“Failing to obtain recognition from North Carolina and an admission of the independence of the state of Franklin, Sevier laid the matter before Congress. Here he failed. He turned to Georgia, and was told by that state that Franklin and the old state of North Carolina must settle their own affairs themselves. Day by day the Franklin party became weaker, and on the expiration of Sevier’s term as governor no election was held, and the state of Franklin therefore ceased to exist. Indeed it is a matter of surprise that it survived four years of such constant and irritating opposition. The explanation, lies in the fact that no other man in Tennessee before or since has had so firm a hold upon the popular heart as did John Sevier. In one instance at least the fickle multitude was constant. “Soon after Franklin’s downfall, Sevier was arrested by North Carolina officers on the charge of treason, the warrant having been granted by Judge Spencer of the old state, and he was taken over the mountains for trial at Morganton. There he was at once surrounded by many of his old King’s Mountain comrades, and after a short sojourn returned home without trial and without interference. He was soon elected to the North Carolina senate, where he took his seat, that section of the legislature restoring to him all his old-time privileges. Almost immediately thereafter he was elected to Congress (in 1789) from the ‘Washington District of North Carolina,’ thus becoming the first member of that body from the valley of the Mississippi.” All this turmoil as to the bestowal of governmental allegiance was going forward at the same time that the settlers of Kentucky were raising their corn under rifle guard, and constantly fighting back the savage population that hemmed them in. They too were clamoring for national support, or individual independence. Meantime, too, the intrigues of Wilkinson in the Mississippi valley were continuing, and the men of the Free State of Franklin even looked southward for an alliance with the nation holding control of the mouth of the great Mississippi highway. The formation of the new state was a blow not so much at the government at Washington as at the mother state of North Carolina; and the latter was at first willing enough to have the separation take place, for she was tired of paying war debts for fighting the Indians on her far-off frontier. The times being so far out of joint, we can scarcely wonder that the hardy Indian fighters under Sevier at one time (September twelfth, 1788) sent word to the Spanish minister Gardoquoi that they wished to put themselves under the protection of Spain—a thing to-day difficult to believe of any part of the American population, yet not wholly irrational for those times and conditions. Nor is this all of the story of these little splits and schisms and secessions, which for a time took place on the Western slope of the Alleghanies.