The Backwoodsmen Approve Clark's Deed.
The more violent and lawless among the backwoodsmen of Kentucky were
loud in exultation over this deed. They openly declared that it was not
merely an act of retaliation on the Spaniards, but also a warning that,
if they did not let the Americans trade down the river, they would not
be allowed to trade up it; and that the troops who garrisoned Vincennes
offered an earnest of what the frontiersmen would do in the way of
raising an army of conquest if the Spaniards continued to wrong them.
[Footnote: Draper MSS. Minutes of Court-Martial, Summoned by George
Rogers Clark, at Vincennes, October 18, 1786.] They defied the
Continental Congress and the seaboard States to interfere with them.
They threatened to form an independent government, if the United States
did not succor and countenance them. They taunted the eastern men with
knowing as little of the West as Great Britain knew of America. They
even threatened that they would, if necessary, re-join the British
dominions, and boasted that, if united to Canada, they would some day be
able themselves to conquer the Atlantic Commonwealths. [Footnote: State
Dept. MSS.
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