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The Remonstrance of the citizens west of the Allegheny mountains respectfully showeth — That your Remonstrants are entitled by nature and by right to the undisturbed navigation of the river Mississippi and consider it a right in separable from their prosperity. . . . We de clare it to be a right which must be obtained and do also declare, that if the General Govern ment will not procure it for us, we shall hold ourselves not answerable for any consequences which may result from our procurement of it. The God of nature has given us the right and means of acquiring and enjoying it, and to per mit a sacrifice of it to any earthly country, would be a crime against ourselves and our posterity. On the 2 7th of December, 1784, was held at Danville, Kentucky, the first of several conventions to consider the propriety and expediency of seeking a separation of the dis trict from Virginia. The time it took to communicate with the authorities in Virginia may be gathered from the fact that a letter, sent in April, 1781, by Gov. Thomas Jefferson to Gen. George Rogers Clark, containing orders for that officer, did not reach Gen. Clark until the middle of the following July. Some of the disadvantages that the people labored under were their defencelessness against the savages, their ignorance of laws until long after they had been enacted, and that they had to prosecute suits in Rich mond under " every disadvantage of lack of friends, evidence and money." "The increasing depreciations of the sav ages afforded the advocates of independence a powerful argument," says one historian, "against waiting longer, but to throw off the authority of Virginia without delay and make themselves an independent State." The memorial of the convention, held in 1 786, was sent to John Marshall, afterwards Chief Justice of the United States, then liv ing in Richmond, and by him presented to the Assembly of Virginia. The father of Chief Justice Marshall, Col. Thomas Mar shall, lived in Kentucky, having gone there after the Revolutionary war.

The following letter ' was written by John Bradford, a soldier of the Revolution, editor of the Kentttcky Gazette, the first newspaper published west of the mountains, and author of " Western Notes," the foundation of Ken tucky history, to Judge Harry Innés, who had been Judge of the Virginia District Court, then Attorney General, Judge of the United States District Court for Kentucky, a member of the Board of War for the Western Country, and President of the first Kentucky College of Electors. October 3oth, 1808. I was not only a member but one who proposed the forming a Democratic Society in Lexington and Iknow that the leading and I believe ostensible object in forming that society was to endeavor to mature some plan to induce the general govern ment to use their best endeavors to procure the free navigation of the Mississippi river. I be lieve I attended every meeting of the society as long as it continued to meet, and there never was any resolution or proposition of any kind whatever made by a member to that society when I was present, or which came to my knowl edge, to separate the Western from the Eastern States. The information that Mr. Jay had treated with Gardoqui, the Spanish Minister, for the cession to Spain of the navigation of the Mississippi river for twenty-five or thirty years; and viewing at that time the defenceless state of our country and the neglect and indeed re fusal of the general government to protect us against the Indians; or even to suffer us to protect ourselves by carrying war into the enemy's country, disgusted the people of this country generally with the administration and they decidedly declared their disapprobation of the appointment of Mr. Jay as Minister to the Court of St. James. It was a generally received opinion that the Eastern States were unfriendly to the popula tion of the western country until they had dis posed of and settled their own vacant lands. Hence a continual anxiety and jealousy respect ing the measure of government. I believe that it was the general opinion from 1 This letter is now the property of Judge Innes's grandson, ville, who Hon. kindlyGeorge allowedD.me Todd, to copy former it. Mayor of Louis,