The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reign of Law, by James Lane Allen

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Title: The Reign of Law
A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields

Author: James Lane Allen

Posting Date: May 19, 2009 [EBook #3791]
Release Date: February, 2003
First Posted: September 12, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE REIGN OF LAW

A TALE OF THE KENTUCKY HEMP FIELDS

BY

JAMES LANE ALLEN

DEDICATION

TO THE MEMORY OF A FATHER AND MOTHER WHOSE SELF-SACRIFICE, HIGH
SYMPATHY, AND DEVOTION THE WRITING OF THIS STORY HAS CAUSED TO LIVE
AFRESH IN THE EVER-GROWING, NEVER-AGING, GRATITUDE OF THEIR SON

JTABLE 5 23 1

THE REIGN OF LAW

HEMP

The Anglo-Saxon farmers had scarce conquered foothold, stronghold,
freehold in the Western wilderness before they became sowers of
hemp--with remembrance of Virginia, with remembrance of dear ancestral
Britain. Away back in the days when they lived with wife, child, flock
in frontier wooden fortresses and hardly ventured forth for water,
salt, game, tillage--in the very summer of that wild daylight ride of
Tomlinson and Bell, by comparison with which, my children, the midnight
ride of Paul Revere, was as tame as the pitching of a rocking-horse in
a boy's nursery--on that history-making twelfth of August, of the year
1782, when these two backwoods riflemen, during that same Revolution
the Kentuckians then fighting a branch of that same British army,
rushed out of Bryan's Station for the rousing of the settlements and
the saving of the West--hemp was growing tall and thick near the walls
of the fort.

Hemp in Kentucky in 1782--early landmark in the history of the soil, of
the people. Cultivated first for the needs of cabin and clearing
solely; for twine and rope, towel and table, sheet and shirt. By and by
not for cabin and clearing only; not for tow-homespun, fur-clad
Kentucky alone. To the north had begun the building of ships, American
ships for American commerce, for American arms, for a nation