were the efforts of the national Congress or of the commonwealth of
Virginia to grant their prayers. We can scarcely censure General James
Wilkinson for wishing to cut the "Gordian knot of difficulty" by
immediate separation and the erection of an independent government. At
the same time the subtle music of the siren's song fell upon the ears of
those who had won their homes through privations.
In June, 1785, Don Gardoqui was sent by the Spanish government to treat
with the American government on any subject of dispute. The Honorable
John Jay was commissioned to meet him, but the far-seeing members of
Congress fortunately put the following check upon Mr. Jay: "That he
enter into no treaty, compact, nor convention whatever with the said
representative of Spain, which did not stipulate the right of the United
States to the navigation of the Mississippi and boundaries as
established by their treaty with Great Britain."
In a few months, Jay urged upon Congress a commercial treaty, which
would, he claimed, redound to the benefit of the United States; the
consideration on her part was "she should forbear the use of the
navigation of the Mississippi for twenty-five or thirty years." Jay,
that had stood "like a stone wall" at Madrid and Paris, was now willing
to barter away the privileges of the nation for a mere sectional gain.
Happily, only seven of the requisite nine states voted favorably, and
the chimerical plot failed. The facilities for knowing the actions of
Congress were not nearly so great then as now; so when a communication
was made, 1787, from Pittsburgh by "A Committee of Correspondence for
Western Pennsylvania" to Kentucky pioneers, viz.: "That John Jay, the
American Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had made a proposition to Don
Gardoqui, the Spanish minister to the United States, to cede the
navigation of the Mississippi to Spain for twenty-five or thirty years,
in consideration of some commercial advantages to be granted to the
United States; but such as the western country could derive no profit
from," the effect may be easily imagined.
The people sent out a circular letter and prepared to hold a convention
to oppose such oppression; but learning that the project had failed,
after merely meeting and discussing the subject, they adjourned without
any action upon it.
In June, 1787, General James Wilkinson secured the privilege from
General Miro, Commandante, of shipping a vast quantity of tobacco to New
Orleans annually and of depositing it in the government's warehouse.
More than ever he now urged the importance to Kentuckians of the free
navigation of this great river, and the right to deposit at New Orleans.
Meanwhile, the Honorable John Brown of Danville had been chosen to
represent the Kentucky District in Congress. Again the frontiersmen were
doomed to disappointment when news came that the government had
postponed the admittance of Kentucky, indeed, would refer the question
to the new government.
As Don Gardoqui had failed in his scheme with John Jay, he now very
opportunely sought Representative Brown; with what effect may be read in
this part of a letter from Mr. Brown to Samuel McDowell, president of
the various Kentucky conventions: "In a conversation I had with Mr.
Gardoqui, the Spanish minister, relative to the navigation of the
Mississippi, he stated that, if the people of Kentucky would erect
themselves into an independent state and appoint a proper person to
negotiate with him, he had authority for that purpose, and would enter
into an arrangement with them for the exportation of their produce to
New Orleans on terms of mutual advantage." In a letter to Judge Muter,
Mr. Brown sets forth the same, and in addition says: "This privilege can
never be extended to them while part of the United States, by reason of
commercial treaties existing between that court and other powers of
Europe."
In 1788, at Danville, sat the seventh convention earnestly endeavoring
to be loyal to both the people and the parent state. In this assembly
General Wilkinson said: "There is one way and but one way, that I know
for obviating these difficulties, and that is so fortified by
constitutions and guarded by laws, that it is dangerous of access and
hopeless of attainment, under present circumstances." He dilated on the
population, production, and prosperity of the country and its
inalienable rights to the Mississippi. With natural adroitness, he
caused the Honorable John Brown to tell the convention, "That provided,
we are unanimous, everything we could wish for is within our reach."
Wilkinson also read a message he had addressed to the "Intendant of
Louisiana" wherein he urged that should Spain persist in her refusal of
the navigation of the Mississippi and cause a resort to arms, Great
Britain would join the western people in securing it, and thus all
Spanish-America would be endangered. Whatever individual profit
Wilkinson derived from his connection with the Spanish authorities may
be forgotten when we realize that he and the court party he represented
would forever have fought any act to lose to Kentucky the navigation of
the Mississippi.
