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An election was duly
held for members of the convention
called to meet November 14, 1785, at
Greeneville for the adoption of a
permanent Constitution for the State. An
amicable settlement with North Carolina
seemed probable. The refractory John
Tipton took part as one of the delegates
of Washington county.
From an early day the
Presbyterian church had been planted on
the upper waters of the Tennessee by the
Scotch-Irish immigrants, and it had
grown to such proportions that the
parent Presbytery of Hanover, in
Virginia, felt that it was advisable to
subdivide its territory, and in 1785
Abingdon Presbytery was organized,
including in its bounds Southwest
Virginia and the contiguous State of
Franklin. It was felt that the time had
come to make sure of the predominance of
that church in the region assigned the
Presbytery, and all available ministers
were encouraged to lead the advance.
Liberty Hall, an educational institution
of the Valley of Virginia presided over
by Rev. William Graham, was the source
from which were to come the laborers in
that moral vineyard. Thence years before
had come Samuel Doak, who had deserved
and won a firm hold on the frontiersmen
of Watauga and Nolachucky, and joining
him later were the Revs. Hezekiah Balch
and Samuel Houston. The latter was
awarded a bachelor's degree in 1785, the
class of that year being the first to
receive degrees under the privilege of a
charter granted the school by the
Virginia legislature.1
Influential laymen of
Franklin had received their education at
Liberty Hall under Graham, among them
David Campbell and Samuel Newell.
Graham had been a
leading figure of the Valley for many
years; he was active in the struggle for
independence in revolutionary days; and,
later, in the prolonged contest in
Virginia for religious freedom. To him,
as friend and mentor, the Liberty Hall
coterie in Franklin naturally turned for
advice and assistance in the working out
of the confronting problems of state. A
committee, of which Graham and Arthur
Campbell were probably the leading
spirits, began work on the draft of a
constitution for the new Commonwealth
which was to be submitted for adoption
by the Greeneville convention; and which
should also meet the needs of Campbell's
greater "Frankland." The name proposed
was State of Frankland —to be changed
from Franklin.
Samuel Houston who had taken charge
(1783) of a congregation near the
Washington-Greene county line, in North
Carolina, was chosen to be the proponent
and advocate of the draft in the
approaching Franklin constitutional
convention. Some, indeed most, of
Graham's notions of government were
visionary. He thought that by provisions
in the fundamental law the vicious part
of society could be excluded from
political power. The electoral franchise
should belong to the virtuous believers
in God, in a future state of rewards and
punishments, in the inspiration of the
scriptures and the trinity of the
Godhead." These ideas were carried into
the draft of his Frankland Constitution.
By the same section it was provided that
no person should be eligible to serve in
any office in the civil department "who
is of an immoral character, or guilty of
such flagrant enormities as drunkenness,
gaming, profane swearing, lewdness,
Sabbath-breaking, or such like;" and,
further, that no minister of the gospel,
attorney at law or doctor of physic
should be a member of the Assembly.
"Ecclesiastical hierarchies and
dignitaries" were prohibited, but every
citizen of the Commonwealth should have
full and free religious liberty.
However, as Caldwell, in his
Constitutional History of Tennessee,2
remarks, "one condition to office
holding was a perfect orthodoxy. A
citizen might have held whatever opinion
he pleased, but he would not have been
eligible to office unless his beliefs
were entirely orthodox."
Other provisions of this curious
document evince suspicion of officials
who might run the gauntlet of such
safeguards. The governor was to be
chosen annually; all bills of public
nature introduced in the legislature
were required to be printed and
submitted to the people "for debate and
amendment" before being read in the
Assembly the third time and enacted into
law; "except on occasions of sudden
necessity" bills should not be passed
into laws before the next session of the
Assembly. The legislature was to consist
of but one body, and was to meet
annually.
On the first day of
the convention at Greeneville, Samuel
Houston, first reading the document as a
report of a committee on a draft,
proposed that it be made the basis of a
permanent constitution, alterations and
amendments to be offered for discussion
and action. A spectator, Rev. Hezekiah
Balch, asked and was granted the
privilege of the floor to speak in
opposition. He dealt severely with the
document. The convention rejected it and
adopted the modified North Carolina
Constitution, doubtless in the form of
the provisional Constitution under which
the State was being governed at the
time. The only record extant of the
members who composed this convention is
that shown by a protest against this
action signed by nineteen of the
delegates: David Campbell, Samuel
Houston, John Tipton, John Ward; Robert
Love, William Cox, David Craig, James
Montgomery, John Strain, Robert Allison,
David Looney, John Blair, James White,
Samuel Newell, John Gilliland, James
Stuart, George Maxwell, Joseph Tipton,
and Peter Parkinson.
