The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820
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Empires and Politics
From the time of the first French and Spanish expeditions into the American interior in the seventeenth
century, the trans-Appalachian West was an arena of continuing conflict. Western territory was crucial
to continuing international struggles for control of waterways, natural resources, and areas for
settlement.
As France moved south from Canada through the Great Lakes, as Spain pushed northward along the
Mississippi River and across the Great Plains, and as Britain and its colonies moved inland from the
Atlantic seaboard, the West was repeatedly enveloped in global geopolitical warfare.
The arrival of large numbers of settlers from the eastern seaboard created a new political order in the
trans-Appalachian territory. American nationalism and western regionalism soon combined to produce
strong pressures for Kentucky statehood. On June 1, 1792, Kentucky was admitted as the fifteenth state
of the Union and became the first state west of the Appalachians.
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Campaigns and Conquests
For those living in the Ohio River Valley, recurring hostilities were marked by a succession of strikes
into enemy territory, whether invading force considered the enemy to be the British empire, tribes of
Native Americans, or settler outposts in the Bluegrass region.
Western wars followed a cyclical pattern and were frequently as brief as they were bloody. Campaigns
opened with the mustering of military troops and local militias, often in the spring, followed by a forced
march against the enemy, a fixed battle or series of skirmishes, and retreat or withdrawal, invariably
accompanied by the burning of enemy villages, houses, and crops.
From Bouquet's expedition into the Ohio country of 1764, through Clark's attack on Vincennes in 1779,
to the Kentuckians' defeat at Blue Licks of 1782, St. Clair's defeat of 1791, and Fallen Timbers in 1794,
the cycle of conflict appeared irresolvable. Only after Harrison's victory over the British and Tecumseh
at the Battle of the Thames in 1813 was it possible to foresee the end of warfare east of the Mississippi.
The victors of the Thames returned home to write flattering narratives of their exploits and claim the
political power made possible by enlarged public reputations. Native Americans were left without their
ancestral land and with no written accounts in their own languages to document the experience of
dispossession.
Crafting Statehood
In 1776 Kentucky became a separate county of Virginia, and in 1792 it was admitted to the federal
Union. The fifteen years between legal recognition by Virginia and statehood were clouded by complex
maneuvers and alliances and struggles between partisans of America's nascent political party system.
Kentucky became a county just as the first waves of settlers were making their way over the
Cumberland Gap and down the Ohio River. At the time of the first federal census in 1790, Kentucky
already had more than 73,000 residents, more than 12,000 of them slaves.
The great distance between Kentucky and the eastern seaboard and continuing fears of attacks by Native
Americans encouraged Kentuckians to feel that Virginia was not sufficiently attentive to the needs of
the West. A separation movement grew in strength, and it led to nine successive constitutional
relations with Spain, which controlled all commerce on the Mississippi south to the port of New
Orleans.
In the end, slavery proved to be the most deeply divisive issue. Slavery was legal in Kentucky so long
as it remained governed by the laws of Virginia, but anti-slavery activists like Presbyterian clergyman
David Rice argued that it should not be retained in a new state. Pressing just as adamantly for
maintaining slavery were powerful figures such as George Nicholas and John Breckinridge. The forces
of slavery won the constitutional contest, with results that would leave Kentucky divided along lines of
race, class, and religious belief.
Imperial Conspiracies
In 1798, the Federalist-dominated Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts granting the President
power to imprison or deport aliens suspected of subversive acts and to imprison Americans speaking out
against the government, Congress, or President. Jeffersonian Republicans responded with the Kentucky
Resolutions adopted by the Kentucky legislature in November 1798. Written by Jefferson himself,
these resolutions declared that the Constitution had established nothing more than a compact among
states and that states had the right to declare void, or nullify, any federal legislation that exceeded
constitutional limits on central power.
General James Wilkinson, a veteran of Revolutionary and frontier battles who had settled in Kentucky,
was one of the strong voices in opposition to the federal Constitution. In 1787, he had navigated a
boatload of goods to New Orleans and secured from Spanish authorities a monopoly on all American
trade on the Mississippi. Taking advantage of the charged atmosphere surrounding the Alien and
Sedition Acts, Wilkinson sought a grant of land from the Spanish to establish a colony and secured a
monopoly on emigration to the land. Wilkinson's political enemies fastened on these and other rumored
schemes to charge that Wilkinson was involved in a "Spanish conspiracy" evidenced by traitorous
involvement with a foreign power and attempts to separate Kentucky from the United States. Once
Kentucky was successfully admitted to the Union in 1792, the appeal of Wilkinson's schemes
dissipated.
