University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THE SCENE.

The stormy and rugged winds of March were overblown
— the first fresh smiling days of April had come at last —
the days of sunshine and shower, of fitful breezes, the breath
of blossoms, and the newly-awakened song of birds. Spring
was there in all the green and glory of her youth, and the
bosom of Kentucky heaved with the prolific burden of the
season. She had come, and her messengers were everywhere,
and everywhere busy. The birds bore her gladsome
tidings to

nor were the lately-trodden and seared grasses of the forests
left unnoted; and the humbled flower of the wayside
sprang up at her summons. Like some loyal and devoted
people, gathered to hail the approach of a long-exiled and
well-beloved sovereign, they crowded upon the path over
which she came, and yielded themselves with gladness at
her feet. The mingled songs and sounds of their rejoicing
might be heard, and far-off murmurs of gratulation, rising
from the distant hollows, or coming faintly over the hilltops,
in accents not the less pleasing because they were the
less distinct. That lovely presence which makes every
land blossom, and every living thing rejoice, met, in the
happy region in which we meet her now, a double tribute
of honor and rejoicing.

The “dark and bloody ground,” by which mournful epithets
Kentucky was originally known to the Anglo-American,
was dark and bloody no longer. The savage had disappeared
from its green forests for ever, and no longer profaned
with slaughter, and his unholy whoop of death, its broad
and beautiful abodes. A newer race had succeeded; and
the wilderness, fulfilling the better destinies of earth, had
begun to blossom like the rose. Conquest had fenced in its
sterile borders with a wall of fearless men, and peace slept
everywhere in security among its green recesses. Stirring
industry — the perpetual conqueror — made the woods resound
with the echoes of his biting axe and ringing hammer.
Smiling villages rose in cheerful white, in place of the
crumbling and smoky cabins of the hunter. High and becoming
purposes of social life and thoughtful enterprise
superseded that eating and painful decay, which has terminated
in the annihilation of the red man; and which, among
every people, must always result from their refusal to exercise,
according to the decree of experience, no less than
Providence, their limbs and sinews in tasks of well-directed
and continual labor.

A great nation urging on a sleepless war against sloth
and feebleness, is one of the noblest of human spectacles.
This warfare was rapidly and hourly changing the monotony
and dreary aspects of rock and forest. Under the
creative hands of art, temples of magnificence rose where
the pines had fallen. Long and lovely vistas were opened
through the dark and hitherto impervious thickets. The
city sprang up beside the river, while hamlets, filled with
active hope and cheerful industry, crowded upon the verdant
hill-side, and clustered among innumerable valleys.

Grace began to seek out the homes of toil, and taste supplied
their decorations. A purer form of religion hallowed
the forest-homes of the red-man, while expelling for ever
the rude divinities of his worship; and throughout the
land, an advent of moral loveliness seemed approaching,
not less grateful to the affections and the mind, than was
the beauty of the infant April, to the eye and the heart of
the wanderer.

But something was still wanting to complete the harmonies
of nature, in the scene upon which we are about to
enter. Though the savage had for ever departed from its
limits, the blessings of a perfect civilization were not yet
secured to the new and flourishing regions of Kentucky.
Its morals were still in that fermenting condition which invariably
distinguishes the settlement of every new country
by a various and foreign people. At the distant period of
which we write, the population of Kentucky had not yet
become sufficiently stationary to have made their domestic
gods secure, or to have fixed the proper lines and limits
regulating social intercourse and attaching precise standards
to human conduct. The habits and passions of the
first settlers — those fearless pioneers who had struggled
foot to foot with the Indian, and lived in a kindred state
of barbarity with him, had not yet ceased to have influence
over the numerous race which followed them. That moral
amalgam which we call society, and which recognises a
mutual and perfectly equal condition of dependence, and a
common necessity, as the great cementing principles of the
human family, had not yet taken place; and it was still too
much the custom, in that otherwise lovely region, for the
wild man to revenge his own wrong, and the strong man
to commit a greater with impunity. The repose of social
order was not yet secured to the great mass, covering with
its wing, as with a sky that never knew a cloud, the sweet
homes and secure possessions of the unwarlike. The fierce
robber sometimes smote the peaceful traveller upon the

highway, and the wily assassin of reputation, within the
limits of the city barrier, not unfrequently plucked the
sweetest rose that ever adorned the virgin bosom of innocence,
and triumphed, without censure, in the unhallowed
spoliation.

But sometimes there came an avenger; — and the highway
robber fell before the unexpected patriot; and the virgin
was avenged by the yet beardless hero, for the wrong
of her cruel seducer. The story which we have to tell, is
of times and of actions such as these. It is a melancholy
narrative — the more melancholy, as it is most certainly
true. It will not be told in vain, if the crime which it
describes in proper colors, and the vengeance by which it
was followed, and which it equally records, shall secure the
innocent from harm, and discourage the incipient wrong-doer
from his base designs.