June 1, 1792, Kentucky became the fifteenth state, and at last some of
her trials were over. Still the British retained their forts and the
Indians continued their depredations. At this time, the Revolution was
shaking France from center to circumference. Remembering the aid of the
French allies in our war for liberty and hating England with an
implacable hatred, many of our people, especially the Kentuckians, were
prepared to rally around the French flag.
Democratic clubs, modeled after the Jacobean clubs of France, sprang up;
and the one at Lexington was so urgent as to pass the following
resolution:
"That the right of the people on the waters of the Mississippi to the
navigation thereof was undoubted, and it ought to be peremptorily
demanded of Spain by the United States."
In November, 1793, the persons sent to Kentucky by Genet to arrange an
expedition against the Spaniards at the mouth of the Mississippi, found
a field ripe for harvest. They raised a company of two thousand men and
induced General George R. Clark, at the head of the expedition, to
accept the position of "Major general in the armies of France and
commander in chief of the revolutionary legions on the Mississippi." He
then proceeded to call for volunteers to reduce the Spanish forts on
the Mississippi, and open it for free navigation. Flattering offers were
made to all who would engage. Governor Shelby of Kentucky felt it was
beyond his jurisdiction to attempt to restrain these forces. So, early
in 1794, President Washington warned the people of the unlawfulness of
such an undertaking, and the dangers of such an expedition. General
Wayne was ordered to Fort Massac, to prevent the descent of armed men.
Soon after, Genet was recalled, and his acts disavowed, and Washington's
"friendship for all, but entangling alliances with none" was the policy
of the hour.
In the summer of 1795, Governor Carondelet of Louisiana sent a messenger
to Judge Benjamin Sebastian of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky,
requesting him to send agents to New Madrid to negotiate with Colonel
Gayoso on the subject of the Mississippi and regulation of commerce
between the local authorities at New Orleans and the people of Kentucky.
In the latter part of the year, Judge Sebastian went to New Madrid,
thence to New Orleans, where he secured the promise of the navigation of
the Mississippi and New Orleans as a place of deposit, with duty payable
only on imports. Fortunately for posterity, news came that in October,
1795, a treaty was consummated with Spain which acknowledged the United
States as extending southward to 31 deg., and westward to the middle of the
Mississippi. It granted us the free navigation of that stream and the
right of deposit at New Orleans for a period of three years, and a
promise to continue these privileges longer.
Whether or not the proposals of Don Gardoqui and Baron Carondelet were
merely a commercial consideration on the part of Spain, yet dastardly in
the extreme were the futile attempts she made in 1797 to have Kentucky
withdraw from the Union, seize Fort Massac, and become an independent
government.
Money and arms galore were promised those infamous enough to enter into
this conspiracy to extend the northern boundary of Spain's possessions
east of the Mississippi to the Yazoo. Again Spanish conspiracy received
a blow.
A KENTUCKY INVENTOR
Though the stalwart pioneers, dressed in their primitive suits of
deerskin or homespun, pushed farther and farther into Kentucky, stopping
not for privation or peril, danger or disaster, climbing cliffs, fording
streams, fighting savages, yet they were not all merely unlettered
backwoodsmen hunters and fighters. Though the education of nearly all
was more or less limited, a number of these early courageous Kentuckians
have made unusual contributions to the useful sciences. If not the
birthplace, Kentucky was the home and the burial place of a trio who can
claim priority in the invention of the steamboat.
In 1778 there came to Kentucky from Connecticut a man of vigorous
intellect and remarkable powers of perseverance, John Fitch. He had
formerly been a silversmith, clock maker, and lieutenant in the
Revolutionary forces from New Jersey. Though made captive by the Indians
and held prisoner for a year, yet in 1780, as he gazed upon the
beautiful Ohio, he had the first conception of overcoming currents by a
new mode of navigation. Retiring to his surveyor's camp he pondered,
and, remembering the work of Watt with steam, concluded that boats could
be propelled by the same power.
