USA > Kentucky > The political beginnings of Kentucky. A narrative of public events bearing on the history of that state up to the time of its admission into the American Union > Part 5
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" Resolved unanimously, That the election of deputies for the proposed convention ought to be on the principles of equal representation.
" Resolved, That the petition to the assembly for establishing this dis- trict into a state, and the several resolves of the former and present con- vention, upon which the petition is founded, together with all other matters relative to the interest of the district that have been under their considera- tion be referred to the future convention, that such further measures may be taken thereon as they shall judge proper."
It is a significant feature of this resolution that it em- bodies the idea of equal representation in proportion to population, as was indeed suggested by the first convention
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under the military call. This was a departure from the ancient usage of the parent State, where representation in the House of Delegates was by counties, without regard to their population and extent. The innovation thus suggested was not only in accord with the spirit of the new commu- nity where, as in all frontier life, individuality was so gener- ally displayed, but voiced a theory inseparable from the results of the Revolution and ultimately accepted throughout the land. It was upon this pivotal point that the political differences of after years in a great degree rested. It involved a theory of individual right to representation not very readily acquiesced in by those who were the later comers from Vir- ginia, but to which the pioneer element and the more ener- getic of the younger immigration were firmly attached.
Having agreed on its resolutions, the convention pro- ceeded to draft a petition to the General Assembly of Vir- ginia, and also an address to "the inhabitants of the District of Kentucky."
Both documents exhibited a sobriety of thought and lan- guage suited to the importance of the measure discussed, and set forth with cogency the necessities that impelled the movement.
The petition to the legislature of Virginia, after advert- ing to the source from which the convention drew its right "to take into consideration the propriety and expediency of
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making application to the legislature for having this district established into a separate State to be taken into union with the United States," called attention to the inconveniences springing from their remoteness from the seat of State gov- ernment. It reminded the Virginia Legislature of the privi- lege and duty (declared by themselves) "of all men to seek happiness by entering into any form of civil society, not injurious to others, that they may judge most conducive to this great end." It gratefully acknowledged the fostering care of the parent State, and protested unabated affection for her. The prayer was, that "agreeable to the provisional clause in the Constitution (of Virginia) the District of Ken- tucky may be established into a separate and independent State, to be known by the name of the Commonwealth of Kentucky."
The Kentucky petitioners had an abhorrence of anarchy quite as sincere as was their desire for a separate State organization, and they carefully guarded against possible injustice or disorder by conditions which they asked to have incorporated in the desired Act of Separation. They prayed that authority be given to assemble a convention by which a constitution and form of government might be framed; that the laws of Virginia in force at the time of separation should continue to be operative; that the common law of England should prevail; and that parliamentary acts of date
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anterior to the fourth year of King James the First, general in their nature and unrepealed by Virginia, should remain in force until in due course they might be altered by the leg- islative power of the new Commonwealth. They wished to assume a proper proportion of the debt of Virginia, and asked that commissioners be appointed to adjust the amount. And in conclusion they asked that the new State "likewise be recommended to Congress to be taken into union with the United States of America, to enjoy equal privileges in common with them."1
In its address to the inhabitants of Kentucky the con- vention rehearsed the many reasons supporting the move- ment for separation from Virginia, the establishment of a sovereign State, and its admission into the Union.
No desire to anticipate the popular will was shown, and the better and more certainly to elicit the sentiments of their fellow citizens on this all-important point, it was determined to recommend another convention of selected delegates to finally speak the wish of the District and approach the leg- islature of Virginia.2
The tone and language of this address has been criticised and the motives of the members of the convention of May,
1 Littell, Political Transactions, Appendix No. 2.
2 The text of the resolutions, petition, and address is given by Littell (Political Transactions, Appendix 2), and is reprinted with the other documents that form appendices to this paper.
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1785, severely impugned by Marshall in his history of Ken- tucky.' Allowance must in justice be made for feelings of bitter personal animosity that had existed for nearly thirty years when he gave his history to the press in 1812. The judicial temper of impartial history could hardly exist where there was so much of long-existent, well-fostered controversy. But when the list of delegates is scanned and upon it found as the controlling names those of George Muter, Samuel McDowell, Benjamin Logan, Caleb Wallace, William Ken- nedy, Harry Innes, James Speed, James Garrard, Levi Todd, John Coburn, Robert Patterson, Andrew Hynes, Matthew Walton, James Rogers, James Morrison, Philip Barbour, and others, the best and most tried and highly trusted of all the pioneers, it is absurd to impute to a convention composed of such material a design injurious to their people, wrong in itself, or uncertain of popular support. To characterize such men as "revolutionists," or insinuate an unpatriotic purpose, is unwarranted by the history of their lives, and unauthor- ized by any proof that has come down to us. Far from assuming powers, or transcending those implied in their election, the members of the convention of May, 1785, were complained of as proceeding with unnecessary and tardy deliberation. They appealed to the people for still another expression of sentiment, and desired them to select yet 1 Marshall, History of Kentucky, ed. of 1812, 240,
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another convention to declare the matured opinion of the District.
