go down
eternally through the pages of history, and in my darker moments I
pictured her standing beside the guillotine with a smile that haunted
me.

The hideous image of that strife was reflected amongst our own people.
Budget after budget was hurried by the winds across the sea. And swift
couriers carried the news over the Blue Wall by the Wilderness Trail
(widened now), and thundered through the little villages of the Blue
Grass country to the Falls. What interest, you will say, could the
pioneer lawyers and storekeepers and planters have in the French
Revolution? The Rights of Man! Down with kings! General Washington and
Mr. Adams and Mr. Hamilton might sigh for them, but they were not
for the free-born pioneers of the West. Citizen was the proper term
now,--Citizen General Wilkinson when that magnate came to town,
resplendent in his brigadier's uniform. It was thought that Mr.
Wilkinson would plot less were he in the army under the watchful eye of
his superiors. Little they knew him! Thus the Republic had a reward for
adroitness, for treachery, and treason. But what reward had it for the
lonely, embittered, stricken man whose genius and courage had gained for
it the great Northwest territory? What reward had the Republic for
him who sat brooding in his house above the Falls--for Citizen General
Clark?

In those days you were not a Federalist or a Democrat, you were an
Aristocrat or a Jacobin. The French parties were our parties; the
French issue, our issue. Under the patronage of that saint of American
Jacobinism, Thomas Jefferson, a Jacobin society was organized in
Philadelphia,--special guardians of Liberty. And flying on the March
winds over the mountains the seed fell on the black soil of Kentucky:
Lexington had its Jacobin society, Danville and Louisville likewise
their patrons and protectors of the Rights of Mankind. Federalists were
not guillotined in Kentucky in the summer of 1793, but I might mention
more than one who was shot.

In spite of the Federalists, Louisville prospered, and incidentally I
prospered in a mild way. Mr. Crede, behind whose store I still lived,
was getting rich, and happened to have an affair of some importance in
Philadelphia. Mr. Wharton was kind enough to recommend a young lawyer
who had the following virtues: he was neither handsome nor brilliant,
and he wore snuff-colored clothes. Mr. Wharton also did me the honor to
say that I was cautious and painstaking, and had a habit of