PRELECTION.

A large body of the elite of the organized melitia of Kentucky having encamped in Franklin county near the capital, for the purpose of discipline and in commemoration of our National Anniversary-Mr. ROBERT SON, nine days before the 4th of July, was invited to address the assemblage of at least 20,000 persons, male and female, old and yourg, citizens and soldiers--and the following address was accordingly delivered:

CAMP MADISON, FRANKLIN COUNTY, KY., July 5, 1843.

To the Hon. George Robertson:

SIR-By a resolution adopted at a meeting of the officers and troops assembled at Camp Madison, the undersigned were appointed a committee to express to you their warm thanks for the able and eloquent address delivered to them by you on our National Anniversary, and at the same time respectfully to request from you a copy for publication. We have the honor to be respectfully, your obedient servants,

JOHN MILLER. Col.

LUCIUS DESHA, Lt. Col.

C. M. CLAY, Col. Fayette Legion.
J. T. PRATT, Adj't. General.

T. L. CALDWELL, Surgeon Gen.

CAMP MADISON, 5th July, 1843.

Gentlemen :-In answer to your polite and flattering communication requesting for publication a copy of the address delivered yesterday, at the instance and in behalf of yourselves and those you represent, I cheerfully consent to the proposed publication, and will, in a day or two, furnish you the desired copy. Yours respectfully,

G. ROBERTSON.

ADDRESS.

Once more, my countrymen, we are permit-ous emotions and resolutions, make us wiser ted gratefully to behold the anniversary sun as individuals, and as citizens more useful. of American Independence; once more we A bird's eye glance at Kentucky-physical, salute the star-spangled banner, and rejoice moral, and political-past, present, and prothat the cherished emblem of our union and spective-may, and ought to, produce all those liberty, spotless and peerless as ever, still valuable results, as fruits of this day's comwaves over a nation now, as in time past, sig- memoration. And if, in any degree, such nally blessed by a benignant Providence; should be the consequence, our assembling once more, on earth, the old and the young, of will have been neither barren nor vain; and all classes, forgetting the distinctions of name, it will be good for us all that we were here. of fortune, and of faith, have assembled, under the canopy of a bright sky, to embalm the memory of "76," to remember the tribulations and triumphs of our pilgrim fathers and mothers, and to thank God that we are yet a free and united people.

At the call of those trumpets and those drums-with short notice, and rather as a "minute-man"-the organ of that beautiful and gallant band of citizen soldiers-I appear before you on the forlorn hope of suggesting, for your contemplations, something befitting such an assemblage, on such a day. And, although the accustomed and more comprehensive topics, however trite, can never be unacceptable to those who delight to commemorate "the 4th of July," yet we have thought that a subject which, whilst it may be less directly plicable, is more local and novel, might be equally appropriate and more generally interesting. The birth, progress, and condition of our own Commonwealth, as an offspring of our glorious Revolution and a member of our blessed Union, are intimately associated with all that belongs to the becoming celebration of this day, and beautifully illustrate the beneficence of the principles of human right and civil government which have consecrated it as a national jubilee. Our theme, is KEN

TUCKY.

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But

Time builds on the ruins itself has made. It destroys to renew and desolates to improve. A wise and benevolent Providence has thus marked its progress in the moral, as well as in the physical world. The tide which has borne past generations to the ocean of eternity, is hastening to the same doom the living mass now gliding downward to that shoreless and unfathomed reservoir. whilst the current, in its onward flow, sweeps away all that should perish, like the Nile, it refreshes every desert and fructifies every wild through which it rolls; and, fertilizing one land with the spoils of another, it deposits in a succeeding age the best seeds matured by the toil of ages gone before. Asia has thus been made tributary to Africa and to the younger Europe, ancient to modern times, and the middle ages to the more hallowed days in which we ourselves live. One generation dies that another may live to take its place. The desolation of one country has been the renovation of another-the downfall of one system has been the ultimate establishment of a better-and the ruin of nations has been the birth or regeneration of others both wiser and happier. The stream of moral light, with a western destination from the beginning, has, in all its meanderings, increased its volume, until, swollen by the contributions and enriched by the gleamings of ages, it has poured its flood on the cis-atlantic world.

