In a message dated 08/12/1999 9:21:37 AM Central Daylight Time, [email protected] writes: > Why do we never hear about all these little > governments that did not last long, but show how our ancestors thought law > and order was important. There were so many really intelligent men setting > up these government The state of Franklin and the Cumberland Compact folks are different one from another. The state of Franklin was an attempt to separate from the state of NC because it was felt that NC wasn't doing all it should for them. The Cumberland Compact was a group of settlers who entered into an agreement among themselves to maintain law and order because they were so far from their acknowledged government in NC. It was never intended to supplant that government but a recognition that it would be impossible to transport every petty criminal back across the mountains for prosecution. They continued to pressure NC to bring organized government to them so that they could file their land claims and transact all other courthouse business locally. Within two years NC had established Davidson County, NC, with Nashville as the county seat, and the duties performed under the Compact were again relegated to the county government. It was only after several more years of NC being unable to defend these western settlements that sentiment for separation resulted in NC relinquishing the area to the federal government in 1790 and the Territory South of the River Ohio was organized and a procedure established for a U. S. territory to progress to statehood. The admission of Tennessee as a state in 1796 proved that this method of adding states to the union was indeed a viable solution to expansion. And you are right about our coming very close to not being a country. Or at least to being a country that extended no farther west than the mountains. Were it not for the pioneers on the western edges of civilization from Georgia to Pennsylvania, that vast expanse of land might very well have been lost to England or Spain. We owe a tremendous debt to those families who settled where every man, woman, and child became a front line soldier. Its shameful that historians have paid so little attention to their contribution. Joyce