THE BETTER PEOPLE OF KENTUCKY 75 



very able men, who gave no fit account of themselves to their 

 generation. Of the first of these I have a separate story to tell, 

 for he has a special interest to me; they were all kinsmen of the 

 great John Marshall. There are a score more of strong men who 

 knew their strength and helped me to the station of manhood, 

 though few of them helped themselves to their fit place in the 

 world. 



The impression made on me by the better people of Ken- 

 tucky, as I saw them in the gatherings at Frankfort, an im- 

 pression not lessened by later and wide intercourse with men, 

 such as came soon thereafter, was that there was a singular 

 development of power, one of those great openings of thought 

 that is now and then, though rarely, offered to the world, 

 in this case vainly. I am quite sure that this judgment is 

 not colored by the enthusiasm or the ignorance of youth; for 

 before my contact with these people was ended, I had been for 

 a year or two a student in Harvard, associated with a very 

 selected group of youths and mature men. Moreover, in that 

 day even more than in this fifty years later, I was given to 

 critical observation of the ways and nature of men. I question 

 if in the history of our race there was ever a better presenta- 

 tion of varied power than in the generation that was matured 

 and maturing at the outset of the Civil War in Kentucky. 

 There were reasons why there should have been such devel- 

 opment and why it should have come to naught, leaving the 

 people on a lower plane than they have been since the founda- 

 tion of this commonwealth. To see the meaning of this inter- 

 esting social history, we must first note that the population of 

 Kentucky, or at least of the central district which has given 

 character to its society, was made up, in a measure not ex- 

 hibited by the other secondary settlements of this country, 

 of folk selected by circumstances for their vigor and capacity. 

 So far as the whites were concerned, it may be doubted whether 

 any plantation of men of a greater average of physical and 

 mental vigor has been established in this country. This is shown 



