Were these things which follow to my thinking not extraordinary, I should
not write them down here, nor should I have presumed to skip nearly five
years of time. For indeed almost five years had gone by since the warm
summer night when I rode into New Orleans with Mrs. Temple. And in all
that time I had not so much as laid eyes on my cousin and dearest friend,
her son. I searched New Orleans for him in vain, and learned too late
that he had taken passage on a packet which had dropped down the river
the next morning, bound for Charleston and New York.
I have an instinct that this is not the place to relate in detail what
occurred to me before leaving New Orleans. Suffice it to say that I made
my way back through the swamps, the forests, the cane-brakes of the
Indian country, along the Natchez trail to Nashville, across the barrens
to Harrodstown in Kentucky, where I spent a week in that cabin which had
so long been for me a haven of refuge. Dear Polly Ann! She hugged me as
though I were still the waif whom she had mothered, and wept over the
little presents which I had brought the children. Harrodstown was
changed, new cabins and new faces met me at every turn, and Tom, more
disgruntled than ever, had gone a-hunting with Mr. Boone far into the
wilderness.
I went back to Louisville to take up once more the struggle for practice,
and I do not intend to charge so much as a page with what may be called
the even tenor of my life. I was not a man to get into trouble on my own
account. Louisville grew amazingly; white frame houses were built, and
even brick ones. And ere Kentucky became a State, in 1792, I had gone as
delegate to more than one of the Danville Conventions.
Among the nations, as you know, a storm raged, and the great swells from
that conflict threatened to set adrift and wreck the little republic but
newly launched. The noise of the tramping of great armies across the Old
World shook the New, and men in whom the love of fierce fighting was born
were stirred to quarrel among themselves. The Rights of Man! How many
wrongs have been done under that clause! The Bastille stormed; the Swiss
Guard slaughtered; the Reign of Terror, with its daily procession of
tumbrels through the streets of Paris; the murder of that amiable and
well-meaning gentleman who did his best 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, 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 tiring out my
adversary. Therefore, in the early summer of 1793, I went to
Philadelphia. At that time, travellers embarking on such a journey were
prayed over as though they were going to Tartary. I was absent from
Louisville near a year, and there is a diary of what I saw and felt and
heard on this trip for the omission of which I will be thanked. The
great news of that day which concerns the world--and incidentally this
story--was that Citizen Genet had landed at Charleston.
Citizen Genet, Ambassador of the great Republic of France to the little
Republic of America, landed at Charleston, acclaimed by thousands, and
lost no time. Scarcely had he left that city ere American privateers had
slipped out of Charleston harbor to prey upon the commerce of the hated
Mistress of the Sea. Was there ever such a march of triumph as that of
the Citizen Ambassador northward to the capital? Everywhere toasted and
feasted, Monsieur Genet did not neglect the Rights of Man, for without
doubt the United States was to declare war on Britain within a fortnight.
Nay, the Citizen Ambassador would go into the halls of Congress and
declare war himself if that faltering Mr. Washington refused his duty.
Citizen Genet organized his legions as he went along, and threw
tricolored cockades from the windows of his carriage. And at his
glorious entry into Philadelphia (where I afterwards saw the great man
with my own eyes), Mr. Washington and his Federal-Aristocrats trembled in
their boots.
It was late in April, 1794, when I reached Pittsburg on my homeward
journey and took passage down the Ohio with a certain Captain Wendell of
the army, in a Kentucky boat. I had known the Captain in Louisville, for
he had been stationed at Fort Finney, the army post across the Ohio from
that town, and he had come to Pittsburg with a sergeant to fetch down the
river some dozen recruits. This was a most fortunate circumstance for
me, and in more ways than one. Although the Captain was a gruff and
blunt man, grizzled and weather-beaten, a woman-hater, he could be a
delightful companion when once his confidence was gained; and as we
drifted in the mild spring weather through the long reaches between the
passes he talked of Trenton and Brandywine and Yorktown. There was more
than one bond of sympathy between us, for he worshipped Washington,
detested the French party, and had a hatred for "filthy Democrats" second
to none I have ever encountered.
We stopped for a few days at Fort Harmar, where the Muskingum pays its
tribute to the Ohio, built by the Federal government to hold the
territory which Clark had won. And leaving that hospitable place we took
up our journey once more in the very miracle-time of the spring. The
sunlight was like amber-crystal, the tall cottonwoods growing by the
water-side flaunted a proud glory of green, the hills behind them that
formed the first great swells of the sea of the wilderness were clothed
in a thousand sheens and shaded by the purple budding of the oaks and
walnuts on the northern slopes. On the yellow sandbars flocks of geese
sat pluming in the sun, or rose at our approach to cast fleeting shadows
on the water, their HONK-HONKS echoing from the hills. Here and there a
hawk swooped down from the azure to break the surface and bear off a
wriggling fish that gleamed like silver, and at eventide we would see at
the brink an elk or doe, with head poised, watching us as we drifted. We
passed here and there a lonely cabin, to set my thoughts wandering
backwards to my youth, and here and there in the dimples of the hills
little clusters of white and brown houses, one day to become marts of the
Republic.
