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-•-ddress Delivered at the Cen
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DEHVEREI) AT THE
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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<lition Law
furnished the particular occasion. The symi)athy between Virginia anil
Kentucky was more cordial and more intimately conlidential than between
any other two States of Republican policy. Mr. M idison came into the
Virginia Legislature I was then in the Vice- i'lesidency, and could not
leave my station; but your father. Col. W. C. Nicholas, and myself, hap-
0,0 CENTENNIAI, ( F.I.EBRATIOX.
act, formulated for the first time that distinct theory of
our constitutional government, upon which the election of
Jefferson in 1801 was secured, and which for three-score
years was accepted by the dominant party of the country.
Under that theory the era of good will under Madison and
Monroe became possible.
The first of that celebrated series has been so often the
subject of earnest discussion and fierce denunciation, that
the remaining eight of them have been forgotten. What-
ever may be the errors contained in this instrument, if indeed
there be any, it is a most masterly composition. The funda-
mental general principles it announces as applicable to all
times and all questions are: that confidence everywhere is
the parent of despotism; that all governments possess only
such powers as are bestowed, all others being reserved in
pening to be together, the engaging the co-operation of Kentucky in an
enercretic protestation against the constitutionality of those laws became
a subject of consultation. Those gentlemen pressed me strongly to sketch
resolutions for that purpose, your father undertaking to introduce them to
that Legislature, with a solemn assurance, which I strictly required, that
it should not be known from what quarter they came. I drew and deliv-
ered them to him, and in keeping their original secret he fulfilled his
pledge of honor. Some years after this Col. Nicholas asked me if I would
have any objection to it being known that I had drawn them. I pointedly
enjoined that it should not. Whether he had unguardedly intimated it
before to any one I know not, but I afterwards observed in the papers
repeated imputations of them to me, on which, as has been my practice
on all occasions of imputation, I have observed entire silence. The ques-
tion, indeed, has never 'before been put to me nor should I answer it to
any other than yourself, seeing no good end to be proposed by it, and the
desire of tranquility inducing with me a wish to be withdrawn from public
notice Your father's zeal and talents were too well known to desire any
additional distinction from the penning these resolutions. That circum-
stance surely was of far less merit than the proposing and carrying them
through the Legislature of his State. The only fact in this statement on
which my memory is not distinct, is the time and occasion of the consul-
tation with your father and Mr. Nicholas. It took place here I know, but
whether any other person was present or communicated with is my doubt.
I think Mr. Madison was either with us or consulted, but my memory is
uncertain as to minute details. I fear, dear sir, we are now in such
another crisis, with this difference only, that the judiciary branch is alone
and single-handed in the present assaults on the Constitution ; but its
assaults are more sure and deadly, as from an agent, seemingly passive and
una-suming May you and your cotemporaries meet them with the same
determination and effect as your father and his did the "Alien and
Sedition" laws, and preserve inviolate a Constitution which, cherished in
all its chastity and purity, will prove in the end a blessing to all the
nations of the earth. With these prayers, accept those for your own
happiness and prosperity.
"TH. JEFFERSON.
"For T. C^KEI.L Breckinridge, Frankfort, Ky."
BKIXKIXRIDGE COUNTY. :]1
and by the people ; that the Constitution of State and
United States is the measure of the powers bestowed, and
not the discretion of the government; that if the discretion
of the government be the measure of its powers, then that
government is a despotism ; that the Federal Constitution
was a compact entered into by the States by which a gov-
ernment w'as created, all of whose powers were delegated
powers, and contained in that compact, and that of neces-
sity the parties to that compact were the sole judges, each
for itself, of infractions thereof, and the redress therefor.
To these universal principles were added the denunciation
of the particular acts under consideration, and the reasons
why Kentucky believed them to be unconstitutional.
At the next session of the Legislature, 1799, John Breck-
inridge became Speaker, and in Committee of the Whole,
Joseph Desha being Chairman of the Committee, offered
the resolutions of 1799, of which he was the undisputed
author, which were unanimously adopted ; and at this very
session, doubtless, in additional indorsement of these cher-
ished views, the Legislature created this county, and made
it a memorial of its esteem and admiration for that Speaker.
The men of whom the Legislatures of 1798 and 1799
were constituted had already acquired and always thereaf-
ter retained the confidence and affection of the State. They
had been among her soldiers and leaders in the past twenty-
five years. Upon them she showered ever)' honor in her
gift until that generation gave place to another.
