Hence the Jacobin clubs that were formed in Kentucky: one at Lexington, a
second at Georgetown, a third at Paris. Hence the liberty poles in the
streets of the towns; the tricoloured cockades on the hats of the men; the
hot blood between the anti-federal and the federalist parties of the State.
The actions of Citizen Genet had indeed been disavowed by his republic. But
the sympathy for France, the hatred of England and of Spain, had but grown
meantime; and when therefore in this spring of 1795 the news reached the
frontier that Jay had concluded a treaty with England--the very treaty that
would bring to the Kentuckians the end of all their troubles with the posts
of the Northwest--the flame of revolution blazed out with greater
brilliancy.
During the hour that John Gray spent in that assemblage of men that night,
the talk led always to the same front of offence: the baser truckling to
England, an old enemy; the baser desertion of France, a friend. He listened
to one man of commanding eloquence, while he traced the treaty to the
attachment of Washington for aristocratic institutions; to another who
referred it to the jealousy felt by the Eastern congressmen regarding the
growth of the new power beyond the Alleghanies; to a third who foretold that
like all foregoing pledges it would leave Kentucky still exposed to the fury
of the Northern Indians; to a fourth who declared that let the treaty be
once ratified with Lord Granville, and in the same old faithless way,
nothing more would be done to extort from Spain for Kentucky the open
passage of the Mississippi.
At any other time he would have borne his part in these discussions. Now he
scarcely heard them. All the forces of his mind were away, on another
battle-field and he longed to be absent with them, a field strewn with the
sorrowful carnage of ideal and hope and plan, home, happiness, love. He was
hardly aware that his own actions must seem unusual, until one of the older
men took him affectionately by the hand and said: "Marshall tells me that you teach school till sunset and read law till
sunrise; and tonight you come here with your eyes blazing and your skin as
pallid and dry as a monk's. Take off the leeches of the law for a good
month, John! They abstract too much blood. If the Senate ratifies in June
the treachery of Jay and Lord Granville, there will be more work than ever
for the Democratic Societies in this country, and nowhere more than in
Kentucky. We shall need you then more than the law needs you now, or than
you need it. Save yourself for the cause of your tricolour. You shall have a
chance to rub the velvet off your antlers."