CHAPTER VIII.
THE SOUTHWEST TERRITORY, 1788-1790.
Uneasiness in the southwest During the years 1788 and 1789 there was much disquiet and restlessness throughout the southwestern territory, the land lying between Kentucky and the southern Indians.

The disturbances caused by the erection of the state of Franklin were subsiding, the authority of North Carolina was re-established over the whole territory, and by degrees a more assured and healthy feeling began to prevail among the settlers; but as yet their future was by no means certain, nor was their lot irrevocably cast in with that of their fellows in the other portions of the Union.
As already said, the sense of national unity among the frontiersmen was small.

The men of the Cumberland in writing to the Creeks spoke of the Franklin people as if they belonged to an entirely distinct nation, and as if a war with or by one community concerned in no way the other [Footnote: Robertson MSS.

Robertson to McGillivray, Nashville, 1788.
"Those aggressors live in a different state and are governed by different laws, consequently we are not culpable for their misconduct."]; while the leaders of Franklin were carrying on with the Spaniards negotiations quite incompatible with the continued sovereignty of the United States.

Indeed it was some time before the southwestern people realized that after the Constitution went into effect they had no authority to negotiate commercial treaties on their own account.