KENTUCKY'S PART IN THE REVOLUTION.

An Address delivered by Samuel M. Wilson before the Kentucky Society of Sons of the Revolution, at Lexington, Kentucky, on April 5, 1904.

At one of our former meetings the question was asked if there was not some way by which the descendants of the pioneers who explored and settled Kentucky and held it against the savages and their unnatural British allies might be granted admission into this Society. The question, perhaps, was even broader than this and suggested that in the event applicants of this description were eligible to membership, how could they support their claims with the requisite "documentary evidence?"

Without assuming to answer either of these questions, it has occurred to me that they present a still broader and more fundamental question, namely, What was Kentucky's part in the Revolution?

The battle of Lexington was fought on the 19th of April, 1775. Scarcely three weeks before, Daniel Boone and his fellow roadmakers had reached the south bank of the Kentucky River, and near the mouth of Otter Creek had marked the site of Boonesboro. Kentucky at this time was an unexplored region of indefinite extent. This region was supposed to be a part of the territory of Virginia, but so shadowy was her title that a company of enterprising gentlemen of North Carolina undertook to buy two-thirds of this immense tract, lying south of the Kentucky River and west and north of the Cumberland, from the Cherokee Indians at Watauga. Notwithstanding the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, which seemed to relinquish to Great Britain and her colonies the complicated Indian title to Kentucky and other border lands of the West, the Shawnee tribes north of the Ohio still claimed the right of occupancy in their ancient hunting ground. As a political subdivision of Virginia, Kentucky was not yet known. The name of the region was as uncertain as its title. The

most western county of Virginia at this time was the County of Fincastle, which necessarily included Kentucky. The name Kentucky was used for the purpose of identification, but it appears to have been applied not to the transmontane region as a whole, but to a particular part of it now known to us as "Central Kentucky." This localization of the name is strongly illustrated by the habit of addressing letters in early times to persons "At Kentucky," a center of settlement and civilization in the savage, unbroken and seemingly boundless wilderness. This notion has been preserved even to the present day in the Eastern part of the State where I was asked by one of the natives some two years ago if the apple crop in Kentucky was not unusually good that season. Louisa, Levisa, Chenoa, Chenoca, Transylvania, Fincastle, Kentucky-these were a few of the diverse names by which this far-western region was known. Spasmodic efforts at exploration and settlement had been made. by small parties of homeseekers and adventurers, prospecting on their own account, from the time of Col. James Patton and Dr. Thomas Walker in 1748 and 1750 to the coming of the McAfees in 1773-4. But no secure foothold had been gained and no permanently successful inroad had been made prior to the arrival of the Transylvania Colonists in April, 1775. The war of the Revolution dates from the battle of Lexington, fought on the 19th of April, 1775. The organized and systematic and permanent settlement of Kentucky begins practically with the same date. This settlement was begun not merely in rebellion against the crown of Great Britain, but in derogation of the rights of the Colonial governments of Virginia and North Carolina as well. Henderson and Hart and their associates undertook to establish a proprietary government, not as Penn and Baltimore had done, by virtue of a charter from the King, but by right of private contract. This colony of Transylvania was to be separate and independent of the older colonies not by virtue of any compact or articles of separation between the parties but solely by the force of their own choice and declaration to that effect. Ignoring the parent colonies, the Transylvania promoters sought recognition from the Continental Congress as an independent Commonwealth and despatched their representatives to Philadelphia before they sued for leniency at Williamsburg. The dreams of these empire-builders were shortlived, but

they were none the less splendid and marked their authors as men of unusual genius, enterprise and daring. Their whole program was revolutionary. Every man of them proceeded in utter disregard of the sovereignty of both King and Colony and acknowledged no over-lord or superior in the prosecution of their plans. It is not without interest and significance in this connection to recall that by the Proclamation of 1763 the King of Great Britain had forbidden any grants of land beyond those lying on the headwaters of the streams which flow eastward into the Atlantic ocean. Nearly all the streams in Kentucky flow in a northwesterly direction, so that every landgrant and every appropriation of land on these "Western Waters" was made in open defiance of the royal proclamation and prerogative.

The unique position which Kentucky occupied may be brought out in a still stronger light by other considerations. Thus as an independent proprietary government it stood "midway between the claims of Great Britain on the north, of colonial Virginia on the east, and of the Spanish government on the south and west." It was no doubt anticipated by the Henderson speculators that the distractions incident to the war in the eastern part of the country would divert attention from this revolutionary enterprise until it could be firmly established. But they counted without their host. The country to which they claimed title was already dotted here and there with the cabins of the more venturesome pioneers and with a few of those nuclei of population called "Stations." These forerunners of the Transylvania movement looked upon that movement with suspicion if not with genuine alarm. These free and hardy sons of the forest were filled with a devouring land-hunger even more insatiable than the Spaniards' thirst for gold. But they were also jealous of their wild forest freedom. They knew nothing of the feudal system except to abhor it. Quit-rents such as the Transylvania proprietors proposed were a badge of vassalage and this was wholly at war with the free spirit of the pioneers and their intense longing for landed independence. Nothing less than a freehold estate could satisfy their craving, for with them, as with the knights and barons of old, no lesser estate was considered worthy of a freeman's acceptance.

Fortunately for the future of the Commonwealth as well as for the good of the parties immediately concerned, these unwilling tenants of the Transylvania Company found a ready and able champion of their cause in the person of that farsighted and patriotic soldier of fortune, George Rogers Clark. It is a never-ceasing subject of surprise to me that such a man should have appeared in such a quarter at such a time. He combined in himself in the highest degree command over the three great departments of political activity, viz., war, diplomacy, and statecraft. He has been called the "Hannibal of the West," but the likeness, it seems to me, stops short with the persons of the two men, for their careers were radically dissimilar. In the versatility and vigor of his genius he may be likened with equal propriety to the great Napoleon. But in my opinion he resembles no one so much both in character and achievement as he does that intrepid spirit, Robert Clive, and his conquest of British India. With a keen perception of the state of things in the western country, its exposed condition and the strategic value of its outposts; with no means at his command equal to the contest, but with unwavering devotion to his native land, a supreme confidence in himself, and a courage that oftentimes bordered on foolhardy recklessness, George Rogers Clark accomplished for Virginia and the Confederation only on a smaller scale what Clive accomplished for Great Britain in its empire of the East.

Clark's first efforts were directed toward balking the plans of the Transylvania Company. This done, he straightway turned his attention to the conquest of the Northwest. Recent revival of interest in this period has made the romantic story of how Kaskaskia and Cahokia were taken and "Old Vincennes" captured and recaptured again and the neighboring Indian tribes completely pacified, a familiar tale to all of us, but I doubt whether any of us have consciously and carefully tried to answer the question as to what was Kentucky's part in these stirring and momentous events.

Without attempting anything like a minute and comprehensive presentation of the facts, it is enough to point out that the work done by Kentuckians during the Revolutionary War in subduing the forest, in checking the Indians, in resisting the assaults of hostile bands instigated and frequently accompanied and led by