Cumberland Compact
1780 document establishing the law of settlers in present-day Tennessee
The Cumberland Compact was signed at a Longhunter and native American trading post and camp near the French Lick aka the "Big Salt Springs" on the Cumberland River on May 13, 1780, by 256 settlers led by James Robertson and John Donelson, where the group settled and built Fort Nashborough, which would later become Nashville, Tennessee.
The Cumberland Compact was based on the earlier Articles of the Watauga Association composed in 1772 at the Watauga settlement located on the Watauga River at present day Elizabethton, Tennessee.
The only surviving copy of the Cumberland Compact was discovered in 1846 inside a trunk that once belonged to early pioneer and founder Colonel Samuel Barton. The copy in the Tennessee State Archives is slightly damaged. Other than this the document is intact and legible.
The Cumberland Compact was composed and signed by 256 colonists. One colonist, James Patrick of Virginia, was illiterate and marked his name with an "X". This constitution called for a governing council of 12 judges who would be elected by the vote of free men 21 years of age or older. Unique to the times, the Compact included a clause that these judges could be removed from office by the people. Government salaries were to be paid in goods.
“Cumberland Compact” enters the record as 1780 document establishing the law of settlers in present-day Tennessee. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cumberland, Compact and document can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5193859. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1780, 1772 and 1846.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cumberland Compact” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.