Seven decades of the Union. The humanities and materialism

Front matter

Gass,/: ^^oj Book_it/£/_

SEVEN DECADES

OF

Dedication

To the rector, board of visitors, faculty, alumni, and students of the College of William and Mary, I dedicate this memoir of her late rector and chancellor, John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States of America ; prepared for the archives of his Alma Mater, in obedience to her resolves and orders, at intervals snatched from professional business, and from household hinderances and cares, since the meeting of the rector, board, and faculty in the year 1868.

It has been to me a task of tears, dashed with some sacred joy, — a tale of sadness cheered and lightened by some exultant songs of triumphant remmisceuce.

Mr, Tyler's life ran through seven decades, from 1790 to 1862 ; it is full of the themes of many and mighty events and thoughts; it has a divine moral in its teachings, and lessons for the deepest study of mankind.

Chapter I. The First Decade, From 1790 To 1801

' PAOB

The American Revolution^The Effect of the Reformation — The First Administration under the Constitution of the United States, during which Mr. Tyler was born — The Second Administration, and its Revolution of Parties in 1801 — Mr. Tyler's Lineage, and the Peninsula on which he was born and raised 11

Chapter II, The Second Decade, From 1800 To 1810

The Aggressions of England and France upon Neutrals, and the Rejection of the American Mission by France — Commencement of the American Navy — The Effect of the Alien and Sedition Laws, causing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 — The Presidential Election in 1800, overthrowing the Federal Party, and dividing the Democratic by the Contest of Burr for the First Place on the Ticket — Peace with the First Consul, and the Acquisition of Louisiana — Disunion Sentiments in the North in 1803, on account of the Treaty with France — The Lewis and Clarke Expedition — The Orders in Council, and the Imperial Decrees — The Attack of the Leopard on the Chesapeake — The Embargo Act — Preparatiops for War — The War turned over to the Madison Term — What Mr. Jefferson did for Science 36

CHAPTER IIL

THE THIRD DECADE, FROM 1810 TO 1820.

Tecumseh and Tippecanoe — War with Great Britain ; how the Declaration of it was got at, and Mr. Tyler's part in the War — The Attempt upon Canada — General Scott, another War-made Man — The Navy on the Ocean and the Lakes — Blue-Lights — Cockburn at Hampton — General Taylor, another War-made Man — General Jackson — The Course of Connecticut and Massachusetts during the War — The Hartford Convention vi CONTENTS.

PAOB

called by Massachusetts in thg midst of the War — Peace saved the United States — After Peace, Imposts for Protection — National Bank in 1817 — The Colonization Society and the Republic of Liberia — The First Term of Mr. Monroe — His Couciliation of Federalism — His Cabinet — J. Q. Adams — W. H. Crawford — John C. Calhoun — Internal Improvements — The Erie Canal by New York — The Seminole War — St. Mark's — Pensacola and Fort Barrancas — Cession of Florida — Admission of Missouri — Ocean Steam Navigation, July 20, 1819 62

Chapter IV. The Fourth Decade, From 1820 To 1830

The Second Term of Mr. Monroe — The Debate on the Execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister — The Presidential Election in 1824 — General Jackson. 72

Chapter V. The Fourth Decade, From 1820 To 1830

" The Monroe Doctrine" — Northwestern Coast of America — The Tariff of 1828 — The Election of General Jackson — An Episode and Anecdote . 90

Chapter VI

Debates from 1831 to 1832— The Tariff of 1828 for Protection— The Compromise — Mr. Clay the Great Pacificator — South Carolina Ordinances and Force Bill — Mr. Tyler the real and only Peace-Maker — The Presidential Election of 1832 — Democracy divided — Mr. Van Buren the Favorite — The Names of Factions — Mr. Tyler's Error of siding with Nullification — Difference between it and the Virginia Doctrines of Mr. Madison — The Conservative Purpose and End of a Convention of the States for Cages of Last Resort 119

Chapter VII

Bill to modify and continue the Bank of the United States — Mr. Tyler's Consistency — Mr. Tyler's Re-election to the Senate, to serve from the Fourth of March, 1833 — His Suggestions how to compose the Strife of Nullification — The Removal of the Public Deposits from the Bank of the United States — Censure of President Jackson by the Senate — The President's Protest — Expunction — Mr. Benton's Notice — Mr. Tyler's Report on the Bank and Debate with Benton — His Presidency of the Senate — "Three Millions Bill" — Action of Virginia Legislature on Expunction — Mr. B. AV. Leigh — Mr. Tyler's Resignation of his Seat in the Senate, and Letter — Mr. Rives elected to fill the Vacancy — Mr. Leigh on the Verb "to Keep" — Scene of £.\punction — Election of Mr. Van

