Page:Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.djvu/51

Rh was yet unsolved. It was not too much to say that they never would be content till this was secured. Kentucky was plainly the most anti-federal of States. Her vote had been eleven to three against ratification, and this affords a clue to her instant opposition to the administration when taken in connection with the Mississippi question. These things combined to make her throw herself into the arms of the French party, and when France planned, through Genet, an expedition against Louisiana, her abandonment to that cause was complete. A Democratic club of American origin, manly and straightforward in its tone, had long been in existence at Danville. Now a number of Democratic societies on the French model began to spring up. Several were formed in 1793, among them one in Lexington, which proceeded to resolve that "the right of the people on the waters of the Missisippi to its navigation is undoubted, and ought to be peremptorily demanded of Spain by the United States Government." Genet's four agents appeared just at this time and began to prepare for an expedition to the southwest. General George Rogers Clark, whose sun was fast setting in an old age of dissipation, received a commission as "Major-General in the Armies of France, and Commander-in-Chief of the revolutionary legions on the Mississippi." There was much talk, but apparently very little action, the commissioners being more given to braggadocio than warlike deeds. Washington no sooner heard of this proposed expedition than he communicated to the government at Frankfort a