In contrast to this rather
uneventful history, the dealings of Virginia and Pennsylvania with their
respective – and, at times, shared – separatist populations were a fair bit
more turbulent. In what is now the state of Kentucky, for example, while
migration into the territory was initially promoted by Virginia’s colonial
government in defiance of British injunctions against settlement west of the
Appalachians, the inhabitants thereof soon enough made themselves a perpetual
nuisance to authorities in Richmond. Not only, these westerners began to
complain near as soon as the Revolutionary War was concluded, was travelling
from their homes to the state capital a lengthy and potentially hazardous
proposition – covering some five hundred miles across mountains that were
wholly impassable for a significant portion of the year – but the continued
presence of aggressively antagonistic native tribes in the region – the Shawnee
and Cherokee in particular – left the few permanent settlements in a
particularly vulnerable position. Since only the governor could authorize the
use of the state militia, and since the governor continued to reside in distant
Richmond, the inhabitants of Virginia’s three westernmost counties accordingly
concluded that their fate as a community lay either in self-government or
imminent destruction.
Economic necessity
seemed also to point to this same critical choice. When Spain closed the port
city of New Orleans to American commerce in 1784, the ability of Virginia’s
trans-Appalachian farmers to easily export their produce via the Mississippi
River was effectively crippled. While the resulting negotiations between the
United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain ultimately came to nothing –
the Jay-Gardoqui Treaty (1786) was rejected in Congress once it became clear
that the American ambassador had willingly traded away access to the
Mississippi for admission into Spain’s various Caribbean ports – the
precariousness of the Kentucky counties’ prospects were nonetheless made
exceptionally clear. Had the aforementioned treaty been accepted, the inhabitants
of far western Virginia would have been forced to essentially sacrifice their
livelihoods in favor of America’s eastern mercantile interests without ever
having been able to make a public case to the contrary on the same footing as
the other states. As merely a small, distant, and sparsely-populated district
of large, wealthy, and increasingly eastern-looking Virginia, their voices were
easily drowned out by those of the political elites in Richmond. As a separate
state, however, the Kentuckians might at least have been afforded – along with
the ability to direct their own militia and enjoy the benefits of having a
government near at hand – the dignity of being heard by their fellow Americans
with the same degree of consideration afforded to Pennsylvanians, Georgians,
and New Yorkers. Consequent to these and other considerations, nearly a dozen
separate conventions were held in Kentucky between 1784 and 1788 for the
purpose of drafting a constitution and petitioning for admission to the union
of states. Notwithstanding a notable attempt by notorious intriguer Gen. James
Wilkinson (1757-1825) to propose secession from Virginia and alliance with
Spain at one of these gatherings, the Kentuckians proceeded with a degree of
calm determination that ultimately paid off in the form of Virginia’s consent
to statehood in 1788 and the Bluegrass State’s admission to the Union in 1792.
Less fortunate
than the inhabitants of what would eventually become Kentucky – though
similarly implacable – were the residents of a region in the Trans-Appalachian
West on the south bank of the Ohio River between Pittsburgh and the eastern
terminus of the Cumberland. Formal survey efforts, which would likely have
averted the resulting boundary dispute between the colonies of Virginia and
Pennsylvania, had been abandoned in 1767, leading both governments to claim the
right to administer Pittsburgh and environs as either the District of West
Augusta or Westmoreland County, respectively. In spite of the intensity of
interest both colonies seemed to be focusing on the territory in question,
however, the inhabitants thereof were of the shared opinion that neither
government was particularly interested in either hearing or addressing their
concerns. Inspired by the actions then being undertaken across the colonies in
the name of liberty and self-government, the residents of the disputed region
accordingly petitioned the Continental Congress in the summer of 1776 – in the
form of a document entitled, “The Memorial of the Inhabitants of the Country,
West of the Allegheny Mountains” – for formal recognition as an independent
state. The people of this distant territory, it seemed, were of the opinion
that the ongoing dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania would likely result
in an armed conflict between the two, that neither government was doing enough
to control the activities of land speculators, and that the tendency of these
same private agents to sell land belonging to local native tribes was bound to
produce, "A bloody, ruinous & destructive War with the Indians [.]"
They consequently requested of Congress that, “The Said Country be constituted
declared & acknowledged a separate, distinct, and independent Province
& Government by the Title and under the name of — ‘the Province &
Government of Westsylvania’[.]”