CONTENTS vii

PAQE

Buren — Annexation of Texas — The Threat by General Jackson against France — Wharton, Archer, Samuel Houston — How Annexation by Arms was disappointed — The Boundary with Mexico — Jackson and Adams — The Sacrilege of D — ning Grotius, Puffendorf, and Vattel — General Jackson's Unpardonable Sin in the Eyes of Mr. Adams .... 134

Chapter VIII

Intrigues to make Mr. Van Buren the Favorite for the Succession — Judge White — The Effect of the Ambition of the President to elect his Successor — The Election in 1836 — The Union of all Factions in Opposition, forming the Whig Party — The Election of Mr. Rives to the Senate of the United States in the Session of the General Assembly of Virginia of 1838-39— Treachery to Mr. Tyler made him Vice-President— Mr. Webster's Opposition to the Nomination of Mr. Clay — The Triangular Correspondence — Judge White's Warning and Prophecy — Mr. Clay's Pledges and Committals on Practical Points — Judge AVhite inatructed out of the Senate by Locofocoism in the Tennessee Legislature — Scenes with Mr. Clay in 1840 — His Habits up to 1844 — His AVar with Webster, resulting in the Election of Harrison and Tyler — The total Dismemberment of the Whig Party before Harrison's Inauguration 153

Chapter IX. The Sixth Decade, From 1840 To 1850

Campaign of 1840 — Tippecanoe and Tyler too — Personations of the Divisions of the Whig Party — Tyler's expressed Opinions during the Canvass—Dismemberment of the Whig Party before General Harrison's Inauguration — General Harrison's Health and Death — Scenes at Washington City — Harrison's Cabinet — "Tyler too" President — What he had to do — The Harrison Cabinet retained — Mr. Tyler's Speech as Vice- President — His "Address to the People of the United States," and his First Message — Fiscal Bank — Veto — Fiscal Corporation — Ewing's Bill — Mr. Clay's Pledges broken — Why — The Ewing, Sergeant, and Berrien Committee's Interview with Mr. Tyler — Mr. Rives's Plan of evading Constitutional Scruples — Mr. Clay's Object to force a Veto — Veto Second — Mr. Tyler's Integrity assailed — His Firmness — Conditions of Peace tendered to him — Mr. Clay inexorable — Congress implacable — The Harrison Cabinet dissolved — Mr. Webster remains with his Credentials in Favor of Mr. Tyler — Disposition to deprive Mr. Tyler of a Cabinet by not confirming any of his Nominees — The First Tyler Cabinet. . . 174

Chapter X. The Sixth Decade, From 1840 To 1850

The Cabinet — Mr. Webster; his Social Conversation — Daniel Wise^ — Hon. A. P. Upshur— T. R. Joynes— Trial of the Gibbses— The Figure of Arithviii CONTENTS.

PAGE

metic and of Rhetoric — Mr. J. C. Spencer — Mr. WicklifFe — Mr. Legare — Error in his Biography — lletirement of Spencer and Webster — Death of Legare — Second Session of the Twenty-seventh Congress — Its Measures — The Bank Bills — The E.xchequer — Act for the Distribution of the Sales of the Public Lands, and the Tarifif, and their Veto — Report of Mr. Adams's Committee, and the Protest — Mr. Thomas W. Gilmer — Dorr Rebellion — Impeachment — Loss of Mrs. Tyler — Persecution and Composure of Mr. Tyler — The Cabinet renewed 194

CHAPTER XL

THE SIXTH DECADE, FROM 1840 TO 1850.

Vacancy in Supreme Court — The Case of Vidal et al. ve. Girard's Executors — Sergeant, Binney, Webster, Jones — Reason why Sergeant and Binney declined — How Mr. Calhoun was called to the Department of State — A Personal Scene with Mr. Tyler after the Catastrophe of the Princeton — The New Cabinet 215

CHAPTER Xn.

THE SIXTH DECADE, PROM 1840 TO 1850.

