322 The Winning of the West 



tics the paper sided with the separatists and clam 

 ored for revolutionary action by Kentucky. 21 



The purpose of the extreme separatists was, un 

 questionably to keep Kentucky out of the Union 

 and turn her into a little independent nation, a 

 nation without a present or a future, an English- 

 speaking Uruguay or Ecuador. The back of this 

 separatist movement was broken by the action of 

 the fall convention of 1788, which settled definitely 

 that Kentucky should become a State of the Union. 

 All that remained was to decide on the precise terms 

 of the separation from Virginia. There was at first 

 a hitch over these, the Virginia Legislature making 

 terms to which the district convention of 1789 would 

 not consent ; but Virginia then yielded the points in 

 dispute, and the Kentucky convention of 1790 pro 

 vided for the admission of the State to the Union 

 in 1792, and for holding a constitutional convention 

 to decide upon the form of government, just before 

 the admission. 22 



Thus Kentucky was saved from the career of 

 ignoble dishonor to which she would have been 

 doomed by the success of the disunion faction. She 

 was saved from the day of small things. Her in 

 terests became those of a nation which was bound 

 to succeed greatly or to fail greatly. Her fate was 

 linked for weal or for woe with the fate of the 

 mighty Republic. 



91 Durrett Collection, "Kentucke Gazette," September 20, 

 1788. 

 " Marshall, I, 342, etc. 



