societies and political clubs.  They were written with a violence which, in striving after forcefulness, became feeble.  They described the people of Kentucky as having been “degraded and insulted,” and as having borne these insults with “submissive patience.”  The writers insisted that Kentucky had nothing to hope from the Federal Government, and that it was nonsense to chatter about the infraction of treaties, for it was necessary, at any cost, to take Louisiana, which was “groaning under tyranny.”  They threatened the United States with what the Kentuckians would do if their wishes were not granted, announcing that they would make the conquest of Louisiana an ultimatum, and warning the Government that they owed no eternal allegiance to it and might have to separate, and that if they did there would be small reason to deplore the separation.  The separatist agitators failed to see that they could obtain the objects they sought, the opening of the Mississippi and the acquisition of Louisiana, only through the Federal Government, and only by giving that Government full powers.  Standing alone the Kentuckians would have been laughed to scorn not only by England and France, but even by Spain.  Yet with silly fatuity they vigorously opposed every effort to make the Government stronger or to increase national feeling, railing even at the attempt to erect a great Federal city as “unwise, impolitic, unjust,” and “a monument to American folly.” [Footnote:  Kentucky Gazette, Feb. 8, 1794; Sept. 16, 1797, etc., etc.] The men who wrote these articles, and the leaders of the societies and clubs which inspired them, certainly made a pitiable showing; they proved that they themselves were only learning, and had not yet completely mastered, the difficult art of self government.

    Negotiations of the Spanish and American Governments. 
    Wilkinson’s Ineffectual Treason.

It was the existence of these Western separatists, nominally the fiercest foes of Spain, that in reality gave Spain the one real hope of staying the western advance.  In 1794 the American agents in Spain were carrying on an interminable correspondence with the Spanish Court in the effort to come to some understanding about the boundaries. [Footnote:  American State Papers, Foreign Relations, I., p. 443, etc.; letters of Carmichael and Short to Gardoqui, Oct. 1, 1793; to Alcudia, Jan. 7, 1794, etc., etc.] The Spanish authorities were solemnly corresponding with the American envoys, as if they meant peace; yet at the same time they had authorized Carondelet to do his best to treat directly with the American States of the West so as to bring about their separation from the Union.  In 1794 Wilkinson, who was quite incapable of understanding that his infamy was heightened by the fact that he wore the uniform of a Brigadier General of the United States, entered into negotiations for a treaty, the base of which should be the separation