[Illustration: Fitch's steamboat.]
The story of his struggles, in petitions and disappointments, reminds
one of Columbus, as he so long in vain sought aid to make his first
voyage to America. In 1787, 1788, and 1789, Fitch built several boats,
that made from four to seven and one half miles per hour between
Philadelphia and Burlington. He petitioned the legislatures of a number
of states as well as England, France, and Spain, and obtained not
money, but the exclusive privileges of navigating certain streams by
boats propelled by fire or steam. He became discouraged and finally
despaired; he died at Bardstown, 1798, where his remains rest.
A pathetic circumstance connected with his invention is related. He
wrote three volumes of manuscript, sealed them, and placed them in the
Philadelphia Library to be opened thirty years after his death. When
opened, they touchingly related his disappointments, brilliantly
foretold the perfection of his plans, and sorrowfully and bitterly said,
"The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches
from my invention; but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do
anything worthy of attention."
By a coincidence two others, who chose Kentucky as their home, James
Rumsey and Edward West, also were pioneers in this work. Both Fitch and
Rumsey in 1784 exhibited their plans to General Washington. While Rumsey
made his project public first, by means of a model, Fitch successfully
plied a boat on the Delaware in 1785 and Rumsey on the Potomac the
following year. Fitch claimed that he told Rumsey of his own plans to
effect navigation by steam. In 1794, in the presence of hundreds of
citizens, a miniature boat invented by Edward West, who had removed from
Virginia to Lexington in 1785, proudly moved through the waters of the
town branch of the Elkhorn, which had been dammed up near the center of
the city.
In 1802 Mr. West secured a patent not only for his steamboat invention,
but for a gun lock and a nail cutting and heading machine, the first
invention of the kind in the world, reputed to cut five thousand three
hundred and twenty pounds of nails in twelve hours. The patent of it
sold for $10,000 and its operation enabled Lexington to export nails of
her own manufacture to Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh.
So, while it remained for Robert Fulton in 1807 to gain honor from his
invention, yet when in 1813 he brought suit to establish his claims as
the inventor of steam navigation, he was defeated by a pamphlet of John
Fitch's, which proved conclusively there were inventions that antedated
the _Clermont_.
OTHER KENTUCKY INVENTIONS
In 1792, the year that Kentucky became a state, there came to Lexington
a man named Nathan Burrows, who was a pioneer, not only as a settler,
but as an inventor of the manufacture of hemp and a machine for cleaning
it. He failed to reap any real benefit from this, but later manufactured
a mustard that took a premium at the World's Fair in England in 1851.
Another resident of Lexington, John Jones, in 1803 invented a machine
for sawing stone, and a speeder spindle.
It remained for a Kentuckian, Dr. Joseph Buchanan, while a student of
medicine at Lexington in 1805, to originate the conception of the music
of light to be accomplished by means of harmonific colors, luminously
displayed, and to invent an instrument that produced its music from
glasses of different chemical composition.
Lexington, then the Athens of the West, was for many years the home of a
native Kentuckian, a Mr. Barlow, whose fertile mind made him the most
celebrated of this group of interesting inventors. Having built a
steamboat at Augusta, after his removal to Lexington, he invented in
1826-1827 a steam locomotive for a railroad with a car attached for two
passengers, with power to ascend an elevation of eighty feet to a mile.
An oval track was constructed for it in a room. It was opened to the
public for exhibition and several took rides at fifty cents a ticket on
the first "railroad train" ever run successfully in western America.
This was sold to a Mr. Samuel Robb, who exhibited the novelty at various
cities including Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans; at the
latter place it was burned while on exhibition. In 1837 Mr. Barlow built
another locomotive and likewise sold it to a person who traveled and
exhibited it.
The versatile mind of Mr. Barlow also produced a nail and tack machine,
which was at once purchased and put into use by some capitalists. His
rifled cannon, invented in 1840, patented later, caused Congress to
appropriate three thousand dollars for an experimental gun, which, when
finished and tested, was of greater accuracy and range than was even
expected, and which is believed to have suggested most of the rifled
guns since patented in both America and Europe.
