With the close of the second war with England, came the first real era of peace Kentucky had ever known: Born during the first great struggle with his mother country, the state had won its way through constant strife with the savages and their white English comrades and leaders. It had met them wherever battle was offered whether in Kentucky, or at Vincennes, at Tippecanoe, at the River Raisin, in Canada or at New Orleans, and at last had seen the dawn of peace which gave to her valiant sons, and no less brave mothers and daughters, the opportunity they had so long sought to work out the high destiny of the young state free from war's alarms. To the material interests of the commonwealth, attention was now turned, the shadows of war having passed and the sunlight of peace begun to shed its beneficent rays upon them. In 1780 there came to the district of Kentucky a young surveyor, John Fitch. While descending the Ohio river, and at the mouth of the Big Sandy river, the boat was fired upon by Indians who wounded two of the crew and killed a number of the horses and cattle with which the boat was laden. not related in the histories of that early period that the boat was captured and it is fair to assume that it, with its passengers and cargo, escaped. In 1786 Fitch is reported to have made an entry of lands in Nelson county for

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himself and also for others of the pioneer settlers. He was of an inventive mind and to him has been ascribed the invention of the first steamboat. James Rumsey, about the same time, that is in 1786, also successfully applied steam to the navigation of water craft. sey claimed to have no knowledge of the invention of Fitch. In the eastern states, Robert Fulton was experimenting along the same lines and to him, whether justly or unjustly, is ascribed the invention of a vessel that was impelled by steam for the first time. It is not the purpose of this work to enter into the question of the priority of invention. Many pages have been written upon the subject which has never been definitely or satisfactorily settled. It is enough to know that John Fitch, a resident of, but not a native of Kentucky, did in 1786 operate a steam-propelled vessel upon the Delaware river. This vessel was propelled by paddle wheels, moved by a system of cranks. The boat which was sixty feet in length, made a successful trial trip developing a speed of more than seven miles an hour. During the three succeeding years Fitch built other boats, after the same model, which were run in a regular service between Philadelphia and Burlington at a speed of from four to seven miles an hour. Prior to this time, being like most inventors, a very poor man, he had petitioned congress and several of

celebrating the achievements of Robert Fulton, hailed as the pioneer inventor of the steam vessel. History is sometimes very unjust and occasionally unreliable.

James Rumsey, whose descendants yet live in Kentucky, was working on the problem of steam navigation concurrently with Fitch, though neither knew of the labors of the other. Rumsey's first boat was shown on the Potomac and made a speed of four miles an hour by ejecting water from the stern. He and Fitch acrimoniously contended for priority of invention, without any special addition to the knowledge of steam navigation. Who was

tucky, Wm. Murray operated iron furnaces. He was probably the pioneer employer of Chinese coolie labor, having secured from New York, the services of ten of these people who, at that early day, numbered but few in the United States. Mr. Murray was thoroughly informed as to the chemistry of iron manufacture and was dissatisfied with the results obtained from his furnaces and began a series of investigations and operations which resulted in the transformation, by means of currents of air, of the molten metal into malleable iron or steel as he desired, a variation in the application producing the one or the other metal.

A description of the technical operations producing this important effect would be out of place in a publication of this character. It is enough to say that in the crude little iron furnaces down on the Cumberland river, where Wm. Murray and his ten Chinese employes had been making iron sugar kettles for Southern planters, there was discovered a process which makes possible the great steel bridges of our country and of the world and of the great "skyscrapers" which have done so much. to disfigure our cities. Mr. Murray was remote from the great news centers; there were no fast mail trains in his day and but few telegraph lines. He was content to modestly go on with the work his hands found to do, and made no effort to advertise to the world the great discovery he had made. Others were less modest. English ironworkers, then the foremost manufacturers in that line in the world, came to Eddyville, observed the process Murray had discovered, predicted that it would speedily supersede all others and then went home to England. The result of this visit of inspection by these English iron-workers was that every foot of structural steel used in the world today is known as "Bessemer Steel," instead of "Murray steel" as it should be. Bessemer adopted the Murray methods as his own and patented them, notwithstanding that Murray steel was in use in the United States long before the name of Bessemer was ever heard of, either in England or the United States. Murray, at last aroused to the importance of the great discovery he had made, sought a patent from the United States, but lost precedence of Bessemer who secured a prior patent in England, it has been charged by having corrupted Murray's attorney in the United States. Murray, however, secured a caveat and a final hearing by the commissioner of patents, who decided that he was the real inventor of the new process and granted him a patent which expired in 1871, being then renewed for seven years all

