It was a small weekly
sheet called the _Kentucke Gazette_, and the first number appeared in
August, 1787. The editor and publisher was one John Bradford, who
brought his printing press down the river on a flat-boat; and some of
the type were cut out of dogwood. In politics the paper sided with the
separatists and clamored for revolutionary action by Kentucky.
[Footnote: Durrett Collection, _Kentucke Gazette_, September 20, 1788.]
Failure of the Separatist Movement.
The purpose of the extreme separatist was, unquestionably, 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
Uraguay 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
provided 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.
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