In surrendering her western territory, North Carolina showed praiseworthy generosity. But the frontier settlers were too numerous to be handed about from one dominion to another, without saying something about it themselves; and their action complicated the matter, until it was too late for Jefferson's scheme to operate upon them. In June, 1784, North Carolina ceded the region since known as Tennessee, and allowed Congress two years in which to accept the grant. Meanwhile, her own authority was to remain supreme there. But the settlers grumbled and protested. Some of them were sturdy pioneers of the finest type, but along with these there was a lawless population of "white trash," ancestors of the peculiar race of men we find to-day in rural districts of Missouri and Arkansas. They were the refuse of North Carolina, gradually pushed westward by the advance of an orderly civilization. Crime was rife in the settlements, and, in the absence of courts, a rough-and-ready justice was administered by vigilance committees. The Cherokees, moreover, were troublesome neighbours, and people lived in dread of their tomahawks. Petitions had again and again gone up to the legislature, urging the establishment of courts and a militia, but had passed unheeded, and now it seemed that the state had withdrawn her protection entirely. The settlers did not wish to have their country made a national domain. If their own state could not protect them, it was quite clear to them that Congress could not. What was Congress, any way, but a roomful of men whom nobody heeded? So these backwoodsmen held a convention in a log-cabin at Jonesborough, and seceded from North Carolina. They declared that the three counties between the Bald Mountains and the Holston River constituted an independent state, to which they gave the name of Franklin; and they went on to frame a constitution and elect a legislature with two chambers. For governor they chose John Sevier, one of the heroes of King's Mountain, a man of Huguenot ancestry, and such dauntless nature that he was generally known as the "lion of the border." Having done all this, the seceders, in spite of their small respect for Congress, sent a delegate to that body, requesting that the new state of Franklin might be admitted into the Union. Before this business had been completed, North Carolina repealed her act of cession, and warned the backwoodsmen to return to their allegiance. This at once split the new state into two factions: one party wished to keep on as they had now started, the other wished for reunion with North Carolina. In 1786 the one party in each county elected members to represent them in the North Carolina legislature, while the other party elected members of the legislature of Franklin. Everywhere two sets of officers claimed authority, civil dudgeon grew very high, and pistols were freely used. The agitation extended into the neighbouring counties of Virginia, where some discontented people wished