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On Aug. 23, 1784, factions in western North Carolina declared themselves a separate state called Franklin. Franklin’s organizers adopted North Carolina’s constitution, with a few changes, and set up their own legislature. The new legislature “made treaties with the Indians, opened courts, organized new counties, and fixed taxes and officers salaries to be paid in money, corn, tobacco, whiskey, skins … and everything in common use among the people,” wrote John Preston Arthur in his 1914 book “Western North Carolina: A History from 1730 to 1913.”
While founders worked to make Franklin a success, they were undermined the North Carolina legislature. Made up mostly of land speculators, it sought to regain control of the western half of the state. They pursued a policy of encouraging dissension in the west through conciliatory overtures to the Franklinites, while simultaneously condemning the movement,
Never accepted into the United States, Franklin lasted only four years. The new state struggled for four years, but its dissolution came rather quickly. Former statehood advocate John Sevier had emerged as governor of the new state, while John Tipton led an anti-Franklin faction in Washington County, and their rivalry escalated into a violent feud.