of the Spaniards. But the antipathy of the backwoodsmen to the
Spaniards was too deep-rooted for them ever to effect a real
combination. Ultimately the good sense and patriotism of the Westerners
triumphed; and the American people continued to move forward with
unbroken front towards their mighty future.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STATE OF FRANKLIN, 1784-1788.

The separatist spirit was strong throughout the West. Different causes,
such as the unchecked ravages of the Indians, or the refusal of the
right to navigate the Mississippi, produced or accentuated different
manifestations; but the feeling itself was latent everywhere. Its most
striking manifestation occurred not in Kentucky, but in what is now the
State of Tennessee; and was aimed not at the United States, but at the
parent State of North Carolina.

In Kentucky the old frontiersmen were losing their grip on the
governmental machinery of the district. The great flood of immigration
tended to swamp the pioneers; and the leading parts in the struggle for
statehood were played by men who had come to the country about the close
of the Revolutionary War, and who were often related by ties of kinship
to the leaders of the Virginia legislatures and conventions.

The Frontiersmen of the Upper Tennessee.

On the waters of the upper Tennessee matters were entirely different.
Immigration had been slower, and the people who did come in were usually
of the type of those who had first built their stockaded hamlets on the
banks of the Watauga. The leaders of the early pioneers were still
the leaders of the community, in legislation as in warfare. Moreover
North Carolina was a much weaker and more turbulent State than Virginia,
so that a separatist movement ran less risk of interference. Chains of
forest-clad mountains severed the State proper from its western
outposts. Many of the pioneer leaders were from Virginia--backwoodsmen
who had drifted south along the trough-like valleys. These of course
felt little loyalty to North Carolina. The others, who were North
Carolinians by birth, had cast in their lot, for good or for evil, with
the frontier communities, and were inclined to side with them in any
contest with the parent State.

North Carolina Indifferent to Her Western Settlements.

North Carolina herself was at first quite as anxious to get rid of the
frontiersmen as they were to go. Not only was the central authority much
weaker than in Virginia, but the peo