230 The Winning of the West 



with which the Virginian and Federal Governments 

 had rewarded his really great services. He wrote 

 to Gardoqui in the spring of 1788, boasting of his 

 feats of arms in the past, bitterly complaining of the 

 way he had been treated, and offering to lead a large 

 colony to settle in the Spanish dominions; for, he 

 said, he had become convinced that neither property 

 nor character was safe under a government so weak 

 as that of the United States, and he therefore wished 

 to put himself at the disposal of the King of Spain. 47 

 Nothing came of this proposal. 



Another proposal which likewise came to noth 

 ing is noteworthy because of the men who made it, 

 and because of its peculiar nature. The proposers 

 were all Kentuckians. Among them were Wilkin 

 son, one Benjamin Sebastian, whom the Spaniards 

 pensioned in the same manner they did Wilkinson, 

 John Brown, the Kentucky delegate in Congress, 

 and Harry Innes, the Attorney-General of Kentucky. 

 All were more or less identified both with the ob 

 scure separatist movements in that commonwealth, 

 and with the legitimate agitation for Statehood into 

 which some of these movements insensibly merged. 

 In the spring of 1789 they proposed to Gardoqui 

 to enter into an agreement somewhat similar to 

 the one he had made with Morgan. But they named 

 as the spot where they wished to settle the lands 

 on the east bank of the Mississippi, in the neighbor 

 hood of the Yazoo, and they urged as a reason for 



41 Gardoqui MSS., Clark to Gardoqui, Falls of the Ohio, 

 March 15, 1788. 



