The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 193 



ization of which lay in the future rather than in the 

 present. All honor must be awarded to the men 

 who under such conditions could be loyal to so high 

 an ideal; but we must not refuse to see the many 

 strong and admirable qualities in some of the men 

 who looked less keenly into the future. It would 

 be mere folly 2 to judge a man who, in 1787, was 

 lukewarm or even hostile to the Union by the same 

 standard we should use in testing his son's grand 

 son a century later. Finally, where a man's gen 

 eral course was one of devotion to the Union, it is 

 easy to forgive him some momentary lapse, due to 

 a misconception on his part of the real needs of the 

 hour, or to passing but intense irritation at some dis 

 play of narrow indifference to the rights of his sec 

 tion by the people of some other section. Patrick 

 Henry himself made one slip when he opposed the 

 adoption of the Federal Constitution; but this does 

 not at all offset the services he rendered our com 

 mon country both before and afterward. Every 

 statesmen makes occasional errors ; and the leniency 

 of judgment needed by Patrick Henry, and needed 

 far more by Ethan Allen, Samuel Adams, and 

 George Clinton, must be extended to frontier lead 

 ers for whose temporary coldness to the Union there 

 was much greater excuse. 



When we deal, not with the leading statesmen of 

 the frontier communities, but with the ordinary 

 frontier folk themselves, there is need to apply the 

 same tests used in dealing with the rude, strong peo- 



R. T. Durrett, "Centenary of Kentucky," 64. 

 VOL. VII. 9 



