5. What had North Carolina gained by the war? 6. How did our people enjoy peace? 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 XXXVII. 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 masses 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 Constitution 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 assemble, but its sessions resulted in little good to America. The government was continually embarrassed 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 noble resolution of ceding the great body of land then belonging to the State west of the Allegheny Mountains. This princely domain, now constituting 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.