In light of how
many states were then embroiled in similar disputes over western land claims –
as well as the power and prestige possessed by Virginia and Pennsylvania – it
should perhaps come as no surprise that this entreaty was not acted upon by the
Continental Congress. And while the subsequent settlement of the
Virginia-Pennsylvania border in 1780 would seem to have laid the issue at hand
conclusively to rest, the self-declared Westsylvanians proved themselves rather
difficult to satisfy. Though war between Virginia and Pennsylvania was now a
decidedly remote possibility, most of the grievances which had animated the
Westsylvania movement remained unaddressed. The region was still quite distant
from either Richmond or Philadelphia, still relied on the authorities
headquartered in those cities for the deployment of the local militia, and was
still exposed to the periodic depredations of the territory’s hostile native
tribes. These complaints were joined in Western Pennsylvania by a sense of
discontentment arising from the seemingly arbitrary assignment of Pittsburgh
and its hinterland to the authority of Philadelphia. Many of the settlers in
that region had migrated from Virginia, doubtless hoped that their homesteads
would eventually be assigned to that state upon a settlement of the boundary
dispute, and were consequently shocked and angered to discover that they had
suddenly – and without being consulted – become citizens of Pennsylvania.
Agitation for Westsylvania statehood accordingly continued into the early
1780s, at which point the combined efforts of various Pennsylvania state
authorities began to erode the movement’s grassroots support. Perhaps the most
notable of these initiatives was adopted at the behest of one Hugh Henry Brackenridge
(1748-1816), a Scottish-born lawyer, Princeton graduate, and early community
activist and publisher in Pittsburgh. Eager to finally and completely secure
his state’s far western frontier, Brackenridge convinced the state assembly to
declare that organizing for the purpose of establishing a separate state was
legally equivalent to treason, thus making support for the creation of Westsylvania
punishable by death. The movement for separation flared out soon afterward,
though the rebellious spirit of Pennsylvania’s western inhabitants would remain
a significant factor in local and national politics into the early 1790s.
While ultimately
no more successful than the movements which gave birth to the states of Maine
and Kentucky, the campaign of frontier activism which at length resulted in the
creation of Tennessee from contemporary North Carolina’s westernmost districts was
a fair bit more complex. The first Anglo-European settlers of the region in
question – to the west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and extending as far as the
Mississippi River – were in fact initially from Virginia and South Carolina,
both colonies having easier access to the region than North Carolina. This did
not in itself necessarily portend the region’s eventual rejection of North
Carolinian authority, however. Rather,
it was a series of events taking place in the early 1770s that seemed to set in
motion the eventual existence of a separate, sovereign state of Tennessee.
First, the conclusion of the so-called “War of the Regulation” in 1771 – a kind
of grassroots class rebellion which pitted cash-strapped planters against
wealthy merchants, lawyers, and colonial officials – led a number of former
dissidents to migrate west of the Blue Ridge into territory whose provenance
was at the time still largely uncertain. This influx of these radical-minded –
though not necessarily rebellious – individuals into the region very probably
contributed to the second major development in the pre-history of Tennessee,
the creation of the self-described Watauga Association in 1772.
Fair warning,
ladies and gentlemen, because this is where things get complicated.
Having crossed the
line established by the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763) as separating the
legitimate claims of the colonies from the territory reserved for the exclusive
use of the Crown’s various indigenous allies, the architects of the Watauga
charter necessarily believed themselves to be beyond the authority of any
government save that of Britain proper. Their settlement was accordingly
facilitated by the signing of a lease directly with the local native peoples,
the creation of a limited form of self-government, and the founding of what is
now Elizabethtown, Tennessee on the banks of the Watauga River. This initial
effort was further bolstered in 1775 when North Carolina judge and land
speculator Richard Henderson (1734-1785) organized the purchase of some twenty
million acres from an assembly of Cherokee at a place called Sycamore Shoals.
Forming essentially a wide strip of land bordered by the Cumberland, Ohio, and
Kentucky rivers and the southern portion of the Cumberland Mountains, the
region in question was roughly half the size of Virginia’s neighboring district
of Kentucky and represented a tremendous potential windfall for Henderson – in
the form of land sales to settlers and other speculators – provided that his
claim could be properly validated. While perhaps initially hoping to accomplish
this end by applying to the Crown for a colonial charter, the evolution of the
Anglo-American crisis over the course of that year doubtless convinced him to
instead make his case to the Continental Congress.
