CHAPTER IV.
THE STATE OF FRANKLIN, 1784-1788.
The separatist spirit was strong throughout the West.

Different causes, such as the unchecked ravages of the Indians, or the refusal of the right to navigate the Mississippi, produced or accentuated different manifestations; but the feeling itself was latent everywhere.

Its most striking manifestation occurred not in Kentucky, but in what is now the State of Tennessee; and was aimed not at the United States, but at the parent State of North Carolina.
In Kentucky the old frontiersmen were losing their grip on the governmental machinery of the district.

The great flood of immigration tended to swamp the pioneers; and the leading parts in the struggle for statehood were played by men who had come to the country about the close of the Revolutionary War, and who were often related by ties of kinship to the leaders of the Virginia legislatures and conventions.
The Frontiersmen of the Upper Tennessee.
On the waters of the upper Tennessee matters were entirely different.
Immigration had been slower, and the people who did come in were usually of the type of those who had first built their stockaded hamlets on the banks of the Watauga.

The leaders of the early pioneers were still the leaders of the community, in legislation as in warfare.