Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1910 — ONE OF THE FOUNDER STATES. [ARTICLE]

ONE OF THE FOUNDER STATES.

Kentucky Was the Entering Wedgre In the Winning; of the West Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Kentucky were the foremost founders. New York and Massachusetts have been strongly nourished by European money, culture and immigrants and plenty of good hard, sense to boot. Virginia lost out through pride and war, with her many bloody sacrifices. Malaria has almost ruined Kentucky. Kentucky was our oldest, longest maintained frontier, settled up by first and second generations of English farmers and a few Irish and Scotch and old revolutionary soldiers. Kentucky had more and harder Indian fighting than any other State, besides largely indulging in the 1812-15 and the Mexican and other wars. The -first two generations of Kentucky were hardy, bold, gay hunters and warriors, but poor farmers, says the New York Press. Common dangers and deaths made a great common brotherhood, and the cleanest, most unaffected democracy the world has ever seen for the short time its golden age lasted. From this epoch and blood sprung Lincoln, her greatest son, and Henry Clay, that great homespun democratic pacificator, who was as much beloved in New York and Boston as at home. Then there was George Nicholas, who wrote Kentucky’s constitution; John J. Crittenden, President Taylor, the truly great Gen. George Lewis Clark, and many great constitutional lawyers and judges, to say nothing of Jefferson Davis. Then there came the era of slavery and great agricultural prosperity, bringing a lot of snobbish, rich English and Virginia factors, when the old, great, bluff, wise yeoman English spirit vamosed. And then settled down and took hold the generation of malaria, and Kentucky has not been herself since. But the spirits of Lincoln and Clay and their memory still bless the whole land. Whisky, horses and pretty women in Kentucky; that is all cheap back talk, and does not represent Kentucky's true greatness—her great men, the entering wedge in the winning of the West. Kentucky was the nourishing mother of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Texas, for she almost alone bore the brunt of the Indian and British wars in the West. As Quinine Jim McKenzie put it, “Kentucky was a great conch shell echoing the surges of history when all her neighbors were but periwinkles on the sands of time,” even If these States are richer and better now. Kentucky should rid herself of malaria and resume her great past.