America is a living monument of these con soling truths. Wher, within man's memory, it was blessed with the first footsteps of modern civilization, the germs of inductive philosophy, true liberty, and pure religion, sifted from the chaff and rectified by the experience of ages, were imported by our pilgrim ancestors to a land which seems to have been prepared by Providence for their successful development in the proper season for assuring to mankind an exalted destiny, at last, on earth.

We have not come here to recite the annals of our State. All this beauty, and chivalry, and intelligence, and piety, with religious rites and martial music and display, announce a purpose far more comprehensive and important. Feeling, as we this day must, that we are standing on a narrow isthmus between the great oceans of the eventful past and of the still more eventful future, we instinctively glance backward on the one and forward on the other, and embrace, in the transient vision, a panorama of the pregnant present. Such contemplations are peculiarly appropriate and affecting; and, when intelligent, must be profitable. Mixed with joy and sor- In less than 250 years from the first settlerow-hope and fear-gratitude and regret-ments at Jamestown and Plymouth, the temcomplacency and humiliation-they must help to exalt our minds and purify our hearts, awaken us to a proper sense of our duties and responsibilities, and, by inspiring more virtu

perate zone of North America already exhibits many signs that it is the promised land of civil liberty, and that the Anglo-Americans are the chosen depositories of principles and

institutions destined to liberate and exalt the few have been more eventful-and not one exhuman race.

hibits more of romance or of those qualities But our own Kentucky is, itself alone, a and deeds deemed chivalrous and noble among colossal tower of God's benevolence and time's men. And the adoption of Kentucky's orbeneficence to man. Within three score years ganic law and her admission into the federoand ten-the short period allotted for all the national union of Anglo-American States, conworks and enjoyments of a human being here stitute an appropriate episode to the thrilling below this fair Commonwealth, now so bles-epic of her Herculean infancy. Our own insed and distinguished, was a gloomy wilder-terests, duty to the generations that shall suc ness, the abode of wild beasts, and the hunt-ceed us, and respect for the memory of our ing ground and battle field of the still more illustrious predecessors-call Kentuckians, ferocious red men of the west. Its fertile soil one and all, to the conseeration of an occawas unfurrowed by the plow, its gigantic for- sional day or days to the becoming celebration est untouched by the axe of civilized man. of those two most interesting events in our Within all its limits wild nature's solitude local history. And let these Kentuckiads-was unblessed by the voice of reason, religion like the saturnalia of the Romans, the Passor law-uncheered by one spire to Heaven-over of the Jews, and the Olympiads of the by one hearth of domestic charity, or by the Greeks-be sacred seasons, when all of every curling smoke of a solitary cottage. But, in the fullness of time, the red man was to be supplanted by the white-the scalping knife by the sword of Justice the savage war cry by the church bells of christian temples-the panther and the buffaloe by domestic herdsand the wilderness was soon to bloom with all the beauty and fragrance of "the rose of Sharon and lily of the valley."

rank and denomination, animated by the same pervading sentiments and communing as one family, may refresh their patriotism, revive their civic virtues, and improve their social graces.

