1 1 A A 8 3ior jorecKinridge -•-ddress Delivered at the Cen tennial Celebration F I 457 B9B7 1 dd£c:§§; DEHVEREI) AT THE • CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OK THE SETILEMENT OK BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY, ON THE SITE OK HARDIN'S OLD FORT. NEAR HARDINSBURG, November 2d, 1882. By WM. C. P. BRECKINRIDGE. Published at the request of the Breckinridge Centennial Society. FRANK 1' O R T . K V . : PRINTED AT TflE KENTUCKY YEOMAN OFFICE. MAJOE, JOHNSTON & BARRETT. 1882. ADDRESS DKLIVERKI) AT CENTENNIAL CEL OK THE SETTI.F.MKNT O. BEECKINKIDGE CO ON IHE SITE OF HARDIN'S OLD FORT, NEAR HARDIN; November 2d, 1882. By WM. C. P. BRECKINRIDGI Published at the request of the Breckinridge Centc FRANKFORT, KY.: PRINTED AT THE KENTUCKY YEOMAN OFFl MAJOR, JOHNSTON & BARRETT. 1SS2. I beseech you, sir, to reflect on the delicate situation of our Constitu- tion. It is but the child of yesterday. Let us not expose it to attacks which its imniatured powers may not be able to repel. But young as the Constitution is, it hath wrought miracles. It hath made happy, men from all quarters of the world. Its youth and its merits jointly urge it upon us to touch it with a delicate hand. To preserve it with sacred solicitude is unfiuesiion.ibly the duty of every man who values liberty and property. * * * •«■ -iC- « * * I'or my own part, sir, I never cast my eyes over my country; I never contemplate our beautiful political fabric, but I become animated by the prospect, and triumph in the advantages I possess in common with all my fellow-citizens, and a degree of transport is mingled with my emotions when I consider that my lot is cast in one of the happiest spots, and under one of the best Constitutions in the whole world. JOHN BRECKINRIDGE. Jantakv 31, 1798. I had no thought, my countrymen, of being called before you again after so long an interval; and it is, if possible, still less likely that I shall ever again take part in one of your popular assemblies. If God had so willed, it had been my happiness to have lived and labored amongst you, to have oiingled my dust with yours, and to have cast the lot of my children in the same heritage with yours. \N'herever I live or wherever I die, I shall live and die a true Kentuckian. With me the first of all appellations is Christian, after that Gentleman, and then Kentuckian ROBERT J. BRECKINRIDGE. The whole earth may rejoice that une of her continent.-- abides in free- dom miglitiei- tlian ever ; and tlie inhal^itants of the earth whu sigh for deliverance may exult as they turn their longing eyes towards the invincible land where the free dwell and are safe. We, as our delivered country starts in her new career, wiser, freer, more jjowt-rful than before ; we, fearing God and fearing nothing else, must consecrate ourselves afresh to our higher destiny. Peace, and not force, is tile true instrument of mir mission in the world; instruction, not oppression ; example, not violence and con(|uest, our way to bless the human race. But force and violence and conquest are words which the nations must not utter to us any more; are things which they must learn to use at all with great moderation ; and wrongfully no tiiore at all in the track where our duties make us respon- sible for conniving at their crimes. We must accept our destiny in all its fullness ; and run our great career with jierfect rectitude and majestic ^^trength. It is God who calls us to be great, in all that flistiiiguishcs the race which He has made in His own image. It is God who requires us to do- great things for a world which He so loved that He gave His only begotten Son that it might not perish. ROBERT J. BRKCKINRIDGE. And now, Senators, we leave this memorable chaml^er bearing with us- unimpaired the Constitution we received from our forefathers. Let us cherish -it with grateful acknowledgment to the Divine Power who con- trols the destinies of empires, and whose goodness wje adore. The structures reared by men yield to the corroding tooth of time. These marble walls must moulder into dust; but the principles of constitutional liberty, guarded by wisdom and virtue, unlike material elements, do not decay. Let us devoutly trust that another Senate, in another age, shall bear to a new and larger chamber this Constitution vigorous and inviolate, and that the last generation of posterity shall witness the deliberations of the Representatives of American States still united, prosperous, and free JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE. ADDRESS. These letters,^- tny countrymen, just read in your hearing, furnish evidence of the love felt in many hearts for this dear old county. In the library of the eloquent Holt; in the office where Green conducts with consummate skill the affairs of the great company, whose chief capital is the har- nessed lightning of the clouds; in the Executive Mansion of the lusty giant of the West, the powerful young Missouri, where Crittenden adds dignity to an honored Kentucky name; in the more remote Salt Lake City, where Murray, whose spurs were won in boyhood, strives with gallant zeal to perform troublesome duties ; in office and shop, in field and highway, by the side of glowing hearthstones and in every clime, these exquisite scenes on which our eyes feast are rising before the loving eyes of the scattered children of Breckinridge county; sweet memories of childhood are surging through their hearts. The precious graves of the unforgotten dead, covered in the beautiful brown of a lovely autumn, rise unbidden between their work and them, and prayers for you and yours ascend this November day to Him from whom all mercies flow. And we respond with proud and loving hearts and eyes bedimmed with tears, whose mingled sources are our pride . for all they have accomplished, and grief at the absence of their beloved faces; "God this day bless every son and daughter of this common mother; in the home of every such child may peace and happiness abide ; may the day of honest toil be followed by the night of sweet repose until night is swallowed up in eternal day." * Immediately before llie Address letters from absent sims of Breckin- ridge county were read. a CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. As we unroll the map of our country and gain some con- ception of our heritage; as we ponder over tlie lengthened columns of our last census, and the figures become instinct with life and turn into freemen, cities, States, and all that give power and comfort thereto ; our pride is sanctified by gratitude to the Fathers, who secured this heritage and made possible this result. As we view the consummation of a century, and looking around us on this fruitful and free land, with its millions of people, its aggregate wealth, its happy homes, its peaceful and free States, its powerful and successful general gov- ernment, yet in its youth honored abroad, the hope of the generations and the bulwark of freedom, we gain some conception both of the hopes of those fathers and their wisdom. This is no accident. There are no acci- dents