William Blount was the descendant of a family which arrived in the New World in 1664, beginning in Virginia but eventually settling in eastern North Carolina where they became prominent merchants, planters, and land speculators. William was born on Easter Sunday, 1749, to Jacob Blount and his wife Barbara Gray, at the home of Barbara’s mother. Jacob later built the family home, Blount Hall, in Pitt County, North Carolina. Jacob involved his sons in his many business ventures and in colonial politics. The Blounts were wealthy members of the local establishment.
When disagreements about taxation and local control resulted in the Regulator Movement of the 1760s and 70s—widely considered to be a harbinger of the American Revolution—the Blounts sided with royal authorities, as did many other prominent landowners, because it protected their property rights. When the actual revolution began in earnest later that decade, the family sensed the winds of change and joined the Patriot cause. William and his father served as paymasters for North Carolina’s Continental troops. William’s military career cameto an ignominious end in August 1780, when he lost $300,000 of soldiers’ pay in the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Camden. Blount was cleared of any wrongdoing, but his reputation was clouded.
William achieved greater success in politics, serving in the North Carolina House of Commons and in the Continental Congress and representing the state in important negotiations with the Cherokee. He even served as one of North Carolina’s delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, affixing his signature to our nation’s founding document.
Politics never diverged far from business for the Blounts, and American Independence offered new opportunities for profit. William entered a partnership with his brothers Thomas and John Gray centered on shipping and mercantile enterprises. In a move that foreshadowed William’s future undoing, the brothers wholeheartedly indulged their longtime penchant for land speculation, eventually purchasing more than a million acres west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The vast tracts of land stretching between the mountains and the Mississippi River once belonged to North Carolina, though white settlers had been agitating to create a new state here for years. In 1772, a group banded together under the Watauga Association to carve out a community on land belonging to the Cherokee in the far northeastern corner of present-day Tennessee. Members of this group were the “Overmountain Men” who traveled on foot under John Sevier to defeat British troops at the Battle of King Mountain in 1779. In 1784, Sevier and others attempted to carve out a new State of Franklin in the mountains, but North Carolina fought successfully to hold onto its territory.
Grudgingly realizing that it could not manage its western lands or protect the settlers, North Carolina finally ceded the western half of its territory to Congress in 1789. The following year this area was officially established by Congress as the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio, more commonly referred to as the Southwest Territory. The majority of the Blount brothers’ million-plus acres of land were situated within its boundaries. Not surprisingly, William campaigned to become governor of the new territory, writing to a friend, “The Salary is handsome, And my Western lands had become so great an object to me that it had become absolutely necessary that I should go to the Western Country.”
Indeed, it was land speculation—the purchase of vast tracts of territory in the west in search of profit—more than patriotism or politics, which motivated and defined William Blount throughout his life and career. Blount was one of the largest land owners in the United States. He personally owned more land than most individuals on the continent of North America. THIS was his life’s work. Everything else was a means to this end.
The North Carolina legislature backed William’s candidacy for governorship of the territory, and he made a good impression on the recently elected president, George Washington, who appointed him to a three-year term on June 8, 1790. William’s wife Mary, whom he wed in 1778, wept when she learned the news of William’s appointment; she hated the idea of leaving her comfortable, cultured, and aristocratic life in North Carolina. Nonetheless, William travelled to Mount Vernon to meet with Washington in September and was sworn into office by Supreme Court Justice James Iredell, a fellow North Carolinian, two days later.
In October 1790, William began working from Rocky Mount, William Cobb’s home in the already-settled northeastern corner of the territory and started the process of organizing a government. In addition to naming judges and setting up county institutions, Blount urgently needed to make peace with the Cherokee tribes who regularly attacked white settlers encroaching on their land. They were defending their ancestral homes, hunting grounds, and fishing waters against squatters and settlers who were violating prior peace treaties. It was a negotiation with the Cherokee which brought William Blount to the spot where he would soon start the city of Knoxville and build his home.
WILLIAM BLOUNT AT THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION IN 1787
Thirty-eight-year-old William Blount attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia as a delegate for North Carolina. Delegate William Pierce of Georgia, who penned brief character sketches of each of his colleagues that summer, gave Blount high marks for character, but downplayed Blount’s oratorical skills, describing him as:
a character strongly marked for integrity and honor. He has been twice a Member of Congress, and in that office discharged his duty with ability and faithfulness. He is no Speaker, nor does he possess any of those talents that make Men shine; — he is plain, honest, and sincere.
Indeed, Blount appears to have played no remarkable part in any of the convention’s key debates. For that matter, none of the North Carolina delegates were real standouts. Tarheel State historian Albert Ray Newsome wrote in 1940, “the North Carolina delegation was comparatively mediocre rather than distinguished in ability and reputation. In the framing of the Constitution it played a creditable and important though not a leading or conspicuous role.”
