To be held as
colonists by the States to the eastward of the mountains was contrary
to that spirit of inherited freedom which had already made those States
out of colonies. Just at the dawn of the Revolution the colonisation
of the far-famed "blue grass" region of Kentucky had begun, when Daniel
Boone led the Transylvania Company from North Carolina to found
Boonesboro. Although the independent government which this company
erected was suppressed by the governors of Virginia and North Carolina,
the movement could not be stayed. A few years later, these Kentuckians,
increased in numbers by the enormous migration thither, were holding
secession conventions which Virginia thought wise not to resist. North
Carolina repressed with some effort the independent State of Franklin,
or "Frankland," the land of the free Franks, as it was first called,
which John Sevier and other hardy spirits set up in what is now eastern
Tennessee.
While these attempts to create independent States in the remote regions
are now praised as evidences of the organising instinct of the American
people, it must not be forgotten that at the time they were formed
within the legitimate bounds of regular States and seriously threatened
to impair their domains.
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