Alexander Scott Bullitt had been President of the Senate
since the admission of the State into the Union, and became
her first Lieutenant Governor, and he was succeeded as
Lieutenant Governor by John Caldwell, and he by Gabriel
Slaughter, and he by Richard Hickman, and he in turn
again by Gabriel Slaughter, who, by the death of George
Madison, became Governor, and gave place to his old col-
league in the House, John Adair, who was followed by that
Joseph Desha, who, as Chairman of the Committee of the
Whole, reported the resolutions of 1799 to the House.
32 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
In the meantime John Breckinridge had become Senator,
as had John Adair and Buckner Thurston, the old clerk of
the Senate, and Christopher Greenup Governor, and to both
sets of resolutions had the honored name of James Garrard
been affixed.
This is indeed a galaxy of stars to be placed in the crown
of our State's glory. Garrard, Bullitt, Edmund Bullock,
Adair, Slaughter, Caldwell, Hickman, Greenup, McClung;
Russell, who followed Campbell and Shelby up the steep
acclivity where Ferguson died ; Desha, whose grandfather
fell by the Indians in Tennessee, and whose childhood was
spent amidst all perils, and who lived to share in the triumph
of the Thames; Robert Johnson, the noble root from which
has sprung a noble stock; Green Clay, surveyor, legislator,
■soldier, whose descendants have deserved well of their coun-
try. From the members of those Legislatures the S'^ate
chose four Governors, four Lieutenant Governors, at least
two Senators, and many Congressmen, judges, legislators.
The godfathers, my countrymen, of your venerated county,
-deserve your veneration and gratitude ; no royal infant was
ever surrounded at its birth with a more imposing circle;
around no cradle ever gathered a nobler group, who loved
liberty, bowed in obedience to order, loved their race, and
feared God.
During the fierce discussions of these obnoxious laws,
and the heated Presidential election, Kentucky never for
one moment lost sight of the purpose to own the Missis-
sippi. By every possible means this was kept before Con-
gress, and made the chief object of her servants' in the
Federal Congress. It was because Jefferson was known to
share in these views that made him so beloved in Kentucky,
and filled all her borders with joy when the news of his
election came ; and in 1803 she saw the consummation of
these labors. Not until the garrets of our old families are
searched, and the old moth-eaten papers examined and
weighed, will the true share of Kentuckj' statesmen in the
BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. S3
glory of the purchase and annexation of Louisiana be
known.
These resolutions of Kentucky, adopted in 1798 and
1799, were the platform of the Jeffersonian party, the first
formulated party platform in the history of American poli-
tics. Upon them that election turned. It is not saying too
much that the re-election of Mr. Adams, and the continu-
ance of the Federal party in power at that juncture of
public affairs, would have postponed, if not prevented, the
purchase and annexation of Louisiana — nay, would have
changed the policy of America on that subject. Let this
be put to the credit of this platform, and the State who
gave it her solemn legislative and executive indorsement ;
that its first-fruits were the dawning of the era of renewed
fraternal feeling, the awakening in Kentucky and the South-
west of an earnest and passionate love for the Union, and
the annexation of the father of waters, and all the unrivaled
valley, watered by its tributaries.
The election of Jefferson made negotiation with France
on this subject possible. With surprise did we receive the
offer to purchase it; and for a moment constitutional scru-
ples on the part of the President hindered; but this hesita-
tion continued but for a moment. Although he believed
that under that Constitution there had been given no power
to the General Government to acquire new territory, he de-
termined to act, and then appeal to the States to render
the act legal by a constitutional amendment. Under his
instructions Monroe closed the treaty, and Louisiana —
that superb and magnificent country, now teeming with its
millions of freemen, and fast becoming the very centre of
power — became part of free America. At last the dream
of the pioneer was realized, and from the Big Sandy to the
Gulf the glad waters laved only friendly shores and yielded
their fruitful bosoms to the commerce of the West.
But there remained the unsettled question, " Was annex-
ation of territory extra-constitutional?"
3
34 ' CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
When we estimate what we have since annexed — Florida,
Texas, Cahfornia, the territories growing into States — we
know how momentous the solution of this problem was.
If new territory could be acquired only through the slow
and doubtful process of constitutional amendment, all future
annexation became doubtful if not impossible. John Breck-
inridge was now Senator, and Jefferson selected him as the
mover of the proper constitutional amendment. That
amendment, in Mr. Jefferson's own handwriting, as sent by
him to John Breckinridge, I now hold in may hand. It is :
A't'sohrd, By the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States, two-thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following amend-
ment to the Constitution of the United States be proposed to the Legisla-
tures of the several States, which, when ratified by three fourths of the
said Legislatures, shall be valid to all intents and purposes as a part of
the said Constitution.
"Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of
the United States."
But not even the great influence of Jefferson could per-
suade his friends that the United States could not by treaty
acquire new territory, and that if there were doubts, those
doubts ought to be forever removed by this precedent.
These views prevailed, and to-day it is no idle boast that
but for Kentucky the precedent might have been settled
precisely the other way, and sanctified with the illustrious
name of Jefferson. If it had, who believes that Texas and
the golden slopes on the Pacific would to-day form part of
our dear country, and share with us the glorious prfvilege
of working out the problem of American liberty?*
Here I close this review of the pioneer work of Ken-
tucky. Here began a new era in the development of Amer-
* I add a note from Mr. Jefferson to John Breckinridge, dated August
i8, 1S03:
"MONTICELLO, August, 18, '03.
"Dear Sir: I wrote to you on the 12th inst. on the subject of Louisiana
and the constitutional provision which might be, necessary for it. A letter
received yesterday shows that nothing must be said on that subject which
may give a pretext for retracting; but that we should do, sitd sileiitio, what
shall be found necessary. Be so good, therefore, as to consider that part of
my letter confidential; it strengthens the reasons for desiring the presence
of every fri-end to the treaty on the first day of the session. Perhaps you
BRECKINRIDGE COUXTY. 35
ica. It was now settled that territories could be transformed
into States ; that equal representation and universal suffrage
were compatible with order and constitutional government ;
that the Constitution, not the discretion of those who were
in temporary control of the Government, was the measure
of the powers bestowed ; that the powers of the General
Government were delegated and limited powers; that the
Union formed by the Constitution was a Union of States, into
which Union new States could be admitted on equal footing
with the old; and that this Union had the power of indefinite
expansion by the annexation of territory to be carved into
States. The dream of the fathers had indeed been fulfilled.
As the survivors of the dark and doubtful days from 1770
to 1783 recalled those anxious forecastings, and then looked
around them on what had been accomplished, what emo-
tions of grateful joy must have overflowed their hearts.
I have desired, as my contribution to this memorial day,
to put together some scattered evidences of the part the
pioneers of Kentucky, and the statesman after whom your
county is named, played in securing these glorious results.
I trust I have not overstepped the bounds of propriety in
my utterances concerning that statesman.
can impress this necessity on the Senators of the Western States by private
letter. Accept my friendly salutations and assurances of great respect and
esteem.
' TH. JEI-KERSON.
"J. Bkkckinkidge, Esq "
To those who are familiar with this subject, the proposed amendment
differs from those suggested by Mr Jefferson in his letter to Mr. Madison
of August 25, 1803 and to Levi Lincoln in his letter of August 30, 1803.
His letter to Mr. Breckinridge of August 12, 1803, did not inclose this
proposed amendment.
The manuscript correspondence of Mr. Moiirfjc- .md Mr Breckinridge
show that this whole subject was anxiously discussctl l)y them before Mr.
Monroe went to Europe, and during liis stay there; and tlie manuscript
correspondence between William Cary Nicholas and John Breckinridge
show their agreement as to the proposed amendment.
I ought to state that I had at one time come to the conclusion that the
paper read in the address was really written in April, iSpt). wliiie Mr.
Breckinridge was Attorney General ; that while Jefferson yielded to his
friends in 1803, he had not been convinced, and desired to renew the
subject after his party had become stronger; and there are some facts
which seem to establish this. I have no doubt that there were, and
probably still are, private papers in existence which would conclusively
settle this point.
36 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
Here to-day, at a memorial service, conducted under the
auspices of the Breckinridge Centennial Association, well
may many ask who was this John Breckinridge, after whom
this beautiful county was named? I dare not venture to
answer that question myself. Another more eloquent than
I, who, himself, deserved well of his State, asked and an-
swered that question years ago. His answer was:
Who was John Breckinridge? I liave heard of a man of that name
who, being left at a very tender age an orphan boy of slender means and
delicate constitution, contrived, no one could tell how, in one of the
frontier counties of Virginia, to make himself an accurate and elegant
scholar by the time of life at which most youths of the best opportunities
are beginning to master the outposts of learning. I have heard that he
turned this early and unusual school craft to such nccount, and mixed his
love of learning wi\h a spirit of such unconquera'uiu energy, that with his
rifle on his shoulder and his surveying implements in his hands, he scoured
the frontiers of his native State, exposed every hour to death by savage
warriors, that with the price of his toil and almost of his blood, he might
purchase what he valued above the body's life — the means of life to the
spirit — that enchanting knowledge for which his henrt panted.
