rs knew his real designs or sympathized with them. Their
loosely knit party was at the moment united for one ostensible
purpose--that of separation from Virginia. The measures they championed
were in effect revolutionary, as they wished to pay no regard to the
action either of Virginia herself, or of the Federal Government. They
openly advocated Kentucky's entering into a treaty with Spain on her own
account. Their leaders must certainly have known Wilkinson's real
purposes, even though vaguely. The probability is that they did not,
either to him or in their own minds, define their plans with clearness,
but awaited events before deciding on a definite policy. Meantime by
word and act they pursued a course which might be held to mean, as
occasion demanded, either mere insistence upon Kentucky's admission to
the Union as a separate State, or else a movement for complete
independence with a Spanish alliance in the background.

It was impossible to pursue a course so equivocal without arousing
suspicion. In after years many who had been committed to it became
ashamed of their actions, and loudly proclaimed that they had really
been devoted to the Union; to which it was sufficient to answer that if
this had been the case, and if they had been really loyal, no such deep
suspicion could have been excited. A course of straightforward loyalty
could not have been misunderstood. As it was, all kinds of rumors as to
proposed disunion movements, and as to the intrigues with Spain, got
afloat; and there was no satisfactory contradiction. The stanch Union
men, the men who "thought continentally," as the phrase went, took the
alarm and organized a counter-movement. One of those who took prominent
part in this counter-movement was a man to whom Kentucky and the Union
both owe much: Humphrey Marshall, afterwards a Federalist senator from
Kentucky, and the author of an interesting and amusing and fundamentally
sound, albeit somewhat rancorous, history of his State. This loyal
counter-movement hindered and hampered the separatists greatly, and made
them cautious about advocating outright disunion. It was one of the
causes which combined to render abortive both the separatist agitations,
and the Spanish intrigues of the period.

Gardoqui's Intrigues.

While Miro was corresponding with Wilkinson and arranging for pensioning
both him and Sebastian, Gardoqui was busy at New York. His efforts at
negotiation were fruitless; for his instruc