the aristocrats of colonial days, but to the families—­so often of Presbyterian Irish stock—­who rose to prominence in western Virginia at the time of the Revolution.  In Kentucky all were mixed together, no matter from what State they came, the wrench of the break from their home ties having shaken them so that they readily adapted themselves to new conditions, and easily assimilated with one another.  As for their differences of race origin, these had ceased to influence their lives even before they came to Kentucky.  They were all Americans, in feeling as well as in name, by habit as well as by birth; and the positions they took in the political life of the West was determined partly by the new conditions surrounding them, and partly by the habits bred in them through generations of life on American soil.

    Clark’s Breakdown.

One man, who would naturally have played a prominent part in Kentucky politics, failed to do so from a variety of causes.  This was George Rogers Clark.  He was by preference a military rather than a civil leader; he belonged by choice and habit to the class of pioneers and Indian fighters whose influence was waning; his remarkable successes had excited much envy and jealousy, while his subsequent ignominious failure had aroused contempt; and, finally, he was undone by his fondness for strong drink.  He drew himself to one side, though he chafed at the need, and in his private letters he spoke with bitterness of the “big little men,” the ambitious nobodies, whose jealousy had prompted them to destroy him by ten thousand lies; and, making a virtue of necessity, he plumed himself on the fact that he did not meddle with politics, and sneered at the baseness of his fellow-citizens, whom he styled “a swarm of hungry persons gaping for bread.” [Footnote:  Draper MSS., G. R. Clark to J. Clark, April 20, 1788, and September 2, 1791.]

    Logan’s Prominence.

Benjamin Logan, who was senior colonel and county lieutenant of the District of Kentucky, stood second to Clark in the estimation of the early settlers, the men who, riding their own horses and carrying their own rifles, had so often followed both commanders on their swift raids against the Indian towns.  Logan naturally took the lead in the first serious movement to make Kentucky an independent state.  In its beginnings this movement showed a curious parallelism to what was occurring in Franklin at the same time, though when once fairly under way the difference between the cases became very strongly marked.  In each case the prime cause in starting the movement was trouble with the Indians.  In each, the first steps were taken by the commanders of the local militia, and the first convention was summoned on the same plan, a member being elected by every militia company.  The companies were territorial as well as military units, and the early settlers were all, in practice as well as in theory, embodied in the militia.  Thus in both Kentucky and Franklin the movements were begun in the same way by the same class of Indian-fighting pioneers; and the method of organization chosen shows clearly the rough military form which at that period settlement in the wilderness, in the teeth of a hostile savagery, always assumed.