Deconstructing the Lost State of Franklin, 1784-2005
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“Upon the Shoulders of Giants:” Deconstructing the Lost State of Franklin, 1784-2005 Kevin T. Barksdale Dissertation submitted to the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Ronald L. Lewis, Ph.D., Chair Ken Fones-Wolf, Ph.D. Mary Lou Lustig, Ph.D. Michal McMahon, Ph.D. William L. Anderson, Ph.D. Department of History Morgantown, West Virginia 2005 Keywords: statehood, separatism, Cherokee, Creek, Spanish Intrigue, Tennessee Valley, East Tennessee, Washington, Greene, Sullivan, frontier, economy, North Carolina Copyright© 2005 Kevin T. Barksdale ABSTRACT “UPON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS:” DECONSTRUCTING THE LOST STATE OF FRANKLIN, 1784-2005 KEVIN T. BARKSDALE In 1784, the residents of the upper east Tennessee Valley declared themselves independent from their parent state of North Carolina. The political and economic leadership of the newly formed state of Franklin utilized the ideology, symbolism, and rhetoric of the American Revolution to garner local, regional and national support for the movement. After the state’s collapse in 1788, the state of Franklin continued to attract supporters and admirers, who considered the movement to be a noble extension of the revolution. Over the last two hundred years, historians, politicians, abolitionists, and business leaders have recast the legacy and meaning of the state of Franklin. I argue that the state of Franklin and its leadership were less than noble. East Tennessee’s land speculators and local economic elite led the effort to create America’s fourteenth state in order to protect and expand their landed wealth and political hegemony. During Franklin’s brief four-year existence, the state’s leadership engaged in dubious Cherokee land negotiations and pursued a policy of total Indian annihilation. Eventually, internal factionalism both within the statehood movement and the communities of the Tennessee Valley and North Carolina’s highly effective “divide and conquer” diplomatic strategy led to the dissolution of Franklin. Despite Franklin’s demise, its legacy, both real and mythologized, persisted. This dissertation examines specific examples of how individuals and groups have constructed and reshaped the history and meaning of Franklin to serve their specific agendas. These efforts include: Ezekiel Birdseye’s “Free State of Frankland” abolitionist effort, Andrew Johnson’s use of Franklin during the 1860 secession debate, the historical interpretations of Franklin historians, and finally, Franklin’s use in the twentieth century economic development of East Tennessee. For Kelli. iii Acknowledgments This project could not have been completed without the support of several important individuals. First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Ron Lewis and Dr. Ken Fones- Wolf for their encouragement and guidance during my time at West Virginia University and during the crafting of this manuscript. Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Mary Lou Lustig, Dr. Michal McMahon, and Dr. William Anderson for their constructive criticisms. I am also indebted to Ned Irwin for his invaluable state of Franklin bibliography and for his kind words at the start of this long intellectual journey. This project would not have been possible without the assistance of the staffs of the Archives of Appalachia (East Tennessee State University), the West Virginia Collection (West Virginia University), the University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, Western Carolina University Special Collections, the North Carolina State Archives, and the Pittsylvania County (Virginia) Library. I would also like to acknowledge the Barksdale, Howell, McFerrin, and Tjovaras families for their love and support. Finally, I would like to thank my editor, partner, and better half Kelli D. Cadden. This manuscript is a product of your love, trust, and patience and I am eternally grateful. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements.………………………………………………………………………iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………….v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Part One: Franklin Chapter 1. Land of the Franks: The Frontier Economy of Upper East Tennessee………..4 Chapter 2. Acts of Designing Men: Community, Conflict, and Control………………..31 Chapter 3. “Agreeable to a Republican Government”…………………………………..54 Chapter 4. “Strange Spectacle of Two Empires”………………………………………..83 Chapter 5. “Whare [sic] the Fire of Peace is Always Kept Burning:” Land, Diplomacy, and the Tragedy of the Tennessee Valley’s Principal People………………113 Chapter 6. “Death in all its Various and frightful shapes”……………………………..153 Chapter 7. Vassals del Rey de España………………………………………………….194 Part Two: Frankland