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 Imight 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.