Blount arrived more than three weeks late at the 1787 convention, on June 20th, and was absent again from July 3rd through August 7th so that he could represent North Carolina during a session of the Continental Congress in New York. Writing on July 19th to his brother John Gray Blount in North Carolina, Blount violated the convention’s secrecy oath by describing James Madison’s “Virginia Plan,” which called for the formation of three branches of national government—legislative, executive, and judicial. Blount was dismissive of the proposal, declaring:
I must confess not withstanding all I heard in favour of this System I am not in sentiment with my Colleagues for as I have before said I still think we shall ultimately and not many Years just be separate [sic] and distinct Governments perfectly independent of each other.
In spite of his reservations, Blount eventually recommended the proposed Constitution to state leaders back in North Carolina. Writing to Governor Richard Caswell on August 20th —and this time respecting the secret nature of the convention’s proceedings—Blount stated:
I am not at liberty to explain the particulars of the mode of Government that the Convention have in Contemplation, but I will venture to assure you that it will be such a form of Government as I believe will be readily adopted by the several States because I believe it will be such as will be their respective interest to adopt.
Still, Blount was hesitant to sign the new constitution when the time came; this was likely due to the embarrassment and political fallout ensuing from his entanglement with the Hopewell Treaties of 1785-6, which the federal government negotiated on favorable terms with the southern Indian tribes. As the state’s agent, Blount labored in vain to induce the tribes to sign separate, more favorable, treaties with North Carolina before they approved the federal agreements, and was afterwards unable to block the treaties’ ratification in Congress. Blount had signed the treaties as a witness, and his domestic political fortunes and personal wealth sank when the compacts made it difficult for white settlers to hold onto their land. Consequently, Blount was loathe to affix his signature to another federal document which might prove unpopular at home. Blount relented when Gouverneur Morris of New York convinced him that his signature would simply attest that the states represented at the convention were unanimous in their agreement on the Constitution as proposed, but not that Blount himself personally approved of it. Blount signed on September 17th “without committing himself,” as James Madison described in his notes that day, and returned home to lobby successfully for ratification of the founding document. This was no easy task, as North Carolina initially rejected the Constitution in 1788 before finally ratifying it in 1789, becoming the only state to say no to our nation’s founding document before saying yes.
CONSTITUTION CONNECTION
Thirty-nine men signed the U.S Constitution in Philadelphia on Sept. 17, 1787. Today, eleven of their homes still stand. In addition to Blount Mansion, other well-known museum houses include George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, Alexander Hamilton’s house in Manhattan, and James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia. Lesser-known examples include the homes of John Dickinson and Jacob Broom in Delaware (the Broom house is a private residence), Rufus King in Massachusetts, John Langdon in New Hampshire, William Livingston and David Brearley in New Jersey, and George Clymer in Pennsylvania. John Rutledge’s house in Charleston, South Carolina is now a bed and breakfast. All of the remaining residences are located in the original thirteen states except for Blount Mansion.
The Blount Mansion Association takes seriously its role as the caretaker of a constitution signer’s house. We consider Blount Mansion to be Knoxville’s Constitution Connection, a hub for activities which create a more civically engaged community. Periodically we host programs such as lectures, workshops, and student council swearing-in ceremonies. Occasionally we have the great honor of co-hosting citizenship ceremonies with the U.S. District Court and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. At the first of these in September 2019, forty persons from twenty-seven different nations became United States citizens.
THE BLOUNTS AND BIG ORANGE
Blount College, named for territorial governor William Blount, was founded in 1794 and was “open to students of all denominations.” Rev. Samuel Carrick, its first president, conducted classes from his home on Gay Street near the present-day location of the Tennessee Theatre. Tuition was $8 per session. The first trustees of the college included Blount, James White, John Sevier, and other early Tennessee leaders.
The name of the institution was changed to East Tennessee College in 1807. When Rev. Carrick died from a stroke in August 16 of 1809, classes were suspended until 1820. In 1826, the trustees of East Tennessee College decided to move operations to a new campus west of town, located on Barbara Hill, where the Blounts’ original log cabin once stood. The name of the institution was changed to East Tennessee University in 1840, and to the University of Tennessee in 1879. Among the first class of students admitted to Blount College in 1804 were the Blounts’ middle daughter Barbara (namesake of Barbara Hill) and four other young women: Jenny Armstrong, Mattie Kain, Kitty Kain, and Polly McClung. This made Blount College one of the first coeducational colleges in the nation. Barbara was the only female student to receive the highest grades the college offered— “attentive” and “diligent.” Women were not regularly admitted to the university again until 1893. Two women’s dormitories were named Barbara Blount Hall. The second and most recent one, dedicated in 1901, was torn down in 1979 to make way for a parking lot.
