The treaty at Hopewell on November 28, 1785, marks the end of an era--the Spartan yet hopeless resistance of the intrepid red men to the relentless and frequently unwarranted expropriation by the whites of the ancient and immemorial domain of the savage.
The skill in self-government of the isolated people beyond the mountains, and the ability they had already demonstrated in the organization of "associations," received a strong stimulus on June 2, 1784, when the legislature of North Carolina ceded to the Congress of the United States the title which that state possessed to the land west of the Alleghanies.

Among the terms of the Cession Act were these conditions: that the ceded territory should be formed into a separate state or states; and that if Congress should not accept the lands thus ceded and give due notice within two years, the act should be of no force and the lands should revert to North Carolina.

No sooner did this news reach the Western settlers than they began to mature plans for the organization of a government during the intervening twelve months.

Their exposed condition on the frontiers, still harassed by the Indians, and North Carolina's delay in sending goods promised the Indians by a former treaty, both promoted Indian hostility; and these facts, combined with their remote location beyond the mountains, rendering them almost inaccessible to communication with North Carolina--all rendered the decision of the settlers almost inevitable.

Moreover, the allurements of high office and the dazzling dreams of ambition were additional motives sufficiently human in themselves to give driving power to the movement toward independence.
At a convention assembled at Jonesborough on August 23, 1784, delegates from the counties of Washington, Sullivan, and Greene characteristically decided to organize an "Association." They solemnly declared by resolution: "We have a just and undeniable right to petition to Congress to accept the session made by North Carolina, and for that body to countenance us for forming ourselves into a separate government, and to frame either a permanent or temporary constitution, agreeably to a resolve of Congress...." Meanwhile, Governor Martin, largely as the result of the prudent advice of North Carolina's representative in Congress, Dr.Hugh Williamson, was brought to the conclusion that North Carolina, in the passage of the cession act, had acted precipitately.