklin, continuing to appoint their own sheriffs, county clerks, and
other officials, calling for elections to the North Carolina
legislature (Tipton was among those elected), and offering to forgive
all back taxes to anyone who would come back to North Carolina.
North Carolina even formed Hawkins County, in response to the desire
for more local control of government.
*This dual government resulted in several things.
*The fact that more people took the time to vote in Franklin’s
elections than North Carolina’s probably shows that more people
supported Franklin, but the fact that fairly sizable numbers did vote
for the Old North State’s legislature proves that it was hardly
dominant.
*The existence of two courts and sheriffs for each county meant that
sometimes disputes, contracts, and other legal matters could not be
settled definitively, because no-one knew which court to trust.
Sometimes supporters of one state or the other would go and disrupt and
break up court meetings of the other state, and the sheriffs and clerks
took to hiding court records in caves and abandoned buildings.
*Eventually the divide-and-conquer tactics did North Carolina some
good. The Franklinites grew tired of the struggle in some cases,
and Sevier spent a lot of his time fighting the Indians which, though
seen as worthwhile, still took him away from business.
*North Carolina did offer an established government and set of laws and
legal structure, and even a reasonably sound currency, which Franklin
was supposed to issue, but never did. Instead, pelts were used to
pay taxes, fines, and other expenses to the government (as well as the
government’s salaries to its officers and employees) with different
pelts having different values.
*Counterfeiting was even a problem in Franklin, as furs were often
given in payment in bundles. It was not unknown for a scoundrel
to bundle up a bunch of possum skins, sew raccoon tails to the edge of
the bundle, and pass it off as the real thing.
*In the end, it was taxes that would bring about the end of Franklin,
or at least give the most dramatic closing to that chapter in
Tennessee’s history.
*When Sevier returned from an expedition against the Creek in early
1788, he found that Tipton, acting for North Carolina, had arranged for
the loyalist sheriff to seize some of his slaves for payment of North
Carolina back taxes. With some soldiers still with him, and many
more south of the Hopewell Line who really depended on Franklin’s
success, Sevier laid siege to Tipton’s farm. on 27 February 1788.
*The siege was not very successful; Sevier’s men did not prevent Tipton
from getting reinforcements, and, really, neither side (for the most
part) really wanted to kill the other. Although these were some
of the best shots in the world (who had wiped out Major Ferguson’s
command in an hour), they now fired for hours while hardly hitting
anyone—a fact that one later explained by saying no-one really wanted
to kill his own neighbours—in fact, Sevier even had a cannon with him,
but as far as we know, never used it. In the end, only two
Tiptonites were killed (including the North Carolina sheriff of
Washington County, Jonathan Pugh, who had seized Sevier’s slaves),
although a number of men on both sides were wounded.
*Having been reinforced by Sullivan County militia loyal to North
Carolina, Tipton’s men tried to break the siege of 29 February.
They attacked at dawn and surprised the Franklinites, who
retreated. In the process, two of Sevier’s sons were
captured.
*Tipton wanted to hang them, but Robert Love, a Tiptonite, convinced him not to.
*On 1 March 1788, Sevier’s four-year term expired. Although the
Franklinites had offered the next term of governorship to Evan Shelby,
he had politely declined, having mostly stayed neutral during the past
four years. Franklin largely withered away after that, although
it was still recognised in some form by the settlers living beyond the
Hopewell line, because, like the original Franklinites, they were
beyond the bounds of any other government.
*Sevier was arrested for his part in the State of Franklin, but rescued
by his friends right out of a court meeting in North Carolina, and
later in 1788 all the Franklinites were pardoned.
*In November 1789, North Carolina became the next-to-last state to
ratify the new Constitution, which replaced the old Articles of
Confederation. Among the provisions of the new Constitution was
Article IV, Section 3, which stated that "New States may be admitted by
the Congress into this union [a provision never specifically made by
the Articles of Confederation, thus immediately confounding a simple
resolution of the problem]; but no new State shall be formed or erected
within the Jurisdiction of any other State [thus undercutting every
serious state movement discussed thus far]; nor any State be formed by
the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the
Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the
Congress.” This was included in large part because of Franklin,
which Alexander Hamilton took a moment to condemn in the Federalist
Papers.
*In December, NC ceded all western lands to the new Federal
Government. Again they had several conditions, mostly meant to
protect existing land claims, but also to ensure reasonably fair
treatment of the people dwelling there.
*Congress accepted the cession (with great joy, as it falsely believed
that plenty of valuable land remained unclaimed in the area), and on 2
April 1790, President Washington signed the bill. On 26 May, he
signed the bill creating the Territory of the United States South of
the River Ohio.
*Much like the Northwest Territory (although not identical), the
Southwest Territory would initially be governed by a governor appointed
by the President. When the territory had at least 5,000 free
adult males, a legislature was to be formed. When the territory
had at least 60,000 free persons, it could frame a constitution and
apply to Congress for admission as a state.
*Washington chose William Blount to be Territorial Governor, in part
because they were friends (or at least acquaintances), both having
served in the Constitutional Convention and signed the Constitution, in
part because he had never been involved in the Franklin movement, and
thus would not have too many enemies going into the job, and partly
because as one of the largest owners of land in the Territory, he would
want to see the place well-governed. Blount chose as a secretary
Daniel Smith, an important and wealthy man in the Mero District.
*Blount was subordinate not only to the president, but also to the
Secretary of State (Jefferson) and, as superintendent of Indian affairs
for the Territory, to the Secretary of War (Knox).
*Blount arrived in the Territory in the fall of 1790, and took up
residence in Rocky Mount, the home of William Cobb, another important
man who had remained neutral in the Franklin period. He remained
there until the spring of 1792, when he home at James White’s Fort was
completed. He then moved there and renamed the area Knoxville in
honour of his boss.
*Once Blount knew he would make Knoxville the Territorial capital, he
invited a printer, George Roulstone, to move to the area. He did
so, and in 1791 began publishing the Knoxville Gazette, and soon became
the territory’s official printer. Although he died in 1804, his
widow Elizabeth continued his business and remained the state’s printer
for many years.
*Early in his tenure, Blount named Sevier brigadier-general of the
Washington District and Robertson brigadier-general of the Mero
District. He chose William Cocke as attorney general of the Washington
District and recently-arrived Andrew Jackson as attorney general for
the Mero Distrct. He visited and affirmed the rightful existence
of all of North Carolina’s old counties (but none of those created by
Franklin). In 1792 he created two counties in 1792, Knox and
Jefferson, named after his bosses, and made them part of the new
Hamilton District.
*One of Blount’s earliest and most important achievements was the
Treaty of the Holston, signed in Knoxville on 2 July 1791. In
that treaty, the Cherokee recognised new boundaries for white
settlement, which included the settlers south of the French Broad who
had been excluded by the Hopewell Treaty, and promised perpetual peace
and friendship. In exchange, they got a payment of $1000 a year
(soon increased to $1500), as well as farming tools, looms, and other
equipment, and training in how to use them.
*Some Cherokee, especially the Chickamauga, were not satisfied, and
complained to Washington and Knox directly. That led to the
increase in the annuity and other gifts, but did not really solve the
problem.
*In 1792, the new Spanish governor of Louisiana, Luis Carondelet,
started to encourage the Creek to attack the Territory, which they and
the Chickamauga gladly did, attacking Nashville and the rest of the
Mero District (and to a lesser extent the eastern part of the
Territory) until 1794. This was Dragging Canoe’s last fight, as
he died, old and sick, in 1792.
*Knox sent some federal troops to Tennessee, and Georgia sent some
militia to assist those raised by Sevier and the order of Daniel
Smith. Under his leadership, the Chickamauga and Creek were
pushed back into Alabama and Georgia, and many of their towns were
burnt.
*In the end, Blount, Knox, and Washington bought peace for
$3,000. However, after Blount’s return, a group of militia from
the Hamilton and Mero Districts planned and carried out a very
effective but very brutal attack on the Nickajack and Running Water
towns of the Chickamauga. However, the Chickamauga could not
fully respond (in part because the US Army had won a major victory
against other Indians in the Ohio Territory), and Blount, although
officially angry, was privately pretty pleased by the Nickajack
Espedition.
*During the Third Cherokee War, Blount decided he had had enough of
running the Territory on his own, especially as the people became less
satisfied with him. He had conducted an initial census of the
Territory in 1791, and discovered that there were 35,700 people in the
Territory (almost 29,000 in Washington and 7,000 in Mero (see page
60)), including almost 6,300 adult males, enough to call for a
legislature. There were also 3,400 slaves (2,300 in Washington
and 1,200 in Mero).
*Although it was revealed that the territory was entitled to an
assembly by the 1791 census, Blount did not actually form one until
1793, because until then he was virtually an all-powerful dictator, at
least in a legal sense. By 1793, though, he felt it was time for
a legislature, in part because he was busy with the Indian war, and in
part because more and more people wanted one.
*In October he called for elections, and on 24 February 1794, 13 men
(including Tipton and Cocke) met in Knoxville as representatives of the
territory. They chose a list of ten names, from which President
Washington chose five men to serve as a council, a sort of upper house
to the legislature and an advisory board for Blount. The five
chosen included John Sevier and Stockley Donelson.