in the economy of God; there is no luck in the divine providence which inspires the inevitable progression of cause and effect. All the Present is held in the bosom of the Past: the Future is the fruit of that Present and Past. We cannot foresee a// that may be produced by our act; we cannot estimate the entire force of the influences we put in motion; the modifying power of other agencies cannot be ascertained; yet the outcome is, in its nature, the harvest due to the seed sown. He who sows good seed in good ground, with honest and intelligent toil, may confidently expect to reap a fruitful harvest; nay more: even "they that sow in tears shall reap in joy; he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves." To-day the Alleghany Mountains mark no line of division : from the Lakes to the Gulf there are only prosperous and united communities ; the Mississippi flows in majestic power, twining together in indissoluble bonds the imperial States nestled in its surpassing Valley ; the mountain ranges of the West have opened their bosoms to our advancing power, and the Pacific ocean guards with glad and placid vigilance BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. 7 the industrious toilers who are building new empires on its shores. Within these wide boundaries thirty-eight States have been solving the intricate problem of American Lib- erty : the problem of duplex government — of two races — and, with God's blessing, have become powerful, rich, and contented. The benign influences of religion, the pervasive power of education, the sweet leadership of liberty, have united with all the kindly agencies of a beneficent nature, fertile soil, salubrious climate, exhaustless inineral re- sources, numerous rivers, to give to the favored land every blessing. Well might the fathers say, " Si moniuncntum reqiiiris , ci) aims pice . ' ' I-^or this was not always so. Wiien Boone on June 7, 1769, feasted his eyes with "the unrivaled valley of the Kentucky," what a contrast the picture of to-day would have been by the side of the picture of that day. If painter, poet, or orator could in fitting color or apt word produce these two portraits — paint America as she was in 1769 and as she is to-day — it would stagger human credulity to real- ize that they represe;it the same country, with an interval ol only one hundred and twelve years. And if some great thinker would with equal power set before us the political (I use the word in its noble signification) surroundings of those people with those of our country to-day, the trans- formation would be as astounding as is the ph}-sical and material transformation. The germs of each existed ; the possibilities of each were in e.\istence ; the "precious seed" for all these harvests were in our fathers' possession, and, even if soan in tears, they were sown with true intelligence, and with brave confidence in the result. In the thin fringe of settlements on the Atlantic coast were held in its very nature the capability and necessity of future growth, and these settlements were themselves the grovvth of this peculiar characteristic. I here is something in that great race, or that family of races which speak the English language, which necessitates expansion, growth, 8 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. development, in lines peculiar to itself. This race seems to have instinctively the quality to found empires, form organ- ized societies, construct States. Social order, governmental forms, administrative justice according to orderly methods, a(;company all emigrants of this race, all adventurers of this blood. Wherever there be a camp, where the sun is greeted in this tongue, there is order, and the capacity of immediate self-government, and the prompt administration of justice according to some fair and impartial procedure. But this peculiarity had been of slow growth through the long centuries, and , it struggled upward to strength and domination amid much darkness. Blood and pain and broken hearts had been the price paid for the exercise of the power in free and untrammeled will. Along the Atlantic the colonists found homes, and under charters from kings began the development of a new power in this virgin continent. Not like Aphrodite did this glorious mistress rise from the wave into the full radiance of unearthly beauty ; not like Minerva did she spring into being, the perfect form of adorned and ravishing wisdom. Through many )^ears of colonial labor, by the power of many diverse, and, on the surface, conflicting agencies, grew into some tangible shape this idol of the West. There is an exquisite figure in the Apostolic epistle of the Temple of God, the stones of which, builded and com- pacted together, are the blood bought souls for whom Christ died. It is not irreverent to adopt and a[)ply the allegory. The stones for our temple, like those of Solomon, were being hewn out of the quarry, being also "lively stones." In this new world, guarded as it had been by the fogs of the sentry oceans and the denser fogs of human ignorance, the slow and bitter fight against the forests of nature, the Indian, the traditions of tyranny and the legal claims of English domination, had reached that critical moment when all the BRECKINRIDGE COUNTV. 9 Colonies must unite all their forces, or the battle was lost. Thirteen Colonies had taken root. The colonists had be- come acclimated in the highest and broadest sense of that word. They had become countrymen of each other in the holy sense of that ennobling thought : sons of a common land, brothers sprung from a common vvoinb, joint heirs of a common heritage. That heritage was not only of hill and dale, of mountain fastness and outreaching prairie, of the rushing river and the shore on which crawled the creeping ocean tide, but was of the chartered rights and the tradi- tional liberties of English colonists and the inalienable free- dom of men. All that belonged to men as men, all that was the birthright of Englishmen, and all the added rights of American colonists, formed part of this common weal. The fierce foes of the forests — nay, the forests themselves — were enough to appal any but the stoutest heart. The con- ■ tests with the French had added to the dangers of the long probationary struggle. And it was indeed a sad fate which brought these weak thirteen Colonies face to face with that dread alternative — submission to civil and political serfdom, or the unknown contingencies of such a struggle. Our fathers were clear- sighted and wise, as well as brave and free. They saw the immense dangers of success, as well as the great evils of a most possible defeat. They realized the immense difficulties that success would bring, and the sad consequences which defeat would entail. It was in no blind, haphazard passion, no thoughtless, daredevil recklessness, that our Revolution- ary sires met these appalling duties. They knew that if the Colonies secured independence from English domination, the dangers and difficulties to be met and surmounted were of the very gravest and most alarming