Old men have told me, and their eyes have filled with tears as they
dwelt on the name of the beloved lad, that when he had left his mountain
home for the ancient institution of Williamsburg, eagerly bent on knowing
what he might, and while yet a minor, his native county appalled him by
an order to represent her interests and honor in the legislative halls of
the most renowned of our Commonwealths; and I have heard that from
that day forward, for a period of six and twenty years, he lived continually
in the public eye, until 1806 he was prematurely cut off in the very flower
of his manhood, and when the richest fruits of such a life were only
beginning to ripen.
As an advocate, the mention of his name, even in remote connection
with that of Patrick Henry, who was still in his meridian splendor when
the young backwoodsman met him at the bar, is enough to prove that
from the start the goal was in his reach. As a lawyer, learned, great, and
full of strength, the man who was the constant rival of George Nicholas,
and out of all other professional comparison, and who, when just turned
of forty, and at a period of our history when distinguished merit was an
indispensable requisite for high office, became Attorney General of the
United States, had name enough. As a politician, the leader of the first
Democratic Senate that ever met under the present Government of the
United States, the compeer of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, and their
confidential friend, the author of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, which
constituted the earliest and the boldest movement of that great era, and
which were drawn with such consummate ability that Mr. Jefferson con-
BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY. 37
siclered it too great an addition to his fame to be reputed their author,
ever openly to deny it, niay justly be called great.
As a statesman, the present Constitution of Kentucky, of which he,
more than any man, was the undoubted author, and which the people of
that State, after a trial of more than forty years, refuse to alter ; the
Criminal Code of that State the most humane that exists, and which in
its great outlines is the work of his hands; the opposition to Jay's treaty;
the securing the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi, the subsequent
purchase of Louisiana, and the incalculable influence of these events upon
the destinies of this great nation — ideas which the proof is complete had
their origin in those Democratic societies of the West of which he and
that far-sighted patriot, George Nicholas, were the life and soul — place him
in the very front rank.
Of the private life of this man, I have heard a character still more
remarkable. Simple in his manners, grave and lofty in his carriage, self-
denied in his personal habits, and a stranger to the common wants and
infirmities of man, no efforts were too great, no labors too immense, no
vigils too protracted, no dangers too imminent, no difficulties too insur-
mountable for his great, concentrated, indomitable energies. And yet
this firm and earnest spirit and this vigor almost austere were tempered
by a gentleness towards those he loved, so tender that the devotion of his
friends knew no bounds; and directed by a frankness and generosity
towards all men, so striking and absolute, that even those he could not
trust, trusted him If men have told me truth, his was a life from
beginning to end most imposing and illustrious; a character in all respects
noble and pure. He was a man whom all noted while he walked amongst
them, and when he fell all men mourned.
In 1800 Kentucky had a population of 220,985, and in
1810 of 406,51 1, and had increased with even greater pro-
portionate rapidity in wealth and the luxuries which wealth
brings. She had led in all literary and religious nio\'einents.
She had outgrown the old days of her pioneer struggles, and
had settled all those scores but one. The ancient enemy
was yet unconquered. They who led the bands against the
log stations in the virgin cane, whose scalping-knives had
been bloody with precious blood, who filled Kentucky with
universal mourning for the slain of Blue Lick — the story of
which tragic disaster has been so lately told in eloquent
prose and stately poetry — were yet the allies of Great
Britain. This debt, made thousand-fold greater by the
dead of Tippecanoe and the slain of Raisin river, was paid
at the Thames, where Tecumseh fell, and at New Orleans,
38 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
where British valor broke its waves on the cotton bulwarks
of Western soldiery.