Departure for Brazil — The Calhoun Cabinet — The Last Year of the Administration, and Annexation of Texas — Mr. Spencer retires — Election of 1844 — The Triumph of Mr. Tyler's Policy — Comparison with Jefiferson's Administration — Mr. Tyler's Second Marriage — A Scene on a James River Steamer — Mr. William L. Marcy ; Anecdotes of him and Robert G. Scott, Esq., of Richmond, Va. — The Sherwood Estate of Mr. Tyler — His Appointment and Services as Overseer of Roads in Charles City County — His Retirement and Private Life — Professor Holmes's Slur upon him in the University Series — What ho did in preparing for the Acquisition of California — The Effect of the Gold-Mines — The Revival of the Missouri Compromise Controversy — The South dwarfed in the Union 228

CHAPTER XIIL

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FROM 1850 TO 1860.

Disparity of the North and South in White Population — General Taylor and the Election of 1848 — Mr. Fillmore — " Free Soil" Usurpation in California — Mr. Clay's Omnibus Bill — Death of General Taylor — Non-intervention — Election of Mr. Pierce in 1852 — Kansas and Nebraska Bills — " Squatter Sovereignty" — The Modern Republican Party — Convention of Seven Southern States at Nashville, Tennessee, in 1850 — Secession started — Judicial Blindness of the South — "Immigrant Aid Societies" and " Blue Lodges" — Border War enacted by Congress — John Brown of Ossawattomie — Know-Nothingism — Election of Mr. Buchanan in 1857 — Dred Scott Case; its Etfect — Kansas Troubles — Mr.

CONTENTS. ix

PAGE

Buchanan's Failure to keep the Peace — Raid on Harper's Ferry — Election of 1860 : the Issue — The Plan and Meaning of Fighting in the Union — Mr. Tyler's Part-Peace Convention — Mr. Tyler's Sj)eeeh at Baltimore in 1855 — Secession Fears of Halters 241

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FROM 1850 TO 1860.

The Essential Rights of States — The Original Condition of the several United States — What Change did the Constitution of the United States make in their Sovereign Condition? — The War-Power of the United States — War-Power and the Power to repel Invasion in Constitutional Contrast with the Powers to execute the Laws and to suppress Insurrection — The Prohibitions to the States — The Error of Secession — Instances of Insurrection and Rebellion — A State defined — The Primary and Secondary Elements of a State — The Conflict of States never an Insurrection : of these States, it is Internal or Civic War, governed by the Law of Internal Sovereignty — The States invaded, and their Duties in the Case — Inimici noti Hostca — Dorr's Rebellion ..... 255

CHAPTER XV.

THE SEVENTH DECADE, FKOM 1850 TO 1S62.

Peace Convention — Virginia's Attitude — Rapid Rush of Events from the 4th of February to the 18th of March, 1861— The Part of Mr. Tyler— His Speech on opening the Peace Convention — Virginia's Delegates disagree among themselves — The Rule in the Case of Hylton vs. United States, as to Uniformity and Equality of Taxation throughout the United States, contended for by Mr. Tyler — Proclamation of the Federal Executive, and its Effect — The Seizure of Harper's Ferry — Secession declared by Virginia on the 17th of April, 1861 — What Virginia ought to have done — Mr. Tyler elected to the Confederate Congress — His Death — The Obituaries — His Will 271

CHAPTER XVI.

DECADE BEGINNING IN 1861, AND ENDING JANUARY 18, 1862.

Death of Mr. Tyler — Proceedings of the Legislature of Virginia — Proceedings of the Confederate Congress — The Citizens of Richmond did him Homage and Sepulture at Hollywood Cemetery, where his Remains lie; and Honor was done his Memory even in Baltimore at that Hazardous Time- -Item in his Will touching his Burial . 283

SEVEN DECADES OF THE UNION.

Chapter I. The First Decade From Itoo To 1801

The American Revolution — The Effect of the Reformation — The First Administration under the Constitution of the United States, during which Mr. Tyler was born — The Second Administration, and its Revolution of Parties in 1801 — Mr. Tyler's Lineage, and the Peninsula on which he was born and raised.

"The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heap'd For truth to overpeer,"

had not Heaven's messengers of the Reformation, in the latter end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, broken its thick crust of ages. The smouldering fires of accumulated wrongs burst forth in Europe with more than volcanic force, shaking and scorching the Absolutism of the Old World, and setting human intellects free.