nature, and were of every possible kind — physical, political, financial. The entire population of the> thirteen Colonies was less than three xnillion, scattered from the frozen edge of Canada to where the magnolia fills the night with fra- 10 CKXTKNNIAI. CELEHRATIOX. grance and the ni^'htingale the air with song. These set- tlements were scattered thinly along this long coast by the banks of the rivers — a mere skein of population. The boundless continent behind held the implacable In- dian, who had been driven slowly back by the combined power of colonist and British. The Spaniard and French had foothold on the Gulf and on the Pacific, holding the mouth of the Mississippi, and a ready ally to the Indian. So that the narrow strip between the Appalachian range and the sea was all that would, in fact, constitute the United States of America when success made them free. Impov- erished by such a war as would follow; with no accumulated wealth; with so sparse a population; with the British in Canada, the Indian behind them, the Spaniard and French holding Florida, the Gulf, and the Mississippi, national ex- istence, much less national expansion, seemed indeed almost hopeless; and the political difficulties added to the dark forecastings. It was not one Colony, homogeneous and unique. The political factors were thirteen, wifh different charters, with diverse traditions, with diverse interests, and every possible jealousy that can be generated in human breasts; and all history told how fierce and cruel and un- reasoning these jealousies could be. Grecian Leagues, Italian Confederacies, German Federations, had been con- stant causes of fraternal strife and savage massacre. Why should not Virginia hate as Sparta hated, or Massachusetts make terms with a foreign foe against her sisters, as heroic but misguided patriots had often done? Some of the wisest saw another cloud, then no larger than a man's hand, on the horizon — the cloud of African slavery — and foretold the storm which would thence fall. It was clear to our far-sighted sires that in the end suc- cess required the conquest of the continent; that the subtle force which would give us life would not be confined within these narrow limits. Nay I that our existence would depend on that expansion. War with Great Britain meant far more HRKCKINRIHGE COUNTY. II than that mere war. It was the beginning of a poh'cy which had for its object national independence, founded on the union of sovereign States, into which was to be brought the continent. It was a subh'nne conception in its magnificent outline as in its great details, and we this day are witnesses that these seers of old were not mere dreamers of dreams. One of the most eloquent of modern divines has drawn a graphic picture of St. Paul passing over from Asia to the conquest of Europe ; of the insignificance of the apparent force for the accomplishment of the proposed end; of the cultured Greek, the mighty Roman, the nomadic tribes of the Black Forest, the fierce Celt and mjstic Druid, to be transformed as well as conquered by this Jewish servant of a crucified Master; and then, as companion picture, the great preacher drew Christian Europe in her glor}', her might, and her triumphs Such are the triumphs of truth — such the victories of moral forces. And the heroic lovers of truth, who can look beyond the day of their labors to the morrow of their triumph are the true leaders of the world's progress, even though they seem to die defeated or live the objects of derision. To some it is given to live to enjoy the first fruits of their toils, and to see the certaint}- of the end of their labors. Time gives to these favored ones the indorsement of its approval, while immortality waits to bestow its crown. It is in honor of such men that we hold these memorial exercises ; to recount once more their ser- vices ; tell over their romantic and stirring deeds; reproduce the dense wilderness and tangled underbrush, and repeople them with savage beast and more savage red-man ; clothe again this fair land with virgin verdure, and have our hearts stirred with tale of ambush, woe, and danger ; listen with new and breathless eagerness to story of sacrifice, pain, and endurance; to the never old story of daring men and heroic women, building loving, even if rude, log-cabin homes, a;id laying the foundations of a new State. T_> CKNTENNTAL CELEHRATION. It is, indeed, an enchanting story of human skill and fortitude, of brave endeavor and crafty maneuver, of re- lentless attack and fierce retort, of ceaseless vigilance and endless danger — all mellowed by the golden sheen of wifely love and womanly devotion, and glorified by the noble destinies involved. It has been told over and over to unwearied ears. It has never lost its fresh attraction and never will. I have chosen a theme less attractive than the deeds of war and scout. I have come to draw other pictures than the fierce contests in brake and forest between Boone and Kenton and Logan and Hardin and Todd and their com- rades, and the brave and skillful though cruel Indian. To other and more eloquent tongues I resign this delightful labor. The task allotted to me is to re-state somewhat of the debt that good order and free government owe to these brave fighters of the forest, who were builders more than warriors, and that which they builded were States. Like those who re-builded Jerusalem after the captivity, they were warriors only because they could not otherwise build. Wall and city and temple must be builded, even if they which builded on the wall, and they that bore burdens with those that laded, every one had with one of his hands to labor, and with the other hold a weapon. It is as builders that I desire this day to honor these fathers, and as we renew our love for that edifice, whose foundations they laid, we give new utterance to our grateful admiration of them. The American Revolution did not open suddenly nor unexpectedly. The beginnings of that revolt were years before, and the mutterings of the storm were heard by thoughtful observers long before the cloud appeared on the horizon. As early as 1763 the King desired to limit the growth of the Colonies west of the Alleghanies, and to con- fine the increase to the narrow scope between the moun- tain range and the sea-coast, most of which was accessible BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. ^•^ by navigable rivers, and all of which could be controlled from the sea-coast and those rivers. In that year, a royal proclaination expressly forbade the granting warrants of survey or passing patents for any land beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or south- west. It was in defiance of this royal edict that Kentucky was settled. She is the only State whose very existence was in express disobedience to all governmental authority; and as the mother island and the refractory Colonies become more in earnest in the long preliminary dispute that preceded the actual clash of arms, adventurous hunters and daring sur- veyors made Kentucky known as the most abundant of