presided over by Col. Samuel McDowell, who, like Fleming,
was a veteran Indian fighter and hero of the Great Kanawha. Up to this
point the phases through which the movement for statehood in Kentucky
had passed were almost exactly the same as the phases of the similar
movement in Franklin. But the two now entered upon diverging lines of
progression. In each case the home government was willing to grant the
request for separation, but wished to affix a definite date to their
consent, and to make the fulfilment of certain conditions a
prerequisite. In each case there were two parties in the district
desiring separation, one of them favoring immediate and revolutionary
action, while the other, with much greater wisdom and propriety, wished
to act through the forms of law and with the consent of the parent
State. In Kentucky the latter party triumphed. Moreover, while up to the
time of this meeting of the May convention the leaders in the movement
had been the old Indian fighters, after this date the lead was taken by
men who had come to Kentucky only after the great rush of immigrants
began. The new men were not backwoods hunter-warriors, like Clark and
Logan, Sevier, Robertson, and Tipton. They were politicians of the
Virginia stamp. They founded political clubs, one of which, the Danville
club, became prominent, and in them they discussed with fervid eagerness
the public questions of the day, the members showing a decided tendency
towards the Jeffersonian school of political thought.

Convention Urges Independence.

The convention, which met at Danville, in May, 1785, decided unanimously
that it was desirable to separate, by constitutional methods, from
Virginia, and to secure admission as a separate state into the Federal
Union. Accordingly, it directed the preparation of a petition to this
effect, to be sent to the Virginia Legislature, and prepared an address
to the people in favor of the proposed course of action. Then, in a
queer spirit of hesitancy, instead of acting on its own responsibility,
as it had both the right and power to do, the convention decided that
the issuing of the address, and the ratification of its own actions
generally, should be submitted to another convention, which was summoned
to meet at the same place in August of the same year. The people of the
district were as yet by no means a unit in favor of separation, and this
made the convention hesitate to take any irrevocable step.

One of