at, as
far as words go at any rate, the founders of Tennessee were willing
to negotiate with Spain. In a letter dated September 12, 1788, Sevier
offered himself and his tottering State of Franklin to the Spanish King.
This offer may have been made to gain a respite, or it may have been
genuine. The situation in the Tennessee settlements was truly desperate,
for neither North Carolina nor Congress apparently cared in the least
what befell them or how soon. North Carolina indeed was in an anomalous
position, as she had not yet ratified the Federal Constitution. If
Franklin went out of existence and the territory which it included
became again part of North Carolina, Sevier knew that a large part of
the newly settled country would, under North Carolina's treaties, revert
to the Indians. That meant ruin to large numbers of those who had put
their faith in his star, or else it meant renewed conflict either with
the Indians or with the parent State. The probabilities aria that Sevier
hoped to play the Spaniards against the Easterners who, even while
denying the Westerners' contention that the mountains were a "natural"
barrier between them, were making of them a barrier of indifference.
It would seem so, because, although this was the very aim of all Miro's
activities so that, had he been assured of the sincerity of the offer,
he must have grasped at it, yet nothing definite was done. And Sevier
was presently informing Shelby, now in Kentucky, that there was a
Spanish plot afoot to seize the western country.

Miro had other agents besides McGillivray--who, by the way, was costing
Spain, for his own services and those of four tribes aggregating over
six thousand warriors, a sum of fifty-five thousand dollars a year.
McGillivray did very well as superintendent of massacres; but the
Spaniard required a different type of man, an American who enjoyed his
country's trust, to bring the larger plan to fruition. Miro found that
man in General James Wilkinson, lately of the Continental Army and now a
resident of Kentucky, which territory Wilkinson undertook to deliver
to Spain, for a price. In 1787 Wilkinson secretly took the oath of
allegiance to Spain and is listed in the files of the Spanish secret
service, appropriately, as "Number Thirteen." He was indeed the
thirteenth at table, the Judas at the feast. Somewhat under middle
height, Wilkinson was handsome, graceful, and remarkably magnetic. Of a
good, if rather impoverished, Maryl