They settled
on Henderson's land but refused his terms. They joined in their
sympathies with James Harrod, who, having established Harrodsburg
in the previous year at the invitation of Virginia, was not in
the humor to acknowledge Henderson's claim or to pay him tribute.
All were willing to combine with the Transylvania Company for
defense, and to enforce law they would unite in bonds of
brotherhood in Kentucky, even as they had been one with each
other on the earlier frontier now left behind them. But they
would call no man master; they had done with feudalism. That
Henderson should not have foreseen this, especially after the
upheaval in North Carolina, proves him, in spite of all his
brilliant gifts, to have been a man out of touch with the spirit
of the time.
The war of the Revolution broke forth and the Indians descended
upon the Kentucky stations. Defense was the one problem in all
minds, and defense required powder and lead in plenty. The
Transylvania Company was not able to provide the means of defense
against the hordes of savages whom Henry Hamilton, the British
Governor at Detroit, was sending to make war on the frontiers.
Practical men like Harrod and George Rogers Clark--who, if not a
practical man in his own interests, was a most practical
soldier--saw that unification of interests within the territory
with the backing of either Virginia or Congress was necessary.
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