THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1811. 461 this appalling phenomenon-which commenced by distant rumbling sounds, succeeded by discharges as if a thousand pieces of artillery were suddenly exploded the earth rocked to and fro; vast chasms opened, whence issued columns of water, sand, and coal, accompanied by hissing sounds, caused, perhaps, by the escape of pent-up steam; while ever and anon flashes of electricity gleamed through the troubled clouds of night, rendering the darkness doubly horrible. The current of the Mississippi was driven back upon its source with the greatest velocity for several hours, in consequence of an elevation of its bed. But this noble river was not thus to be stayed. Its accumulated waters came booming on, and, overtopping the barrier thus suddenly raised, carried everything before them with resistless power. Boats, then floating on the surface, shot down the declivity like an arrow from a bow, amid roaring billows, and the wildest commotion. A few days' action of its powerful current sufficed to wear away every vestige of the barrier thus strangely interposed, and its waters moved on to the ocean. The day that succeeded this night of terror brought no solace in its dawn. Shock followed shock; a dense black cloud of vapor overshadowed the land, through which no struggling sunbeam found its way to cheer the desponding heart of man-who, in silent communion with himself, was compelled to acknowledge his weakness and dependence upon the everlasting God. Hills disappeared, and lakes were found in their stead; numerous lakes became elevated ground, over the surface of which vast heaps of sand were scattered in every direction; in many places the earth for miles was sunk below the general level of the surrounding country, without being covered with water-leaving an impression in miniature of a catastrophe much more important in its effects, which had preceded it ages before. One of the lakes formed is sixty or seventy miles in length, and from three to twenty in breadth; in some places very shallow, in others from fifty to one hundred feet deep, which is much more than the depth of the Mississippi river in that quarter. In sailing over its surface in a light. canoe, the voyager is struck with astonishment at beholding the giant trees of the forest standing partially exposed amid a waste of waters, branchless and leafless. In a keel-boat moored to a small island in the Mississippi river, about eighteen miles below the boundary line of Kentucky and Tennessee, the crew was frightened almost to helplessness by the first terrible convulsion. This was before two o'clock in the morning of December 16, 1811. At half-past two o'clock A. M., another, only less terrible, shock came on—a shock which made a chasm in the island four feet wide and over three hundred feet long. Twenty-seven shocks, all distinct and violent, were felt and counted before daylight. They continued every day until the 21st of December, with decreasing violence-indeed, they were repeated at intervals until in February, 1812. The center of the violence was ascertained to be about Island No. 14, twenty-two miles below New Madrid, Missouri, which is opposite Fulton county, Kentucky, in the wide vicinity of which the traces of the frightful convulsion are yet frequent and marked. A scientific English gentleman, who happened to be upon the above keel-boat, became cool enough to record his observations. He noticed that the sound which was heard at the time of every shock always preceded the shock at least a second, originated in one point and went off in an opposite direction. And so he found that the shocks came from a little northward of east, and proceeded to the westward. In the legislation of 1811-12, among others, bills were passed granting lands, at ten cents per acre, to aid in building iron and salt-works in Wayne and Pulaski counties; assenting on the part of Kentucky to the proposed amendment of the United States Constitution, depriving of citzenship any one accepting title of nobility or honor, or receiving presents or office from foreign emperor, king, or prince; requiring all State and judicial officers and attorneys at law to take an oath against duelling, or participating in a duel, or negotiating a challenge; granting lotteries-one to improve the Kentucky river, one to repair the road from Maysville to Washington, and another to build a church on the public square at Frankfort, for the free use of all sects or denominations. The messages of Governor Shelby during the term following 1812 bear grateful testimony to the general internal prosperity of the State; severely animadvert on the insincerity and vacillation of Great Britain in effecting overtures for peaceful negotiations, while taking advantage of the delays to prosecute the war with more relentlessness, advising such measures as will render the militia forces most available for the demands upon Kentucky in the prosecution of the war; advise amendment and reform of the revenue laws; in 1814, recommend the appointment of a judge specially for the General Court; note the losses and delays sustained by the treasury by the failure of the judges to hold court at the regular terms; urge the repair of the penitentiary, and provision for the greater safety of the prisoners; that rooms be rented for the accommodation of some of the public officials, until the new state-house is finished, to replace the old one burned; and assure that the secret-service fund placed at the disposal of the governor remains unexpended, no occasion demanding its use. 1 John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, pp. 199–207. Defeat on the right bank. Two hundred Kentuckians, unsupported, driven back. Unjust aspersions of Patterson and Mor gan. Prejudice that misleads Jackson. Fort St. Philip bombarded. The British