The crowning invention of this great genius was his wonderfully complex
production, a planetarium, that perfectly imitated the motions of the
solar system, the first and only instrument of the kind in the world.
This was so perfected as to produce the minute relative revolutions of
the planets. The first instrument was sold to Girard College,
Philadelphia. A number of small ones were later made for colleges and
institutions, and one large one for the Military Academy at West Point,
one for the Naval Academy at Annapolis, and one for New Orleans.
Some of these brought two thousand dollars each. One was exhibited at
the World's Fair Exhibition, Paris, France, 1867, as Kentucky's
contribution, and received the highest premium awarded any illustrative
apparatus.
THE MAN WHO KNEW ABOUT BIRDS
Kentucky is noted for her great hunters, Indian fighters, orators, and
statesmen. But there also lived in this state for awhile--some of the
time at Louisville, part of the time at Henderson--a man who knew more
about birds than any one had ever learned before.
This was John James Audubon. He was born in Louisiana near New Orleans,
and lived several years in France, where he enjoyed every luxury. In
after life, when he spent many years traveling through the forest,
hunting, and studying the birds,--their homes and their habits,--he
often went for days and days with very primitive food. He said his first
recollections were of his home in the South, where he would lie among
the flowers and listen to the songs of the mocking birds. While yet a
boy he gathered birds' nests, birds' eggs, curious stones, and moss. He
would kill and stuff the birds; but these failed to satisfy him, as
their plumage was not bright like that of the live birds. So he began to
make _pictures_ of the birds instead. This was done many, many times
before he was satisfied, for he wanted lifelike pictures of his
feathered friends.
He married a young lady in Pennsylvania, and brought her down the Ohio
in a flat-bottomed float called an ark,--a rather tiresome method for a
wedding trip.
He entered into business in Louisville with bright prospects, but
hunting and studying birds had more fascination for Audubon than trade.
Finally, competition becoming too strong, he and his partner shipped
their goods to Henderson or Hendersonville; but business not being good,
and the roving instinct strong, the stay was brief, and Audubon made
another change.
A few years later he returned to Henderson when he, with several
partners, attempted to operate a steam mill; but the place was not
suitable, every one concerned lost his money, and Audubon departed with
only his sick wife, gun, drawings, and dog. Still he never despaired.
Audubon spent most of his time in Kentucky, rambling in the wilds, and
persons in both Louisville and Henderson have often spoken of seeing him
come in with his great quota of game. He said Kentucky was a "sort of
promised land for all sorts of wandering adventurers."
[Illustration: John James Audubon.]
While Audubon enjoyed, to the fullest, studying his favorite subject,
birds, yet there were many difficulties to encounter and many
deprivations to undergo. He had to travel many thousand miles, sometimes
using the breasts of wild turkeys for bread and bear's grease for
butter, sometimes living on only fruits and roots, sometimes having to
quit this enchanting work for a while and turn dancing master or artist
to procure funds.
After Audubon had traveled, studied, written, and made many hundred
drawings, rats got into his box and cut up all his papers; for a while
he was almost heartbroken and could scarcely eat or sleep. Finally, with
true courage, he said, "I will make more drawings and make them better
than any the rats cut up." So he persevered and, with the aid of his
wife, who encouraged and inspired him in his great work, and gladly gave
of her salary as a teacher to defray expenses, he at last went to Europe
to arrange for its publication.
He was made a member of the Royal Society at Edinburgh, concerning which
he wrote his faithful wife, "So, poor Audubon, if not rich, thou wilt be
honored at least and held in high esteem among men." In another letter
he said, "I have run the gantlet of Europe and may be proud of two
things,--I am considered the first ornithological painter and the first
practical naturalist of America." His "Birds of America" contains
pictures of one thousand sixty-five birds, natural size. His work has
been called the "most magnificent monument that has been erected to
ornithology," and all over our land Audubon Societies have been formed
to protect our friends in feathers.
