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ALWAYS true to the interests of the frontier and a zealous defender of the state sovereignty theory of government, John Floyd was, through it all, true to his heritage and early environment. He was, in fact, a child of the frontier, his ancestors being, for generations, leaders in those pioneer movements that carried settlement first into the tidewater section of the New World, thence in turn into the Piedmont, the Valley separating the Alleghany and the Blue Ridge mountains, and finally into the great West beyond. He first saw the light of day near Louisville, Kentucky, on April 24, 1783, twelve days after his father, Colonel John Floyd, had fallen a victim to the savage foe. Reared in this frontier environment he early learned to judge merit by individual standards. It was from the "association," the embryo state of the frontier, that he received his first lessons in the inalienable right of a rational and social people imbued with the highest and most extensive ideas of liberty to make all the laws and regulations necessary for the common good and to alter and abolish those laws when they failed to accomplish the ends for which they were made. Thus to understand this man, it will be necessary to know something of the life and the times of his forebears.

Two brothers, Nathaniel and Walter, seem to have been the first of the Floyds in this country.

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They landed at Jamestown in their own vessel, the Nova, a short time after the first settlement there and seem to have been engaged for several years in trading with the mother country. Their father, John Floyd, a veteran of that thrilling conflict in which the Spanish Armada had gone down to defeat, was a man of means and of social position. He probably helped to equip his sons for their adventures in the new world. He was knighted at the hands of Queen Elizabeth, and later became a writer of some note and a lecturer in the Society of Jesus.

When tobacco culture and negro slavery were introduced into the colony of Virginia, the life of a planter there became both attractive and profitable. Following the impulse of the times, Walter Floyd patented four hundred acres of land in Martin's Hundred, and five years later, in 1637, Nathaniel became the owner and proprietor of eight hundred fifty acres in Isle of Wight County. These two pioneers in the conquest of the Tidewater thus became the progenitors of the many families which bore their name in that section.(1)

It was not until near the middle of the eighteenth century and until after two generations of their ancestors had passed away that we hear anything more of the Floyds in Virginia. About that time a feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, followed later by political revolutions and readjustments, was abroad in the world. It had extended even to the tobacco growers of Virginia, who, despite the comparative newness of their lands, now fell victims of that wanderlust which carried the Floyds forth, at intervals more or less regular, in

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search of new homes. William, John, and Charles Floyd answered the call and set out on a surveying expedition which carried them along the James to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Already that picturesque frontiersman, Alexander Spotswood, had led the way and had founded a settlement in the Piedmont. Numerous other surveys had been made in the country so that there was nothing very remarkable in the journey of the Floyds to the Blue Ridge. Its significance is in the fact that they were on the move. Soon after their return John cast his lot with the North and was lost to his family. Charles went to the South. and became the progenitor of a long line of descendants, among whom was General John Floyd, a famous Indian fighter and a representative from Georgia in Congress. William, the grandfather of the subject of this sketch and the ancestor of the Virginia- Kentucky branch of the Floyd family, returned to the uplands of his native state, finding a home in Amherst County which was then on the very outskirts of the slaveholding society.

William Floyd had received the rudiments of a substantial education and, as a surveyor, early rose to prominence on the frontier. He became the owner of a large tract of land which he himself patented and was, during a large part of his life, both county surveyor and captain of the county militia. Shortly after his arrival in Amherst County he married Abadiah, the beautiful daughter of Robert Davis, a large landholder on the upper James, who had married a half-breed Indian girl. There is a family tradition of uncertain origin that traces the

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ancestry of this girl to the great Indian chieftain Opechancanough. However that may be, the descendants of William Floyd and his wife, Abadiah, have never ceased to be proud of the Indian blood that courses through their veins and to hold in highest esteem the memory of their maternal ancestor.

William Floyd and his wife, Abadiah, had twelve children: Sarah, who married Wyatt Powell and became the ancestor of a noted line of descendants, in the succeeding generations in Virginia; Elizabeth, who married Charles Tuley whom she later accompanied to Kentucky, whence her children spread to all parts of the great Northwest; John, the father of the subject of this biography; Charles, who played a prominent part in the Revolutionary War, aided George Rogers Clark, and gave a son for the Lewis and Clark Expedition; Robert and Isham, who lost their lives in encounters with the Indians while fighting under the command of George Rogers Clark; Nathaniel, who saw gallant service under Jackson at New Orleans; Jemimah and Abadiah, whose husbands were killed in Indian massacres; and three other girls, who are known to the family only as Mrs. Pryor, Mrs. Drake, and Mrs. Alexander.

Because they were, in many respects, typical of the other families that carried settlement and civilization into the frontier, it should be noted, in this connection, that the sons and daughters of William Floyd came from a home of refinement and even of wealth. Their ancestors represented the best in the culture and taste of two races and were

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numbered among the landholding aristocrats who rived in almost regal splendor on the banks of the upper James, and who were only one generation and a few score miles removed from the aristocrats of the Tidewater. They were thus able to extend to the Valley and to the country beyond a modified, yet discernible, form of the plantation life. Thus amid all the privations and hardships of the frontier, they never forgot or abandoned the distinctive traits of the Virginia gentleman, in emulation of whom they became leaders among their fellows upon the battlefields and in the political arenas of the frontier.

