Thomas Marshall Green, journalist and historian, was born near
Danville, Kentucky, November 23, 1836, the son of Judge John Green, an
early Kentucky jurist of repute, who died when his son was but two
years old. Green was graduated from Centre College, Danville, in what
is now known as the famous class of '55, which included several men
afterwards distinguished. In 1856 Green joined the staff of the
_Frankfort Commonwealth_, then a political journal of wide influence;
and in the following year he became editor of that paper. He left the
_Commonwealth_ in 1860, to become editor of the _Maysville Eagle_, of
which he made a pronounced success, its screams smacking not at all of
the dignified days of its first editors, the Collinses, father and
son. His _Historic Families of Kentucky_ (Cincinnati, 1889), gave him
a place among Kentucky historians, but the late Colonel John Mason
Brown, of Louisville, gave to Green his greatest opportunity when he
published his _The Political Beginnings of Kentucky_ (Louisville,
1889). This work of Colonel Brown's was, in effect, an avowed
vindication of the reputation of his grandfather, John Brown, first
United States Senator from Kentucky, who, in the stormy days in which
his lot had been cast, had been violently attacked for his alleged
connection with the Spanish Conspiracy of Aaron Burr, which was
charged in a controversy running through many years of violent
disputation, to have been an attempt in connection with General James
Wilkinson, Judges Sebastian, Wallace, and Innes of the Kentucky Court
of Appeals and others to detach Kentucky from her allegiance to the
United States, and annex her territory to the Spanish dominions of the
South and South-west, through which the much-desired free navigation
of the Mississippi would be assured. Colonel Brown was a brilliant man
of unusual scholarly attainments and deeply read in American history.
These qualities with his large legal training enabled him to present a
strong case in the vindication of his grandfather's reputation. His
arguments, theories, and proofs were illuminating, able, and to many
minds most convincing, while they fell with small effect upon Green
and many others who held the opposite view. For this reason Green
wrote and published _The Spanish Conspiracy_ (Cincinnati 1891), a
wonderfully well informed and clever work, and the one upon which he
takes his place among Western historians. Students who would be fully
informed as to the many phases--the charges and matter relied upon for
defense, pro and con, in this bitter controversy which marshalled
Kentucky into two hostile camps, whose alignments were more or less
maintained through many strenuous years--must study these two books.
They present the last word on either side. Colonel Brown's untimely
death, which occurred in 1890, some months before the appearance of
Green's book, probably lost Kentucky a reply to the Maysville
historian that would have added to the flood of light thrown on this
early and vital crisis. _The Spanish Conspiracy_ was supplemented and
supported in its conclusions by Mr. Anderson C. Quisenberry's _The
Life and Times of Hon. Humphrey Marshall_ (Winchester, Kentucky,
1892). Thomas M. Green died at Danville, Kentucky, April 7, 1904.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Biographical Encyclopaedia of Kentucky_
(Cincinnati, 1878); _Library of Southern Literature_ (Atlanta,
1910, v, xv).