The leader of this organization was Judge
Richard Henderson.* Judge Henderson dreamed a big dream. His
castle in the air had imperial proportions. He resolved, in
short, to purchase from the Cherokee Indians the larger part of
Kentucky and to establish there a colony after the manner and the
economic form of the English Lords Proprietors, whose day in
America was so nearly done. Though in the light of history the
plan loses none of its dramatic features, it shows the practical
defects that must surely have prevented its realization. Like
many another Caesar hungering for empire and staking all to win
it, the prospective lord of Kentucky, as we shall see, had left
the human equation out of his calculations.
* Richard Henderson (1734-1785) was the son of the High Sheriff
of Granville County. At first an assistant to his father, he
studied law and soon achieved a reputation by the brilliance of
his mind and the magnetism of his personality. As presiding Judge
at Hillsborough he had come into conflict with the violent
element among the Regulators, who had driven him from the court
and burned his house and barns. For some time prior to his
elevation to the bench, he had been engaged in land speculations.
One of Boone's biographers suggests that Boone may have been
secretly acting as Henderson's agent during his first lonely
explorations of Kentucky.
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