*Like any good legislature, they immediately created taxes. The
representatives suggested a tax of 25 cents per hundred acres of land;
Blount and the council (who tended to own more land) wanted a
12½ cent per hundred acre tax, but the 25 cent rate passed, and
property taxes would remain the Territory and Tennessee’s main source
of income for over a century. They also created a treasury
department to take care of the money.
*The legislature created Sevier County (essentially ratifying the old Sevier County created by Franklin).
*The legislature also chartered a college (which also served as an
elementary and preparatory school for boys and girls), the first in
Tennessee and still one of the oldest in the nation, and named in
Blount College, with the Presbyterian minister Rev. Samuel Carrick as
its first president. In 1807 the school was renamed East
Tennessee College, later East Tennessee University, and eventually
became the University of Tennessee.
*Before adjourning, the legislature requested that Governor Blount call
a new census in 1795. He was sick of the office by then, so he
did so, and even called the legislature into session early the next
year to get it over with. They called for a census and a
referendum, and paid the sheriffs who took the census one dollar for
every hundred persons counted (so it is possible that the numbers were
inflated). They found 66,650 free persons and a total population
of 77,300.
*Since only 60,000 free persons were required for statehood to be
possible, and 72% of those who responded to the referendum supported it
(although Davidson and Tennessee counties in Mero opposed it, and
Sumner County, Mero, recorded no result), blount called for an
election of five delegates from every county to frame a constitution.
*In January 1796, 55 delegates (40 from Washington and Hamilton and 15
from Mero Districts) arrived in Knoxville. They included Blount,
Landon Carter, Cocke, Andrew Jackson, Joseph McMinn, Archibald Roane,
James Robertson, Daniel Smith, and John Tipton. John Sevier,
however, was not among them, at least officially, although he actually
attended the convention and worked to support Blount’s positions.
*Rev Carrick opened with a prayer and they got to work. They
started by reducing their own pay from $2.50 per day to $1.50, and then
quickly put together a document (with Daniel Smith serving as
secretary), borrowing heavily from the constitutions of other states.
*Blount and his rich friends managed to include uniform taxation of
land and slaves, meaning that land was taxed at the same rate per acre.
*There were property qualifications for holding office (as was common
in those days): 200 acres of land for a legislator and 500 for
the governor, but any free adult male (even free blacks) who owned land
(regardless of how much) could vote, making it one of the most liberal
state constitutions of its day. While the legislature and
governor got to appoint many public officials, some, including militia
officers, were elected locally (and the militia generals were elected
by the officers elected by the regular soldiers).
*Andrew Jackson supposedly suggested that Tennessee be the name of the
state, and he certainly was responsible for the provision that
Knoxville was only guaranteed to be the state capital until 1802.
This was done on behalf of the Mero District to ensure that East
Tennessee would not remain the most powerful part of the state
forever—they knew their own population, though small, was growing
faster.
*The 1796 Constitution included a declaration of rights, most of which
were typical to state constitutions, but one that was unique was the
right to free navigation of the Mississippi River—Tennesseans had not
forgotten that Jay was ready to trade away all rights to that river in
the 1780s.
*The convention concluded on 6 February, and Joseph McMinn was sent to
Philadelphia, currently the nation’s capital, to present the document
to Congress before they adjourned in late spring. The
constitution was accepted, and Tennessee became the 16th state.
*Franklin had been sort of a practise run for Tennessee
statehood. Almost everyone who had been important in Franklin
held a similar office in Tennessee.
*John Sevier, formerly governor of the State of Franklin, was elected Tennessee's first governor.
*William Cocke, Franklin's delegate to Congress, was elected to the
United States Senate as was Blount. Andrew Jackson was our only
representative—we should have had two, but Tennessee was strongly
Republican, and the Federalists in power only accepted Tennessee as a
state on the condition that until the 1800 census (and thus after the
1800 election) we only have one representative and three rather than
four presidential electors.
*Many of the Volunteer State's other early leaders had been prominent
Franklinites in their day; even the clerk of the first Franklinite
convention in Jonesborough, Francis Ramsey, was appointed clerk of the
first Tennessee Senate.
*Eventually Sevier and Blount, and later Sevier and Jackson, would
become bitter political rivals, both for personal reasons and because
they represented different sections of the state, but for now, all
could celebrate Tennessee’s creation, which they did with cannon fire,
speeches, and the division of the old Tennessee County in Middle
Tennessee into two new counties, Robertson and Montgomery.