Only a few years later, however, Wilkinson became involved in another international intrigue, the Burr
conspiracy. In 1804, U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr privately offered the British minister in
Washington his support in separating the western territories from the United States. The next year, after
his term of office had ended, Burr traveled west to Kentucky and New Orleans, securing men and
equipment for his plan and enlisting the aid of western leaders, among them James Wilkinson.
Burr's hopes for a western empire collapsed when Wilkinson withdrew from the plot and released the
text of an incriminating coded letter he had received from Burr. Burr was tried for treason but acquitted
by Chief Justice John Marshall because the government could not produce two sworn witnesses to
Burr's acts as required by the Constitution.
Political Ambitions
Political careers in the trans-Appalachian West were shaped by a combination of influences including
family lineage, land holdings, social and business alliances, and military reputation. Early in the period
of settlement and statehood, power in Kentucky devolved upon a relatively small elite dominated by
names such as Shelby, Adair, Breckinridge, Brown, and Henderson.
Into this group came an aspiring young attorney, Henry Clay, who was born in Virginia and in 1799
married Lucretia Hart, youngest daughter of Thomas Hart, a wealthy and influential Lexington
businessman and landholder. Quickly gaining entry to Kentucky's most influential circles, Clay became
widely known for his legal skills and was retained to defend Aaron Burr against charges of treason in
Kentucky courts. In 1811, he was elected to Congress and chosen Speaker of the House on his first day
of service. He subsequently served twenty years as one of the most powerful members of the U.S.
Senate.
Clay's career was not without controversy, including a duel fought with a bitterly partisan rival,
Humphrey Marshall. Clay was also shadowed by his difficult relationship to Masonry. The Masonic
order was at the height of its prominence and proud to point to a roster of members that had included
George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, and others of the Revolutionary
generation.
For the young Henry Clay, Masonic membership was an important avenue to social and political power,
and he was glad to accept appointment as Master of Lexington Lodge No. 1 and Grand Master of the
Grand Lodge of Kentucky. With the founding of the Anti-Masonic Party in the late 1820s, however, the
tide of public opinion turned, and Clay was among those who broke publicly with Masonry and
attacked it for wielding a dangerous, hidden influence in American political affairs.
Western Commerce
With access to the Ohio River and astride the Wilderness Road bringing settlers westward, Kentucky
was well positioned for commercial success. Agriculture became the economic mainstay of the area,
and by the late 1780s burley tobacco was the primary cash crop.
Kentucky was also a leading producer of the nation's supply of hemp, which was used to manufacture
rope and other fiber products such as bag cloth. By the early nineteenth century, Kentucky industries
included tobacco processing houses and ropewalks as well as gristmills, sawmills, ironworks,
meatpacking plants, and glassworks.
One Kentucky staple crop that was initially difficult to transport was corn. By the mid-1780s, however,
a number of Kentucky distillers including Elijah Craig, Evan Williams, and Jacob Beam had developed
a new variety of corn-based whiskey that acquired the name bourbon from one of its principal counties
of origin. Thereafter, Kentucky's corn crop could be converted from hulled kernels into kegged liquor
and shipped to markets in the eastern United States or down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
Kentucky's early experience with banking was less successful. The War of 1812 spurred economic
prosperity, but once peace returned financial difficulties threatened many with ruin. The state
responded in 1818 by chartering a number of new banks that were authorized to issue their own
currency. These banks soon collapsed, and the state legislature passed measures for the relief of the
banks' creditors.
These measures were declared unconstitutional by a state court, and the electorate became deeply
divided between pro-relief and anti-relief factions. Political debates erupted over the proper role of
banks, a struggle that moved to the national stage in the 1830s with President Andrew Jackson's attack
on the Bank of the United States.
Western Law
Kentucky inherited its common law system from Virginia, the state of which it was a part until 1792.
The opening of the trans-Appalachian West created a vast field of activity in the region for local, state,
and federal courts and the attorneys and judges who built their careers on legal practice.
The law was involved in every transaction of consequence to the new society in the West, from the
purchase and sale of land to the formation of corporations, operation of businesses, prosecution of
crime, conveyance of dowries, and settling of estates.
Legal documents provide a unique perspective on the workings of the western social order. This is
especially true of legal records related to slavery, since court proceedings and other legal documents
preserve some of the few surviving facts about individual slaves of the period.
Slaves were considered an important and valuable form of property, and they were thus included in
court proceedings as subjects in legal contests, sales, inheritances and estates, and marriage portions and
dowers. As with other forms of property, slaves could be mortgaged or used as security for payment of
loans, and they were recoverable in a suit of law. Slaves could also be attached by government officers
as assets for their owners' nonpayment of debts or taxes.
Encountering the First American West
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The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820