Wickliffe, Calvin, Luther, Melanchthon, Cromwell were not the only ones thinking and daring and doing, but hosts of mightiest minds, in every department of knowledge and of truth, were scattering lights abroad to illumine the darkness. The closets of the Vatican were thrown open ; the secrets of flie Schoolmen were revealed ; the stools of Dogmas and the thrones of Despotism were thrown down. Powei's and Principalities were subdued to become the Protestant pupils of a divine faith of "good will to men," and were themselves made to question and confront Absolutism defiantly, with the cross of suffering and of martyrdom, for the sake of Truth.

This shock of old things, thought to be firmly established because simply hoary, and having custom without law, had its ample course. Students of the laws of God and of the rights of man were in the laboratories of the great school of the Humanities, and the Humanities were made ready for the occasion of their uses. Earth was crying for them, and they went forth to the call Philology, Grammar, the Hebrew, Latin, and Greek languages. Logic, Poetry, History, Metaphysics, and the Divine Philosophy of Christianity found the Printing-Press ready to give them the wings of the morning, and Columbus had already sailed over the seas and found a New World for their theater. Here, in North America, they found a huge, rude, barbaric continent, lying prone in a state of nature, ample for the fires and the blasts of all their mighty furnaces, forges, and foundries.

In the mean time, Bacon had been at his inductions ; Oxford was teaching; the divines were translating and publishing the Bible; Milton was singing; and by the time America was ready for her first Revolution Burke had generalized the philosophy of human government ; Bourbons and Stuarts of old dynasties had been beheaded ; Hampdens and Sydueys had asserted rights and been mart\'red ; the Publicists had codified international law, and the convulsions of England had settled some ideas of Magna Charta for domestic government. The people of England had learned to rehearse the noble Baron's chant of Liberty:

"Let every Briton, as his mind, be free. His person safe, his property secure; His house as sacred as the fane of heaven ; AVatching unseen, his ever-open door, Watching the realm, the spirit of the laws; His fate determined by the rules of right; His voice enacted in the common voice, And general suffrage of the assembled realm. No hand invisible to write his doom; No demon starting at the midnight hour,

To draw his curtain, or to drag him down To mansions of despair. Wide to the world Disclose the secrets of the prison walls, And bid the groaniugs of the dungeon strike The public ear. Inviolable preserve The sacred shield that covers all the land, The lleaven-conferred palladium of the Isle, To Britain's sons, the judgment of their peers. On these great pillars, freedom of the Mind, Freedom of Speech, and freedom of the Pen, Forever changing, yet forever sure.

The base of Britain rests!"

These were the mighty throes making grand preparation for the working of new ideas.

The American Revolution breaking out in 1*765, and brought to a denouement in 'T6, germinated thoughts which will never cease growing, until they cover the whole earth with the aegis of laiDS made for the sake of liberty, not of liberty only to make laivs.

1st. The right of self-government, in all separate communities defined into distinct peoples, requiring separate and different laws, and capable of either separate or confederate nationality.

2dly. Self-government, guarded in laio-making and in laivadminstering power by limitations of authority in written constitutions of government.

odly. The demolition of colonial and provincial States dependent on central sovereignties.

4thly. Freedom, equality, and source of sovereignty in the governed, and responsibility and accountability in the governors of men.

5thly. Sovereignty in the constituency or source, and not in the mere municipality of government.

These were the five cardinal points of the North American system of constitutional republicanism.

The forest-born Demosthenes did not catch songs of liberty from the birds of the trees in the wilderness. Old Logan had written his poem, and Kunnymede was read in the forests where Henry hunted ; and it was thus that the orator's thunders caught the notes of the poet's soul-music; the one singing, " 'Tis Liberty or Death!" and the other singing, "Give me Liberty or give me Death !"

It was about this period of liberty brooding over States which had just ceased to be colonies of America, and germinating these indestructible thoughts in mighty men, that John Tyler was born. It was the age of heroes and of sages, and of battles, too, — battles of which those of the sword were only heroic, while those of the souls and minds of men were spiritual and immortal. It was the age which gave the xvorld a Washington ; and the shrine of Mount Yernon is sacred to all men, next only to the unapproachable shrine of Mount Nebo. The Moses of the New World inducted these new ideas into the government of men. The novelty of this new government was the least difficulty in the wondrous work of its establishment. Its magnitude was immense, and yet all its parts were aptly fitted together, and appropriate to all its far-reaching ends. The administration of the Father of his Country gave it at the beginning its true form and expression.