hunting fields and the most fertile of lands — a country alike inviting to the hunter and farmer — a land flowing with milk and honey, charming to the eye, and rich to the earnest. In 1774, while the Old Bay Colony was preparing for Bunker Hill, and Henry was thundering in Williamsburg, and Franklin was urging a hesitating Colony, and the conflict was at hand, a house was built in this beautiful land — only a log-cabin it was — yet it consecrated all the State to that Anglo-Saxon civilization which founds the State on the family, and it was evidence that the adventurers were settlers. True, as yet no woman had come to occupy this home; but it was built for women to inhabit. And after the Continental Congress had convened, and Bunker Hill given bloody proof that American militiamen could die for liberty, and Wash- ington was at the head of the Continental army, the families of Boone and other pioneers immigrated here, and the corner-stone of the new State was placed in its proper position, in defiance of royal proclamation, and amid the first da}'s of the new era of national independence, in the exquisite valley of the Kentucky, began the infant life of the first born of American liberty and American institu- tions. Her birth was coeval with that of the New Repub- hc, and her history covers the life time of that Republic. 14 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. While the territory was part of Virginia, and these few stations and forts were the frontier settlements of that State, and in that sense were Under the protection of her laws, and subject to her authorities, yet practically they were wholly beyond any protection or obedience. The distance and the dangers alike made every station a community to itself, and united all the stations in mutual support and defense. These pioneers belonged to a race who knew and instinctively obeyed the laws of order, and organized society and military subordination, and the habit of sub- mission to law, made law and order reign in this new community. The liberty of our ancestors was never law- lessness. However illiterate, according to the learning of the schools, these hunters may hav^ been, they were learned in the important lesson that order is the first great law, and submission to authority the first necessity for freemen; and during those long years of revolution and war, when civil courts might well be powerless, and every man might have temptation to be a law unto himself, there was entire obedience to law and constituted authority. In the very midst of the Revolutionary War, when every nerve was being strained, and every resource was drained, the expansive power, residing in all great eras, and in all great influences, found itself able to increase the strength of these frontier settlements; and in October of 1776, the State of Virginia, Patrick Henry being Governor, found time to create a county, and give it the name of Kentucky, whose territorial limits were those which now include this State. This was j^robably the result of the influence of -George Rogers Clark, than whom few Americans deserve better of their country, and to whose sagacity, military genius, and statesmanlike foresight we owe, in large part, the successful preservation of that superb territory out of which Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were carved; and to him is ascribed the first intimation that the situation BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. 15 of Kentucky was such that she was needed by Virginia as much as she needed Virginia, and that as an independent State she had a future worth taking many risks for. He, more clearly, perhaps, than any of his compeers, saw the necessity of destroying the Indian power north of the Ohio river, and of acquiring the right of the free navigation of the Mississippi ; and that a State so fertile, free from any other burdens than its own exigencies, would attract hardy and enterprising adventurers bj^ promis'e of tracts of virgin soil, and the fascinating power of dangerous enterprises. He foresaw the greatness of that wide West which stretched from the western foot-hills of the Virginia mountains across the great river, and that at the head of such a country Ken- tucky might have a grand future. He, too, with his broad forecast, must have foreseen that it would be destructive to Virginia to hem her in between mountain and sea. How far he opened these views to the assembled pioneers at Harrodsburg that .sent him and Gabriel Jones to Rich- mond as delegates to the State authorities, is a matter of doubt. That he unfolded them to the Governor of Virginia, the prophetic Henry, to whom, as yet, history has not given his true place, and who was as sagacious as a statesman as he was eloquent as an orator, is beyond doubt; and that wise magistrate immediately entered into the plans of Clark to afford Kentuck\' all the fostering and protecting aid pos- sible in the midst of those revolutionary dangers. The first aid were military stores and proper commissions; the next, the protection of civil government and the presence of legally authorized magistrates ; so that civil government and military organization followed Clark's visit to Virginia. The views of Clark and Henry were communicated to, and shared b\-, Jefferson, who, when Governor, exerted himself to the uimost to prepare the way for the ultimate exten- sion of our western boundary to the Pacific slope. As earl\- as 1778 Jefferson ordered possession to be taken of the bank of the Mississipi)i river, and a fort built thereon ; and in 1780 Clark obeyed this order. l(i . CENTENNIAL CEEEBRATION. This act and the mih'tary successes of Clark, in ail proba- bility, prevented the success of the intrigue of the Spanish and French courts in 1780 to take advantage of the condi tion of the United States, and obtain a pledge to limit the States to the territory east of the Alleghanies, and give to Spain the territory south of the Ohio. This would have resulted, necessarily, in securing to Great Britain the terri- tory north of the Ohio. If this plan had been successful, the destiny of America' would indeed have been altered beyond our ability to conjecture. If Spain had held all west of the Mississippi, and on the east thereof, all south of Ohio, including Kentucky, part of Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and Great Britain had retained the Canadas, and that fertile empire bounded on the south by the Ohio, and on the west by the Mississippi, what would the century have produced? Some knowledge of these intrigues was possessed by the leading, men in Ken- tucky, but they were not generally known, and ignorant of this danger, year by year new families join those who had found their way across the blue mountains and through the wilderness until Virginia, staggering under the dreadful bur- den of the lengthened war, yet mindful somewhat of these far off sons, divided the county of Kentucky into three counties, and blotted this Indian name from the map and from political association. Other counties of Virginia had thus been divided, and their names never restored, and, so far as I know, this is the only instance of the obliteration and restoration of a political name to the same territorial divis- ion; and from 1780 to 1783 there was no Kentucky; yet the name constantly appears in all the contemporaneous writings; and in popular speech and general talk it is called Kentucky, and in 1783 the name was restored, and the counties of Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln united into the District of Kentucky, and this district is given a district court, with all common law, chancery, and criminal jurisdic- tion. BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. 17 Peace was declared, independence had been recognized, and the armies of the Revolution were disbanded, and many of its tried veterans sought a new home in this new land — soldiers of liberty, who had won a country by their valor, sought now to win a home where that liberty could be enjoyed. The league formed by the Indian tribes to crush the infant settlements had been frustrated ; but the •danger of invasion was not yet ended. So long as the power of the Northwestern tribes was not broken, Kentuck)' was in constant danger, and rapid increase improbable. To the dangers of invasion from the Northern Indians ■was added the startling rumor of a threatened attack from the Indians of the South. The organization of the District was purely judicial ; the military power was in the hands of the militia officers of the three counties, and there was no common head, and no executive power nearer than Richmond. There was immediate need of mutual protec- tion, and some common authority near at hand. Out of this necessity action sprang. As is the case with our P2ncr- lish-speaking race, the action was prompt, but orderly. Col. Logan, second in military reputation only to Gen. Clark, and not second to him in weight of character and in the affections and confidence of the people of the District, summoned the leading citizens, all of whom had been sol- diers, to meet in Danville, "to consult as to what measures should be taken for the common defense." It was a notable meeting — called not in violation of law, not for revolution, but to supply by voluntary effort and organization the absence of that needed executive power which every community must exercise, ^and which must be so placed as to render it available at a moment's notice. Every one in that council had been a soldier of freedom, and was thoroughly learned in all the principles involved in the late struggle. Most of them were by blood and rear- ing Virginians. The gravity of their condition forced them to the conclusion that they must have a government inde- IS CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. pendent of Virginia. It will be remembered that thi.s was before the adoption of the Federal Constitution — before the gift by Virginia of the Northwest to the General Govern- ment. Up to this period, no Starte had organized itself. All the States had been Colonies, formed under and by virtue of charters which created executive, legislative, and judicial offices, and these Colonies had passed from Colonial to State existence by the declaration of the Legislatures created by these charters. No State had been carved out of a State. The experiment of the organization of an independent State to remain a part of the confederation had never been made. This problem met this assembly — an assembly with-^ out legal authority. These men were absolute believers in the two fundamental principles of the American concep- tion of liberty, to-wit : that all men were free, and that governments rested on the consent of the governed. To make these efficient, it followed that in every body of freemen rested inalienably the right of free assemblage and orderly organization to ascertain and make potent the will of the governed. This these men proceeded to do. They recommended that each militia company should, on a fixed day, elect one delegate to meet in Danville on December 27, 1784. The militia company was selected, doubtless, because it was easily assembled ; it was a legally constituted body, and in them were enrolled all the men of the District. The courageous and thoughtful Logan, therefore, put into motion that movement which ended in the admission of Kentucky as a State. But from 1784 to 1792 very much patience was needed, and some important contributions to political science were made. The convention elected by these companies met, and after grave and earnest debate, came to the resolution that the proper steps ought to be taken to obtain an act to render Kentucky independent of Virginia; but the first step in this BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. lit was to ascertain the will and obtain the consent of the peo- ple, and to do this, this convention recommended the elec tion of delegates to another convention, the members to which convention should be elected by the three counties on the principles of equal representation, i. e., of numbers. This seems to us so just and so simple as to excite no re- mark. Yet it was a wide departure from all English and Virginia custom, and a long step in advance toward po[)u]ar government. Borough representation — representation based on wealth, or on intelligence, or on favoritism, but never on numbers — had been long known and enjoyed. The mere idea of representation in government contains in germ the entire conception of a free representative gov- erninent. So soon as he who makes the laws does so b\^ virtue of a delegated power — as the representative of a con- stituency — speaking in the name of others, the germinal conception of a free government has taken form ; and time and fortunate circumstance may develop it into perfection. But in that day it is indeed remarkable that these back- woodsmen — these pioneer hunters in hunting shirts — should have seen so clearly the true pathway before them and their State, and from the beginning settled every question on the broadest basis, on the securest principles, weaving no bonds to be loosened. Froni that day Kentucky has adhered to this broad principle — that representation shall be equal — based on the number of her free population. Virginia has followed the example thus set her by her daughter; and the fierce contests concerning parliamentary representation reveal how far in advance our sires were. Another great stride was, that no qualification except manhood was affixed to the right of suffrage. If possible, this was a greater departure from the tradi- tions these men brought from Virginia. In all America there was no State that did not require a jiroperty qualifica- tion. All men were free undoubtedly, but all men were not voters. " Theelective franchise" was, in a certain sense, a gift. Some had to possess it. Those who did, represented •20 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. the whole body of her people, but to what classes this priv- ilege should be accorded was held to be a matter of choice, to be determined by constitutional provision or legislative action. Manhood suffrage was unknown. <« In those early days. Kentucky not only blazed the way for all communities to become States, but she gave to American liberty these two great contributions — equal representation and suffrage without property qualification. Man as man was free. When he became citizen he re- mained free, and entitled to his voice in the elections held to ascertain his will ; and not only to his vote, but that this vote should have equal power with every other vote in every other part of the State. This was the simple but sublime conception these pioneers had of a free citizen and a representative government. And yet these men, with such radical notions, were con- servative and orderly and patient. Kentucky was part of Virginia, and these men owed obedience to her laws, respect to her authorities, confidence in her desire to do justice, and therefore her consent must be asked, and every proper means taken to secure this consent. In the end, independence — this was determined ; but to accomplish that end only lawful, orderly, and peaceable means were to be employed. The patience of the truly brave is always great ; the free who are brave add dignity to patience. Another year and another Convention ; still another, and the fifth, Convention assembles, and it con- siders another question — tlie navigation of the Mississippi river. I have not the space to enter into the details concerning this vexed matter. It was charged that the Eastern States had voted to sur- render the claim to the right of free navigation, and had authorized Mr. Jay to propose to cede this right for a long term of years. It is true that there were good grounds for such a charge; certainly seven of the Northeastern States had so voted, and Congress did rescind its former instruc- BRECKINRIDGK COUNTY. 21 tion to conclude no treaty without obtaining the free navi- gation of the Mississippi from its source to its mouth. Rivers were then the great highways of commerce; and the topography and geography of Kentucky rendered her pecuHarly dependent on this river. Hemmed in by moun- tains, separated from the centers of trade r\nd population by hundreds of miles of wilderness, her only hope of mar- ket, her only outlet was down this inland sea. All her peo- ple saw and felt this. To deprive her of this was to seal up her only hope for wealth and commerce or trade. That this should be done, not only with the consent but by the proposition of the East, and that for the paltry trade of the Mediterranean, caused bitter and angry emotion. But among her more thoughtful were added higher mo- tives and loftier thoughts. These believed that free institu- tions could be preserved only by conquering the continent; that the true mission of Kentucky was to push the frontiers northward and westward ; that her development was toward the setting sun. To these this free navigation was a means, not an end. It was a step towards the end. It was vital in the broad sweep of this hope. This was not new to these men. The ante-revolutionary statesmen possessed the same broad views; the men of the Revolution shared them; Clark unfolded them to Henry, and to render them possible, Kaskaskia and Vincennes were captured ; Jefferson based his hope for the country on their fulfillment. To these was to be added the ambitious, who saw in tlu^ leadership of Kentucky as an independent State, at the head of all the West, field for fame, position, and wealth. It is not surprising, therefore, that uneasiness took hold of the [)eople ; and that to the determination to i)e inde- pendent of Virginia was added the resolve that no power should close this mighty ri\er to their commerce; and from this resolve grew tJiat series of efforts, thai ceaseless agitation ^ xvJiich elided in the purchase and annexation of tlie lerritory of Louisiana. 22 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. I will not trespass on your patience to recount the other successive steps until Kentucky became a member of the Federal Union under the new Constitution. She had waited for eight years. She had seen the Confederation give place to the new government. She had demonstrated that Amer- ican institutions were sufficient to render the expansion and increase of new States practically without limit. It was her lot to exhibit the process in the slowest, most harassing, and troublesome manner by which a free people can trans- form themselves into organized States; and that the mode adopted in the Constitution by which new States could be admitted into the Union was a feasible, simple, and peace- able process. She had, furthermore, contributed to all new States, free from old charters and the trammels of old traditions, that equal representation and manhood suffrage were the true foundation on which to build. She had prevented the cession of our claim to the free navigation of the Mississippi. And all this had been done by men whose perilous daring had won this land, whose unerring rifles had made Virginia's title to the Northwest good, before whom forests fell, and at whose hands civil government and happy homes arose ; men. not many of whom were learned in the learning of the schools, nor known to fame. B'"ave, sagacious, far seeing men, there is no presence in which they need uncover; no assembly of the world's leaders where they ma}' not sit at ease as among peers ; no Pantheon that would not be honored by their presence. I ought not to omit that, in the very fore front of her Constitution, is another instance of how exact and true was their conception of a free government. All the functions of government can be separated into three great departments, no more and no less: the power to make the law, the power to declare the law, the power to execute the law — the legis- lative, the judicial, the executive functions. These exhaust governmental functions and powers. BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. -J;^ When they are united in one person, and he with power to make, declare, and execute his will as law, and at his pleasure, it is unlimited despotism. If he agree to first make the law, and only execute that, a great gain has been made. If the power to declare the law is taken from him, an immense stride has been made towards protection. If the power to make the law is taken from him, we have the beginning of a free government. Our fathers, in their Con- stitutions of the original thirteen States, and of the Federal Constitution, following the general example of the British Constitution, separated these great powers and functions, and made the pozvcrs of these departments separate. George Nicholas and the Convention of Kentucky went one step further, and for the first time in the history of political science, that I am aware of, separated the persons as well as the poivers. We are so accustomed to these simple sen- tences that we forget how valuable they are, and how nec- essary to the preservation of pure and free institutions. Other States have adopted in ipsissimis verbis these sec- tions: Article I, Fikst Kentucky Constitution. § I. The powers of government shall be divided into three distinct departments, each of them to be confided to a separate body of magistracy, to- wit: those which are legislative to one, those which are executive to another, and those which are judiciary to another. § 2. No person, or collection of persons, being of one of these departments, shall exercise any power properly be- longing to either of the others, except in the instances hereinafter expressly permitted. While a few names appear often in these Conventions — George Muter, James Speed. Matthew Walton, Harry Innis, Caleb Wallace, Isaac Cox, Levi Todd — and while conspicu- ous names — Isaac Shelby. James Garrard, James Wilkinson, Humphrey Marshall. John lirown, Christopher Greenup, Alexander Scott Bullitt, and others — adorn the list of mem- bers, only two men were members of all these Conventions — Samuel McDowell aad Benjamin Logan. To Logan be- 24 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. longs the honor of inaugurating the movement which he lived to see successful, and in which, in every detail, he. was an active participant. Samuel McDowell was called to preside over all these Conventions, and how much Kentucky owes to his resolute and conservative opinions, and to his pure and well balanced character, we may never be able to estimate. He was in- clined to be an emancipationist, and leant to the Federal party in his views, as indeed did at first that group of lead- ing men who made Danville their place of meeting, and who belonged to that famous club, whose proceedings have recently been narrated in masterly style by one whose ma- ternal ancestors helped to ordain and establish these Con- stitutions. Thomas Todd was the Secretary of every one of these Conventions. Clerkly, prompt, ambitious, capable, his aid was invaluable in these formative times, and though he became Justice of the Supreme Court, he is fast fading inta oblivion. Cannot some one, in the pious spirit of Old Mor- tality, re-cut these names on their crumbling tombstones^ and a new Scott breathe the life of genius into their noble and fruitful lives, and reproduce their deeds and words to a State who owes them so much ? The names of Logan and of the Todds have been perpet- uated by counties, but no such memorial has been erected by a grateful country to Samuel McDowell. The men who composed these various Conventions were no common men. They had served under Washington and Greene and Campbell in the campaigns of the East and the South. They had driven the regulars of Great Britain before their resistless charge. They were the heroes of unnumbered dangers in Indian combat — of scout and hunt and skirmish. They had heard Henry in the Raleigh, tavern, and met Wythe, Mason, Jefferson at the council board as their equals. In camp and council, in field and wilderness, under starry skies and around the slumbering ]5RF,CKINRIDGE COUXTV. L'.v camp-fires, they had been trained so that body and brain, heart and soul, were developed to their highest stature. In the silences of the forests they had communed with God, and sounded the depths of their own souls. In the solitude of the wilderness they had held communion with Nature, and heeded her august and loving teachings. God and Nature and their own hearts had taught them how noble was Man, how paltry the accidental rank. Men were these founders of a State — fit brethren to those who have made Plymouth Rock immortal, to those who sat in judgment on a King, and made England a common- wealth, of those who gathered about William the Silent or Martin Luther — grave, patient, heroic, simple, sincere, wise. The arena on which they played their parts was the distant and obscure backwoods of a frontier community. Their numbers were small; there were no great armies, no flaunt- ing banners, no royal commanders, with gay trappings nor stately ceremonials ; }'et the part they played is immortal, and they played it nobly. They were fit fathers to the State they loved and who now honors them. But the pioneer work of Kentucky was not ended when she became a State. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for us to estimate correctly the position and condition of Kentucky in June, 1 792. Her population was under one hundred thousand. The posts in the Northwest had not been surrendered, and the confederacy formed by the genius of Tecumseh was alert and powerful. Her land titles were complex, doubtful, and embarrassing. She was under a perpetual fear of the closing of the Mississippi. She was so remote from her sister States and the seat of the Federal Government, as to feel that she received only nominal benefits from her connection with them, and that in important respects her interests were held to be adverse to theirs. The majority of her representatives in the Virginia Convention had voted against the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and the vast majorit)- of her citizens cordially approved this action and shared the grave suspicions of 2() CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. Heni}-. and looked with distrust upon the great powers bestowed on the central government. Without any established financial system, and poor in all thi>^ world's goods, save a soil of surpassing fertility; burdened with the oppressive expenses of constant military organization and Indian campaigns which she believed were not carried on with proper vigor, nor in a generous spirit by the Federal authorities, it is not strange that murmurs of discontent were often heard. The discovery, settlement, defense, and organization of Kentucky were of the precise nature to cultivate the spirit of self-dependence and of careless independence of all exterior authority. In defiance of royal orders had she been settled; almost without assistance had she been con- quered to civilization ; with reluctant consent, and after the most annoying obstructions, had she been permitted to become an independent State. As her people recalled the steps of her history, they felt that they had won and earned all they had obtained, and in their hearts felt that by them- selves, if untrammeled by other exterior authority, they would win all they yet desired. The influence of Gen. Hamilton and the East in the councils of General Washington was dreaded in Kentucky, and the election of Mr. Adams was received with alarm. It was in this state of public sentiment that the news of the passage of the Alien and Sedition Laws was received, and instantly Kentucky was ablaze. These bills violated every principle cherished by the statesmen and people of this democratic State. They were based on a theory that really made the powers of the Federal Government unlim- ited, and gave to the Executive despotic authority. If they were constitutional, Congress could add to the crimes enumerated in the Constitution as within the juris- diction of the Federal Courts, and by statute both create an offense and then confounding the broad distinction be- tween the executive and judicial functions, clothe the Presi- BRECKINRIDEE COUNTY. 