In the Current of the Revolution 119 



He was ultimately made a brigadier-general of 

 the Virginia militia, and to the harassed settlers 

 in Kentucky his mere name was a tower of strength. 

 He was the sole originator of the plan for the con- 

 quest of the Northwestern lands, and, almost un- 

 aided, he had executed his own scheme. For a year 

 he had been wholly cut off from all communication 

 with the home authorities, and had received no help 

 of any kind. Alone, and with the very slenderest 

 means, he had conquered and held a vast and 

 beautiful region, which but for him would have 

 formed part of a foreign and hostile empire 53 ; he 



63 It is of course impossible to prove that but for Clark's 

 conquest the Ohio would have been made our boundary in 

 1783, exactly as it is impossible to prove that but for Wolfe 

 the English would not have taken Quebec. But when we 

 take into account the determined efforts of Spain and France 

 to confine us to the land east of the Alleghanies, and then to 

 the land southeast of the Ohio, the slavishness of Congress 

 in instructing our commissioners to do whatever France 

 wished, and the readiness shown by one of the commis- 

 sioners, Franklin, to follow these instructions, it certainly 

 looks as if there would not even have been an effort made 

 by us to get the Northwestern territory had we not already 

 possessed it, thanks to Clark. As it was, it was only owing 

 to Jay's broad patriotism and stern determination that our 

 Western boundaries were finally made so far-reaching. None 

 of our early diplomats did as much for the West as Jay, 

 whom at one time the whole West hated and reviled ; Mann 

 Butler, whose politics are generally very sound, deserves 

 especial credit for the justice he does the New Yorker. 



It is idle to talk of the conquest as being purely a Virginian 

 affair. It was conquered by Clark, a Virginian, with some 

 scant help from Virginia, but it was retained only owing to 

 the power of the United States and the patriotism of such 

 Northern statesmen as Jay, Adams, and Franklin, the nego- 



