State of Franklin

The State of Franklin (also the Free Republic of Franklin, Lost State of Franklin, or the State of Frankland) was an unrecognized state located in present-day East Tennessee, in the United States. Franklin was created in 1784 from part of the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains that had been offered by North Carolina as a cession to Congress to help pay off debts related to the American War for Independence. It was founded with the intent of becoming the 14th state of the new United States.

Franklin's first capital was Jonesborough. After the summer of 1787, the government of Franklin (which was by then based in Greeneville) ruled as a "parallel government" running alongside (but not harmoniously with) a re-established North Carolina bureaucracy. Franklin was never admitted into the union. The extra-legal state existed for only about four and a half years, ostensibly as a republic, after which North Carolina reassumed full control of the area.

The creation of Franklin is novel, in that it resulted from both a cession (an offering from North Carolina to Congress) and a secession (seceding from North Carolina, when its offer to Congress was not acted upon and the original cession was rescinded).

If Franklin had become a state, its boundaries would have included the 12 modern Tennessee counties of Johnson, Carter, Sullivan, Washington, Greene, Hawkins, Unicoi, Cocke, Hamblen, Jefferson, Sevier, and Blount. With an approximate total area of 6,400 square miles (17,000 km), Franklin would rank as the 4th smallest state by area in the Union, ahead of Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Its population, estimated at 930,000 based on the current populations of these counties, would place it as the 6th smallest state by population, ahead of South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming.