among them and inciting them to deeds of violence. If Virginia went to the defense of the colonies in Kentucky, the Transylvania Company must be ignored. If Virginia declined to aid them, then the Transylvania people must arrange their own defense. This was a question of great moment; how great was not then recognized by the Virginia authorities. It was solved by a man who was later to play a great part in the making of history and to give to Virginia a great territory, free from Indian or English influence. George Rogers Clark appeared upon the scene at this critical moment. CHAPTER VII. CLARK IN COMMAND OF MILITIA REFUSES BRITISH MILITARY COMMISSION-OPPOSITION TO TRANSYLVANIA SCHEME-DELEGATE TO VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY-HISTORIC "FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS OF POWDER"-A DOUBLE VICTORY-TRANSYLVANIA DIES; KENTUCKY BORN. George Rogers Clark, the winner of the Northwest territory for the Union that was to be, came to be a Kentucky colonist at the moment when the Indians, forgetting past defeats. and the treaty they had signed, put on the war paint again, won by specious promises made by wily agents of the British government, and began their savage warfare anew among the people on the southern bank of the Ohio river, whom they had declared in solemn treaty they would never more molest. The Indian is not to be wholly blamed for this; he was a savage; the land on the southern bank of the Ohio he claimed as his own, as his hunting ground, and the provisions of a treaty, signed by him when the burden of defeat laid heavily upon him, meant less to him. than to the white signatories. The English agents were blamable; they were white men, capable and educated; they knew the solemnity of a treaty and the force of its provisions; they knew that the men, women and children of Kentucky to whose murder they were inciting the savages, were of English blood, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh; yet they drove the Indians against them and to deeds of violence, rapine and murder unequalled by the savage inhabitants of India who, driven to desperation by British tyranny and intolerance, rose against their oppressors and wrote into the history of England in India the bloodiest chapters of the career Vol. I-3. of the Island Kingdom, the Mistress of the Seas. Clark first visited Kentucky in 1775, and had so impressed himself upon the colonists as a man of force and character that they placed him in command of their militia. After a short stay, he returned to Virginia, full of knowledge of the situation in Kentucky; the necessity for the development of a system of defense not only against the Indians but against their unnatural allies, the English. Furthermore, he opposed the Transylvania idea and believed that Virginia should reject all the claims of the Lords Proprietors. This meant the early demise of the ambitious designs of Colonel Henderson and his associates. With Patrick Henry, the sturdy statesman and orator, the advocate of liberty at any price, opposing their schemes and refusing craftily tendered bribes; with George Rogers Clark, the born soldier and patriot, declaring in opposition to all their schemes, the ambitious Proprietors saw their principality melt away and their dreams of vast fortune vanish into thin air. Clark was still a young man, of but twentyfour years; he had shown such capacity and gallantry in Lord Dunmore's war against the Indians as to win the offer of a commission in the British army, which, with a prescience of coming events, he had declined, feeling, even then, that the day was not distant when he 33 Summer of the cond Lemur and is very asure to Governor is ma potion of as flow-proprietors 2 V I vill be recalled, <remena z Philadelphia. So the executhe ire a once adThe rummed pounds of Je pense of the people in I strev ; and lomatic the aesense of the people 4's man cf them her own The be protected but this Vits assemmg a proprietary comed would be a blow eat to the downfall of amdocs designs. The It and Loree to Clark's re quest, declaring that its powers did not extend so far. Clark, however, was not to be denied; he knew the dire need of his associates in Kentucky he had journeyed through many difficulties and dangers to Virginia in their behalf, and was not to be put off by pleas of lack of jurisdiction. He pressed his request with such insistence that the council finally concluded that it would assume the responsibility of lending him five hundred pounds of powder, holding him responsible in the event that the house of burgesses did not uphold the transaction. Clark wanted that powder very badly, but not on these terms. In addition to his desire for the powder for defensive purposes, he desired that Virginia should assume, as of right and duty, the defense of the western frontier. He returned the order of the council with a brief note in which he declared his intention to return at once to Kentucky, there to set up an independent state, declaring for the benefit of the council that "a country which is not worth defending is not worth claiming." It was Clark, the diplomat, who penned that indignant statement accompanying his refusal to accept a loan of powder. He knew the members of the council better than they knew themselves and acted accordingly, the result being that Clark was called a second time before the council and on August 23, 1776, he was given another order for five hundred pounds of powder to be conveyed by Virginia officials to Pittsburg, "to be safely kept and delivered to George Rogers Clark, or his order, for the use of the said inhabitants of Kentucky." Clark had won a double victory, in that he had secured the much needed powder and what, in his view, was more important, an expression from Virginia that it was her duty to defend the western frontier and its brave pioneer occupants. This first and important step he hoped would soon be followed by a direct assertion of Virginia's authority over the territory in Kentucky. Overjoyed with the success thus far attendant upon his efforts, Clark wrote to his friends in Kentucky requesting them to receive the powder at Pittsburg and safely convey it to Kentucky that it might be used in defense against the expected savage forays under English guidance. Clark himself, remained in Virginia awaiting the reassembling of the assembly. Joined by his colleague, Gabriel John Jones, he proceeded to Williamsburg and presented the memorial of the Kentucky colonists to the assembly. Once again victory was with Clark; the personality which in the near future was to mark him so distinctly as a soldier now stood him in good stead as the civil representative of his people. The Transylvania Company knew that Clark and Jones were in Virginia, claiming rights as delegates to the assembly from "the western portion of Fincastle county," and had put forth every effort of their inventive minds to destroy the effect of their pleas. Notwithstanding the efforts of Colonel Henderson and his associates, the Virginia assembly on December 7, 1776, passed an act which divided the county of Fincastle, which covered a vast and not altogether well-defined western territory, into three sections to be thereafter known as Kentucky county, Washington county and Montgomery county, Virginia. December 7, 1776, may therefore be claimed as the anniversary of Kentucky, as it undoubtedly was the day when Transylvania met its death blow. That was a rather wide and expansive territory, which the Virginia assembly called Kentucky county, and which is practically the state of Kentucky of today, but it was not wide enough nor expansive enough. for the sovereignty of Virginia and of the Lords Proprietors of Transylvania to occupy together; so the latter passed out of existence and have never nor can they ever have a successor in our country. To George Rogers Clark be all the honor, for to him it is largely due that the Kentucky of today exists. Yet how few of the inhabitants of the state know the great value of his services at a critical period in our history, or the tremendous effect of his subsequent military successes upon the history of our country. Fewer still know that he sleeps in a humble grave not many miles from the great metropo lis of the state, which he helped to politically found and so faithfully served. Nor do they know that outside the pages of history there has been practically no recognition of his great services. |