Clark personally would have preferred to see the settlers combine
as a freemen's state. It was plain that they would not combine
and stake their lives as a unit to hold Kentucky for the benefit
of the Transylvania Company, whose authority some of the most
prominent men in the territory had refused to recognize. The
Proprietary of Transylvania could continue to exist only to the
danger of every life in Kentucky.
While the Proprietors sent a delegate to the Continental Congress
to win official recognition for Transylvania, eighty-four men at
Harrodsburg drew up a petition addressed to Virginia stating
their doubts of the legality of Henderson's title and requesting
Virginia to assert her authority according to the stipulations of
her charter. That defense was the primary and essential motive of
the Harrodsburg Remonstrance seems plain, for when George Rogers
Clark set off on foot with one companion to lay the document
before the Virginian authorities, he also went to plead for a
load of powder. In his account of that hazardous journey, as a
matter of fact, he makes scant reference to Transylvania, except
to say that the greed of the Proprietors would soon bring the
colony to its end, but shows that his mind was seldom off the
powder. It is a detail of history that the Continental Congress
refused to seat the delegate from Transylvania.
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