John, the eldest son of Abadiah and William Floyd, was born in Amherst County, Virginia, in 1751. At the age of eighteen he married a Miss Burfoot who died twelve months after their marriage. Disconsolate he now sought new friends and new fortunes in the land beyond the mountains. About 1770 he went to Botetourt County and found employment first as a teacher and later as a clerk in the land-office of Colonel William Preston, surveyor of Fincastle County. When not thus employed he rode as a deputy sheriff with Daniel Trigg, both being employed by Colonel William Christian, high sheriff of Botetourt County.

Shortly thereafter, the officers and soldiers, who had land claims in the West for services rendered in the French and Indian War, made application to Colonel Preston to have their lands located and surveyed. Accordingly a party of surveyors was sent into the trans-Alleghany country. Floyd's services in the land office and in the bailiwick had

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been such that Colonel Preston selected him as one of the party and commissioned him a captain. In the spring of 1774 he set out for the "Dark and Bloody Land" with his companions: James Douglas, Isaac Hite, Alexander Spotswood Dandridge, Thomas Hanson (who kept a journal), James Knox, Frederick McCra, and Mordicai Batson.

Notwithstanding the fact that the relations between the white man and the savage had become alarming, that the inhabitants of what is now southwestern Virginia were abandoning their outposts and retreating to the more thickly settled communities, and that the newspapers of the East were demanding war for the protection of the frontier, the band of surveyors pressed on to the task before them. On the long and tedious journey down the Kanawha and the Ohio, Floyd, though yet a young man, seems to have been the moving spirit among his companions. After they had passed the Falls of the Kanawha, on April 14, 1774, it was he who provided the canoe that carried most of the party beyond the "burning spring" and into the midst of the hostile red men who Were now jealously watching the Ohio; it was he who surveyed the lands for Colonel George Washington on the Kanawha and for Patrick Henry and others on the Ohio; and it was he who provisioned his companions by the aid of his trusty rifle and inspired them to press on in the face of the dangers which seemed to surround them on all sides.

By the middle of May, 1774, Floyd and those of his companions who had not turned back for fear of the Indians were in the "Kentucky country." A

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few days later a canoe driven by two Indians and flying a red flag came down the Ohio. The Indians bore passes from the commandant at Fort Pitt and had come to warn the hunters and trappers that a war was on between the whites and the Shawnees. The news which they bore of the frightful massacres which had already taken place caused some of the party to turn back, but "Mr. Floyd and the rest of the surveyors were determined to do the business they came on if not repulsed by a greater force than themselves." Accordingly they pressed vigorously to the work of surveying on the Ohio River and on the waters of Bear Grass and Elk Horn Creeks. Among the tracts surveyed by Floyd, to say nothing of those surveyed by Hancock Taylor and others already in the field, were six for Patrick Henry comprising seven thousand four hundred acres, five for Colonel William Christian aggregating eight thousand acres, two for Alexander Spotswood Dandridge, making three thousand acres, a tract of one thousand acres for Colonel William Preston, and one of one thousand acres for himself.

Meanwhile the Indians continued to press down in ever greater numbers, and Colonel Preston began to have concern for the safety of his surveyors. Accordingly he secured, through the aid of Captain William Russell, the services of two seasoned woodsmen, Daniel Boone and Michael Stoner, to go as runners through Kentucky and warn the surveyors and the outlying settlers of the impending perils. Before they reached the Kentucky country the Indians had already penetrated

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to the very midst of the surveyors and murdered James Hamilton and James Cowan, pioneer settlers. Coming upon the scene of this barbarity, James Douglas and others of Floyd's companions fled by way of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Deserted by his companions and officially apprised of the impending danger, Floyd could hold out no longer, He at once set out by the most direct routes for the settlements in the Valley of Virginia, where he arrived after a journey of sixteen days, which led "through mountains almost inaccessible and ways unknown." It is probable that he followed, for a part of the distance at least, the route taken by Christopher Gist in 1751.

Upon his arrival in the Clinch Valley, Floyd found his countrymen busy and even enthusiastic in their preparations for Dunmore's War. All realized that the long series of mutual grievances and outrages between the frontiersmen of Pennsylvania and Virginia on the one side, and the savages of the Ohio Valley on the other, had reached a crisis pregnant with weal or woe. In his inability to restrain his subjects upon the frontier, who "acquire no attachment to place and who ever imagine the lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled," Lord Dunmore had issued a circular letter calling out the militia of the western counties for a part in the impending conflict. Dunmore himself was on his way to Fort Pitt and had sent word to Colonel Andrew Lewis "to raise a respectable body in your quarter [southwestern Virginia], and join me

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either at the mouth of the Great Kanawha or Wheeling, or such other point on the Ohio as may be most convenient." The summons had also reached the county lieutenants and the local military officials, among whom great rivalry prevailed in the contest then on for excellence in raising and equipping companies of soldiers.

