At last the founder of Kentucky with his little band reached the destined goal of their arduous journeyings. Henderson's record on his birthday runs: "Thursday the 20th [April] Arrived at Fort Boone on the Mouth of Oter Creek Cantuckey River where we were Saluted by a running fire of about 25 Guns; all that was then at Fort.… The men appeared in high spirits & much rejoiced in our arrival." It is a coincidence of historic interest that just one day after the embattled farmers at Lexington and Concord "fired the shots heard round the world," the echoing shots of Boone and his sturdy backwoodsmen rang out to announce the arrival of the proprietor of Transylvania and the birth of the American West.
[CHAPTER XV.]
Transylvania—A Wilderness Commonwealth
You are about a work of the utmost importance to the well-being of this country in general, in which the interest and security of each and every individual are inseparably connected.… Our peculiar circumstances in this remote country, surrounded on all sides with difficulties, and equally subject to one common danger, which threatens our common overthrow, must, I think, in their effects, secure to us an union of interests, and, consequently, that harmony in opinion, so essential to the forming good, wise and wholesome laws.
—Judge Richard Henderson: Address to the Legislature of Transylvania, May 23, 1775.
The independent spirit displayed by the Transylvania Company, and Henderson's procedure in open defiance of the royal governors of both North Carolina and Virginia, naturally aroused grave alarm throughout these colonies and South Carolina. "This in my Opinion," says Preston in a letter to George Washington (January 31, 1775), "will soon become a serious Affair, & highly deserves the Attention of the Government. For it is certain that a vast Number of People are preparing to go out and settle on this Purchase; and if once they get fixed there, it will be next to impossible to remove them or reduce them to Obedience; as they are so far from the Seat of Government. Indeed it may be the Cherokees will support them." [164] Governor Martin of North Carolina, already deeply disturbed in anticipation of the coming revolutionary cataclysm, thundered in what was generally regarded as a forcible-feeble proclamation (February 19, 1775) against "Richard Henderson and his Confederates" in their "daring, unjust and unwarrantable proceedings." [165] In a letter to Dartmouth he denounces "Henderson the famous invader" and dubs the Transylvania Company "an infamous Company of land Pyrates."
Officials who were themselves eager for land naturally opposed Henderson's plans. Lord Dunmore, who in 1774, as we have seen, was heavily interested in the Wabash Land Company engineered by William Murray, took the ground that the Wabash purchase was valid under the Camden-Yorke decision. This is so stated in the records of the Illinois Company, likewise under Murray's control. But although the "Ouabache Company," of which Dunmore was a leading member, was initiated as early as May 16, 1774, the purchase of the territory was not formally effected until October 18, 1775—too late to benefit Dunmore, then deeply embroiled in the preliminaries to the Revolution. Under the cover of his agent's name, it is believed, Dunmore, with his "passion for land and fees," illegally entered tracts aggregating thousands of acres of land surveyed by the royal surveyors in the summer of 1774 for Dr. John Connolly. [166] Early in this same year, Patrick Henry, who, as already pointed out, had entered large tracts in Kentucky in violation of Virginia's treaty obligations with the Cherokees, united with William Byrd 3d, John Page, Ralph Wormley, Samuel Overton, and William Christian, in the effort to purchase from the Cherokees a tract of land west of Donelson's line, being firmly persuaded of the validity of the Camden-Yorke opinion. Their agent, William Kenedy, considerably later in the year, went on a mission to the Cherokee towns, and upon his return reported that the Indians might be induced to sell. When it became known that Judge Henderson had organized the Transylvania Company and anticipated Patrick Henry and his associates, Colonel Arthur Campbell, as he himself states, applied to several of the partners of the Transylvania Company on behalf of Patrick Henry, requesting that Henry be taken in as a partner. [167] It was afterward stated, as commonly understood among the Transylvania proprietors, that both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson desired to become members of the company; but that Colonel Richard Henderson was instrumental in preventing their admission "lest they should supplant the Colonel [Henderson] as the guiding spirit of the company." [168]
Fully informed by Preston's elaborate communication on the gravity of the situation, Dunmore acted energetically, though tardily, to prevent the execution of Henderson's designs. On March 21st Dunmore sent flying through the back country a proclamation, demanding the immediate relinquishment of the territory by "one Richard Henderson and other disorderly persons, his associates," and "in case of refusal, and of violently detaining such possession, that he or they be immediately fined and imprisoned." [169] This proclamation, says a peppery old chronicler, may well rank with the one excepting those arch traitors and rebels, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, from the mercy of the British monarch. In view of Dunmore's confidence in the validity of the Camden-Yorke decision, it is noteworthy that no mention of the royal proclamation of 1763 occurs in his broadside; and that he bases his objection to the Transylvania purchase upon the king's instructions that all vacant lands "within this colony" be laid off in tracts, from one hundred to one thousand acres in extent, and sold at public auction. This proclamation which was enclosed, oddly enough, in a letter of official instructions to Preston warning him not to survey any lands "beyond the line run by Colonel Donaldson," proved utterly ineffective. At the same time, Dunmore despatched a pointed letter to Oconostota, Atta-kulla-kulla, Judge's Friend, and other Cherokee chieftains, notifying them that the sale of the great tract of land below the Kentucky was illegal and threatening them with the king's displeasure if they did not repudiate the sale. [170]
News of the plans which Henderson had already matured for establishing an independent colony in the trans-Alleghany wilderness, now ran like wild-fire through Virginia. In a letter to George Washington (April 9, 1775), Preston ruefully says: "Henderson I hear has made the Purchase & got a Conveyance of the great and Valluable Country below the Kentucky from the Cherokees. He and about 300 adventurers are gone out to take Possession, who it is said intends to set up an independent Government & form a Code of Laws for themselves. How this may be I cant say, but I am affraid the steps taken by the Government have been too late. Before the Purchase was made had the Governor interfered it is believed the Indians would not have sold." [171]