Adopting this recommendation, the several counties chose a body of thirty delegates, who assembled at Danville on 8th August, 1785.
The Convention of August, 1785.
In this body a series of resolutions was adopted on the report of the Committee of the Whole on the State of the District, presented through George Muter, its chairman. These set forth that the situation of the District, distant more than five hundred miles from the seat of government, separated from the settlements of Virginia by two hundred miles of intervening mountains, often impassable and never free from Indian menace, precluded a political connection on republican principles, and gave rise to many grievances. Of these the principal were:
1. The impossibility of application to the executive power in cases of public emergency, or in cases where clemency would be implored.
2. The difficulty of adequate legislative representation in view of the long journey and expense that deterred fit per- sons from serving as delegates.
3. Penalties and losses resulted from want of knowledge
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of the laws passed. They often took effect and expired before their existence was made known throughout the Dis- trict.
4. Appeals taken to the High Court at Williamsburg involved so much expense and sacrifice of time that justice was practically denied to all but the rich.
The unequal operation of revenue and land laws was also pointed out.
The convention were unanimous in their conclusion, which was worded thus:
" Resolved therefore : That it is the indispensable duty of this Conven- tion, as they regard the prosperity and happiness of their constituents, themselves, and posterity, to make application to the General Assembly, at the ensuing session, for an Act to separate this district from the present government forever on terms honorable to both and injurious to neither ; in order that it may enjoy all the advantages, privileges, and immunities of a free, sovereign, and independent republic."
A memorial to the legislature was prepared. Its matter was in every respect unobjectionable, and the ends proposed as laudable as they were distinct. The object was a separa- tion from the parent State and admission to membership in the Federal Union on Virginia's recommendation.
This prayer was from the pen of Gen. James Wilkinson, who had for about a year been a resident of the District. The style was somewhat ambitious, as were all his writings,
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and the rhetoric rather turgid, but the matter was sound and the tone unobjectionable. The innuendo of premeditated alliance with Spain has been leveled at the convention of August, 1785, because Wilkinson drafted this paper." What- ever may have been his subsequent intrigues, it is absolutely certain that at that time Wilkinson had never met a Spanish official, or been within a thousand miles of the authorities of Louisiana. He had served honorably and usefully to the close of the Revolutionary War, and had come westward from Philadelphia to repair his ruined fortunes. His habit- ual energy soon made him prominent, and the mercantile schemes in which he embarked were successful. But it was not until 1787 that he made his first commercial voyage to New Orleans, or had opportunity for intrigue. Whether he at any time sooner than 1795 became an actual pensioner of Spain has been at times doubted. But, as will appear here- after, it is quite certain that as early as 1787 he obtained from the Governor at New Orleans exceptional commercial privileges, for which he paid by a division of profits. And it is now well established that in 1787 he began with Miro an intrigue that fully committed him to Spain.
The bald fact that Wilkinson and Sebastian were mem- bers of the conventions of 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788, and that they failed at a later day in the duties which loyalty and
I Marshall, History of Kentucky, ed. of 1812, 250.
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ordinary sense of propriety would have imposed, seems but an inadequate argument to support a noisy and indiscrim- inate charge of purposed revolt or change of allegiance. Common fairness toward Sebastian must absolve him of any improper conduct or design until a later period. The charges made against other public men by Marshall were in no respect at any time true, as will appear in the course of this narrative and the discussion of proofs that have been ex- tracted from contemporary documents.
That the repeated conventions and memorials of the peo- ple of Kentucky created neither surprise nor anxiety in the breasts of the Revolutionary patriots is apparent from the action taken by the legislature of Virginia. Judge George Muter and Harry Innes, selected as delegates to present the petition of the Kentucky Convention, appeared before the Virginia Legislature at its winter session of 1785-6, and were accorded a favorable hearing. The manifest urgency of the situation was such that a bill entitled, "An act con- cerning the erection of the District of Kentucky into an In- dependent State," was promptly passed (January 10, 1786)."
By its terms the prayer of the petition was granted, and numerous prudent and salutary details of procedure pre- scribed for putting in motion a new and independent polit-
'The principal points of the convention's proceedings are given in the Appendix, taken from Littell. The Virginia statute is in 12 Hening, Statutes at Large, 37.
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ical machinery, and conserving public and private rights, but always subject to affirmative action of the Congress, to be taken prior to Ist June, 1787, and conditioned on its assent that Kentucky should become an independent State, to be admitted at "some convenient time" in the future into the Federal Union.