Although the main army had already assembled at Camp Union on the Big Levels of the Greenbriar River and was about ready to march under the command of the gallant Lewises, Floyd began to raise a company of his own, hoping to join his fellow soldiers before they reached the common enemy. The best soldiers had already enlisted, and Floyd did not, therefore, wish his friend Preston "to take too much notice" of the news that might reach him of the efforts and means being used to get others. He was certain that all could be explained when they met and that all differences between rival commanders could then be adjusted. He succeeded in raising one of the best companies that ever went out of the Valley to meet any foe.

Hoping to return by way of Kentucky and to finish his surveys Floyd set out with his command late in September, following the line of march of the main army. We next hear of him from Point Pleasant six days after the decisive battle which took place there on October 10, 1774, between the Indians commanded by Cornstalk and the whites commanded by Colonel Andrew Lewis and his brother Charles. He had arrived on the night of the battle but too late to take part in it. While yet twelve or fifteen miles from the scene of action,

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messengers brought reports of the conflict which waged just ahead, and of the uncertainty of the outcome. Inspired by the prayers of those who fought and of those who sought to aid them he hastened onward covering the whole distance in a single afternoon, but, when he arrived, the defeated enemy had fled never again to threaten the whites on the Ohio in such formidable numbers.

When the troops were ready for march from the mouth of the Kanawha, the season was too far advanced and the contest with the Indian was too uncertain to permit Floyd to return by way of Kentucky, as he had planned. April 21, 1775, found him in Powell's Valley, twelve miles from Cumberland Gap, ready to reenter the Kentucky country by that popular route. It mattered not that the red man, in defence of his hunting-grounds, persisted in carrying war and massacre into the very midst of the settlements that were being made there. The lands they sought to defend were the only diet that satisfied the appetites of the pioneers. Already the contest for Kentucky had passed into a chaotic scramble for the best and the next best lands, and it was thus necessary for Floyd to be on the scene of action to protect the interests of those whom he represented.(2) Several independent companies were making surveys there, and Richard Henderson and his associates from the Watauga Valley had purchased the Indian title to several million acres in central Kentucky. Floyd saw plainly that the settlements were ruining the hunting-grounds of the "Tawas and the Kickapoos" and dreaded the consequences, but he too had the land hunger and

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pressed onward. This time he marched at the head of a band of thirty-two tried frontiersmen who were resolved to "force their way into the country" and to maintain their ground in the face of the savage foe and in defiance of their white competitors.

Floyd and his party seem to have made a first stop near Stamford in what is now Lincoln County, Kentucky. Joining with Henderson and others, his supposed rivals, he lent a hand to the efforts then on foot to establish law and order in the frontier. Thus he was able to play an important part in the organization of the first Anglo-American government on the west side of the Alleghanies. A movement was on to create a fourteenth colony to be called Transylvania which was to be provided with "a plan of government by popular representation." To this end a representative assembly composed of delegates from the towns or settlements of Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, Boiling Spring, and St. Asaph was summoned to meet at Boonesborough on May 23, 1775, to agree upon a form of government and enact such laws and regulations as were required to meet the immediate needs of the proposed colony. Floyd was sent as a delegate from the St. Asaph settlement.

After listening to a speech from Richard Henderson, the father of the proposed new colony, in which might come from the proposed scheme, and "solid consequence" of their deliberations to "the peace and harmony of thousands," to the blessings which he called attention to the importance and to their right, surrounded as they were by dangers

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which threatened their destruction, to make all laws for the regulation of their conduct "without giving offence to Great Britain, or any of the American colonies," the delegates provided for courts of justice. Floyd became a member of the first court that met under their authorization. The delegates also provided for the organization of a militia, for the preservation of game, and for a system of fees. They adjourned after four days, and the proposed colony of Transylvania ceased to be heard of; but their efforts marked the initial step of the process by which Kentucky later entered the Union.

Floyd's work and appearance on this occasion were described, sixty-five years later by John Morehead in a famous address as follows:

Alternately a surveyor, a legislator, and a soldier, his distinguished qualities rendered him at once an ornament and a benefactor of the infant settlements. No individual among the early pioneers was more intelligent or better informed; more displayed on all occasions that called for it, had a bolder or more undaunted courage. His person was singularly attractive. With complexion unusually dark, his eyes and hair were deep black and his tall spare figure was dignified by the accomplishments of a well bred Virginia gentleman. Connecting himself with the Transylvania Company he became their principal surveyor and was chosen a delegate from the town of St. Asaph . . . . to make laws for the infant colony.(3)

Following his initial experience as a legislator Floyd continued to make surveys of land until late in the summer of 1776. The letters which he wrote meanwhile to Colonel Preston tell the story of the occupation of the Kentucky country. They tell of

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the hundreds who were pouring into the new land by way of the Ohio River and the Cumberland Gap, of the log cabins which were being erected both by those who came as permanent settlers and those who sought adventure, of the failure of the Virginia convention to take proper steps for the protection of the frontiers and the regulation of land sales, of the pernicious activity of "Jack Jones" (Gabriel Jones) at the head of the Harrodsburg "banditti," of the Bryans and other Tories on the Elk Horn, and of the numerous contests between rival land claimants.(4) Because of the unusual and thrilling narrative contained therein his letter of July 21, 1776, to Colonel Preston is here given in full as follows:

My Dear Sir, The situation of our country is much altered since I wrote you last. The Indians seem determined to break up our settlement; and I really doubt, unless it is possible to give us some assistance, that the greater part of the people may fall a prey to them. They have, I am satisfied, killed several whom, at this time, I know not how to mention. Many are missing, who some time ago went out about their business, of whom we can hear nothing. Fresh sign of Indians is seen almost every day. I think I mentioned to you before some damage they had done at Lee's town. On the seventh of this month they killed one Cooper on Licking Creek, and on the fourteenth a man whose name I know not, at your salt spring on the same creek.