This, my countrymen, is a monumental land. Modern, as it is, in authentic history, it is covered with monuments of a remote antiquity-memorials, not only of successive In 1774, the tide of civilization, moving generations of long extinct vegetables and anwestward from the Atlantic, approached the imals whose transformed relics fill and fertil Alleghanies-the Anglo-Saxon race, destined ize the earth beneath us, but also of a race or to conquer and enlighten the earth, crossed the races of men as far advanced perhaps in mountain barrier-and Finley, and Boone, and knowledge and the arts of social life as their Harrod, and Logan, and Knox, and Whitley, contemporaries of Europe, Asia, or Afries; and Kenton, hunters of Kentucky-came, and but of whose origin, history, or doom, no traconquered. They brought with them the rifle, dition remains. It contains monuments also the axe, the plough, and THE BIBLE. And, of more recent races less civilized, and by thus armed, this vanguard of their race led whom the more ancient and enlightened inthe forlorn hope of western civilization to vic- habitants may have been exterminated or abtory and to fortune. The Indians fell by their sorbed, as Southern Europe once was, and rifles, the forest by their axes, and savage idols perhaps about the same time, by wander. tumbled before God's holy Book-until the ing tribes of Northern barbarians. By its current of population, rolling on, wave by central position as the heart of North Amerwave in rapid succession, soon made Ken-ica--its stupendous cliffs and labyrinths-its tucky a rich and powerful State-the first genial climate-its unsurpassed fertility-its born of the Union of 1788, and now, even physical beauty and magnificence-its instinow, unsurpassed by physical blessings and tutions, its population, and its deeds-God moral power already the mother of younger has made it an everlasting monument as enCommonwealths in the great Valley of the during as its own mountains and far more inMississippi, and, in many respects, a fit ex-teresting than the Towers and Pyramids of emplar to the nations of the whole earth. the old world. And may we, of this generaThe birth and legal maturity of such a Com-tion, leave behind us memorials worthy of our monwealth are surely worthy of public com- country and our age. memoration. As Kentuckians, we should Sites of large cities of the Cyclopean style; make periodical offerings of thanksgivings to ruins of gigantic fortifications, temples, and God and of gratitude to our pioneer fathers cemeteries-perfect petrifactions of human be and mothers for our enviable allotments in this ings of the Caucasian form, with the accusage of light and in this land of liberty, plenty, tomed habiliments of the civilized dead--all and hope. Every nation leaves, on its path- disinterred after a sleep of many centuriesway behind, some lasting memorial which it prove, beyond dispute, that our continent was should never forget or neglect--some green once the theatre of a crowded population respots in the waste of the past, around which sembling, and probably equalling, the most memory lingers with ennobling emotions. civilized of their cotemporaries of the transAnd to commemorate, with grateful hearts, atlantic world. When and whence those great national events either glorious or beneficent, is a double offering on the altar of patriotism and the altar of God. Few incidents in the history of nations have been more useful or can be more memorable than that of the first settlement of Kentncky by our own race;

buried and forgotten nations came to America we have no clue for determining with historic certainty. If, as may be probable, any of them were superior to the Itzacans who emigrating probably from the Caspian sea, built Mexico and Cusco-they may have been Car

thagenians, Phoenicians, Phocians, or Etrus the hand of civilization until the year 1767, cans-all of the Pelasgian race-or probably when GEORGE WASHINGTON, afterwards Danes; all of which nations navigated the commander-in chief and President of the the Atlantic Ocean, and the last of whom United States, visited the Eastern portion of had planted settlements in the New England it, and under the proclamation of '63, made States at least twelve centuries ago. Modern two surveys, chiefly within its limits, on geology, which discloses the history of the Sandy, in the name of John Fry, the Colonel earth and vegetation and irrational animals of the regiment, of which, in the war of '53, for thousands of years, is dumb as to our race, he himself was Lieut. Colonel. These surof whom there is no fossil fragment in any of veys, like everything else attempted by Washthe stratifications of the globe. Nor, whilst ington, were perfectly made and reported, so it proves,, beyond question, that this whole that every line and corner have been easily continent was once covered by an ocean of identified. They were the first surveys ever water, does it intimate the origin, character, or destiny of the more enlightened people who lived on it after its emergence and long before the discovery of it by Cabot.

