[Footnote: Marshall, i., 342
etc.]
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 interests 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.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY; OHIO. 1787-1790.
Individual Initiative of the Frontiersmen.
So far the work of the backwoodsmen in exploring, conquering, and
holding the West had been work undertaken solely on individual
initiative. The nation as a whole had not directly shared in it. The
frontiersmen who chopped the first trails across the Alleghanies, who
earliest wandered through the lonely western lands, and who first built
stockaded hamlets on the banks of the Watauga, the Kentucky, and the
Cumberland, acted each in consequence of his own restless eagerness for
adventure and possible gain. The nation neither encouraged them to
undertake the enterprises on which they embarked, nor protected them for
the first few years of uncertain foothold in the new-won country.
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