their posts in the Mississippi Valley north of the Ohio and overawing thousands of hostile Indians there, seemed to promise peace and safety to western settlers; and the next year a great wave of immigration from the east flowed into the trans-Allegheny wilderness. Whereas, before Clark's victory at Vincennes in 1779 there were only one hundred and two men able to bear arms in Kentucky, the next year its population was said to have grown to twenty thousand, and Robertson pushed a small settlement westward into central Tennessee at Nashville. Peace, however, did not come; the Kentucky people had still to endure more years of desperate struggle, not only with their British and Indian enemies, but with dire poverty and famine. To make their plight worse, they were torn with dissensions, industriously fomented by the emissaries of a powerful syndicate of northern land jobbers, called the Indiana and Vandalia Companies, who pretended to have title to West Virginia and a large part of Kentucky under fraudulently procured deeds from the Six Nation Indians of New York. These men wielded a very great and sinister influence in the Continental Congress, which, during the later years of the Revolution, had lost much of its former high character.

Most of the immigrants to Kentucky were poor; and many of them from other states, especially Pennsylvania, finding the best lands nearly all taken up under grants from Virginia, soon developed an ugly spirit of agrarianism and not only disputed her land grants, but conspired with the land company emissaries to overthrow her government in Kentucky and erect a new state under authority from Congress. Under the influence of the land companies, and by the votes of delegates from northern states, Congress virtually asserted a fictitious claim to the whole trans-Allegheny region. By 1781 it forced an offer from Virginia to cede to the Confederacy the whole country north of the Ohio, all of which was within her charter bounds. By this offer Virginia hoped to satisfy the northern states and to be left in undisputed possession of what are now West Virginia and Kentucky; but that region being precisely the one claimed by the land jobbers, they continued to influence Congress to dispute her jurisdiction west of the Alleghenies and instigated many of her Kentucky citizens to do likewise. Not until after the Revolution did Congress, in 1784, accept Virginia's cession of the Northwest Territory.

Meantime, that state, fearing she would be forced to give up Kentucky also, and being greatly impoverished, naturally lost in

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terest in governing and protecting the people there. Furthermore, Congress, after receiving the cession of the Northwest Territory, did practically nothing to restrain its Indian subjects there from invading Kentucky, and numberless bands of warriors overran the district, slaughtering the people and burning their homes. Nor was this all. As if to make the plight of the Kentuckians intolerable, the Virginia government forbade them to defend themselves by crossing the Ohio and striking the savages at their home towns, where they were alone vulnerable.

Having repeatedly, but in vain, begged Virginia to protect them, or to influence Congress to do so, the Kentucky people began to demand separation from that state and statehood for Kentucky, so that they might protect themselves. Aside from Virginia's neglect or inability to defend them, they had other reasons for desiring separation. One was their remoteness from the state capital, which made communication with the state government slow, uncertain, and expensive. In times of great public danger the delays were sometimes disastrous, and at all times exasperating. One might travel hundreds of miles through a difficult and dangerous mountain wilderness to look into a land title at Richmond, or to attend the trial of a suit, or to settle an account, or to collect a claim against the state, and perhaps be delayed there for months at ruinous expense before he could return to home and family. Many were the lawful land titles lost by pioneer soldiers and others unable to look after them at the capital.

Still another motive impelling the Kentucky people to seek selfgovernment with direction of their own affairs, grew out of Spain's refusal to allow them to use the lower Mississippi, where she owned both banks of the river. She was ever fearful that a growing American power west of the Alleghenies would wrest Louisiana from her. Throughout the Revolution, with the powerful, secret, and treacherous aid of our ally, France, Spain schemed to persuade or force the Continental Congress to surrender to her the great region between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, at least as far north as the Ohio. Failing in that, she afterward stoutly asserted her exclusive ownership of the lower part of the river, forbade the Americans to use it, arrested those who attempted to do so, and confiscated their boats and cargoes.

Naturally, the Kentuckians were incensed; for, although their virgin soil yielded superabundant products, the cost of transporting them over the mountains to Atlantic seaports was greater than they

would sell for there. Sorely chafing to find themselves cut off from using the great river whose tributaries passed their very doors, and to see their surplus products rotting on their hands, they hotly demanded that Congress should force Spain to open it. Mr. Jay, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had always declared they had a clear treaty right to navigate it freely, and said: "God Almighty had made that river as a highway for their use"; yet Congress did practically nothing to secure their right.

Such were the many causes of complaint leading the Kentucky people to seek separation from Virginia. In view of alarming reports of impending Indian invasion, an informal meeting of citizens at Danville, in November, 1784, recommended the election of delegates from the militia companies to a convention to be held there the next month to concert measures of defense. The delegates assembled, but, finding that no effective defense was practicable under the state laws, they unanimously passed resolutions recommending Kentucky's separation from Virginia, and that a popular convention be called to meet in May, 1785, to petition the State Assembly for an act of separation. The resolution further declared that, when made independent, Kentucky "ought to be taken into Union with the United States." Thus was initiated the movement for statehood."