On the same day they took out of a canoe in sight of this place, Miss Bessie Callaway, her sister Frances, and a daughter of Daniel Boone--the last two about thirteen or fourteen years old, and the other grown. The affair happened late in the afternoon. They left their canoes on the opposite side of the river from us, which prevented our getting over for some time to pursue them. We could not that night follow more than

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five miles. Next morning by daylight, we were on their track; but they had entirely prevented our following them by walking some distance apart through the thickest cane they could find. We observed their course and on which side they had left their sign, and travelled upwards of thirty miles. We then supposed they would be less cautious in travelling, and making a turn in order to cross their trace, we had gone but a few miles, when we found their tracks in a buffalo path--pursued and overtook them in going about ten miles, Just as they were kindling a fire to cook. Our study had been how to get the prisoners without giving the Indians time to murder them after they discovered us. We saw each other nearly at the same time. Four of us fired, and all rushed on them, by which they were prevented from carrying anything away except one shot gun without ammunition. Mr. Boone and myself had each a pretty fair shot, as they began to move off. I am well convinced I shot one through the body. The one he shot dropped his gun--mine had none. The place was covered with thick cane, and being so much elated on recovering the three poor little heartbroken girls, we were prevented from making any further search. We sent the Indians off almost naked--some without their moccasins, and none of them with so much as a knife or tomahawk. After the girls came to themselves sufficiently to speak, they told us there were only five Indians--four Shawnese and one Cherokee. They could speak good English, and said they should then go to the Shawnese towns. The war club we got was like those I have seen of that nation. Several words of their language, which the girls retained, were known to be Shawnese. They also told them that the Cherokees had killed or driven all the people from Watauga and thereabouts, and that fourteen Cherokees were then on the Kentucky waiting to do mischief. If the war becomes general, of which there is the greatest appearance, our situation is truly alarming. We are about finishing a large fort, and intend to keep possession of this place as long as possible. They are, I understand, doing the same at Harrodsburg, and also at Elkhorn, at the Royal spring. The settlement on Licking creek, known by the name of Hinkston's, has been broken up; nineteen of the settlers are now here on their way in--Hinkston among the

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rest. They all seem deaf to any thing we can do to dissuade them. Ten at least of our people, are going to join them, which will leave us with less than thirty men at this fort. I think more than three hundred men have left the country since I came out, and not one has arrived, except a few cabinets down the Ohio.

I want to return as much as any person can do; but if I leave the country now, there is scarcely one single man who will not follow the example. When I think of the deplorable condition a few helpless families are likely to be in, I conclude to sell my life as dearly as I can in their defence, rather than make an ignoble escape.

I am afraid it is in vain to sue for any relief from Virginia; yet the convention urged the settlement of this country, and why should not the extreme parts of Fincastle be as Justly entitled to protection as any other part of the country? If an expedition were carried on against these nations who are at open war with the people in general, we might be in a good measure relieved, by drawing them off to defend their towns. If any thing under Heaven can be done for us, I know of no person who would more willingly engage in forwarding us assistance than yourself. I do, at the request and in behalf of all the distressed women and children and other inhabitants of this place, implore the aid of every leading man who may have it in his power to give us relief. I am, etc.(5)

Shortly after this letter was written the Kentucky country was aroused by the information that the united colonies had declared their independence of the mother country. The frontiersmen had eagerly awaited such a turn in events and now abandoned their outposts and hastened to take a part in the efforts being put forth to make that declaration effective. Floyd was the first to join their ranks. By the most direct route possible he came to Williamsburg, where, after presenting the grievances of the pioneers, he offered his services to his

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country. Dr. Thomas Walker, Edmund Pendleton, Colonel William Preston, and two or three others had already purchased a vessel which they planned to fit out as a privateer. Now that a suitable commander in the person of Floyd was at hand, their plan was quickly carried out, and the Phoenix put to sea headed for the West Indies. A few days after leaving port it overtook and captured a rich prize. To the commander's great surprise the cargo contained a wedding costume for a lady. Thus at one and the same stroke he had won his fortune and a suitable present for his bride to be, Miss Jane Buchanan, a beautiful girl of the mountains of Virginia. A happy man he hastened homeward but was overtaken by a British man-of-war just as he was entering the Chesapeake Bay, was captured, and carried a prisoner to England, where he was retained for almost a year.

