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. [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. Only
the backwoodsmen themselves felt the thirst for exploration of the
unknown, the desire to try the untried, which drove them hither and
thither through the dim wilderness. The men who controlled the immediate
destinies of the confederated commonwealths knew little of what lay in
the forest-shrouded country beyond the mountains, until the backwoods
explorers of their own motion penetrated its hidden and inmost
fastnesses. Singly or in groups, the daring hunters roved through the
vast reaches of sombre woodland, and pitched their camps on the banks of
rushing rivers, nameless and unknown. In bands of varying size the
hunter-settlers followed close