Both the Federal and the Virginia authorities were much alarmed and angered, less at the insult to Spain than at the threat of establishing a separate government in the West.
The Government Authorities Disapprove.
From the close of the revolution the Virginian government had been worried by the separatist movements in Kentucky. In 1784 two "stirrers-up of sedition" had been fined and imprisoned, and an adherent of the Virginian government, writing from Kentucky, mentioned that one of the worst effects of the Indian inroads was to confine the settlers to the stations, which were hot-beds of sedition and discord, besides excuses for indolence and rags. [Footnote: Va. State Papers, III., pp. 585, 589.] The people who distrusted the frontiersmen complained that among them were many knaves and outlaws from every State in the Union, who flew to the frontier as to a refuge; while even those who did not share this distrust admitted that the fact that the people in Kentucky came from many different States helped to make them discontented with Virginia. [Footnote: Draper MSS. Clark Papers, Walter Darrell to William Fleming, April 14, 1783.]
Georgia and the Frontiersmen
In Georgia the conditions were much as they were on the Ohio. Georgia was a frontier State, with the ambitions and the lawlessness of the frontier; and the backwoodsmen felt towards her as they did towards no other member of the old Thirteen. Soon after Clark established his garrison in Vincennes, various inflammatory letters were circulated in the western country, calling for action against both the Central Government and the Spaniards, and appealing for sympathy and aid both to the Georgians and to Sevier's insurrectionary State of Franklin. Among others, a Kentuckian wrote from Louisville to Georgia, bitterly complaining about the failure of the United States to open the Mississippi; denouncing the Federal Government in extravagant language, and threatening hostilities against the Spaniards, and a revolt against the Continental Congress. [Footnote: Do., Letter of Thomas Green to the Governor of Georgia, December 23, 1786.] This letter was intercepted, and, of course, increased still more the suspicion felt about Clark's motives, for though Clark denied that he had actually seen the letter, he was certainly cognizant of its purport, and approved the movement which lay behind it. [Footnote: Green's "Spanish Conspiracy," p. 74.] One of his fellow Kentuckians, writing about him at this time, remarks: "Clark is playing hell…eternally drunk and yet full of design. I told him he would be hanged. He laughed, and said he would take refuge among the Indians." [Footnote: Va. State Papers, IV., 202, condensed.]
Public disavowal of Clark's Actions.
The Governor of Virginia issued a proclamation disavowing all Clark's acts. [Footnote: Draper MSS. Proclamation of Edmund Randolph, March 4, 1787.] A committee of the Kentucky Convention, which included the leaders of Kentucky's political thought and life, examined into the matter, [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 71, vol. ii., p. 503. Report of Dec. 19, 1786.] and gave Clark's version of the facts, but reprobated and disowned his course. Some of the members of this Convention were afterwards identified with various separatist movements, and skirted the field of perilous intrigue with a foreign power; but they recognized the impossibility of countenancing such mere buccaneering lawlessness as Clark's; and not only joined with their colleagues in denouncing it to the Virginia Government, but warned the latter that Clark's habits were such as to render him unfit longer to be trusted with work of importance. [Footnote: Green, p. 78.]
Experience of a Cumberland Trader.
The rougher spirits, all along the border of course sympathized with Clark. In this same year 1786 the goods and boats of a trader from the Cumberland district were seized and confiscated by the Spanish commandant at Natchez. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 124, vol. iii. Papers transmitted by Blount, Hawkins, and Ashe, March 29, 1787, including deposition of Thomas Amis, Nov 13, 1786. Letter from Fayettsville, Dec. 29, 1786, etc.] At first the Cumberland Indian-fighters determined to retaliate in kind, at no matter what cost; but the wiser among their leaders finally "persuaded them not to imitate their friends of Kentucky, and to wait patiently until some advice could be received from Congress." One of these wise leaders, a representative from the Cumberland district in the North Carolina legislature, in writing to the North Carolina delegates to the Continental Congress, after dwelling on the necessity of acquiring the right to the navigation of the Mississippi, added with sound common-sense: "You may depend on our exertions to keep all things quiet, and we agree entirely with you that if our people are once let loose there will be no stopping them, and that acts of retaliation poison the mind and give a licentiousness to manners that can with great difficulty be restrained." Washington was right in his belief that in this business there was as much to be feared from the impetuous turbulence of the backwoodsmen as from the hostility of the Spaniards.
Wrath over Jay's Negotiations.