Congress, as it
happened, was as yet not inclined to indulge the ambitions of a solitary land
speculator whose proposition to create an entirely new state in the
Trans-Appalachian West threatened to inflame an existing territorial
disagreement between two of its members. Henderson’s project – submitted under
the name of Transylvania – was accordingly defeated, his land purchase
invalidated by the interested states – i.e. Virginia and North Carolina – and
the fate of the relevant settlers once more thrown into a kind of legal limbo. On
one hand, the inhabitants of the original Watauga lease and the failed
Transylvania purchase continued to successfully govern themselves without the
need for guidance for validation from any higher authority. Upon the outbreak
of the Revolutionary War, for example, the residents thereof took it upon
themselves to re-found their community in 1776 as the self-proclaimed District
of Washington. Despite falling outside the formal authority of any state, this
ad-hoc polity proclaimed its allegiance to the Continental Congress, formed a
Committee of Safety, and began to organize and train a local militia. In spite
of the presence of mind and self-possession which these actions would seem to
demonstrate, however, the settlers of this sparse and distant region also
appeared to harbor a fairly clear understanding of the precariousness of their
situation. Not only did they face the continued threat of attack and
destruction by factions of the Cherokee dissatisfied with their presence, but
the emergence of a state of war between the colonies and Britain proper
introduced the further danger of invasion by Loyalist militias and the Crown’s
various indigenous allies. Petitions were accordingly dispatched from the
District to the governments of Virginia and North Carolina requesting the
formal annexation of the otherwise stateless territory. While Virginia declined
the offer, North Carolina – perhaps acting out of sympathy after the settlers
managed to throw off a Cherokee invasion in July of 1776 – agreed to the proposition.
Effective as of November, 1777, the Washington District thus became Washington
County, NC.
Annexation did not
spell the end of a local habit of autonomy, however. Washington County was
still a great distance from the state capital in New Bern, and events moved too
quickly on the frontier for formal validation to be sought for every decision
local residents made. The Washington County militia, for example, dubbed the
Overmountain Men because their region was “over the mountains” from the
Atlantic colonies, acted in a broadly independent fashion for most of its
existence, partnering with forces from Virginia and South Carolina as often as
those from North Carolina in defense of the former Watauga settlements. The
reputation of this fighting force was at length greatly burnished by its
pivotal participation in the Battle of King’s Mountain in October of 1780, during
which a force of some nine hundred patriot militia defeated a numerically
superior deployment of Southern Loyalists near Blacksburg, South Carolina.
Having mustered six hundred men at arms whilst being harried by British forces,
and having led them to victory alongside smaller detachments from Virginia and
North Carolina, men like Isaac Shelby (1750-1826) and John Sevier (1745-1815) in
particular were heralded as great woodsmen heroes of the western frontier. At
the same time as these erstwhile patriots were advancing the cause of the
American Revolution, of course, they were also demonstrating the
self-sufficiency and determination of the Overmountain communities. When peace
finally arrived upon the signing and ratification of the Treaty of Paris in
1783, it was accordingly to be expected that such a clear display of functional
autonomy would end up fueling renewed calls for formal separation and
statehood. All that was wanting was the proper set of circumstances. As luck
would have it, they arrived within the year.
North Carolina, like most of its
sister-states, emerged from the Revolutionary War deeply in debt. At something
of a loss as to how best to pay off its obligations, the state assembly
consequently agreed in April of 1784 to cede twenty-nine million acres of land
– the whole of the its territory and claims lying between the Appalachian
Mountains and the Mississippi River, including Washington County – to the
Continental Congress in exchange for some portion of its debt being forgiven. As
Congress lacked the means to take immediate possession of the region, however,
it was agreed that up to two years could elapse before a formal transfer of
sovereignty took place. Understandably, this state of affairs did not go over
well in the Overmountain communities. In spite of the invaluable service they
had rendered to the cause of American independence during the recent conflict
with Britain, they were now effectively being abandoned by one government while
another took up to two years to decide how best to make use of them. Not only
did this once more place the defense of the scattered frontier settlements
entirely in the hands of a small – if now quite experienced – local militia,
but it also begged certain uncomfortable questions as to the priorities and
intentions of Congress. If, as outwardly appeared to be the case, the national
government was as desperate as the state governments to pay down its
obligations, what was there to stop the assembled delegates from arranging to
trade the North Carolina cession to Spain or France in return for their
forgiveness of a wartime loan? Once more, it seemed, in spite of having clearly
demonstrated their functional independence, the Wataugans – or Washingtonians,
or Overmountaineers – were being shown that their destinies were not really
theirs to determine.