Their tale is untold. Were it known, it would doubtless be interesting and eventful. Ages ago, Kentucky may have been the busy theatre of incidents and catastrophes in the drama of civil and social life, of which a Hesiod, a Homer, and a Virgil might have sung with immortal melody It is said that, when Alexander saw the hillocks supposed to contain the bones of Achillis and Patroclus, he sighed because he too had not, like them, a Homer to canonise his name.

made within the limits of our present stateand thus Washington was one of the first "hunters of Kentucky." Finley and others, of North Carolina, having in the same year of 1767, explored the best northern portions of the territory, and returned with alluring accounts, Daniel Bone of the same state, the Nimrod of the day, was induced to come and look at it for himself in 1769. He was so charmed with the beauty and sublimity of its landscape, the melody and fragrance of its forests, and the variety and abundance of its wild game, as to linger in its solitudes, generally alone, for two years. In 1770, in escaping from Indians who killed one of his May not Kentucky, centuries back, have brothers by his side on Boone's creek in the had its Achilles and Patroclus, and Hector, present county of Clarke, he lost his hunting and Helen, and Troy--its Marathon, its knife, which was found in 1822, and is now in Athens, its Delghi, and its Parnassus-its the historic cabinet at Washington city. In Theseus, its Solon, its Socrates, its Epami- 1773-4, several surveys were made near" the nondas, its Themistocles, its Demosthenes-its wars, its friendships, its loves, and its human woes? But of these no Homer sang, and all is now desolation and oblivion. Whilst we tread on the ruins of generations unknown, all that history tells of Kentucky's past may be embraced in the narrow span of one century.

falls," and on Elkhorn and the Kentucky river under the proclamation of '63. And, in the fall of the year 1774, James Harrod of Monongehala, with about 60 others who were in "the battle point," built some cabins where Harrodsburgh now stands, and returned home with the intention of removing to them, which some of them did in the fall of 1775. Long prior to the immigration of our an- Boone had come with his family as far as cestors, Kentucky had been depopulated, and, Holstein, was at Wataga in March 1775, and -covered with majestic fotests and luxuriant having there assisted in negotiating the concane, had become the hunting ground of va- tract whereby the Cherokees, who claimed all rious tribes of savages and the theatre of the territory south of the Kentucky river, sold bloody conflicts between them. And, from to Colonel Henderson of North Carolina, their those circumstances, it derived its name title thereto, he was employed by the purKantuckee, in Indian dialect being, "the chaser to open the first Kentucky road-(from dark and bloody ground." Though embraced Cumberland gap to that river,) which being constructively within the chartered limits of soon completed by blazing trees and calling Virginia under James's grant of 1606, yet it the designated route a trace, he commenced, was also claimed by France-both England about the middle of April, 1775, the erection and France claiming a great portion of North of a log fortification on the southern bank of America by alleged prior discovery, which, the river, at a place since called Boonsboaccording to the conventional law of Chris- rough, and which was finished in June of the tendom, gave to a Christian nation dominion same year. Thus it is almost certain that, over any unchristian country which it first dis- whilst the first revolutionary guns were thuncovered. These conflicting claims of Eng- dering on the 19th of April at Lexington, land and France not being adjusted until the Massachusetts, in the cause of National Intreaty of 1763, the uncertainty of title, the re- dependence, the pioneer axe was resounding moteness of the territory, and the perils and among the cliffs of Kentucky in the work of privations incident to a colonization of it re-rearing the first modern fortress for founding tarded its exploration and settlement until and guarding civilization in this Hesperian after that peace had been concluded. Some wilderness. The fortress being completed, wandering Frenchmen, as well as Virginians, Boone removed to it with his wife and daughthad occasionally had earlier glimpses of it, ers early in September, 1775.-These were the and made glowing reports of its fertility and first civilized females who ventured to settle beauty. But it remained unappropriated by in Kentucky. Without the co-operation of the

gentler sex, the settlement would never have, and homes for settlements for themselves and been made. Woman was the guardian angel children here, came like pilgrims to a wilderof the wild and perilous forest. And never, on earth, was the poet's conception of her value more perfectly exemplified-for it was here truly seen and felt that

The world was sad, the garden was a wild, "And man the Hermit sighed, till woman smiled."