The act of Virginia (of January, 1786,) directed the selection by the people of Kentucky of yet another body of delegates, to assemble on the 4th Monday of September, 1786, at Danville. These were to speak for "the good peo- ple of the District," and declare in due form whether it was their will that the District "be erected into an independent State on the terms and conditions" contained in the act.
The Convention of September, 1786.
Delegates were accordingly chosen by vote in August, and it seemed that at last the successive conventions were to have an end in the meeting appointed for the 30th Sep- tember, 1786, when the act of Virginia was to be accepted. But another disappointment was in store, for on the day fixed for its assembling the convention was found to lack a quo- rum. "So many of the members had marched with the two armies" (i. e., with Clark against the Wabash tribes, and with
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Logan against the Shawnees) "that a number sufficient to proceed to business could not be had." :
The minority present, acting as a committee, prepared a memorial reciting the reasons why the convention could not proceed to business, and requesting some alterations in the Act of Separation. They named John Marshall (who was afterward Chief Justice of the United States) as their agent to present the memorial to the Virginia Legis- lature.
In the mean time, and. to keep alive their legal status, the minority caused some of its members, together with the clerk, to meet and adjourn from day to day until the return of the military expeditions should make a quorum possible.
It was not until January, 1787, that a quorum was ob- tained and business proceeded with. It was immediately voted, in the terms of the Act of Separation passed by Vir- ginia, " That it was expedient for, and the will of the good people of the District to separate from the State of Virginia and become an independent State."
Hardly had this step been taken when, to the surprise and disappointment of the delegates and the great body of their constituents, news was received of adverse legislation in Virginia.
1 Littell, Political Transactions, 21.
2 Littell, Political Transactions, 22.
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The delays in securing a quorum had consumed so much of the time limited by the act of January, 1786, that it seemed hopeless to expect a formal presentation to Congress and a favorable action by it upon an application for the admission of Kentucky as a member of the Federal Union. The grand proviso of the enabling act was that such action should be taken by Congress "prior to the first day of June, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven." Only four months of the unexhausted time were left, and the time in those days of slow communication was inadequate for any discussion or arrangement of the financial prerequisites, and a completion of the congressional legislation necessary to be had before the first day of June. However irritating the delay, and however annoying the tedious repetition of elec- tion, assembling of convention, and formal votes, it was evi- dent to the Virginia Assembly that the ground must be gone over again if legal formality and dignity of procedure was to be insisted upon.
The fact was plain to John Marshall who, in his capacity of political agent of the District of Kentucky, attended the deliberations at Williamsburg. It is not to be doubted that he very sincerely sympathized in the movement for a new : State organization, nor has it been questioned that he faith- fully labored to that end. He yielded to the well-nigh con- clusive arguments of those who deemed another legislative
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act necessary, and his assent, reluctantly given, brought about the act passed on the roth January, 1787."
The preamble of this act recited the hindrances that had frustrated the execution of the former act looking to a sep- aration, and the impossibility of securing congressional action within the limited period. It reiterated the purpose of Virginia, "that the said District shall become an inde- pendent State on the terms and conditions of the act aforesaid whenever the good people thereof shall so de- termine and the United States in Congress shall thereof approve.".
It was therefore enacted that another election should be held in August, 1787, of delegates (five for each county), who should assemble at Danville on the following third Monday in September, 1787, clothed with full powers to vote upon the former terms proposed for separation, and to fix them by their vote of approval as a binding compact between the two high contracting parties.
A proviso to the act withheld sanction from such vote of approval unless Congress should, prior to the 4th of July, 1788, "assent to the erection of said District into an inde- pendent State; shall release this Commonwealth from all its federal obligations arising from said District, as being part thereof, and shall agree that the proposed State shall imme-
1 12 Hening, Statutes at Large, 240; Littell, Political Transactions, Appendix No. 7.
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diately after the day fixed as aforesaid, or at some convenient time future thereto, be admitted into the Federal Union."
The gist of this legislation was to postpone for more than a year the complete organization of the new State. Instead of Ist September, 1787, as contemplated by the first act, the Ist January, 1789, was fixed as the earliest day.
It is not difficult to imagine the chagrin of those who had labored so long and so patiently, and who, under so many difficulties and discouragements, had kept within all the tedious formalities of repeated votes, conventions, resolves, and memorials. The great and absolutely necessary boon of a separate State organization had slipped their grasp at a time when parent State and colony were both willing that it should be conferred, and the loss was aggravated by the fact that those Indian troubles, which only a new State govern- ment could adequately cope with, had withdrawn from con- vention the services of the men needed to take legal action.
The necessity of the new measure was regretted by John Marshall, though he had to acquiesce in it.
