262 The Winning of the West 



tered into an aHiance with her. 11 Georgia had no 

 self-assertive communities of her own children on 

 her western border, as Virginia and North Carolina 

 had, in Kentucky and Franklin. She was herself 

 a frontier commonwealth, challenging as her own 

 lands that were occupied by the Indians and claimed 

 by the Spaniards. Her interests were identical with 

 those of Franklin. The Governors of the two com 

 munities exchanged complimentary addresses, and 

 sent their rough ambassadors one to the other. 

 Georgia made Sevier a brigadier-general in her 

 militia, for the district she claimed in the bend of 

 the Tennessee ; and her branch of the Society of the 

 Cincinnati elected him to membership. In return 

 Sevier, hoping to tighten the loosening bonds of his 

 authority by a successful Indian war, entered into 

 arrangements with Georgia for a combined cam 

 paign against the Creeks. For various reasons the 

 proposed campaign fell through, but the mere plan 

 ning of it shows the feeling that was, at the bottom, 

 the strongest of those which knit together the Frank 

 lin men and the Georgians. 12 They both greedily 

 coveted the Indians' land, and were bent on driving 

 the Indians off it. 13 



One of the Franklin judges, in sending a plea for 

 the independence of his State to the Governor of 

 North Carolina, expressed with unusual frankness 



11 Stevens' "Georgia," II, 380. 



18 State Dept. MSS., No. 125, p. 163. 



13 Va. State Papers, IV, pp. 256, 353. Many of the rumors 

 of defeats and victories given in these papers were without 

 foundation. 



