However,
Congress took no action either for or against the insurrectionary
commonwealth.
The new state wished to stand well with Virginia, no less than with
Congress. In July, 1785, Sevier wrote to Governor Patrick Henry,
unsuccessfully appealing to him for sympathy. In this letter he insisted
that he was doing all he could to restrain the people from encroaching
on the Indian lands, though he admitted he found the task difficult. He
assured Henry that he would on no account encourage the southwestern
Virginians to join the new state, as some of them had proposed; and he
added, what he evidently felt to be a needed explanation, "we hope to
convince every one that we are not a banditti, but a people who mean to
do right, as far as our knowledge will lead us." [Footnote: Va. State
Papers, IV., 42, Sevier to Henry, July 19, 1785.]
Correspondence with Benjamin Franklin.
At the outset of its stormy career the new state had been named
Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin; but a large minority had wished
to call it Frankland instead, and outsiders knew it as often by one
title as the other. Benjamin Franklin himself did not know that it was
named after him until it had been in existence eighteen months.
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