A HERO OF HONOR
It takes neither the excitement of war nor the curious conditions of the
far Orient to prove a man a hero of the highest type. Martial music, the
roar of the cannon, the thud of the musket, and the flash of the saber
have inspired many men to deeds of valor. We find incontrovertible
evidence of this in every battle's record. These are accepted as facts
with no fancy interwoven. But when we read of how Damon offered to stay
in the place of his friend, Pythias, condemned to death, with the
knowledge that if Pythias did not return by the hour appointed for the
execution, he, himself, would be called upon to make the sacrifice; how
he prayed that his friend would fail to come, but how that friend, by
every conceivable plan, purposely came in time to accept his fate,--we
sometimes wonder if any friendship could withstand such a test or any
person's pledge be held in such exalted estimation.
In the early days of Kentucky, when the shrill whistle of the locomotive
had not yet reverberated among the hills, when the red schoolhouse was
not found in every locality, nor the moonlight schools had wiped out
illiteracy among the mountaineers, there dwelt in Lewis County a man by
the name of Larkin Liles. He was the hardy son of a hardy race, who
hunted and trapped, lived and loved; and while he knew not a letter of
the alphabet, had never attended school a day in his life, nor heard the
golden rule, yet his rugged honesty and high sense of honor can never be
surpassed. The "benevolent qualities of head and heart by a primeval
decree are not dependent on education, for although it enlightens and
enlarges the mind of man, it does not always ennoble it." So this man,
versed in naught but the backwoodsman's lore, gave the world a lesson in
honor.
On one occasion, when at Vanceburg in the above-named county, and while
under the influence of whiskey, he became involved in a rough-and-tumble
fight with very serious results. For this offense he was tried, found
guilty, and sentenced to serve one year in the penitentiary. It so
happened that the sheriff of Lewis County at this time was a personal
friend of "Jay-bird" Liles, and knew the soul of honor hidden by this
rough exterior.
After leaving the courtroom, the prisoner, in a voice husky with
emotion, said, "Uncle Buck,"--everyone called the sheriff of Lewis
County by this title,--"Uncle Buck, won't you let me go home and get in
my winter's wood and fix to have my corn crap gathered, to fatten my
hogs, to keep the young-uns on? Then I's come over to Clarksburg and go
with ye to the penitentiary."
Sheriff Parker asked, "How long will it take ye, Jay-bird?"
"About two weeks," he replied.
Then the magnanimity of the man shone forth,--some might say overcame
the discretion of the officer,--when the sheriff replied, "Go ahead and
do it." But so well did he know the pride with which "Jay-bird" Liles
kept a promise, that he was as confident of his return at the promised
time, as was Damon that Pythias would return.
The wood was cut, an arrangement was made concerning the crop, the
good-by kiss was given to his weeping wife and helpless babes, and,
feeling he was going on such a distant trip that he would never again
return, Larkin Liles, just two weeks to the day and hour from the time
of the above conversation, walked into the sheriff's office ready to be
taken to Frankfort.
When he told "Uncle Buck" that he was ready to start, the sheriff shook
his hand and told him to spend the night with him, and on the morrow
they would take the boat for Maysville, and from there go by stage to
Lexington, and on to Frankfort. Again "Jay-bird's" voice trembled as he
thought of the disgrace of being publicly taken by the sheriff to the
penitentiary; and again he made a most singular request. "Say, Uncle
Buck, I'd rather not do it. You go that way; but let me take my gun and
walk through the mountains to Frankfort, won't ye? I'd rather do that,
and maybe I might kill some game on the road. I'll meet you on any spot,
on any day you appoint."
What do you suppose the sheriff replied? Looking him straight in the eye
he answered, "All right, Jay-bird, suit yourself. Frankfort lies right
in yon direction; you can't miss it. When you reach Frankfort, go
straight to the governor's office and tell him what you are there for,
if I don't get there first."
Then this rugged mountaineer, this unlettered, unpolished son of the
hills, with honor as his watchword, dressed in the primitive style of
the time and place, with his trusty rifle, started over the hills,
through vales, and across streams to meet the sheriff at Frankfort, one
hundred and fifty miles away, where he would hear the lock snap as it
closed the door that would shut him in from freedom and friends.