Page:Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.djvu/39

The population still retained the characteristics of a frontier people. Impatient of restraint, they were rash and adventurous. Placing an exalted value upon personal courage but too often according praise to recklessness rather than to calm, unpretentious heroism, they exaggerated personal privileges and repelled any breach of them with unnecessary violence. The love of adventure too often degenerated into a mere thirst for excitement, and the spirit of the backswoods hero into the love of horse-races, cock-fights and games of chance. But on the other side of their nature they were frank, manly, and generous, living with an easy and open-handed hospitality that was very attractive and has passed into a proverb. And in all things, in word and act, they were full of nature's own gift of an untrammelled love of liberty, crude and unformed beyond the nomad spirit sometimes, as when it drove the aged Boone to the wilds of Missouri because he could not find room to breathe in Kentucky, but rising with the temper of the times to an intelligent and not-to-be-denied demand of political independence. Whatever trespassed on it was jealously regarded. Where any thing, in whatever domain, has acquired a special sensitiveness, its guardians do not have to look long or seek far for an injury. And so it was that within ten years from the first settlement the cry was raised that injustice was being done by Virginia to her District beyond the mountains, that her laws were oppressive to its people and that their personal liberty was curtailed. It was not a groundless cry in some respects. But