This conclusion
was arguably affirmed several months later when a new session of the North
Carolina legislature decided to void the donation to Congress and reassert New
Bern’s sovereignty over the Trans-Appalachian communities. Fed up, at long
last, with being alternately traded and ignored, an assembly was called by the
Overmountain settlers in August of 1784 for the purpose of declaring their
separation from North Carolina. Delegates from four counties met in the town of
Jonesborough, elected a legislature, drafted a constitution, and chose John
Sevier as their governor. A delegation was dispatched to Congress the following
spring with a petition in hand for the admission of “Frankland” as the
fourteenth state in the union. In spite of receiving the support of seven of
the existing thirteen states, however – and attempting to garner the support of
one of the most popular and respected men in America by changing the name of
their proposed state to “Franklin” – the petitioners fell short of the
two-thirds majority required by the Articles of Confederation for the accession
of a new state. Nevertheless undaunted, the supporters of the organized but
unrecognized State of Franklin spent the next several years attempting to
consolidate their status as a de-facto independent political entity. A new
capital was declared at Greenville, a second constitution was drafted and
ratified, courts were established, new counties drawn, and a series of treaties
were sealed with the Cherokee which established Franklin’s claim to an extensive
swath of territory stretching ever further to the west than had previously been
the case.
Notwithstanding
this burst of energy, the State of Franklin really never managed to make good
on the promise that the best efforts of its supporters seemed to foretell.
Having faced repeated rejections of its offer to forgive back taxes and potential
charges of treason in exchange for recognition of its authority, the government
of North Carolina proceeded in 1787 to send a detachment of the state militia
across the Appalachians for the purpose of reaffirming its claim to the region.
A loyalist government was thereafter established at Jonesborough in parallel to
that which continued to be operated by the rebellious Franklinites. The
jurisdiction of the North Carolina courts was reestablished, sheriffs were
chosen from among the local residents who recognized New Bern’s mandate, and
proceedings were initiated against the properties of a number of Franklin
officials in an attempt to bring them to heel. One of these men, no less than
the notional Governor himself, John Sevier, responded to the seizure of several
of his slaves by marching on the site of their imprisonment with a force of
over one hundred men during a snowstorm in February of 1788. The arrival of an opposing
force of North Carolina militia resulted in a brief skirmish, during which
several men were wounded and three were killed. Events proceeded from this
point on in a somewhat desultory fashion. Sevier, increasingly at a loss for
manpower and resources and still threatened by the remaining Cherokee who
refused to recognize the treaties between their people and the State of
Franklin, reached out to Spain for a loan and ongoing military assistance.
North Carolina responded to this attempt at foreign intrigue by redoubling its
efforts and having Sevier arrested in August of 1788. While a sympathetic
sheriff agree to set him free before he faced trial, Sevier and the last of his
supporters ultimately turned themselves in to North Carolina authorities – and
acknowledged the authority of the North Carolina government – in February of
1789. Ironically enough, the Tar Heel State again ceded its Trans-Appalachian
territory to Congress in 1790. This in turn led to the creation of the
Southwest Territory, its later accession to the union as Tennessee, and
Sevier’s election as its first governor in 1796.
Now, granting that the history of late 18th
century American state separatism detailed above is a lot to digest all at
once, its relevance to the cited passage of Centinel I is hopefully fairly
clear. Keen to point out the inability of a geographically extensive republic
to adequately address the needs of communities located at significant distances
from the center of power, Samuel Bryan accordingly observed that even within
the nascent American republic, “The inhabitants in a number of larger states
[…] are loudly complaining of the inconveniences and disadvantages they are
subjected to […] and that, to enjoy the comforts of local government, they are
separating into smaller divisions.” As the stories of Maine, Kentucky,
Westsylvania, and Franklin plainly demonstrate, this was very much the case. At
times the results were very civil, and at others they were rather the opposite.
But the principle at work behind all of them was the same. The more distant a
people are from their government, the less likely said government is to be able
to adequately address their concerns, and the less likely those people are to
place their trust in said government. To that end, political power is best
located as close to those it claims to act upon – and to whom the responsibility
for oversight falls – as is physically possible. In the final analysis, this
represents a very pragmatic mode of thought, and very a conservative one by the
political standards of a subsequent age. But it is also distinctly American.
