As British traders had frequently exploited the Cherokee, many of the Cherokee leaders had developed anti-British sentiments. The British believed that a fort and garrison would enable them to regulate the trade. Support for the fort increased considerably in 1743, with the appointment of James Glen as South Carolina's governor. Glen believed such a fort could also be a stepping stone to expand British control into the interior of the North American continent, where France had some colonies along the Mississippi and Ohio tributaries in Illinois Country, and south in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast. The fort had some support among British officials, as it was the height of King George's War (1744–1748), and the French were threatening to expand into the area from their base at Fort Toulouse (in modern central Alabama). While many of the Cherokee in the Carolinas were initially cold to the idea, the Overhill Cherokee (i.e., the Cherokee living on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains, in what is now Tennessee), who had been suffering attacks from French-backed rival tribes, invited South Carolina to build the fort in 1747. Support for the fort faded at the end of the war, however. The outbreak in 1754 of the French and Indian War (the North American theater of the Seven Years' War between France and Great Britain) revived British interest in the fort. The Cherokee were still allies of the British, but French influence within the tribe had grown considerably. A faction of the tribe based at Great Tellico had switched its support to the French. The Cherokee towns were highly decentralized and their chiefs made independent alliances. The British Crown provided the royal governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, with funds to construct a fort, but Dinwiddie gave an insignificant amount to Governor Glen for this purpose, and spent most of the remainder on Braddock's Expedition in 1755. After this expedition ended in disaster, Dinwiddie turned to the Cherokee for assistance in defending Virginia's frontier. The Cherokee agreed to provide 600 warriors, and in return, Virginia and South Carolina would construct a fort in the west to protect Cherokee families while the men were away fighting. Construction of Fort Loudoun The fort was to be a joint effort by Virginia and South Carolina. The party from South Carolina was hampered by bureaucratic delays, however, and the Virginians, led by Major Andrew Lewis, reached the