Franklin was created in 1784 from part of the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains that had been offered by North Carolina as a cession to Congress to help pay off debts related to the American War for Independence.

If Franklin had become a state, its boundaries would have included the 12 modern Tennessee counties of Johnson, Carter, Sullivan, Washington, Greene, Hawkins, Unicoi, Cocke, Hamblen, Jefferson, Sevier, and Blount.

[citation needed] Campbell's proposed state would have included southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and parts of Kentucky, Georgia, and Alabama.

In April 1784, the state of North Carolina voted "to give Congress the 29,000,000 acres (45,000 sq mi; 120,000 km2)[b] lying between the Allegheny Mountains" (as the entire Appalachian range was then called) "and the Mississippi River" to help offset its war debts.

These developments were not welcomed by the frontiersmen, who had pushed even further westward, gaining a foothold on the western Cumberland River at Fort Nashborough (now Nashville), or the Overmountain Men, many of whom had settled in the area during the days of the old Watauga Republic.

[4][page needed] Inhabitants of the region feared that the cash-starved federal Congress might even be desperate enough to sell the frontier territory to a competing foreign power (such as France or Spain).

Realizing the land could not at that time be used for its intended purpose of paying the debts of Congress and weighing the perceived economic loss of potential real estate opportunities, it rescinded the offer of cession and reasserted its claim to the remote western district.

The North Carolina lawmakers ordered judges to hold court in the western counties and arranged to enroll a brigade of soldiers for defense, appointing John Sevier to form it.

[2] Rapidly increasing dissatisfaction with North Carolina's governance led to the frontiersmen's calls to establish a separate, secure, and independent state.

The following month, the Franklin government convened to address their options and to replace the vacancy at speaker of the House, to which position they elected Joseph Hardin.

I will endeavor to inform myself more perfectly of your affairs by inquiry and searching the records of Congress and if anything should occur to me that I think may be useful to you, you shall hear from me thereupon.Franklin, still at odds with North Carolina over taxation, protection, and other issues, began operating as a de facto independent republic after the failed statehood attempt.

[7] Barter became the economic system de jure, with anything in common use among the people allowed in payment to settle debts, including corn, cotton, tobacco, apple brandy, and skins.

All citizens were granted a two-year reprieve on paying taxes, but the lack of hard currency and economic infrastructure slowed development and often created confusion.

The Cherokee claim to sovereignty over much of the area of southern Franklin, though already occupied by Whites, was maintained at the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell with the federal government.

Coyatee re-affirmed the 1785 Treaty of Dumplin Creek, which the republic had secured from the Cherokee, and which Dragging Canoe's Chickamauga faction had refused to recognize.

The new treaty extended the area for White settlement as far south as the Little Tennessee River, along which the main Overhill Cherokee towns were located.

[9] The Cherokee did not formally relinquish their claim to this territory to the U.S. until the July 1791 Treaty of Holston[10] and even then, hostilities continued in the area for years afterward.

When this offer was popularly rejected in 1787, North Carolina moved in with troops under the leadership of Col. John Tipton[c] and re-established its own courts, jails, and government at Jonesborough.

In 1787, the "Franklinites" continued to expand their territory westward toward the Cumberland Mountains by forcibly stealing land from the Native American populations.

During a heavy snowstorm in the early morning of February 29, Colonel George Maxwell arrived with a force equivalent to Sevier's to reinforce Tipton.

Both North Carolina and the federal (Confederation) government supported the Cherokee claims as set forth in the Treaty of Hopewell, and considered settlers in the area "squatters".

In 1789, these articles were adopted at Newell's Station, which served as the seat of government for the wider area of Lesser Franklin, including all the settled country south of the French Broad.

[9] The Lesser Franklin government finally ended in 1791, when Governor William Blount, of the newly formed Southwest Territory, met the Cherokee chieftains on the site of the future Knoxville, and they made the Treaty of Holston.