Meantime by
word and act they pursued a course which might be held to mean, as
occasion demanded, either mere insistence upon Kentucky's admission to
the Union as a separate State, or else a movement for complete
independence with a Spanish alliance in the background.
It was impossible to pursue a course so equivocal without arousing
suspicion. In after years many who had been committed to it became
ashamed of their actions, and loudly proclaimed that they had really
been devoted to the Union; to which it was sufficient to answer that if
this had been the case, and if they had been really loyal, no such deep
suspicion could have been excited. A course of straightforward loyalty
could not have been misunderstood. As it was, all kinds of rumors as to
proposed disunion movements, and as to the intrigues with Spain, got
afloat; and there was no satisfactory contradiction. The stanch Union
men, the men who "thought continentally," as the phrase went, took the
alarm and organized a counter-movement. One of those who took prominent
part in this counter-movement was a man to whom Kentucky and the Union
both owe much: Humphrey Marshall, afterwards a Federalist senator from
Kentucky, and the author of an interesting and amusing and fundamentally
sound, albeit somewhat rancorous, history of his State.
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