27 dent with power of arrest and exile. They struck at the freedom of the press, of speech, of pubHc discussion, of pop- ular assemblies, as well as at alien friends. That they were passed at the time and as one of a series of measures when war with France was anticipated, added to the intense oppo- sition felt in Kentucky. Public meetings were held every- where in the State, and all these measures denounced. The sedate and conservative George Nicholas felt called on to publish an open letter denouncing the acts as unconstitu- tional, and that this was known to those members of Con- gress who voted for them, and the President who approved them. In almost all, if not in all, the resolutions adopted by the public meetings, among the toasts at muster and barbecue, there were united with the denunciation of these acts ex- pressions of resolute purpose to secure the free navigation of the Mississippi ; and it seems to have been universally felt in the State that the continuance in power of the Federal party would be followed by the cession of this claim. Some of the addresses and resolutions, and series of toasts are known to have been written by one who had migrated to Kentucky after she had become a State ; and in these appeared a construction of the Federal Constitution, which, if true, gave to Kentucky and each of the States the right to protect her citizens against the operation of an unconsti- tutional Federal ^ct. And in some of them were sentences which contained the thought that the true mission of the Union was to people the whole Continent, and as speedily as possible carve new States out of the outstretching West, which should be received into the Union on e(|ual footing with the original States ; that this was possible only on the theory that these States could protect themselves and their citi- zens against usurpation b)' either the General (jovernment or their co-States. That as between these new and at first necessarily weak States, and the General Government and their co-States, the Constitution was the compact of union. 2S CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION. containing all the terms and stipulations of the contract, all the powers granted or to be exercised, all the burdens to be borne ; that the people of these new States could understand from the perusal of this Constitution the precise terms on which they could be received into the Union, and weigh all the duties and contingencies resulting from such a union. But if that Constitution was not the measure of the powers of the General Government and of the co-States, if there resided anywhere unlimited power to add new burdens against the protest of the State, and in open violation of that compact, for which violation the new State had no remedy, except by appeal to the very Government who had committed the violation, then, indeed, would it be folly for these new States to seek a connection where they would be at the unrestrained mercy of distant and at times, per- haps, hostile States, whose numbers and wealth and conti- guity to the Capital gave them control of the departments of the Government; that Kentucky, as a new and compar- atively feeble State, on the frontier of that territory out of which other new States were to be carved, was vitally inter- ested in this construction of the Constitution, which, if adopted, would insure beyond doubt the extension of the Union, and remove all danger of the establishment of another Confederacy. This lawyer and statesman had been the personal friend and neighbor of Jefferson, had served with distinction in the Virginia House of Burgesses, enjoyed the confidence of Madison, and the affectionate friendship of Monroe, and his elder brothers '■■ possessed the respect and esteem of Ken- tucky. He had been President of the Democratic Society of Lexington, and for awhile Attorne\' General of Ken- tucky. Elected to the Legislature from Fayette in May, 1797, he had become interested in legal reform, and in May, 1798, was re-elected. After the Alien and Sedition Laws *Gen. Robert Breckinridge had sat in some of the Conventions, been a delegate to the Virginia House and was first Speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives. BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. 29 were passed, he, with his young family, went on a visit to Albemarle among his relatives and friends. He was the friend of the three Nicholas brothers, Wilson Gary, George, and John — all of whom were able and conspicuous mem- bers of the Jeffersonian party. During that visit to Albe- marle, in a consultation at Monticello, in which Jefferson, Wilson Gary Nicholas, and this Kentuckian were present, the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798 were sub- stantially agreed upon. Madison drafted those adopted by Virginia. From 1798 to 182 1 it was believed that John Breckinridge drafted those Kentuck}' adopted ; in that year Jefferson made the claim that he was their author. * This is not the time nor place to enter into any discus- sion of the disputed authorship of these celebrated reso- lutions. The point I am making is, that Kentucky, by this *I append a copy of the celebrated letter in which Mr. Jefferson made that claim — copied from the original letter in Mr Jefferson's peculiar hand-writing, which letter is now in my possession . It is addressed to J. Cabell Breckinridge, Frankfort, Kentucky, is postmarked Charlottes- ville and has Mr Jefferson's frank on it. This letter is published in the correspondence of Mr. Jefterson as "to Nicholas, Esq." Whether the editor of that correspondence fol- lowed an indorsement on the copy of the letter found among Mr Jeffer- son's papers, or whether the mistake is that of the editor, I know not. It may not he improper to add that the copy of the Kentucky resolutions sent by Mr Jefferson to Mr. Madison on November 17, 1798. and the copy found among Mr. Jefferson's papers, consist of eight resolutions; those adopted by the Kentucky Legislature of nine ; and that there are several differences in language and form of expressions: " MONTICEI.LO, December 11, '21. "Dkau SiK: Your letter of December I9 places me under a dilemma which I cannot solve, but by an exposition of the naked truth I would have wished this rather to have remained as hitherto without inquiry, Ijut your inquiries have a right to l)e answered. I will do it as e.\actly as the great lapse of time and a waning memory will enable me. I may misre- meml)er indifferent circumstances, Hut can be right in substance. At the time when the Republicans of our country were so much alarmed at the proceedings of the Federal ascenilancy in Congress, in the Executive and the Judiciary departments, it became a matter of serious consideration how head could be made against their enterprises on the Constitution ; the leading Republicans in Congress found themselves of no use there; brow- beaten as tliey were by a bold and overwhelming majority, they concluded to retire from that lield, take a stand in their Slate Legislatures, and endeavor there to arrest their progress. The Alien and Se