He explained the reasons that dictated its passage in a letter in which he stated with judicial fairness the causes that procured it:
"The act is not precisely such as I wished it to be, nor is it conformable to the resolutions of the committee before whom I appeared, but it may perhaps be formed on more prudent and cautious principles, on principles which
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will finally conduce more to the peace and harmony of the district, than had my wishes (which were to enable the present convention to decide the question finally) prevailed. Those, sir, who introduced and passed the law reasoned thus : The power delegated to the convention by the people, to decide upon a separation, was limited in point of time to a decision to be made in such time that Congress might consider and determine on the ad- mission of your State by the first day of June, 1787; That an existence for twelve months was given for other purposes pointed out in the law; that as you are very much divided among yourselves, and there does not appear to be in the minority a disposition to submit with temper to the decision of the majority, and the measures of the convention, in consequence of a defect in the original law, would be liable to some objection, the most safe, unex- ceptionable, and accommodating plan is to pass a law in which the defects of the former act may be corrected, and which shall enable the present convention to sit till their term has expired, or to call immediately a new convention, to the decisions of which the disappointed can make no objec- tion." (Littell, Appendix No. 7, p. 17.)
First Alarm as to the Navigation of the Mississippi.
In the same letter he notified the people of Kentucky of a danger that threatened them, more enduring, unless averted, than the evils of any war, and more fatal to the West than could be all the apprehended inroads of savages. He gave the first news of Jay's project of ceding to Spain the naviga- tion of the Mississippi :
"The negociation which has been opened with Spain, for ceding the navi- gation of the Mississippi-a negociation so dishonourable and injurious to America, so destructive of the natural rights of the western world-is
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warmly opposed by this country, and for this purpose the most pointed in- structions are given to our delegates in Congress. I persuade myself that this negociation will terminate in securing instead of ceding that great point." (Littell, Appendix 8, p. 21.)
The news thus sent to the West by John Marshall was corroborated from other sources, and particularly by advices from the committees in Western Pennsylvania. It greatly alarmed all who appreciated the vital importance to Ken- tucky and its people of an unobstructed navigation of the Mississippi.
A meeting of citizens at once convened, and in their behalf a circular letter was put forth over the signatures of George Muter, Harry Innes, John Brown, and Benjamin Sebastian. It bore date 29th March, 1787."
The consultations preliminary to the issue of this circular were undoubtedly had at the weekly meetings of the Polit- ical Club, an association of the best talent and character of the District, accustomed to meet for the discussion of mat- ters of public interest, and, as events proved, very potent in shaping public opinion. Concerning this " Political Club," more will be said in another place, but it may be remarked in passing that not a little of the acrimony that entered into the political antagonisms of Kentucky's earlier years had its
1 Littell, Political Transactions, Appendix No. 8, pp. 19, 20. The text of this cir- cular letter is given in the Appendix.
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origin in the social jealousies of membership or non-mem- bership of that Saturday-night Club, which met at Grayson's Tavern, in Danville, over a bowl of punch, as was the man- ner of the time, to exchange views upon a subject selected a month before, and introduced by debatants appointed to that duty.
The gravity of the threatened surrender to Spain of the navigation of the Mississippi was too real to be neglected. The circular attracted immediate and earnest attention. A conference was had at Danville in May (as the circular letter suggested), but happily Virginia had already taken action that emphatically voiced the sentiments of the West and ratified the views put forth by the committee of citizens. There was practical unanimity throughout the District of Kentucky, and the parent State entirely sympathized. The opinion of both communities had found expression in the resolutions of the Virginia House of Delegates, adopted on the 29th November preceding, but long delayed in reaching the western settlements. Those who have chosen to criticise, and even attribute to the worst and most treasonable mo- tives the continued and unremitting anxiety and persistence shown by the principal Kentuckians for navigation rights unfettered by any superior claim, may be well answered by the terms of the Virginia resolution ;
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" Resolved, unanimously, That the free use and navigation of the west- ern streams and rivers of this Commonwealth and of the waters leading into the sea, do of right appertain to the citizens thereof, and ought to be considered as guaranteed to them by the laws of God and nature as well as compact.
" Resolved, unanimously, That every attempt in Congress or elsewhere to barter away such right ought to be considered as subversive of justice, good faith, and the great foundations of moral rectitude, and particularly of the principles which gave birth to the late revolution, as well as strongly repugnant to all confidence in the federal government, and destructive to its peace, safety, happiness, and duration.
" Resolved, That a Committee ought to be appointed to prepare instruc- tions to the Delegates representing this State in Congress to the foregoing import, and to move that honorable body to pass an act acknowledging the right of this State, and that it transcends their power to cede or suspend them, and desiring the said delegates to lay before the General Assembly such transactions as have taken place respecting the cession of the western navigation."
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