est to atone for the sins of his
ancestors; the fearful months of waiting suffered by his Queen before
she, too, went to her death. Often as I lighted my candle of an evening
in my little room to read of these things so far away, I would drop my
Kentucky Gazette to think of a woman whose face I remembered, to wonder
sadly whether Helene de St. Gre were among the lists. In her, I was
sure, was personified that courage for which her order will 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, Louisvill