This convention, of forty deputies or thereabouts, met at Jonesboro, on August 23, 1784, and appointed John Sevier President.  The delegates were unanimous that the three counties represented should declare themselves independent of North Carolina, and passed a resolution to this effect.  They also resolved that the three counties should form themselves into an Association, and should enforce all the laws of North Carolina not incompatible with beginning the career of a separate state, and that Congress should be petitioned to countenance them, and advise them in the matter of their constitution.  In addition, they made provision for admitting to their state the neighboring portions of Virginia, should they apply, and should the application be sanctioned by the State of Virginia, “or other power having cognizance thereof.”  This last reference was, of course, to Congress, and was significant.  Evidently the mountaineers ignored the doctrine of State Sovereignty.  The power which they regarded as paramount was that of the Nation.  The adhesion they gave to any government was somewhat shadowy; but such as it was, it was yielded to the United States, and not to any one State.  They wished to submit their claim for independence to the judgment of Congress, not to the judgment of North Carolina; and they were ready to admit into their new state the western part of Virginia, on the assent, not of both Congress and Virginia, but of either Congress or Virginia.

So far the convention had been unanimous; but a split came on the question whether their declaration of independence should take effect at once.  The majority held that it should, and so voted; while a strong minority, amounting to one third of the members, followed the lead of John Tipton, and voted in the negative.  During the session a crowd of people, partly from the straggling little frontier village itself, but partly from the neighboring country, had assembled, and were waiting in the street, to learn what the convention had decided.  A member, stepping to the door of the building, announced the birth of the new state.  The crowd, of course, believed in strong measures, and expressed its hearty approval.  Soon afterwards the convention adjourned, after providing for the calling of a new convention, to consist of five delegates from each county, who should give a name to the state, and prepare for it a constitution.  The members of this constitutional convention were to be chosen by counties, and not by captain’s companies.

There was much quarrelling over the choice of members for the constitutional convention, the parties dividing on the lines indicated in the vote on the question of immediate independence.  When the convention did meet, in November, it broke up in confusion.  At the same time North Carolina, becoming alarmed, repealed her cession act; and thereupon Sevier himself counselled his fellow-citizens to abandon the movement for a new state.  However, they felt they had gone