Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/658

 A Leaf from History.

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A LEAF FROM HISTORY. EARLY CONSPIRACIES IN KENTUCKY. BY SALLY EWINC MARSHALL HARDY. BITTER indeed was the feeling, in the part of the United States now em braced in the great State of Kentucky, en gendered by the delay, on the part of the general government, in admitting the State into the Union of States. This feeling was increased and intensified by the suspicions that existed that John Jay, who had been commissioned by Congress to treat with Don Gardoqui, the Spanish envoy, favored the ceding of the right to navigate the Mississippi river to Spain, for twentyfive years, by the United States. It will readily be seen that this treaty must have been ruinous to the people of Kentucky, whose chief intercourse with the outside world was down the Ohio river to the Mississippi, and so on to New Orleans and the Gulf. It is not strange, therefore, that good and great men were found who listened to the pleadings of the Spanish, French and English tempters, and that the spirit of secession was rife in the land. However, no large number of Kentuckians of those days ever thought seriously of sev ering their connection with their sister States and allying themselves with one of the na tions standing ready with open arms to receive them, and nothing beyond the secur ity of the free navigation of the Mississippi was thought of by any but the most extreme. The controversies that have waged, year after year, over the actions of Kentuckians at this period have been most bitter, and tongue and pen have been used by many in the endeavor to clear accused ancestors of the charge of having been mixed up in the "conspiracies." I am told that some years ago one young man challenged another whom

he heard connect his ancestor's name with the matter. In " The Kentucky Centenary," Col. R. T. Durrett says : There were Spanish, French and British intrigues in Kentucky, but the principal ones were Spanish. At the peace of 1783. Spain, with her hereditary proclivity for intriguing and intermeddling, attempted to confine the victori ous colonies to the territory lying between the Appalachian mountains and the Altantic ocean. France supported Spain in this intended outrage, but England was too wise to favor the scheme. Spain hoped to gain something by intrigue and her emissaries worked upon Kentuckians through their fear of losing the free use of the Mississippi. Her agent, Thomas Power, in 1797, offered openly to furnish money and arms to help Kentucky to separate from the Union and establish an independent government.

Col. Durrett adds : If Kentucky had seen fit to separate from uncongenial and unprofitable companions and set up for herself, there might have been much folly in her act, and a sufficient quantity of re bellion, which was then fashionable, but not much treason. Self-protection is a stronger tie than allegiance. It is a higher law than treason. To denounce all the eminent Kentuckians who took part in these Spanish proceedings as traitors or conspirators, is to judge the darkness of their days by the light of ours. They had obstacles to contend with which no longer exist, and we can only judge them rightly by judging them in the midst of their surroundings.

They were indeed set in the midst of "sore trials and temptations." The following was the memorial sent to the President and Congress of the United States :