Prison bars have rarely prevailed against those types of manliness and worth possessed by John Floyd. They now won for him the regard of his fellow prisoners and, what was more important to him, the heart of the jailor's daughter. The old romantic story of a betrayal of trust was again repeated; the jailor's daughter had freed her lover.

After an affectionate farewell, at which it is said his companions shed tears, Floyd hastened to Dover. There he found a clergyman who assisted him by a sort of underground railway in his efforts to reach France. It was the vintage time when he landed upon those friendly shores, and the people there supplied him with grapes and bread until he reached Paris. After recovering from an attack of

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the smallpox he made ready for his return to America, but not before he had purchased a pair of brilliant shoe buckles for his bride to be and a beautiful scarlet coat for himself. With the assistance of Doctor Franklin, our representative in France, he was soon able to secure passage on a westward bound vessel which, after a tempestuous voyage of many days, landed him in Virginia in the autumn of 1778.

During the time of Floyd's absence no intelligence of the Phoenix or her crew had reached America, and the inference was that all had gone down at sea. A year, the conventional mourning time in the colonial days, had passed, and Colonel Robert Sayers, an officer in the Revolutionary army and a man of means had addressed Miss Buchanan and been accepted by her. A family tradition has it that they were just returning from a walk in the garden, when the arrival of Captain Floyd in Smithfield was announced. Joy reigned everywhere, except possibly in the heart of Colonel Sayers. Be that as it may, Jane Buchanan became the bride of John Floyd and went to live with him in the home of his father on John's Creek.

Considering the stirring times it is strange that Floyd was content to remain inactive, even if his wife did prefer that sort of life, for so long a time as one year, the period of his residence with his father. But service in the regular army was unattractive, and conditions upon the frontier were anything but certain and desirable. In the latter quarter "Jack" (Gabriel) Jones and Floyd's future friend, George Rogers Clark, had defeated the

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purposes of Floyd's former associates in the Transylvania Company and had succeeded in extending the jurisdiction of Virginia over the Kentucky country. Now word came that Clark, the "Hannibal of the West," was planning an expedition into the country north of the Ohio with a view to conquering it and annexing it to Virginia.

Floyd's real interests were in the West, but the short period of his absence had so transformed conditions there as to raise doubts regarding his future course towards it. His former associates were discredited, and their land claims were in litigation in one of the most spectacular cases ever heard in Williamsburg. Indeed, it is not improbable that Floyd's sojourn in eastern Virginia was determined somewhat by the pending land litigations. At any rate he appeared as a witness and betrayed a warm feeling for Henderson and others of the Transylvania Company. His testimony may have aided them in securing from Virginia a grant of several thousand acres in Kentucky, as compensation for their initial service in opening up the wilderness to settlement.(6)

Clark's successes in the Northwest convinced Floyd that the new order of things on the frontier was permanent and unchangeable. Sympathy for the former order of things naturally vanished, and in October, 1779, he with his brothers, Robert, Charles and Isham, and his sisters, Jemima and Abadiah, with their husbands set out in the popular hegira for the Kentucky country. They did not halt before reaching the Falls of the Ohio, where their leader had already preempted some of the choicest lands.

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Here they erected a cabin at a point near the present crossing of Third and Main Streets of Louisville, Kentucky. This was only a temporary shelter for the women and children, to be occupied while the men of the company built larger cabins and stockades on Bear Grass Creek a few miles distance at a place later known as Floyd's Station.

After their families had been settled and made secure, Floyd and his brothers found many opportunities to serve their community and country. Every interest centered in the contest with the red men of the forest. Clark's victories of the previous year had aroused them to a determined resistance to the further encroachments of the white man. Evidences of British aid to the Indians were everywhere and served only to intensify the determination of the white man. Under the circumstances no father or husband could rest secure until the last Indian was driven from the Ohio Valley.

Already George Rogers Clark had inaugurated a war of extermination, and Robert, Charles, and Isham Floyd and their brothers-in-law had joined him. In the long and bloody contest which followed in this phase of "the winning of the West"' danger and even death crouched in every path and behind every tree, and the Floyd brothers, except Charles, fell Victims to the savage foe. Their lives were offered as sacrifices on the altar of their country that that country might have a greater destiny.

Killing Indians was not the only service that a patriotic frontiersman could render his community which stood in need of laws and administration. To these ends John Floyd, the eldest and the most experienced

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of the Floyd brothers, directed his chief energies. By an act of 1780 the General Assembly of Virginia constituted him one of a board of seven trustees with authority to lay out and establish the town of Louisville, which, under their direction, soon sprang into importance as one of the chief trading centers on the Ohio. About the same time Floyd joined John Howard, Robert Todd, Judge Samuel McDowell, and others in a movement to secure the enactment of laws to conserve the peace and dignity of their community. It was Floyd who induced John Brown, an able lawyer of Rockbridge County, Virginia, who later became a power in the West, to cast his lot with the people of Kentucky. His patriotic and disinterested efforts were soon rewarded by a commission from the Governor of Virginia making him colonel of the militia of Jefferson County, a position which he held with honor to the time of his death.(7)

