The True Story of the Short-Lived State of Franklin

Several counties in what is today Tennessee tried to form their own

independent state
Kat Eschner @ Smithsonian Magazine
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-true-story-of-the-short-lived-state-of-franklin?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB
Accessed 6 Nov 2020 @ 22:20

The original name proposed had been “Frankland,” but the counties changed it to Franklin in an attempt to get Benjamin
Franklin on their side. No luck, alas.
Portrait from The White House Historical Association / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

As the story of the lost State of Franklin shows, the American Revolution left some western
communities in complicated circumstances.

After the war was won, communities west of the Appalachian Mountains and east of the Mississippi
didn't default to becoming part of the United States. "It was never assumed," writes Jason Farr in The
Tennessee Historical Quarterly. Instead, those communities “had the option of creating jurisdictions

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within existing states, forming new states within the union, or creating their own sovereign republics.”
The residents of Franklin chose the middle option, feeling, as George Washington himself feared, that
they had become “a distinct people” from those in the Atlantic states who fought for independence. The
story of Franklin highlights how uncertain the early Union was and the rocky relationship between the
original 13 Atlantic states and the West.

“There was little concern for western political and economic interests during the Confederation era,”
Farr writes, “especially among the northeastern elite. Some even assumed that frontier communities
would remain outside the union.” But when Franklin officially declared independence, as it did in 1784
starting with a conference on August 23, it showed that the Founders had to pay more attention to the
west.

At the time, the land of the State of Franklin was considered to have been four counties in North
Carolina. However, North Carolina had ceded the land to the United States Congress in April 1784. The
settlers in the region, which was known as the Cumberland River Valley, “were concerned that Congress
would sell the territory to Spain or France as a means of paying off some of the government’s war debt,”
writes History.com. In response to this worry, North Carolina took the territory back and started to
organize it as part of the state.

But four counties decided they should make their own fate rather than waiting on North Carolina. The
president of the convention of delegates that made this decision chose John Sevier, a Revolutionary War
veteran, as president.

In December 1784, Franklin declared itself to be an independent state, rather than part of the union–
although, as George W. Troxler notes in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, Franklin wasn’t aware that
North Carolina had agreed to take it back just the month before.

“The December 1784 constitution of Franklin did not formally define its boundaries,” Troxler writes.
“By implication, jurisdiction was assumed over all of the ceded territory, and area approximating the
future state of Tennessee.” Leaders within the United States began to think this posed a problem for the
new union, writes Farr, because the American Revolution would only live up to its promise if they could
keep the new country together.

Franklin existed as an independent state for about four years, transacting its own treaties with the
Overhill Cherokee whose land it occupied and even considering an alliance with Spain. But in the end,
the leaders of Franklin decided to rejoin North Carolina in 1789. The land Franklin occupied was mostly
the property of the Muskogee and Cherokee, writes Troxler, and as the federal government made new
treaties with the Native Americans, Franklin found that its separate agreements were hard to maintain.
Rather anti-climatically, when Sevier’s term expired in 1788, “the legislature did not meet again,” Troxler
writes. By 1789, Franklin was over and all its lands had rejoined North Carolina.

“Although the State of Franklin rebellion was ultimately unsuccessful, it did contribute to the inclusion
of a clause in the U.S. Constitution regarding the formation of new states,” writes PBS. That clause
stipulates that while new states “may be admitted by the Congress into this Union,” new states can’t be
formed “within the jurisdiction of any other State” or states unless the state legislatures and Congress
both okay the move.

Kat Eschner is a freelance science and culture journalist based in Toronto.

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