William Blount - North Carolina Politics and The Continental Congress

North Carolina Politics and The Continental Congress

In late 1779, Blount ran for the vacant New Bern state House of Commons seat against Richard Dobbs Spaight in a campaign described by Blount's biographer, William Masterson, as "violent in an age fierce elections." Spaight won by a narrow margin, but Blount successfully convinced election officials that voter fraud had occurred, and the election was voided. In the weeks following the Battle of Camden, Blount again ran for the seat, and this time was successful. He took his seat in the House of Commons in January 1781.

In May 1782, Blount was elected one of North Carolina's four delegates to the Continental Congress. At the Congress's 1782 session, Blount helped defeat a poll tax and a liquor tax, and opposed a reduction of the army. He also agreed to consider a land cession act to satisfy North Carolina's massive tax debt owed to the Confederation. Blount left Philadelphia in January 1783, and resigned from the Congress three months later to accept an appointment to the North Carolina House of Commons steering committee.

During the House's 1783 and 1784 sessions, Blount introduced several bills that would prove critical in the early history of what is now Tennessee. One bill, known as the "Land Grab Act," opened the state's lands west of the Appalachians (i.e., the parts of Tennessee not under Indian domain) to settlement. One individual who took advantage of this act was militia captain James White, who acquired a tract of land that would later become Knoxville, Tennessee. Another bill rendered soldiers with at least two years of military service eligible for land grants. Some soldiers used their grants to acquire land in the Tennessee Valley, while others sold their grants to the Blounts and other land speculators. In 1784, Blount sponsored a bill establishing the city of Nashville in what was then the Cumberland settlements.

In June 1784, Blount sponsored another bill critical to early Tennessee history– a bill calling for North Carolina lands west of the Appalachians (i.e., modern Tennessee) to be ceded to the Continental Congress to satisfy the state's share of the nation's tax burden. The bill was hotly contested, but passed by a 52-43 margin. Opponents of the cession gained control of the House and repealed the act in October, but not before a movement by the Tennessee Valley residents to establish a separate state, known as the State of Franklin, had gained momentum. A friend of both North Carolina governor Richard Caswell and Franklinite leader John Sevier, Blount waffled on the Franklin issue for the next four years.

In spite of the cession debacle, Blount was elected to the Continental Congress for the 1785 session. As he prepared to depart, however, word came that the Congress had appointed a commission to negotiate a new treaty, eventually known as the Treaty of Hopewell, with the southern tribes. Fearing the new treaty would be unfavorable to North Carolina, Blount, with Governor Caswell's blessing, headed south in hopes of negotiating a separate treaty for the state. He arrived too late, however, and the Hopewell treaty negotiated by the commissioners returned a sizeable portion of western lands claimed by North Carolina speculators to the Indians. Fearing a backlash back home, Blount merely signed the treaty as a witness.

In March 1786, Blount hurried to New York to take his seat in the Continental Congress, hoping to prevent ratification of the Hopewell treaty, but once again, arrived too late, and the treaty was ratified. Disappointed, he went home, but with anger rising over his handling of the Hopewell treaty, he returned to the Continental Congress in November 1786. In 1787, he was a candidate for president of the Congress, but Arthur St. Clair was chosen instead.

In March 1787, Blount was chosen as one of five delegates to represent North Carolina at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Blount arrived at the convention on June 20, after debates had already begun. He sent Caswell a copy of the Virginia Plan (in violation of Convention rules), and, expressing pessimism in the Convention's outcome, he stayed for just a few days before heading to New York to rejoin the Continental Congress in early July. He was present for the Congress's debate and passage of the Northwest Ordinance, and heard Henry Knox's report recommending a North Carolina land cession. By August 7, however, he had returned to the Convention in Philadelphia for final debates. Still reeling from the fallout from the Hopewell treaty, he was wary of signing the final document, but was finally convinced by Gouverneur Morris to do so.

Confident that North Carolina would gain more than it would lose with the new Constitution, Blount returned home to campaign for its ratification. Elected to the North Carolina Senate from Pitt County in 1788 and 1789, Blount and his allies successfully countered attempts by antifederalists Willie Jones and William Lenoir to thwart adoption of the new Constitution, and North Carolina voted for its ratification in November 1789. On December 1, the state legislature voted to cede its trans-Appalachian lands to the new federal government. Blount sought one of North Carolina's inaugural U.S. Senate seats in November 1789, but was defeated by Benjamin Hawkins.