other applications for similar patents being denied.

Bessemer steel is known the world over; who knows aught of Murray steel? Robert Fulton is acclaimed as the father of steam navigation while John Fitch sleeps unhonored in a humble grave. The world is sometimes very unkind to those to whom it owes great debts.

At the disastrous battle with the English and Indians at Frenchtown, the details of which have been given, one of the gallant commanding officers of the Kentucky troops was Major George Madison who, with Major Graves, refused to surrender until the supply of ammunition was exhausted, and only then when the British General Proctor promised honorable terms and the protection of their men from Indian atrocities. Major Madison, by his gallant conduct on this and other occasions, had so endeared himself to the people of Kentucky that in 1816 they elected him governor of the state; Gabriel Slaughter, at the same time, being chosen as lieutenant governor. The gallant old soldier-governor did not long survive his civil triumph. After his death there was exciting discussion as to whether the lieutenant governor should succeed him, or a new election should be ordered by the legislature. This was finally decided in favor of the lieutenant governor and Slaughter became governor.

During the administration of the latter the most important question arising was the extinguishment of the Indian titles to that part of Kentucky lying west of the Tennessee river, steps to which end must be taken in connection with the United States government. The Chickasaw Indians had a valid claim to about seven million acres of land lying in Kentucky and Tennessee and between the Mississippi and the Tennessee rivers. This fertile body of land had never been included in any transfers covered by treaties with these Indians, and it was important that some definite

action be had by which the title could be taken over either the government or by the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. The United States in October, 1818, purchased this Indian land for $300,000, to be paid to the Indians at the rate of $20,000 each year for fifteen years. Kentucky's share of the land thus bought includes the counties of Graves, Calloway, McCracken, Marshall, Hickman, Ballard and Fulton, which have ever since been designated as "The Purchase." This is the only land in Kentucky for which any Indian tribe ever received compensation.

In 1822, Henry Clay, as a commissioner for Kentucky met Benjamin W. Leigh, a commissioner for Virginia, to decide certain points of difference that had remained open since the erection of the district of Kentucky into a state. Virginia claimed the right to locate on the Purchase lands bounty warrants for the officers and men of her state troops. All the questions remaining open between the two states were satisfactorily settled by Messrs. Leigh and Clay, the legislatures of the two states ratifying the settlement thus made at their succeeding sessions.

During the session of the legislature, 181718 forty banks were incorporated with a capital stock, on paper, of ten million dollars. These banks instead of redeeming their notes of issue in gold and silver, were, by the terms of their charters, permitted to redeem them in the notes of the Bank of Kentucky which, of all the banks in the state, was now on a specie basis. The new banks started the printing presses to running; immense numbers of their paper promises to pay were issued; everybody had money; therefore everybody was wealthy. These new banks were run in haphazard fashion. Some of them may have been controlled by men who knew at least the alphabet of finance, but most of them. were not. Most of the officers meant well in the density of the ignorance of the basic principles of banking; some of, them did not mean

well except to the advantage of their own pockets which they managed to comfortably fill. Speculation was the order of the day. Money makes money; everybody had money, such as it was; why not make that money make more money? The shoddy banks made large loans to irresponsible borrowers who promptly lost them in speculation. When pay-day came, as it inexorably does come, they had no means by which to meet their obligations to the banks. There could be but one resultthe banks went to pieces, few of them surviving more than a year; the others not beyond two years.

