 The Association is often considered the root of state government in Tennessee, especially since many Wataugans went on to play prominent roles in the failed State of Franklin in the 1780s and in the Southwest Territory and Tennessee state governments in the 1790s.While later writers such as U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt romanticized the Watauga Association as a microcosm of the American Revolution, modern historians point out that the Wataugans never claimed to be independent of the British Crown, and tried to associate themselves with Virginia.The defeat of the Shawnee in Lord Dunmore's War in 1774 emboldened land speculators in North Carolina, who believed much of what is now Kentucky and Tennessee would soon be under British control.