In the May convention there was some discussion as to the wisdom of seeking a separation, and as to the proper proceedings to secure it, but no controversy. Such a controversy did indeed arise afterwards, but not, it should be understood, until over three years later, in 1788. The May, 1785, convention-the first popular one unanimously passed resolutions calling for Kentucky's separation from Virginia and admission into the confederation. It likewise ordered a petition to be prepared and sent to the Assembly praying for the state's consent, and also an address to the Kentucky people. (All appear on pages 62-65.) The convention, however, "determined not to proceed in a matter of such magnitude without a repeated ap

? Ebenezer Brooks, who was a tutor of Colonel Thomas Marshall's children, made a motion for immediate separation, but got no support. (Draper MSS., 11 J 37.) Muter to Madison, February 20, 1787, refers to the motion. (Library of Congress, Madison Papers, XIV, 116.)

'The December, 1784, meeting of militia officers is usually referred to as the first popular convention called to consider separation, but it was not called for that purpose, and it was not a people's convention.

peal" to the people, and recommended the election of another convention, to meet at Danville on the second Monday in August following. Evidently with the design to prepare his readers to believe there was an early hatching of the alleged "Spanish Conspiracy," Marshall labors to make it appear that the men he charges with complicity were scheming for a revolutionary separation from Virginia and an alliance with Spain even so early as during this convention of May, 1785. This he does by insinuation rather than frank assertion."

In this second popular convention of August, 1785, were several members who were afterwards to figure in the Spanish Conspiracy controversy. The president of the convention was Colonel Samuel McDowell, a Judge of Kentucky's Supreme Court and a man of such universally recognized integrity, fairness, and judgment that, despite the acrimonious dissensions which soon prevailed, he was unanimously chosen to preside over all the eight conventions seeking separation from Virginia. He is now mainly known, however, as the father of Doctor Ephraim McDowell, "the father of ovariotomy," whose pioneer work in that field of surgery has led to the saving of the lives of countless thousands of women and made his name familiar to surgeons throughout the world. Another member of this second convention was Judge George Muter of the Supreme Court for Kentucky, a near neighbor and the intimate personal and political friend of Colonel Thomas Marshall, Humphrey Marshall's father-in-law. Other members were Innes, Edwards, Wallace, and Sebastian, all of whom will presently receive attention. Another was General James Wilkinson, who came to Kentucky the year before with the tide of immigration following the war, and who, more than any other man, was to influence the course of western events for many years afterwards. Small, handsome, of open countenance, pleasing voice and

*

'Marshall's Kentucky, I, 205, etc. He gives his readers to understand that there was not only "discussion" about separation, but "some excitement," although he says himself that the proceedings and resolutions were agreed upon without dissent. With much shrewd verbiage, he suggests that the address to the people, which the convention unanimously ordered, was calculated to "inflame impatience among the people" and "infuse * * disaffection * towards the government of Virginia," and plainly intimates that it was the work of designing "revolutionists." For this covert charge he offers no more than his own vague statement. The address to the people (see page 63) was evidently intended to present strongly the necessity for separation. In accord with the style of composition then usual, it is grandiloquent, but it evidences no such revolutionary design.

'See Dr. Augustus Schachner's excellent Life of Ephraim McDowell.

charming manners, he was the most designing, plausible, treacherous and amazingly successful scoundrel in American history. Entering, when hardly more than a boy, the Revolutionary Army under Washington, during the siege of Boston, he courted and rapidly won favor with the great in society, in the army, and in Congress, and in the course of time became, and for many years remained, commander-inchief of the American armies. During a long, strenuous, and eventful life, he cultivated with remarkable assiduity and adroitness the friendship of all who could serve his secret purposes, and succeeded in winning and holding the confidence of superiors whom he was ever plotting to undermine, and the loyal affection of confiding friends whom he was ever ready to ruin in order to effect his selfish ends.

While with the army before Boston, Wilkinson attached himself to Colonel Benedict Arnold, and was his companion in his famous march against Quebec. Later, when a rivalry arose between Arnold and General Gates, Wilkinson deserted his chief and became Gates' aid and confidante-Trevelyian calls him "Gates' Jackal." During Burgoyne's British invasion of New York in 1777, ending in his surrender to Gates at Saratoga, Wilkinson is said to have displayed his talent for deceit by taking credit to himself for an important discovery of the enemy's position, made in the night by another American officer, Colonel Hardin. Hardin confided the discovery to Wilkinson, who unblushingly reported it as his own. Upon Burgoyne's surrender, Gates (who was much more scheming politician than soldier) sent news of the great victory to Congress by Wilkinson, who was invited to address it, won its favor, and was appointed brigadier-general in preference to the two real heroes of Saratoga, Colonels Daniel Morgan and Benedict Arnold. Gates was made President of the Board of War, with great powers, and had his charming young aide given the important position of secretary of the board. Then followed the "Conway Cabal❞— the secret conspiracy of Gates and his political friends, in Congress and in the army, to overthrow Washington and make Gates commander-in-chief. All through the history of the Cabal are found signs indicating that the ever-active, shrewd, and devious Wilkinson was really its master spirit.

'American Revolution, III, 154.

Journal of Congress (old), III, 469, gives his report; Bancroft's United States, V, 191.