Francis A. Ramsey was
secretary of the convention, and John
Sevier or William Cocke was probably the
president.
Houston felt
aggrieved, and smarted under the defeat
of the proposed constitution; and some
of the members of the convention, who
did not have over-concern for orthodox
religion, made its defeat the occasion
for schism. Two factions arose; one to
defend the merit of the Graham-Houston
system and another to decry it; and the
debate waxed warm and then hot.
Something unknown on the border now
occurred; pamphlets were printed and
circulated by the disputants. The
Franklin Commonwealth Society bore the
expense of publishing one of these on
the "Principles of Republican Government
by a Citizen of Frankland."3
Balch violently assailed the position of
his adversaries, and the contest grew so
bitter that strife was engendered among
the people. Some were so irritated that
an effigy of Graham was burned. Hearing
of this, and attributing the blame to
Balch, Graham published an open letter
to Balch, in pamphlet form, which was
replete with satire, keen even to
bitterness. Balch called his opponent to
answer before the judicatory of the
church.
Graham also published a pamphlet in
defense of the proposed Frankland
constitution in which he declared that
the article which excluded immoral
persons from the legislature was one of
the "wisest and best . . . whether the
people of Frankland be wise enough to
adopt it or not. To this article it is
objected that it excludes some men of
great ability and experience who might
do good. The devil has great ability and
long experience."4
Governor Sevier had experience in
subduing Indians who were on the
war-path, but was comparatively helpless
in quelling a controversy between the
two ministers and their followers.
Ramsey deciphers from the minute book of
the Washington County court this entry
which relates to a phase of the dispute:
"On motion being made by the Attorney
for the State, who at the same time
exhibited a hand-bill containing an
'Address to the Inhabitants of Frankland
State,' under a signature of a citizen
of the same, the Court, upon the same
being read publicly in open court,
adjudged it to contain treasonable
insinuations against the United States,
and false and ungenerous reflections
against persons of distinction in the
ecclesiastical department, fraught with
falsehood, calculated to alienate the
minds of their citizens from their
government and overturn the same.
"Upon mature deliberation, the Court
condemned said hand-bill to be publicly
burned by the High Sheriff, as a
treasonable, wicked, false and seditious
libel."5
Strange to say, the deep feeling created
by this controversy operated to weld the
loose-knit elements of discontent into a
faction that only wanted, for one reason
or another, an opportunity openly to
oppose the new State's authority. The
agitation continued for more than year.
Samuel Houston published and circulated
the "Frankland Constitution" in 1786,
with a preface from which it appears
that he still hoped to have the people
adopt it when "the loud and bitter
outcry that has been raised against the
Report and its friends," should subside.6
_________________
1 Other members of this class were
Revs. Samuel Carrick and James Priestly
who also became pioneers in educational
work in the Tennessee Country. Carrick
became the president of Blount College,
at Knoxville; Priestly of Cumberland
College at Nashville, and Balch of
Greeneville College, in Greene county.
2 Caldwell, 2nd edition, 55.
3 Ramsey, 324, where it is
said that Francis Bailey of
Philadelphia, was the printer. Houston
was doubtless the author. Ramsey says of
one of the pamphlets put out by the
Houston faction: "They sent it in
manuscript by express to Newbern, N. C.,
and had it printed and distributed
extensively."—The Magnolia Magazine (of
Charleston), IV, 31a.
4 For a full account of this
controversy, see Ruffner, "Early History
of Washington College" (Washington and
Lee Historical Papers), 6o; Grigsby,
"Founders of Washington College" (W. and
L. Hist. Papers No. 2); Foote, Sketches
of Virginia, 457. The church trial went
for review to the Synod of New York and
Philadelphia, which had jurisdiction
over the Southern Presbyteries. It found
that Graham's attack appeared to be a
very unwarrantable treatment of a
brother. Balch had the testimony of
William Cocke to show that he was
blameless as to the burning of the
effigy.
5 Ramsey, 403. The Greene
County Court took similar action. Balch
resided in that county.
6 The "Frankland
Constitution" appears in full in
American Historical Magazine, I, 49-63.
Graham made the provision in Section 42
of the draft: That the legislature
"shall employ some person, at public
expense, to draw it (the Constitution)
out into a familiar catechetical form"
for its being taught in schools.
The opening of the General Assembly was
to be with a sermon by a minister of the
Gospel. |