His wisdom settled foreign relations on the surest foundations of peace and justice with all nations, and entangling alliances with none ; he firmly guarded neutrality ; he organized the executive departments.

During his term were founded the judiciary, the laud ordinances, the Indian policy, the laws of immigration and naturalization, a navy and military system opposed to standing armies; and he so ordered the public fisc as to frown down the bad faith of repudiating the public debt, and assumed the States' debts incurred in the Revolution. He restored the national credit, revived trade, and provided ample revenue; he protected the frontier against Indian depredations. He resisted Jacobinism from abroad, and, above all, taught us the application of the Constitution and laws to cases of rebellion and trea.son, using the military force as ancillary only to the civil power. In a word, under the auspices of the administration of the first President, grace, dignity, decorum, order, and power were imparted to the govirnnicnt of the United States; and it was made to give assurance to the hope of permanent and perpetual civil liberty, and commanded the highest respect of the nations of the earth. But there was one canker in its bud which needed to be dreaded, and has since proved to be destructive to its bloom and beauty,— -not yet, I hope, to all its fruits. It was the cayiker of construction.

All then admitted that all the powers granted in the Constitution were guarded by limitations ; but two schools existed as to the extent and application of limitations. Jefferson at the head of one, Hamilton at the head of the other school, both of the first Cabinet, came into serious conflict first upon the construction of the words " necessary and proper,'''' as to the power of Congress to create a national bank. The strict school contended that the power was not granted, and was, therefore, reserved to the States or the people.

The school of broader construction resorted to the incidental powers.

Mr. Hamilton admitted all the granted powers were strictly limited, and that the granted powers only could be exercised ; but that all powers " necessary and proper" to carry the expressed powers into execution were granted and could be exercised ; though he admitted that they were restrained and limited in extent and purpose by their relation to the powers expressed.

Neither contended that either the expressed or the necessary and properly relative or incidental powers were unlimited and unrestrained ; but, as we shall see, this memorable start of construction soon passed beyond all bounds of either expressed or necessary and proper incidental powers.

The history of construction shows that in less than a quarter of a century the incidental powers, restrained at first by the ends and extent of the expressed powers, were carried far beyond the expressed powers themselves, which liniited and restrained them. And here commenced the first struggle between what then began to be called the Federal and Democratic Republican parties.

Well for us all would it be, at this day, if construction had

16 SEVEN DECADES OF THE VNIOX.

not carried incidental power further than it was carried by Mr. Hamilton, in Lis masterly argument, which won the mind of Washington on the Bank question. But the Federal party, under his august influence, succeeded in electing his immediate successor ; and the second administration met the portentous obstacte of a threatened war with France.

The crushing conflicts of England and France for universal supremacy assailed the neutral rights of our counlr}^ and a provisional army had to be raised. Genet, the French minister in this country, had outraged our internal sovereignty, and the elder Adams recommended measures which were defended under the pretext of the imminency of war. His party started the doctrine that even threatened war set aside the checks, balances, and limitations of the Constitution, and justified the passage of the acts of the Alien and of the Sedition laws, — the one act to remove aliens suspected of hostility, and the other to punish sedition, in forms violating the freedom of speech and of the press. It was then that the Yirginia Legislature resolved: "That the powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people ; and, therefore, the exercise of the powers not enumerated in the grant by the United States, is an usurpation of the authority of the States or of the people."

This was in turn met by the Federal party assuming that whilst the States and the people of the States w^ere originally the sources of sovereignty, yet they had delegated that sovereignty to the Federal government of the Union, and that the Congress of the United States had, by the Constitution, become invested with the national sovereignty, and might exercise its powers and dominions over any and every subject of the " general welfare."