ness to be made secure by their arms and habitable by the toil of their lives. Through privations incredible and perils thick, thousands of men, women, and children, came in suecessive caravans forming continuous streams of human beings, horses, cattle, and other domestic animals, all moving onward along a lonely The anniversary of the first advent to Ken- and houseless path to a wild and cheerless tucky of Christian woman, by whom our land. Cast your eyes back on that long proState has since been so signally adorned and cession of missionaries in the cause of civiliblessed, should itself he commemorated with zation. Behold the men on foot, with their grateful hearts. She was the tutelar genius trusty guns on their shoulder, driving stock of our settlements-she has been the foster and leading packhorses-and the women, mother of the domestic virtues which have some walking with pails on their heads, others hallowed our hearths and graced our society riding with children in their laps and other -and she it was that fired the heart of Ken- children swung in baskets on horses fastened tucky patriotism and nerved the arm of Ken to the tails of others going before. See them tucky chivalry. encamped at night expecting to be massacred by Indians-behold them in the month of In 1776 many improvements were made December, in that ever memorable season of unpreparatory to ultimate residence, and of such precedented cold called "the hard winter," a character as merely to identify the selected travelling two or three miles a day, frequently spots as those intended for occupancy and in danger of being frozen or killed by the cultivation.-Until the year 1777 all this cis- falling of horses on the icy and almost immontanian territory of Virginia was embraced passible trace, and subsisting only on stinted in the county of Fincastle, and was virtually allowances of stale bread and meat; but now, in a state of nature, without any local juris- lastly, look at them at the destined fort, perprudence or organized administration of jus- haps on the eve of merry Christmas-when met tice. But the county of Kentucky, cotermin- by the hearty welcome of friends who had come ous with our state, having been established before and cheered with fresh buffalo meat about the close of the year 1777, the new county and parched corn-they rejoice at their deliv was organized and a court of Quarter Sessions erance, and resolve to be contented with their was opened in March, at Harrodsburgh. And lots. of that Kentucky court of justice, Levi Todd was the first clerk.

This is no vision of the imagination. It is but an imperfect description of the pilgrimage As the Revolutionary war was raging, and of my own father and mother, and of many no law had been passed for the appropriation others, who settled in Kentucky in December, of land on this side of the mountains, the set- 1779. When, resting from their journey, they tlement of this country did not increase very looked at the cheerless home of their choice, rapidly before the year 1779, when "the land and remembered, with sighs, the kindred and law" was enacted. Having always asserted comforts left behind in the sunny land of their full dominion over all the territory within her youth-they were yet consoled by trust in the chartered limits, conceding to the savage oc- martyr's God, and animated by the rainbow of cupants the usufruct merely, Virginia declared hope which gilded the dark firmament lowerillegal and void the purchase made by Col. ing over the unchincked cabins which scarcely Henderson, and another also by Col. Donald-sheltered their heads. Blest be the memory of son from the Six Nations, of the territory the patriarchal band; blest forever be the north of the Kentucky river, all of which was land ennobled by their virtues and consecrated claimed by those tribes. But, considering by their blood; and blest be their children and those purchases valid for the purpose of di- their children's children, both in this life and vesting the aboriginal title, our parent state in that to come. elaimed the absolute right to the entire terri- The land law provided-that ali persons tory as a trust resulting to her from the ille- who had settled themselves or others in the gal contracts, which were deemed void so far country in good faith antecedently to the 1st only as they purported to vest beneficial in- of January, 1778, should be entitled to 400 terests in the individual purchasers who had acres including each settlement, at the price of made contracts with Indians in violation of a $2.50 for each hundred acres; that all who, in statute prohibiting all such purchases. Thus like manner, had settled in villages should be claiming the use of the land, as well as juris-entitled, collectively, to 640 acres for their town. diction over it, the Legislature, in 1779, enact- and individually to 400 acres each, at the ed a statute, commonly called "the land law," same price of $2.50 for each hundred acres; authorizing, in prescribed modes, individual that such as had settled since the 1st of Januappropriations of land in Kentucky, This ary, 1778, should be entitled to a pre-emption beneficent enactment brought to the country, of 400 acres, including each settlement on during the fall and winter of that year, an unexampled tide of imigrants, who, exchanging all the comforts of their native society

paying for each hundred acres £40 in paper money, then equal to about $40; that such as had, before the 1st of January, 1778, chosen