Both the Federal and the Virginia authorities were much alarmed and angered, less at the insult to Spain than at the threat of establishing a separate government in the West.

    The Government Authorities Disapprove.

From the close of the revolution the Virginian government had been worried by the separatist movements in Kentucky.  In 1784 two “stirrers-up of sedition” had been fined and imprisoned, and an adherent of the Virginian government, writing from Kentucky, mentioned that one of the worst effects of the Indian inroads was to confine the settlers to the stations, which were hot-beds of sedition and discord, besides excuses for indolence and rags. [Footnote:  Va.  State Papers, III., pp. 585, 589.] The people who distrusted the frontiersmen complained that among them were many knaves and outlaws from every State in the Union, who flew to the frontier as to a refuge; while even those who did not share this distrust admitted that the fact that the people in Kentucky came from many different States helped to make them discontented with Virginia. [Footnote:  Draper MSS.  Clark Papers, Walter Darrell to William Fleming, April 14, 1783.]

    Georgia and the Frontiersmen

In Georgia the conditions were much as they were on the Ohio.  Georgia was a frontier State, with the ambitions and the lawlessness of the frontier; and the backwoodsmen felt towards her as they did towards no other member of the old Thirteen.  Soon after Clark established his garrison in Vincennes, various inflammatory letters were circulated in the western country, calling for action against both the Central Government and the Spaniards, and appealing for sympathy and aid both to the Georgians and to Sevier’s insurrectionary State of Franklin.  Among others, a Kentuckian wrote from Louisville to Georgia, bitterly complaining about the failure of the United States to open the Mississippi; denouncing the Federal Government in extravagant language, and threatening hostilities against the Spaniards, and a revolt against the Continental Congress. [Footnote:  Do., Letter of Thomas Green to the Governor of Georgia, December 23, 1786.] This letter was intercepted, and, of course, increased still more the suspicion felt about Clark’s motives, for though Clark denied that he had actually seen the letter, he was certainly cognizant of its purport, and approved the movement which lay behind it. [Footnote:  Green’s “Spanish Conspiracy,” p. 74.] One of his fellow Kentuckians, writing about him at this time, remarks:  “Clark is playing hell...eternally drunk and yet full of design.  I told him he would be hanged.  He laughed, and said he would take refuge among the Indians.” [Footnote:  Va.  State Papers, IV., 202, condensed.]

    Public disavowal of Clark’s Actions.