them, and to see that they were now the possessors of a domain continental in extent and sufficient unto itself in independence of all other lands. They remembered that at the beginning of the war England had refused to aid them in winning the near west, or even in safeguarding their own boundaries, while at its close she deprived them of the legitimate fruits of victory, and they took to thinking that if thus they were to be thrown upon their own resources whenever it pleased the mother country, they might as well rely upon their own resources all the time, and themselves secure the results of their labors. Finally, that war gave them leaders in both war and statecraft. It was one of the most impressive turns of fate that the very man who fired the first shot in winning the empire for England should be the leader in wresting it from her again, and that the old home of the man who first dreamed England's dream of empire in North America should be the scene of the final and irrevocable waking from that dream.

CHAPTER II

SECURING THE OPEN DOOR

There

It was

THE War of the Revolution was chiefly fought, for obvious reasons, in the Atlantic littoral. were the masses of population, the organized governments, the industries, the fortifications, the ports at which the English troops must land in their campaign of attempted repression. We have seen, however, that the region beyond the mountains played an important part in the processes and the influences which led to the war. also the scene of some of the operations of that war, minor from the military point of view but decidedly major from the point of view of the nation-building statesman, and in the final settlement of the issues and results of the war it held a paramount place. Upon it turned the whole question of peace-making. Upon it was based and according to its disposition was framed the treaty which restored peace and secured for the United States universal recognition as an independent and sovereign power.

Especially were these things true of the region north of the Ohio River. That south of the river, composing the states of Kentucky and Tennessee,

was not so much the subject of controversy. As we have seen, it was, prior to the Seven Years' War, practically conceded to the English colonies by France, though during that war it was seized by her in revenge for the English invasion of the country north of the river. At the end of that war it was restored to English rule and occupancy, whereupon England unhesitatingly assigned it to the colonies, to wit, to Virginia and North Carolina, upon which it directly abutted at the west. While she tried to deprive the colonies of the territory north of the Ohio by annexing it to Canada, she left that south of the Ohio to the colonies, and it was therefore a matter of course, never seriously questioned by England, though it was by Spain and France, that the southern country should share the fate of the coast colonies. If the latter won their independence, Kentucky and Tennessee would belong to them. This understanding was greatly strengthened by the course of affairs between the Seven Years' War and the Revolution, when settlers from Virginia and the Carolinas flocked into Kentucky and Tennessee in great numbers. Indeed, such invasions and settlements were made on a considerable scale at an earlier date. In 1748-1750 Dr. Thomas Walker, of Virginia, discovered the Cumberland River, the Cumberland Mountains, and the Cumberland Gap, and gave them the names which they still bear, in honor of that duke who was the "proud Cumber

land" of Culloden and the "bloody Duke of Cumberland" who won fame in defeat by his mighty stand against overwhelming odds at Fontenoy. Christopher Gist, who was Washington's companion in his first visit to the Ohio Valley, explored the Kentucky River in 1751. Daniel Boone, of Pennsylvania, became a mighty hunter in Kentucky in 1769.

From those years down to the Revolution other explorers, hunters, and settlers entered those regions and occupied them to such an extent that by June, 1778, they considered themselves numerous enough to be entitled to political recognition. Accordingly on June 8 of that year they held a convention and elected two delegates to the Colonial Assembly of Virginia, and sent them to Williamsburg, the Virginian capital, with a petition for the incorporation of Kentucky into the colony of Virginia as a new county. These delegates reached Williamsburg just in time to find that the assembly had declared its independence of England and had adjourned. Thus balked in their mission, they waited until the next session of the assembly, only then to be denied seats in it. However, on December 8 of that year the assembly did finally incorporate the western part of Kentucky as a county of Virginia, just six months after the Kentucky convention. The Kentucky delegates then returned home.

One of these delegates was George Rogers

D

Clark, a notable figure in the history of American expansion, and a remarkable combination of hero. and knave. He came of a good Virginian family, and was well educated, but his practical training in warfare and public services had not been of the best character. He had been a companion and in some respects a pupil of the famous or notorious Michael Cresap. The latter, a Marylander, had settled on the Upper Ohio at the end of the Seven Years' War and had figured conspicuously in Lord Dunmore's war. Of his patriotism, valor, and prowess there was no question, and some of his services were of great value. But he was ruthless and cruel, and whether deservedly or not incurred the reproach of some acts of sheer savagery. Clark was morally superior to Cresap, at least in this early part of his career, and was not his inferior in strength and courage. In personal appearance he was a stalwart blond giant, and in spirit he was adventurous, resolute, fearless, and ambitious. It is not infrequently the case that a man who dwells much in the forest or the desert, and thus communes with Nature in her vast and wild aspects, becomes imbued with ideas at once gloomy and grandiose. So it was with Clark, always a dreamer and schemer. On his way home to Kentucky, by way of the Ohio River, he brooded amid the solitudes of the great wilderness upon mighty themes - the Declaration of Independence, the prospect of creating a new nation, the