In this letter he insisted that he was doing all he could to restrain the people from encroaching on the Indian lands, though he admitted he found the task difficult.

He assured Henry that he would on no account encourage the southwestern Virginians to join the new state, as some of them had proposed; and he added, what he evidently felt to be a needed explanation, "we hope to convince every one that we are not a banditti, but a people who mean to do right, as far as our knowledge will lead us." [Footnote: Va.

State Papers, IV., 42, Sevier to Henry, July 19, 1785.] Correspondence with Benjamin Franklin.
At the outset of its stormy career the new state had been named Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin; but a large minority had wished to call it Frankland instead, and outsiders knew it as often by one title as the other.

Benjamin Franklin himself did not know that it was named after him until it had been in existence eighteen months.
[Footnote: State Dept.MSS., Franklin Papers, Miscellaneous, vol.vii., Benj.

Franklin to William Cocke, Philadelphia, Aug.