As the commander of a frontier militia Colonel Floyd's life was one continuous round of thrilling adventure with the red men. He planned much for others but never hesitated himself to meet the foe. When on his way to Louisville, he one day encountered a huge Indian whom he slew in single combat and whose ornaments of silver he confiscated and later converted into table spoons. Shortly thereafter two hundred Indians attempted to break up Squire Boone's settlement near Shelbyville. Upon hearing of their designs Colonel Floyd raised a company of twenty-seven men and hastened to the rescue. As a precaution his followers were divided into two parties, each of which proceeded with great

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care; but this did not prevent those under his immediate command from falling into an ambuscade and being killed, except Floyd and one or two others. After the battle the bodies of the dead, white and red men alike, were placed in a common grave, near the place of the encounter, which was on a branch of the Salt River, known to this day as "Floyd's Branch of Salt River."(8)

Finding that they could not drive the frontiersmen from their outpost on the Ohio, even with the aid of the savage foe, the British resorted to bribery. The conditions seemed opportune for success by this method. It was a time when the ties of patriotism sat lightly upon many; the frontier was in constant danger and fear of attacks by the Indians with little hope of aid from Virginia; and dissatisfaction among the settlers and the local militia was the order of the day. Accordingly Governor Hamilton offered Clark and Floyd each any amount of land they might desire on the west bank of the Ohio and an English title, if they would give up the Ohio Valley. The offers were made separately and secretly, and for some time neither knew that he carried a common secret. When at length they unburdened their hearts to each other, each resolved to remain loyal to the country of their nativity in whose future greatness they had unbounded confidence.(9)

At length peace was made with the mother country, and the signs pointed to better times on the frontier. In anticipation of the changed order Colonel Floyd invited a number of his friends in the East to share with him the freedom and the opportunities of the frontier. The responses were numerous,

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but reluctant to depart from the scenes of their savage vigils the red men lingered and long remained a menace to both life and property.

The determination of the Indian to made the white man pay dearly for his possession on the Ohio finally cost Floyd his life. On April 12, 1783, when he and his brother, Charles, were riding home from a place on Salt River, they were fired upon by the Indians from ambush. On this day Floyd wore his scarier coat purchased in France. He was thus a tempting mark for the Indian. At the first shot he reeled and would have fallen to the ground, had not his brother supported him to a place of safety. His last hours were spent in expressions of unmitigated sorrow for his young wife and her unborn child and for his two small sons. He saw for them the common lot of the widows and orphans of the frontier for whom he had done so much. Before death came, on the following morning, he knew that the end was at hand and requested that his remains be laid to rest in a grave on an eminence overlooking Floyd's Station, where they now repose.

Besides the subject of this sketch Colonel Floyd left two sons: William and George Rogers Clark. The former was delicate and died before becoming of age, but the latter followed in the footsteps of his father in the ways of the frontiersman. He was born in Kentucky, in 1781, and received the rudiments of an education in the school near his home. In 1807 he received a commission in the federal army. Later he fought in the Indian wars and was several times promoted for gallantry. He was a colonel under General William Henry. Harrison and

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had a command in the battle of Tippecanoe. When this engagement began he, with others of his command, was asleep in his tent and was awakened only by the war-whoop of the savages. Without stopping to dress he rushed into the midst of the fight and slew several Indians with his own hand. Upon his return to Louisville his neighbors greeted him as the warrior who had "clothed himself with honor." He thought himself slighted in the official reports of the battle and withdrew from the service. Little is known of his later life. He died near Woodville, Kentucky, June, 1823, and was buried near his father.

The subject of this biography, the child of the frontier, was the unborn infant for whom Colonel Floyd manifested concern on his death-bed. He was named John for his father. He learned to read and write at his mother's knee and in the log schoolhouse that stood near the grave of his father. When he was thirteen, John Brown, then a Senator from Kentucky, placed him in Dickinson College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Here he remained until financial troubles necessitated his return to Kentucky. But fortune soon took a favorable turn, his dissipated step-father, Captain Alexander Breckenridge, dying in 1801, young Floyd was again permitted to resume his college course. A severe illness kept him from earring out his plans for graduation.

In May, 1804, young Floyd married Letitia Preston, a daughter of Colonel William Preston, his father's friend and adviser, and soon thereafter entered the University of Pennsylvania for a course in medicine. Already he had read medicine with his

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friend, Dr. Ferguson, of Louisville, and he was thus able to graduate at the end of two years. Meanwhile, he had become an honorary member of the Philadelphia Medical Society and a member of the Philadelphia Medical Lyceum. His graduating dissertation was entitled "An Enquiry into the Medical Properties of the Magnolia Tripetala and Magnolia Acuminata" and was dedicated to his friends: Doctors Ferguson, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Smith Burton, and James Woodhouse. After graduation he first settled at Lexington, Virginia, but soon removed to Christiansburg, where he entered actively upon the practice of his profession and soon acquired a wide and favorable reputation as a physician.

