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 I might 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.