2o6 The Winning of the West 



Vincennes offered an earnest of what the frontiers 

 men would do in the way of raising an army of con 

 quest if the Spaniards continued to wrong them. 14 

 They defied the Continental Congress and the sea 

 board States to interfere with them. They threat 

 ened to form an independent government, if the 

 United States did not succor and countenance them. 

 They taunted the Eastern men with knowing as lit 

 tle of the West as Great Britain knew of America. 

 They even threatened that they would, if necessary, 

 rejoin the British dominions, and boasted that, if 

 united to Canada, they would some day be able 

 themselves to conquer the Atlantic Commonwealth. 15 



Both the Federal and the Virginia authorities 

 were much alarmed and angered, less at the insult 

 to Spain than at the threat of establishing a sepa 

 rate government in the West. 



From the close of the Revolution the Virginian 

 government had been worried by the separatist 

 movements in Kentucky. In 1784 two "stirrers-up 

 of sedition" had been fined and imprisoned, and an 

 adherent of the Virginian government, writing from 

 Kentucky, mentioned that one of the worst effects 

 of the Indian inroads was to confine the settlers to 

 the stations, which were hot-beds of sedition and 

 discord, besides excuses for indolence and rags. 16 

 The people who distrusted the frontiersmen com- 



14 Draper MSS. Minutes of Court-Martial, Summoned by 

 George Rogers Clark, at Vincennes, October 18, 1786. 



16 State Dept. MSS. Reports of John Jay, No. 124, Vol. 

 Ill, pp. 31, 37, 44. 48, 53. 56, etc. 



' Va. State Papers, III, pp. 585, 589. 