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OUR second war with Great Britain marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the United States. Prior to that time we had been in a position of semi-dependence upon Europe, looking to the eastward to determine whether the acts of princes bore weal or woe. Henceforth all was changed. The American frontiersmen had made a war in behalf of free trade and sailor's rights and carried it to a successful conclusion though not without its uncertainties and blunders. Now the whole country, under their leadership, faced about and entered upon the exercise of a new born nationality conceived in hatred of the mother country and in the hopes of our own future greatness. For a time chief interest centered in the West, in the Indian wars, our relations with Spain, and our efforts to acquire and settle new territory. As a spokesman of these interests, if for nothing else, Floyd deserves a place in history.

That the war sentiment in Virginia, which helped to bring about these changes, arose in her western counties and only gradually extended to the lowlands is now rarely disputed. That it took form among Floyd's neighbors, whom he had for years commanded as a major of militia, was hardly a mere coincidence. Be that as it may, it was the eighth regiment of the Virginia militia, in mass meeting assembled at Lexington, that first expressed the desire of the state "to buckle on the armor of the nation" and to meet the foe, if need be, in the wilds of Canada or on the shores of the Atlantic. From

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the same quarter went forth those militant petitions which, through the skillful presentation of Thomas Ritchie in the Richmond Enquirer, made it possible for Virginia to abandon the peace policy of her beloved Jefferson and join in a war of national vindication.

Floyd was among the first to answer the call to arms. Tarrying only long enough to remove his wife and family to a new home on an old estate near the present site of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where they would be nearer friends, he entered the regular army as a surgeon with the rank of major. In this capacity he continued to serve his country until 1814, when he was elected to the General Assembly.

Before entering the General Assembly, Floyd again changed his residence, this time to the "Thorn Spring" on a large plantation in Montgomery County. Here he continued to practice his profession for a number of years, making for himself a warm place in the hearts of the country folk who knew him then and ever afterwards as "Doctor Floyd."

In the General Assembly Floyd's record was that of a good nationalist. With New England in almost open rebellion and with a foreign invader at the door, it was no time for contention regarding the nature of the federal government or over schemes for territorial expansion. Accordingly he joined the majority in support of a resolution providing for a joint committee of the two houses of the General Assembly instructed to confer with the federal authorities regarding plans of defence for Virginia.

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The counter proposition to authorize the governor to "communicate" with the "Government of the United States," he opposed.(10)

Probably in condemnation of New England's opposition to the war but certainly not in support of the state sovereignty theory of government, he favored, also, a bill authorizing the state of Virginia to raise troops and place them at the order of the federal government, "as well for the further and more vigorous prosecution of the war, as for the defence of this commonwealth."(11) Moreover, he joined in the support of a resolution condemning the terms of peace proposed by the British commissioners at Ghent, as "arrogant" and "insulting" on the part of Great Britain and as "subversive of the rights and sovereignty of the United States." Nor would he stand for the opposition tactics of the Federalist leader, Charles Fenton Mercer, who tried to call into question the "sovereignty of the United States" and to give a milder tone to the resolutions censuring the British commissioners.(12) Considering both his own future course and that of Virginia it may be of interest to note that he now acted with a majority in the General Assembly.

In 1817 Floyd was elected to Congress from the famous Abingdon district which he continued to represent by successive reelections for twelve years. In the short period between his services as a state legislator and the beginning of his congressional career the nationalistic tendencies of the federal government had become truly alarming. Conscious of our growing power and greatness and forgetful of the teachings of the fathers a younger generation

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had boarded the national ship of state, leaving the smaller craft, in which Jefferson and Madison had ridden into power, to rot in the neglected harbors of the sovereign states. Under the spell of the new era Congress had enacted a protective tariff law, rechartered the Bank of the United States, and made appropriations to works of internal improvement. Meanwhile John Marshall had practically destroyed the former rights of the "sovereign states" by his liberal interpretation of the "federal compact."

Despite his liberal tendencies of the war period, tradition, education, and inclination made it impossible for Floyd to acquiesce in the nationalistic tendencies of the federal government. He, too, had been a war-hawk, both favoring and supporting our second struggle for independence, and now shared with others a feeling of confidence in his country's future, but, in his theories of government, he remained true to the fathers of 1789. Like many of them, he saw our only escape from the dangers of absolutism at the one extreme of government and of anarchy at the other, in adhering closely to the constitution which they had made. With equal care he would, therefore, have guarded the rights both of the states and of the federal government by confining the latter strictly to the exercise of its delegated powers. According to his interpretation the recent acts of Congress were therefore unconstitutional.

Floyd was not alone in this particularistic reaction of Virginia, if indeed he could be called a leader. Although he had done much to make it necessary Jefferson had already launched a crusade against the federal Supreme Court and the heresies of nationalism;

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Judge Spencer Roane was an able second; Thomas Ritchie, through the Richmond Enquirer, was calling the country back to original principles; and, after a humiliating defeat at the hands of his former constituents, John Randolph had recovered his seat in Congress, where he now became the popular apostle of discontent and of strict construction of the federal constitution.

