ome desultory firing, in which two men were killed
and several wounded. Soon afterward Sevier sent word to Tipton
that on condition his life be spared he would submit to North
Carolina. On this note of tragi-comedy the State of Franklin
appeared quietly to expire. The usually sanguine Sevier, now
thoroughly chastened, sought shelter in the distant settlements--deeply
despondent over the humiliating failure of his plans and
the even more depressing defection of his erstwhile friends and
supporters The revolutionary designs and separatist tendencies
which he still harbored were soon to involve him in a secret
conspiracy to give over the State of Franklin into the protection
of a foreign power.

The fame of Sevier's martial exploits and of his bold stroke for
independence had long since gone abroad, astounding even so
famous an advocate of liberty as Patrick Henry and winning the
sympathy of the Continental Congress. One of the most interested
observers of the progress of affairs in the State of Franklin was
Don Diego de Gardoqui, who had come to America in the spring of
1785, bearing a commission to the American Congress as Spanish
charge d'affaires (Encargados de Negocios) to the United States.
In the course of his negotiations with Jay concerning the right
of navigation of the Mississippi River, which Spain denied to the
Americans, Gardoqui was not long in discovering the violent
resentment of the Western frontiersmen, provoked by Jay's crass
blunder in proposing that the American republic, in return for
reciprocal foreign advantages offered by Spain, should waive for
twenty-five years her right to navigate the Mississippi. The
Cumberland traders had already felt the heavy hand of Spain in
the confiscation of their goods at Natchez; but thus far the
leaders of the Tennessee frontiersmen had prudently restrained
the more turbulent agitators against the Spanish policy, fearing
lest the spirit of retaliation, once aroused, might know no
bounds. Throughout the entire region of the trans-Alleghany, a
feeling of discontent and unrest prevailed--quite as much the
result of dissatisfaction with the central government which
permitted the wholesale restraint of trade, as of resentment
against the domination of Spain.

No sooner had the shrewd and watchful Gardoqui, who was eager to
utilize the separatist sentiment of the western settlements in
the interest of his country, learned of Sevier's armed
insurrection against the au