Long Hunt (9781101559208) by Cameron Judd Read Free Book Online Page B

leave me be on the matter.”
    Cable reached the gate and came through. With effort, Fain slapped a smile on his face and descended the ladder to greet him. Potts followed, and was introduced to the newcomer. They found a shady spot in a corner of the stockade, under a post oak, and sat on the ground.
    It did not take long for the conversation to be led by Cable into a discussion of the governmental issues of the day. Potts listened without saying much. Fain pretended to be interested and Cable droned on like an undying mountain wind, never tiring of his subject.
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    Uninteresting as it might have been to Fain, the governance situation Cable loved to talk about was unusual indeed, and left many of the settlers in the so-called backcountry wilderness honestly unsure as to what government they owed allegiance.
    At the close of the Revolutionary War, the region of North Carolina was vast, extending all the way from the Atlantic coast to the waterway the Algonquin called the “Great River,” or in their language, the “Misi-ziibi.”
    Just west of the Unaka Mountains, along rivers with names such as Holston, Nolichucky, Watauga, and Clinch, were settlements populated by thousands. Beyond was a long stretch of wilderness, reaching to the Cumberland River and its Nashborough settlement, and other neighboring settlements. The Cumberland River settlements were particularly vulnerable to attacks from Indians who did not welcome the intrusion into what had been before rich hunting ground for the Cherokee and other natives, and for long hunters such as Casper Mansker, Alphus Colter, John Rains, Joseph Drake, and Crawford Fain.
    As part of North Carolina, the backcountry people believed themselves due protection from their mother state—but therein lay a problem. Distance and the mountain barrier made it impractical for North Carolina to respond to troubles in the outlying settlements or offer them significant protection, so the settlers were for the most part left on their own.
    The situation was diplomatically clumsy for North Carolina. At the close of the Revolutionary War a solution, or an attempt at a solution, was finally contrived. North Carolina opened its western lands to purchase and settlement, then made a gift of those lands to the government of the United States, effectively washing its hands of the responsibility to protect the far-flung settlements. But before it made the move, it first went through some legislative maneuvers that allowed Carolina leaders the chance to claim ownership for themselves of great tracts of backcountry lands. The move came to be known as the “Land Grab Act.” And in ceding the land to the federal government, the land grabbers set as one term of the cession that their North Carolina land grants would continue to be honored.
    Cut off by their mother state and with little ground to believe the federals would do any better protecting them than had the Carolinian government, the resentful backcountry leaders came up with their own idea: an independent, separate state, one that they hoped would be approved and taken in by the Continental Congress. They named their proposed new state Frankland, meaning “land of the free,” though they eventually got around to changing the name to Franklin, in honor of America’s most popular statesman.
    The affair took another twist when North Carolina changed its mind and rescinded its cession of lands to federal control. The settlers who had begun the process of state-making now were under a strange double banner, their allegiance being asked by both North Carolina and the fledgling entity of Franklin. There were, at some times and places, two simultaneously acting sets of government leaders, one with Franklinian authority, the other acting for North Carolina.
    Efforts to have Franklin recognized by the Continental Congress failed, the vote falling short of what was required by the Articles of Confederation. Those