Here we pause; for in the war of 1812 only a few of old
pioneers — Nestors like Shelby — took part. A new race of
men were in power. The age of the pioneer was ended;
the era of the settler had passed. It is of their era and of
their work alone that I desire to speak, and for that reason,
in part, I have not ventured into the inviting field of the
local history of this county. A graceful pen, however, has
put on record this chapter of Kentucky history. A more
fascinating chapter of the tragic and romantic days of the In-
dian fighter has never been written than that we have this
day listened to. I know this vast audience unites with me
in the urgent request that he bring it down to today. But
there is one episode that is so touching that I cannot refrain
from an allusion to it. Rich, indeed, must be the commin-
gled blood of Benjamin Logan, John Allen, and John Crit-
tenden; and he whose heart was warmed with its pulsations
must be easily touched by any tale of oppression, and eager
to take any risk to give aid. In the youthful ear of a gal-
lant scion of these families were poured stories of Spanish
oppression, and of Cuban yearning to be free; and with all
the ardor of his nature, and all the bravery of his sires, he
embarked in that disastrous expedition to Cuba. And in
the plaza at Havana, with unblanched face, he refused to
kneel, saying, with the chivalric mingling of the thought of
God and woman, the sweet, reverent intertwining of wor-
shipful love for God and mother and sweetheart that marked
the tender but heroic crusader, "a Kentuckian kneels to
none but God and his sweetheart," he gave his life to his
murderers. The comrades who fought under his command,
and died at his side under that murderous fire, were worthy
to die with him — to them death brought no fear. If mis-
guided, they paid the penalty with their lives ; and never,
under the Cid or by the side of the cavalier who drove the
crescent before the cross, fought or died more knightly cru-
saders. That Kentucky blood sanctifies that Cuban plaza,
BRECKTNRTDGE COUNTY. 39
and in the days to come, some English-speaking orator will,
on that very spot, recount the sad and melting story.
I venture to add, that the children of these pioneers have
been worthy of their sires. Buena Vista and Mexico, the
sad but glorious fields of the late unhappy war, bore im-
perishable testimony that those who fell at Kings Mountain
and conquered at Yorktown, who wrestled with Indian foe
and died at Blue Licks, were no braver men or stouter sol-
diers than their grandsons who fell with their feet to the foe
'and their faces to heaven.
And as the foundation and development of the States of
the West and the Southwest and of the Pacific slope are
told, familiar Kentucky names fall on our pleased ears; and
the sons, like the fathers, are builders of States. My coun-
trymen, this is the peculiar destiny of our race. As I recall
all Kentucky has done for mankind and liberty, and realize
all she is to-day, my heart thrills with thanksgiving that my
lot was cast with her. But it is not because m}^ horizon
is limited by her eastern hills or western river; nay, but
because I take in the wide sweep of my contemplation the
leadership that our race has in the world's progress, and for
my country we claim the head of that column. ,
As I look once more at the universal map, and see what
part Great Britain and America bear in all that adds to the
good of man and gives glory to God; as I try to imagine
what added power will be given by another hundred years
to this English-speaking race, I rejoice that our State and
our kinsmen have done their full share in all of the past, and
are doing it in the present. A pure, yet free religion, lib-
erty regulated by law, order protected by the love of the
free, chaste homes where open Bibles and virtuous women
shed the blended radiance of heaven and earth on the
children of those who have conquered every foe who op-
posed the onward march of these lofty and pervasive ideas —
these conservative and peaceful influences, these irresistible
agencies for good — give assurance that the future of this
race will be fruitful in blessing.
40 CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
Already America is conquered by this tongue; the an-
cient prejudices and older religions of India are quietly
melting before the steady heat of English justice; Aus-
traliai like a young giant, is striding towards empire ; in
Africa the leaven has been hid in the weighty measures of
meal. The subtle force of this civilization is making itself
felt in China. It is a civilization and a language worthy of
leadership.
We are no longer pioneers: we are not called to their
work. But every day has its own problems, every era its «i
own questions, every State its own labors.
We are not called to deeds of blood, of rude combat in
forest ; but the struggle is as real, the combat is as danger-
ous. All lead or follow. Leadership is not by accident nor
to the weak; mastery comes not to the slothful nor to the
cowardly. Kentucky can be towards the head — nay at the
head, of this onward marching column of American States.
To do this, her mines must be opened, her mountains tun-
neled, her rivers bridged, her waste land tilled ; still more,
law must reign supreme in her borders, education be hon-
ored in her children, religion be obeyed in her homes. Rich
in her natural resources, richer in the fame of her sons and
the traditions of her past, still richer in the qualities of her
people, Kentucky this day turns her face from the Past to
the rising sun of the Future, and with glad, brave heart
enters into the life that lies before her. And we, her chil-
dren, with proud thanksgiving for that Past, and with
tender love for our mother Commonwealth, do here, on this
holy ground, sanctified by patriot blood and womanly
sacrifice, conscious of the invisible presence of the shades
of the heroic dead, re consecrate ourselves to the service of
the State, to the supremacy of law. to the preservation of a
true liberty, to the weal of a compacted Union, and to the
progress of a common race, appealing to the Searcher of
Hearts, who doeth His will in the army of heaven and
among the inhabitants of earth, to attest the sincerity of our
vow, and for His omnipotent aid.
SiS'b'
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