e I conclude, it may be necessary to
remind you that there will be no more favorable occasion than the
present one to put this plan into execution. North Carolina has
rejected the Constitution and moreover it seems to me that a
considerable time will elapse before she becomes a member of the
Union, if that event ever happens."

Through Miro, Gardoqui was simultaneously conducting a similar
correspondence with General James Wilkinson. The object of the
Spanish conspiracy, matured as the result of this correspondence,
was to seduce Kentucky from her allegiance to the United States.
Despite the superficial similarity between the situation of
Franklin and Kentucky, it would be doing Sevier and his adherents
a capital injustice to place them in the category of the corrupt
Wilkinson and the malodorous Sebastian. Moreover, the
secessionists of Franklin, as indicated in the above letter, had
the excuse of being left virtually without a country. On the
preceding August 1st, North Carolina had rejected the
Constitution of the United States; and the leaders of Franklin,
who were sorely aggrieved by what they regarded as her
indifference and neglect, now felt themselves more than ever out
of the Union and wholly repudiated by the mother state. Again,
Sevier had the embittered feeling resultant from outlawry.
Because of his course in opposing the laws and government of
North Carolina and in the killing of several good citizens,
including the sheriff of Washington County, by his forces at
Sinking Creek, Sevier, through the action of Governor Johnston of
North Carolina, had been attainted of high treason. Under the
heavy burden of this grave charge, he felt his hold upon Franklin
relax. Further, an atrocity committed in the recent campaign
under Sevier's leadership--Kirk's brutal murder of Corn Tassel, a
noble old Indian, and other chieftains, while under the
protection of a flag of truce--had placed a bar sinister across
the fair fame of this stalwart of the border. Utter desperation
thus prompted Sevier's acceptance of Gardoqui's offer of the
protection of Spain.

John Sevier's son, James, bore the letter of September 12th to
Gardoqui. By a strangely ironic coincidence, on the very day
(October 10, 1788) that Gardoqui wrote to Miro, recommending to
the attention of Spain Dr. White and James Sevier, the emissaries
of Franklin, with their plans and proposals, John Sevier was
arrested by Colonel Tipton at the Widow Brown's in Wash