The United States, after all, was not
founded upon the wholesale rejection of authority, but rather of authority
which did not recognize certain basic individual rights. The physical distance
between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain being a primary causal factor of
the Anglo-American crisis, it would thus seem entirely reasonable to conclude
that the revolutionaries believed that access to government was one of these
rights. The aforementioned movements in Maine and in the Trans-Appalachian West
would seem to affirm this characterization. Bryan’s claim, therefore, that
republicanism ceased to function properly over extensive physical distances was
arguably rooted in both European philosophical theory and American experiential
fact. Montesquieu spoke to the principle, in essence, but Bryan’s fellow
citizens could speak to the effect. And yet, in spite of the fact that by 1787
a number of states had yet to conclusively address the complaints – sometimes
rising to the level of demands – being put forward by certain of their more
remote communities, the American people were being asked to put in place a
national government of such power and consolidation that whole states would
likely become remote in turn.
The people of Maine, for instance, were
still struggling with their distance from Boston while the proposed
constitution threatened to remove them yet further from a government of even
greater authority. And while Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina all
continued to grapple with the effects of attempting to assert their authority
across significant physical distances, their citizens were at the same time effectively
being asked to visit this exact species of civil conflict upon whatever
luckless populations found themselves removed from the eventual location of the
newly-empowered federal government. What sense did this make? What manner of
magic could possibly make enlarging an existing problem the solution to that
problem? The nearest answer, put forward by one of the principle architects of
the proposed constitution, was that an adequate division of responsibility,
combined with the moderating influence of scale, would produce the requisite
balance of stability and energy for an extensive American republic to function.
The key, one James Madison (1751-1836) further elaborated in Federalist No. 10,
was successfully striking that balance.
Certainly, the danger existed of creating a
government too distant from the American people to reasonably address their
needs, and too powerful to be adequately controlled if it began to act against
their interests. At the same time, it was also possible that a government which
was too weak or too decentralized would entirely fail to bind the union of
states together, or to restrain the more radical impulses of certain factions
within the states. The solution, No. 10 explained, was therefore essentially to
split the difference. By a process of careful delegation, a situation wherein
local interests became wholly subservient to national priorities could hopefully
be avoided; “The great and aggregate interests being referred to the National,
the local and particular to the State Legislatures.” At the same time, in terms
of that selfsame national interest, the sheer scale of the American republic would
theoretically ensure that elected representatives would have to speak to more
than the narrowest parochial priorities in order to secure election, that
compromise would become the soul of progress, and that any faction hoping to
take control of the mechanisms of federal power would be forced to contend with
a great diversity of views and a great multitude of officers to consider, oust,
or co-opt. “Extend the sphere,” Madison thus explained, “And you take in a
greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a
majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other
citizens [.]” In this way, in defiance of the injunctions of the aforementioned
Montesquieu, the “extended republic” could be made to function, if indeed not
to flourish.
Convincing though Madison most certainly
made this sound, it nevertheless remained a matter of conjecture whether or not
his theory had any basis in fact. No republic, save perhaps the exceptionally
flawed and corrupt model embodied by Rome in years before it became an autocratic
monarchy, had ever existed on the scale which the United States Constitution
was proposing. Whatever case he made, therefore, and whatever concomitant
arguments his cohorts put forward in the ratification conventions in the
states, was strictly on the level of a hypothesis. “This is what I think will
happen,” Madison may as well have said, or perhaps, “This is what I hope will
happen.” Samuel Bryan, by comparison, seemed less inclined to ask his fellow
countrymen to pin their fates upon something as ephemeral as hope. Rather than
ask them to imagine what might happen if certain things came to pass – if the
Constitution was adopted, if its various provisions worked as intended, if the
various moving parts therein acted and reacted as it was predicted they would –
he instead asked them to look around at what was already happening within the
nascent United States. A number of communities were indeed, “Loudly complaining
of the inconveniences and disadvantages they [were] subjected to [,]” and were
either attempting to separate or had unilaterally declared their separation, “Into
smaller divisions.” If this was the case – if this was the plainly observable
truth – then under what circumstances did it make the slightest sense to engage
in an even larger project of consolidation? As Samuel Bryan made clear in the text
of Centinel I, caution was the answer, rather than ambition. The limits of
republicanism were already being tested in the states every day, with results
that ranged from tolerable, to disagreeable, to very nearly calamitous. The
idea of stretching them further still, in the form of a massive, powerful, and
complex national government, accordingly had all the makings of a complete and
utter disaster.
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