The Indian Wars, 1784-1787 215 



on payment of twenty-five per cent duty. Mer 

 chants gathered quantities of flour and bacon, but 

 especially of tobacco, at Louisville, and thence 

 shipped it in flat-boats to Natchez, where it was re 

 ceived by their correspondents ; and keel boats some 

 times made the return journey, though the horses, 

 cattle, and negro slaves were generally taken to 

 Kentucky overland. 30 All these traders naturally 

 felt the Spanish control of the navigation, and the 

 intermittent but always possible hostility of the 

 Spanish officials, to be peculiarly irksome. They 

 were, as a rule, too shortsighted to see that the only 

 permanent remedy for their troubles was their own 

 absorption into a solid and powerful Union. There 

 fore they were always ready either to join a move 

 ment against Spain, or else to join one which seemed 

 to promise the acquisition of special privileges from 

 Spain. 



The separatist feeling, and the desire to sunder 

 the West from the East, and join hands with Spain 

 or Britain, were not confined to Kentucky. In one 

 shape or another, and with varying intensity, sep 

 aratist agitations took place in all portions of the 

 West. In Cumberland, on the Holston, among the 

 western mountains of Virginia proper, and in Geor 

 gia which was practically a frontier community 

 there occurred manifestations of the separatist spirit. 

 A curious feature of these various agitations was 



30 Draper MSS. John Williams to William Clark, New 

 Orleans, Feb. n, 1789; Girault to Do., July 26, 1788, from 

 Natchez; Do. to Do., Dec. 5, 1788; receipt of D. Brashear at 

 Louisville, May 23, 1785. 