The Democracy insisted that the national sovereignty could not be delegated, and could not exist in any one or all of the mere municipal departments of government, either executive, judicial, or legislative, — that sovereignty could exist alone in its source, the States, and that the people could act only through the organism of the States ; aud that its very nature, under our system of republican constitutional freedom, was conventional, aud not municipal; that the mere municipal functionaries of the Federal government were but creatures of sovereignty, and its mere trustees, servants, and agents, to do the biddings of the conventional power of the States and the people as expressed and limited by the Constitution ; that the Constitution itself was but the creature of the sovereignty of the States or the people, and was made by it the guide, and standard, and rule of legislative, executive, and judicial authority and functions, and that the Presidency, th-e Congress, and the Supreme Court each and all were but creatures of the Constitution. They were creatures not in the first, but in the second degree from sovereignty,' and could pretemi neither to be the sovereignty itself nor to have delegated to them its absolute powers, that the conventional powers of the States or their people alone could exercise absolute and unlimited power, and that all questions of doubtful or disputed power by the mere municipal Federal government, and either or all of its departments, had of right to be referred to the conventional power of the States or of the people, in their separate State organizations. Thus began the discord of State rights and of Federal absolutism. The Alien and Sedition laws were passed, the provisional army was provided, a regular army created, Democratic members of the House of Representatives were insulted in the theater for words spoken against standing armies in the House. Mr. Jefferson, then Vice-President, had to be guarded by his friends from his presiding chair in the Senate to his boarding-house and back ; the judiciary had, both in the case of Jay and of Marshall, become officially conjoined with the executive, mixing the chief justiceship in the same person with the secretaryship of state and the office of a foreign minister; and some of the inferior Federal judges had played the Jeffriesscenes over again so rampant that the whole judiciary was very much lowered in dignity, and finally Chase was impeached.

The excesses of the second administration became odious to the States aud the peoi)le, and the Federal party was overtlirown in the memorable political revolution of 1801, when the great apostle of liberty and author of the Declaration of Independence was elected the President. For a study of this era we refer to Wharton's " State Trials," and particularly to his able, philosophical, beautiful, and just preface.

Besides the canker of construction, other causes showed themselves during the first administration which brooded mischief, and from the beginning foreshadowed the danger of dissolution of the Union, by reason of infractions of the Constitution and of infringement of the rights of the States to domestic and internal self-goverijment.

On the 12th February, 1790, the first petition was presented to Congress for the emancipation of slaves. It was signed by Dr. Franklin, President of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery. He was a philosopher " wise as a serpent," but not "as harmless as the dove." He had been chiefly instrumental as a pacificator in the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States on the question of the apportionment of representatives between the free and the slave States ; but it seems that he was wily enough to resort to a more effectual mode of assailing the property in slaves and the power of the States which held them in bondage. Whether he foresaw that the dragon's teeth which he was sowing would sprout armed warriors or not, is not for us to say ; but he was either not wise in not foreseeing the consequences of his movement, or he was fanatically heedless of the consequences themselves which followed. It irritated sectional antagonism, aroused religious antipathies, fomented jealousies and discord, disturbed the legislation of Congress, and finally caused civil war. So much for the motives and action of the highest human wisdom. He was doubtless a man of peace, but was blind to the mode of preserving it.

The Congress of 1790 was wiser than Franklin, more faithful to the Constitution of the United States, and resolved : " That Congress have no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them in any of the States." And the territory south of the Ohio was accepted without excluding- slavery. What a contrast this is with the executive and congressional action in 1862, when civil war was made the pretext for violating the Constitution !

Another cloud, not larger at first than the palm of a man's hand, formed another prognostic of coming wars. The territory ceded by North Carolina, out of which the new State was formed, was what is now included in the State of Tennessee. That territory was ceded by North Carolina in a deed executed by her senators under her laws, in December, 1789, and was accepted by act of Congress passed April 2d, 1190, just fourteen days after the birth of John Tyler. The cession was forced upon North Carolina by the acts of rebels to her jurisdiction, countenanced by Congress. The history of this territory shows the first and only instance of de facto "squatter sovereignty" known in the United States prior to the period of the Mormon monstrosities itf Utah, and it was the first instance of nullification.

The settlers in the then State of North Carolina west of the Stone Mountain, complaining that they were not afforded due protection by the parent State, declared their independence, and set up against both State and Federal sovereignty a sovereignty of their own, called " the State of Franklin." They organized a State government, with all the municipal departments. They practically nullified in their limits both the laws of North Carolina and of the Federal government. They established a currency of peltry, and the then governor, General Sevier, complained that he was cheated grievously in the payment of his salary, by having put upon him opossum-skins with raccoon-tails sewed on to them.