So great was the financial pressure brought about by this ill-advised adventure into the difficult field of finance by those who knew nothing of its intricacies, that the legislature at its session of 1819-20, extended the right to replevy judgments from three months to a term of one year. This appears to have been an absolute necessity. Everyone was in debt; no one had money with which to pay his debts. Ruin could be, at least, temporarily averted, by legislative action. But this was only temporary for in 1820, the demand for further relief was so great that a majority of the members of the state senate and house pledged themselves to measures which would bring relief to the great body of debtors whose burdens were too great to be borne. It would seem to reasonable persons that such lessons as this would have a lasting value. These new banks had flooded the state with their notes and within two years, not only the banks which issued them but the unfortunates who held them were bankrupt.

In 1868, and for several succeeding years, there was a great body of otherwise intelligent men in the United States who demanded that the United States should put its printing presses to work turning out "greenbacks" until every one had all the money he needed. This in larger form, was what had been done in Kentucky fifty years before, and had the sug

gestion been adopted the United States and its people would have been bankrupted, as were most of the Kentucky people during their excursion into the realms of high finance.

In 1896, it was not the press which printed greenbacks that was appealed to, but the coinage press which stamped the half dollar's worth of silver and made it a dollar. That this should be done by the government, free of charge to any one and without asking the consent of any foreign government, was declared to be a panacea for all the financial woes of the people, especially, it may be added, for those who owned and operated silver mines. This plan, like that of the greenback theorists, failed of adoption, very happily for all concerned as it now appears. It has been said that every man is capable of managing a hotel or editing a newspaper. Remembering the wild theories of finance that have been advanced and advocated during the past fortyfive years, one would be safe in adding to the would-be hotel keeper and the editor, the able financier who may be found on every street of the country's cities and at every cross-roads of the country's rural districts.

Returning to the situation in Kentucky, it may be stated that General Adair, the gallant old soldier, was elected governor in 1820. He approved of the acts of the legislature tending to the relief of the people. The independent bank charters were repealed in February, 1820; the Bank of Kentucky had suspended specie payments. Everybody wanted money; nobody had any.

The legislature of that day seemed as incapable as the legislatures of today. To the cry for relief, it responded by chartering the Bank of the Commonwealth at Frankfort, which should have a branch in every judicial district of the state. This bank was authorized to issue irredeemable notes to the amount of three million dollars. The capital of the bank was nominal, not real. It is scarcely necessary to note what happened. In a little while it

took two dollars of its notes to buy one real dollar.

Judge Little in his "Life of Ben Hardin," says: "Almost everybody was in debt and a large proportion hopelessly so." Little further says: "Let it not be supposed that the legislative arm was idle in this emergency. It acted with as serene indifference to all constitutional, as of all financial principles. December, 1819, an act was passed by the legislature to suspend for sixty days all judicial and execution sales. February, 1820, the right of replevin was extended from three to twelve months. In cases of imprisonment for debt (then an existing remedy in a creditor's favor) prison bounds were extended to the limits of each county town. In December, 1821, imprisonment for debt was entirely abolished. The right of replevin was then extended from three months to two years, unless the execution creditor endorsed on the writ that notes of the Bank of the Commonwealth might be taken in payment. How this course of legislation would have culminated, if uninterrupted, can only be conjectured. When it had reached this point, it was suddenly arrested by the adverse decision of a circuit judge.

In a case arising in the Bourbon circuit court in 1822, Judge Clark decided the two years' replevin law unconstitutional on the ground that so far as it was retroactive, it impaired the obligation of contracts and thus violated the constitution of the United States. Wide and profound was the sensation produced by this decision, and the unlucky judge was regarded as little less than a public enemy. The legislature having been convened in special session for another purpose, rushed to the rescue. May 18, 1822, Mr. Slaughter, member for Warren, offered a resolution in the house of representatives stating in the preamble that Judge James Clark had rendered a decision "in contravention of the laws of the commonwealth," had grossly transcended his judicial