Part 24 (1/2)

7. What is said of the agricultural interest of the State?

8. What was the financial condition? The educational?

9. What is said of the population?

10. What party was victor in the great struggle? What is said of the Tories?

11. What was deemed necessary?

12. What plan was adopted towards paying off the soldiers?

Mention some payments that were made to commanding officers.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

THE STATE OF FRANKLIN.

A. D. 1784 T0 1787.

1. During the years that followed upon the close of the Revolution the people of North Carolina were busied with the restoration of their ravaged fields and the development of the new system of self-rule inaugurated by the Convention of Halifax in 1776. There were many good and wise men in America who had no confidence in the perpetuity or effectiveness of a polity which rested upon the wisdom and virtue of the ma.s.ses for its enforcement.

2. Samuel Johnston and the leading lawyers of that day were full of apprehension as to the result, where the protection of life, liberty and property rested upon the ballots of men who were, as a general thing, poor and unlettered. The Halifax Const.i.tution sought to provide for the education of the people, and had recommended the establishment of a university, but no steps had been taken by the Legislature to carry out this wise and beneficent ordinance.

3. The Rev. Drs. David Caldwell and Samuel E. McCorkle were conducting schools on their own responsibility in Guilford and Mecklenburg, in which many young men were receiving sound and useful preparation for life; and there were similar academies in Wilmington, New Bern, Edenton and Charlotte; but as a general thing, education was almost entirely neglected.

4. Under the terms of the ”Articles of Confederation” the General Congress continued to a.s.semble, but its sessions resulted in little good to America. The government was continually embarra.s.sed by the public debt contracted in the Revolution. It could only pay such liabilities by calling upon the several States for their proportions. These were regulated by the value of the real estate.

5. North Carolina, thus witnessing the helplessness of the general government to meet its pecuniary liabilities, was moved to the n.o.ble resolution of ceding the great body of land then belonging to the State west of the Allegheny Mountains. This princely domain, now const.i.tuting the great State of Tennessee, was at that period only settled in part by white people, and many millions of acres of fertile lands could be sold to settlers.

6. Such a resource would have brought a great fund to the State for education and other useful purposes; but with unexampled devotion to the general good, it was determined by the Legislature of 1784 that the Governor should tender to the Federal government, as a free gift, all the lands not already granted to soldiers and actual settlers.

1785.

7. To an embarra.s.sed government, unable to meet its most solemn engagements, such a boon, it seems, would have been gladly received; but so great was the selfishness of certain States which were then struggling to secure for themselves such bodies of western lands, that the intended bounty of North Carolina proved a failure. The General Congress having failed to accept the offer, the act authorizing the cession was repealed.

8. The story of this patriotic munificence on the part of North Carolina ends not here. When it became known among the western settlers that their country had thus been offered to the general government much excitement followed. Colonel John Sevier, of King's Mountain fame, was a leader among the people of the territory in question. He had been a gallant soldier in the Revolution, and was trusted and beloved by his neighbors. He persuaded them that North Carolina, in thus offering to surrender her claims to their allegiance, had forfeited all right to further control their destinies.

9. He procured the support of many others, who elected members to a convention. This body met at Greenville, in November, 1785, and framed a government of a State which they called ”Franklin,”

in honor of the ill.u.s.trious statesman, Benjamin Franklin.

Colonel Sevier was elected Governor, and judges and other officers were also chosen.

10. Richard Caswell had again been made Governor of North Carolina, when it became known that such things were being done in the West. He issued a proclamation forbidding the whole movement and denouncing it as revolutionary and unlawful. He was supported by a party there headed by Colonel John Tipton.

1787.

11. It often seemed that b.l.o.o.d.y civil war would ensue between the men who sided respectively with Sevier and Tipton, but happily there was little bloodshed amid so much brawling. There were many arrests and complaints, until finally, in October, 1788, Colonel Sevier was captured by the forces of Tipton, and brought to jail at Morganton, in Burke county. He was allowed to escape, and, in memory of his services as a soldier, his offences were forgiven. That there were no more serious results was greatly due to the influence of Richard Caswell. Sevier was afterwards in the Senate of North Carolina, and, after Tennessee became a State, received all the honors a grateful people could confer.

[NOTE--There was no money in circulation in the ”State of Franklin,” and the following curious statement, taken from the old records, shows how payment was to be made to the public officers: ”Be it enacted by the General a.s.sembly of the State of Franklin, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, that the salaries of the officers of this commonwealth shall be as follows: His Excellency, the Governor, per annum, one thousand deer skins; His Honor, the Chief-Justice, five hundred deer skins, or five hundred racc.o.o.n skins; the Treasurer of the State, four hundred and fifty racc.o.o.n skins; Clerk of the House of Commons, two hundred racc.o.o.n skins; members of a.s.sembly, per diem, three racc.o.o.n skins.”]