In 1787 the state of Franklin began to totter to its fall.  In April [Footnote:  State Dept.  MSS.  Franklin Papers, VIII., Benjamin Franklin to His Excellency Governor Sevier, Philadelphia, June 30, 1787.] Sevier, hungering for help or friendly advice, wrote to the gray statesman after whom his state was named.  The answer did not come for several months, and when it did come it was not very satisfactory.  The old sage repeated that he knew too little of the circumstances to express an opinion, but he urged a friendly understanding with North Carolina, and he spoke with unpalatable frankness on the subject of the Indians.  At that very time he was writing to a Cherokee chief [Footnote:  Do.  Letter to the Chief “Cornstalk” (Corntassel?), same date and place.] who had come to Congress in the vain hope that the Federal authorities might save the Cherokees from the reckless backwoodsmen; he had promised to try to obtain justice for the Indians, and he was in no friendly mood towards the backwoods aggressors.

Prevent encroachments on Indian lands, Franklin wrote to Sevier,—­Sevier, who, in a last effort to rally his followers, was seeking a general Indian war to further these very encroachments,—­and remember that they are the more unjustifiable because the Indians usually give good bargains in the way of purchase, while a war with them costs more than any possible price they may ask.  This advice was based on Franklin’s usual principle of merely mercantile morality; but he was writing to a people who stood in sore need of just the teaching he could furnish and who would have done well to heed it.  They were slow to learn that while sober, debt-paying thrift, love of order, and industry, are perhaps not the loftiest virtues and are certainly not in themselves all sufficient, they yet form an indispensable foundation, the lack of which is but ill supplied by other qualities even of a very noble kind.

Sevier, also in the year 1787, carried on a long correspondence with Evan Shelby, whose adherence to the state of Franklin he much desired, as the stout old fellow was a power not only among the frontiersmen but with the Virginian and North Carolinian authorities likewise.  Sevier persuaded the Legislature to offer Shelby the position of chief magistrate of Franklin, and pressed him to accept it, and throw in his lot with the Westerners, instead of trying to serve men at a distance.  Shelby refused; but Sevier was bent upon being pleasant, and thanked Shelby for at least being neutral, even though not actively friendly.  In another letter, however, when he had begun to suspect Shelby of positive hostility, he warned him that no unfriendly interference would be tolerated. [Footnote:  Tennessee Hist.  Soc.  MSS.  Letters of Sevier to Evan Shelby, Feb. 11, May 20, May 30, and Aug. 12, 1787.]