In November the Virginia Legislature divided Kentucky into the three counties of Jefferson, Lincoln, and Fayette, appointing for each a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a surveyor.  The three colonels, who were also justices of the counties, [Footnote:  Calendar of Virginia State Papers, Vol.  II., p. 47.] were, in their order, John Floyd—­whom Clark described as “a soldier, a gentleman and a scholar,” [Footnote:  Do., Vol.  I., p. 452.]—­Benjamin Logan, and John Todd.  Clark, whose station was at the Falls of the Ohio, was brigadier-general and commander over all.  Boon was lieutenant-colonel under Todd; and their county of Fayette had for its surveyor Thomas Marshall, [Footnote:  Collins, I., 20.] the father of the great chief-justice, whose services to the United States stand on a plane with those of Alexander Hamilton. [Footnote:  Roughly, Fayette embraced the territory north and northeast of the Kentucky River, Jefferson that between Green River and the lower Kentucky, and Lincoln the rest of the present State.]

    Clark’s Plans to Attack Detroit.

The winter passed quietly away, but as soon as the snow was off the ground in 1781, the Indians renewed their ravages.  Early in the winter Clark went to Virginia to try to get an army for an expedition against Detroit.  He likewise applied to Washington for assistance.  Washington fully entered into his plans, and saw their importance.  He would gladly have rendered him every aid.  But he could do nothing, because of the impotence to which the central authority, the Continental Congress, had been reduced by the selfishness and supine indifference of the various States—­Virginia among the number.  He wrote Clark:  “It is out of my power to send any reinforcements to the westward.  If the States would fill their continental battalions we should be able to oppose a regular and permanent force to the enemy in every quarter.  If they will not, they must certainly take measures to defend themselves by their militia, however expensive and ruinous the system.” [Footnote:  State Department MSS., No. 147, Vol.  V. Reports of Board of War.  Letter of Washington, June 8, 1781.  It is impossible to study any part of the Revolutionary struggle without coming to the conclusion that Washington would have ended it in half the time it actually lasted, had the jangling States and their governments, as well as the Continental Congress, backed him up half as effectively as the Confederate people and government backed up Lee, or as the Northerners and the Washington administration backed up McClellan—­still more as they backed up Grant.  The whole of our Revolutionary history is a running commentary on the anarchic weakness of disunion, and the utter lack of liberty that follows in its train.] It was impossible to state with more straightforward clearness the fact that Kentucky owed the unprotected condition in which she was left, to the divided or States-rights system of government that then existed; and that she would have had ample protection—­and incidentally greater liberty—­had the central authority been stronger.