Chapter 8. “Rocked to Death in the Cradle of Secession:” The Antebellum Evolution of Franklin, 1783-1865………………………………………………………...222 Chapter 9. “Footstool of Liberty’s Throne:” Hero-making versus Historiography, 1865- 2005…………………………………………………………………………247 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………...275 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………277 Appendices……………………………………………………………………………...295 v 1 Introduction In the winter of 1784 the political and economic leadership of the Tennessee Valley defiantly declared their independence from the state of North Carolina and formed the state of Franklin. Determined Franklinites actively lobbied the North Carolina state legislature and the federal government to support Franklin’s admission into the union as America’s newest state, but these efforts failed disastrously. Over Franklin’s four year struggle to achieve political stability and acceptance, the embattled Franklinites managed to construct a backcountry bureaucracy which included a state legislature and judicial system. The Franks also engaged in a highly contentious expansionist program that brought them into direct conflict with their parent state, the federal government, and the region’s Native Americans. The resulting Indian wars left hundreds dead and the Tennessee Valley communities reeling from the devastation of frontier warfare. After the state’s violent collapse in 1788, descendents of the Franklinites recast the historical legacy and meaning of East Tennessee separatism. Over the last two hundred years, local historians, romance novelists, politicians, and regional business leaders have defended the image of Franklin as a noble extension of the American Revolution and the Franklinites as patriotic adherents to the principles of self determination. The goal of this study is to reexamine the history of the state of Franklin and to trace the origins and development of the mythology surrounding the movement to fashion America’s fourteenth state out of North Carolina’s Trans-Allegheny frontier. Scholars of the history of the early American Republic have undoubtedly encountered numerous references to the state of Franklin. The statehood movement is often paired with other expressions of post-revolutionary frontier and agrarian radicalism, such as 2 Massachusetts’ Shay’s Rebellion or western Pennsylvania’s Whiskey Rebellion. The consequence of these problematic comparisons is to create an unrealistic portrait of three very different events. Unlike Shay’s Rebellion or the Whiskey Rebellion, the Franklin separatist movement was rooted in the desires of an economic ruling class to cement their political power and expand their landed wealth. The radical anti-federalism of the Whiskey Rebellion and the struggle for economic independence underlying Shay’s Rebellion are present in the Franklin movement, but flow from very different ideological springs and sought to achieve strikingly divergent objectives. The Franklinite’s attacks on federalism and their demands for political sovereignty stemmed from neither economic marginalization nor political despotism. The instigators of the Franklin independence movement sought to shed the control of North Carolina and the federal government over the Tennessee Valley to defend and expand their already considerable regional hegemony. Franklin was not the radical manifestation of America’s own independence movement, but rather an elaborate scheme to control the economic and political destiny of North Carolina’s western frontier. This study lifts the historical veil from the Franklin statehood movement to reveal the economic motivations and heated regional partisanship which characterized America’s first post-revolutionary statehood movement. The study begins by depicting the political and economic climate which gave birth to the spirit of separatism in eastern Tennessee. The first chapters reveal the existence of a highly speculative land economy dominated by an ethnically and culturally diverse faction of frontier capitalists. The study then chronicles the turbulent four-year history of the state, from the political defeat of a remarkably egalitarian state constitution to the state’s violent collapse at the Battle of 3 Franklin. It examines the bitter internal factionalism, destructive Indian policies, and failed diplomatic efforts (including an aborted alliance with the nation of Spain), which ultimately doomed the state. Finally, the study reexamines the social reconstruction of the state of Franklin, tracing its reinterpretation as a failed statehood movement to the heroic offspring of the American Revolution which it now symbolizes in the collective memory of East Tennesseans. 4 Chapter One Land of the Franks: The Frontier Economy of Upper East Tennessee The state of Franklin began with a journey by a forty-eight