retreat, and abandon Louisiana. In August, the favorite son of Kentucky, Isaac Shelby, was elected governor for the second time. Martin D. Hardin, son of Colonel John Hardin, treacherously murdered while on a peace mission to the Indians, was made the secretary of state. During the session of the Legislature this year, a petition was presented by Daniel Boone, setting forth that all his lands which he had entered in Kentucky had been swallowed up and lost in the intricacies of the law and rival claims, and that, under the circumstances, he had migrated, in 1795, to the Spanish province of upper Louisiana, under promise by the governor of a grant of ten thousand acres of land in the district of St. Charles, on the Missouri river, the title to which was not completed, because it had to be done at New Orleans. On the cession of Louisiana to the United States, the commissioners appointed by the latter had been compelled to declare his claim null and void, and now "your memorialist was left once more, at about the age of eighty, to be a wanderer in the world, having no spot he can call his own whereon to lay his bones." An account of Boone's last years of life we have already given. His last landed estate, donated by Congress, passed from his possession to pay a debt of reimbursement to a person in Kentucky to whom he had sold a tract of land there with a defective title, warranted by Boone. The purchaser lost his land at law, and the loss fell on Boone, taking from him a last time all the ground he had, "whereon to lay his bones." Boone asserted that his lands in Kentucky had proved an injury to him, according to the rules of law. This led him to abandon the country he had called his "Paradise," in despair, and to declare, on the west side of the Mississippi, that he would never recross it again. The interesting episode of the war of 1812-15 with England, though a topic for the history of the United States, involves also an important part of the history of Kentucky, whose soldiers played no inconsiderable part in its stirring events. The causes which led to this were long continued and various. Chagrin and resentment over her loss of the American colonies by the war for independence seemed to rankle in the bosom of the British since the enforced treaty of 1783, manifested mainly for years by the stubborn retention of the North-west posts, and the instigation by secret intrigues and bribes of the Indians to increasing hostilities against the frontiersmen, until the treaty at Greenville, by General Wayne, in 1795. But new provocations occurred. England was the leading of the allied powers of Europe, in the convulsive wars of France, during the period of her revolution. Such had been our rapid progress in wealth and population, DECLARATION OF WAR WITH ENGLAND. 465 that the United States was now second only to England of all the maritime powers of the world. Many English seamen sought service in American ships, mainly on account of higher wages. The contest upon the seas between England and France was very bitter, and the former had continued need to recruit her navy. Under color of seizing her own citizens, she enforced the claim to stop and search American ships upon the high seas. Going even farther than this, she repeatedly seized American citizens, on the plea that they were English, Scotch, or Irish. These outrages were the frequent occasions of complaint on the part of our Government, and of negotiations for redress, often unavailing or of long and tedious delay. Against remonstrance, protracted and bitter, the British Government refused to abandon the practice. By orders in council and decrees on the part of Great Britain and France, respectively, the ports of both these kingdoms and all their dependencies were declared in a state of blockade. Any vessel bound to or sailing from a French port, therefore, without first visiting an English port and obtaining a license for the voyage, was made a lawful prize and subject to seizure and confiscation. The same was true of any vessel sailing to or from any English port under the French decree; but this did not so practically affect American rights, as France was not so great a rival on the seas, and from the friendly spirit of her people. Both were mere paper blockades, as neither power could enforce them, and hence, contrary to the law of nations. Under her high-handed and haughty orders, one thousand American vessels and their cargoes were seized and confiscated. The irritations became intolerable, while the losses to Americans were almost equaling the cost of war. The result was a declaration of war against England in June, 1812, by the United States Govern ment. At last, circumstances forced a compliance on the part of our Government, with the stipulation of the former treaty, that it should go to war with England again whenever France did. America was now indirectly the ally of Napoleon, whose iron rule and desolating wars were the scourge of Europe. The French revolution, with all its excesses and atrocities, was held in aversion by the Federal party, the main strength and numbers of which were in the New England States. Here the religious spirit of the old Puritan element was yet conservative, and they regarded, with plausibility, the Jacobinism of France as opposed to religion, civil order, and morality. Thus the intelligence and wealth of a large portion of our own countrymen, as a choice of evils, were willing to further endure the insults and spoliations of the British, rather than acquiesce in a war that forced them to appear as the associates and allies of the monster, Napoleon. Against this formidable resistance at home, the second war with England was undertaken. The Democratic party, remembering only the friendly aid of France in the war of independence, with ardent gratitude and affection, and incredulous |