Patrick Henry was lying sick at his country-home in Hanover when the young envoy from Kentucky was ushered to his bedside. Pushing his reading spectacles up into his brown wig, the Governor listened keenly as the young man strode up and down his bed-chamber.
The scintillant brown eyes flashed. "Your cause is good. I will give you a letter to the Council."
"Five hundredweight of gunpowder!" The Council lifted their eyebrows when Clark brought in his request.
"Virginia is straining every nerve to help Washington; how can she be expected to waste gunpowder on Kentucky?"
"Let us move those settlers back to Virginia at the public expense," suggested one, "and so save the sum that it would take to defend them in so remote a frontier."
"Move Boone and Kenton and Logan back?" Clark laughed. Too well he knew the tenacity of that border germ. "So remote a frontier? It is your own back door. The people of Kentucky may be exterminated for the want of this gunpowder which I at such hazard have sought for their relief. Then what bulwark will you have to shield you from the savages? The British are employing every means to engage those Indians in war."
Clark knew there was powder at Pittsburg. One hundred and thirty-six kegs had just been brought up by Lieutenant William Linn with infinite toil from New Orleans, the first cargo ever conveyed by white men up the Mississippi and Ohio.
"We will lend you the powder as to friends in distress, but you must be answerable for it and pay for its transportation."
Clark shook his head,—"I cannot be answerable, nor can I convey it through that great distance swarming with foes."
"We can go no farther," responded the Council, concluding the interview. "God knows we would help you if we could, but how do we even know that Kentucky will belong to us? The assistance we have already offered is a stretch of power."