My joy at coming back at this golden season to a country I loved was
tempered by news I had heard from Captain Wendell, and which I had
discussed with the officers at Fort Harmar. The Captain himself had
broached the subject one cool evening, early in the journey, as we sat
over the fire in our little cabin. He had been telling me about
Brandywine, but suddenly he turned to me with a kind of fierce gesture
that was natural to the man.
"Ritchie," he said, "you were in the Revolution yourself. You helped
Clark to capture that country," and he waved his hand towards the
northern shore; "why the devil don't you tell me about it?"
"You never asked me," I answered.
He looked at me curiously.
"Well," he said, "I ask you now."
I began lamely enough, but presently my remembrance of the young man who
conquered all obstacles, who compelled all men he met to follow and obey
him, carried me strongly into the narrative. I remembered him, quiet,
self-contained, resourceful, a natural leader, at twenty-five a bulwark
for the sorely harried settlers of Kentucky; the man whose clear vision
alone had perceived the value of the country north of the Ohio to the
Republic, who had compelled the governor and council of Virginia to see
it likewise. Who had guarded his secret from all men, who in the face of
fierce opposition and intrigue had raised a little army to follow
him--they knew not where. Who had surprised Kaskaskia, cowed the tribes
of the North in his own person, and by sheer force of will drew after him
and kept alive a motley crowd of men across the floods and through the
ice to Vincennes.
We sat far into the night, the Captain listening as I had never seen a
man listen. And when at length I had finished he was for a long time
silent, and then he sprang to his feet with an oath that woke the
sleeping soldiers forward and glared at me.
"My God!" he cried, "it is enough to make a man curse his uniform to
think that such a man as Wilkinson wears it, while Clark is left to rot,
to drink himself under the table from disappointment, to plot with the
damned Jacobins--"
"To plot!" I cried, starting violently in my turn.
The Captain looked at me in astonishment.
"How long have you been away from Louisville?" he asked.
"It will be a year," I answered.
"Ah," said the Captain, "I will tell you. It is more than a year since
Clark wrote Genet, since the Ambassador bestowed on him a general's
commission in the army of the French Republic."
"A general's commission!" I exclaimed. "And he is going to France?" The
nation which had driven John Paul Jones from its service was now to lose
George Rogers Clark!
"To France!" laughed the Captain. "No, this is become France enough. He
is raising in Kentucky and in the Cumberland country an army with a
cursed, high-sounding name. Some of his old Illinois scouts--McChesney,
whom you mentioned, for one--have been collecting bear's meat and venison
hams all winter. They are going to march on Louisiana and conquer it for
the French Republic, for Liberty, Equality--the Rights of Man, anything
you like."
"On Louisiana!" I repeated; "what has the Federal government been doing?"
The Captain winked at me and sat down.
"The Federal government is supine, a laughing-stock--so our friends the
Jacobins say, who have been shouting at Mr. Easton's tavern all winter.
Nay, they declare that all this country west of the mountains, too, will
be broken off and set up into a republic, and allied with that most
glorious of all republics, France. Believe me, the Jacobins have not
been idle, and there have been strange-looking birds of French plumage
dodging between the General's house at Clarksville and the Bear Grass."
I was silent, the tears almost forcing themselves to my eyes at the
pathetic sordidness of what I had heard.
"It can come to nothing," continued the Captain, in a changed voice.
"General Clark's mind is unhinged by--disappointment. Mad Anthony[1] is
not a man to be caught sleeping, and he has already attended to a little
expedition from the Cumberland. Mad Anthony loves the General, as we all
do, and the Federal government is wiser than the Jacobins think. It may
not be necessary to do anything." Captain Wendell paused, and looked at
me fixedly. "Ritchie, General Clark likes you, and you have never
offended him. Why not go to his little house in Clarksville when you get
to Louisville and talk to him plainly, as I know you can? Perhaps you
might have some influence."
[1] General Wayne of Revolutionary fame was then in command of that
district.
I shook my head sadly.
"I intend to go," I answered, "but I will have no influence."
Read next: BOOK III - LOUISIANA#II - THE HOUSE ABOVE THE FALLS
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