The Choir Invisible

Hence the Jacobin clubs that were formed in Kentucky: one at Lexington, a

second at Georgetown, a third at Paris. Hence the liberty poles in the

streets of the towns; the tricoloured cockades on the hats of the men; the

hot blood between the anti-federal and the federalist parties of the State.

The actions of Citizen Genet had indeed been disavowed by his republic. But

the sympathy for France, the hatred of England and of Spain, had but grown

meantime; and when therefore in this spring of 1795 the news reached the

frontier that Jay had concluded a treaty with England--the very treaty that

would bring to the Kentuckians the end of all their troubles with the posts

of the Northwest--the flame of revolution blazed out with greater

brilliancy.

During the hour that John Gray spent in that assemblage of men that night,

the talk led always to the same front of offence: the baser truckling to

England, an old enemy; the baser desertion of France, a friend. He listened

to one man of commanding eloquence, while he traced the treaty to the

attachment of Washington for aristocratic institutions; to another who

referred it to the jealousy felt by the Eastern congressmen regarding the

growth of the new power beyond the Alleghanies; to a third who foretold that

like all foregoing pledges it would leave Kentucky still exposed to the fury

of the Northern Indians; to a fourth who declared that let the treaty be

once ratified with Lord Granville, and in the same old faithless way,

nothing more would be done to extort from Spain for Kentucky the open

passage of the Mississippi.

At any other time he would have borne his part in these discussions. Now he

scarcely heard them. All the forces of his mind were away, on another

battle-field and he longed to be absent with them, a field strewn with the

sorrowful carnage of ideal and hope and plan, home, happiness, love. He was

hardly aware that his own actions must seem unusual, until one of the older

men took him affectionately by the hand and said: "Marshall tells me that you teach school till sunset and read law till

sunrise; and tonight you come here with your eyes blazing and your skin as

pallid and dry as a monk's. Take off the leeches of the law for a good

month, John! They abstract too much blood. If the Senate ratifies in June

the treachery of Jay and Lord Granville, there will be more work than ever

for the Democratic Societies in this country, and nowhere more than in

Kentucky. We shall need you then more than the law needs you now, or than

you need it. Save yourself for the cause of your tricolour. You shall have a

chance to rub the velvet off your antlers."