of the country and the
erection of a separate government. The secessionists then, as always,
played into the hands of the men who wished the new republic ill. In the
last decade of the eighteenth century the acute friction was not between
North and South, but between East and West. The men who, from various
motives, wished to see a new republic created, hoped that this republic
would take in all the people of the western waters. These men never
actually succeeded in carrying the West with them. At the pinch the
majority of the Westerners remained loyal to the idea of national unity;
but there was a very strong separatist party, and there were very many
men who, though not separatists, were disposed to grumble loudly about
the shortcomings of the Federal government.

Their Influence in Kentucky.
Their Fatuity.

These men were especially numerous and powerful in Kentucky, and they
had as their organ the sole newspaper of the State, the _Kentucky
Gazette_. It was filled with fierce attacks, not only upon the General
Government, but upon Washington himself. Sometimes these attacks were
made on the authority of the _Gazette_; at other times they appeared in
the form of letters from outsiders, or of resolutions by the various
Democratic societies and political clubs. They were written with a
violence which, in striving after forcefulness, became feeble. They
described the people of Kentucky as having been "degraded and insulted,"
and as having borne these insults with "submissive patience." The
writers insisted that Kentucky had nothing to hope from the Federal
Government, and that it was nonsense to chatter about the infraction of
treaties, for it was necessary, at any cost, to take Louisiana, which
was "groaning under tyranny." They threatened the United States with
what the Kentuckians would do if their wishes were not granted, announcing
that they would make the conquest of Louisiana an ultimatum, and warning
the Government that they owed no eternal allegiance to it and might have
to separate, and that if they did there would be small reason to deplore
the separation. The separatist agitators failed to see that they could
obtain the objects they sought, the opening of the Mississippi and the
acquisition of Louisiana, only through the Federal Government, and only
by giving that Government full powers. Standing alone the Kentuckians
would have been laughed to scorn not only by England and France, but
even by Spai