Floyd entered Congress at a critical time in the history of Virginia. Her older statesmen were passing from the stage of activity, and new and inexperienced leaders were taking their places. The former had led when Virginia stood in the ascendency of the states of the Union; the latter were now called upon to preserve that ascendency at a time when she was in a political minority and in a period of economic uncertainty. A comparison of the fifteenth, the one to which Floyd was first elected, with the Congresses immediately preceding, shows a great change in the personnel of Virginia's representatives. John Tyler, P. P. Barbour, and others later prominent among the strict construction politicians were now just entering national politics. By James Buchanan, just entering upon his own congressional career, and by others at the North, these young leaders from the South were spoken of as the "radical party."(13) Thus, from the beginning they were marked men; but the ability of his rivals, to say nothing of the needs of his state, made it necessary for Floyd to work for distinction. If he surpassed his fellow representatives from Virginia in any particular, it was probably in his vision of the future and importance of the American frontier.

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Soon Clay's proposition for sending a minister to Buenos Ayres came before the House, and Floyd joined its author in a demand amounting to recognition for the new born republic of Argentina and in an attack upon John Quincy Adams, the secretary of state, who hesitated to offend Spain so long as the negotiations for the purchase of Florida remained undetermined. Swayed by the prejudices of a frontiersman and ignorant of the requirements of diplomacy, Floyd had been aroused by the "sublime and wonderful" spectacle of a "brave people, disdaining the shackles of a foreign despot" in an effort to erect their government upon a free basis. Transformed by the influence of a new and pure climate, "where the productions, the scenery, the physical conformity of the country, and even the very sky and stars of heaven are so different that nothing of the Spaniard is left but the name, and that no more," he relied upon the purifying effects of revolution to fit Argentina for a place in the sisterhood of nations. It was in vain that her settlers and explorers had given the names of Spain to her hills, valleys, rivers, and mountains. The wrack and the torture of the inquisition had wrought havoc with all these precautions, and Argentina and other South American countries were free. Moreover, Floyd was happy to believe that the liberties of a republic could be enjoyed by a Spaniard, or by any people capable of fighting for them. Especially was this true in America, where every man was a general capable of "wiles and stratagems, quick advance, attack, and flight," guarantees of success in any encounter

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with the slow and expensive formalities of European warfare.

This effort in behalf of Clay's measure, also, overflowed with the characteristic contempt of the American frontiersman for Spain. From the proud conqueror of the Incas and the Montezumas he now saw in her ruler only an improvident and bankrupt gamester. Bloated with pride inherited through a long line of ancestors the ruling king was incapable of imitating the magnanimous conduct of George III. in acknowledging the independence of his colonies; yet, despite his proud boast that "the sun never sets upon his domains," the king of Spain was impotent at home and despised abroad. Plainly his was not a power to be taken seriously, certainly not one to thwart the extension of justice to an independent and free people.

Both from our own example and from the writings of Vattel, Henry Clay had defended the right of the Spanish colonies to rebel, but Floyd carried this right to its logical conclusions: independence and recognition. Moreover, he was certain that it would be a "black and sorrowful day for this republic," when the opinions of Europe were held over our deliberations "like a lash of scorpions." He did not, however, share the boldness of his leader, who already had aspirations for the presidency, in urging recognition for Argentina for political reasons and was sorry that the efforts to intimidate those who advocated the measure from "honest conviction" had led gentlemen to mention the presidency in connection with the matter.

With a vision which penetrated the conditions

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under which the Monroe Doctrine was later proclaimed, Floyd also attempted to show that our proposed course towards Argentina was a matter of indifference to some of the European nations, particularly to Great Britain. Since some of the nations of Europe were then making efforts, "not loud, but deep and dangerous," to exclude her from American markets, he felt confident that Great Britain would welcome our intervention in South America. Thus he relied upon another continental system, more dangerous to Britain than the colossal power of Napoleon had ever been, to break down the decaying fibers of the Holy Alliance. Under the circumstances we had nothing to fear. If war with Europe should follow our acts, England could be relied upon to aid us, "even with arms." Thus she would win the eternal gratitude of a grateful people and serve her own commercial purposes.

Alarmed at the hereditary land mania of the Russian monarchs who had carried their conquests across the continent of Asia and well down the Pacific coast of North America, he considered the Czar a formidable factor in South American affairs. No doubt the prominence of the Czar had been enhanced somewhat by the part which he had taken in the formation and maintenance of the Holy Alliance, but Floyd now saw in his designs only a barrier to our ambitions for some day reaching the Pacific coast. But Russian territorial ambitions in America were not sufficient cause of war. Before them came always her designs upon Constantinople in an effort to reach an ice free harbor on the Mediterranean. She was not then to be feared.

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Floyd therefore urged the recognition of Argentina, not only as a matter of justice but also as a matter of self-interest, but some of his colleagues failed to see wherein recognition would be to our best interest. Because Chili had already sold wheat in the West Indies cheaper than the United States could sell it in the same market, Mr. Smith, of Maryland, the merchant prince and "crooked" politician, opposed all measures intended to accelerate the growth and importance of the South American countries. Even the capable Mr. Lowndes of South Carolina was discouraged because of the fact that the British trade advantages with those countries exceeded ours in the proportion of one to seventy. But Floyd saw that great advantages must accrue to us from a free and direct trade with the countries of South America, a veritable granary of luxuries and the precious metals.

This proposed recognition meant more to Floyd even than trade advantages and justice; it was another step in the disenthrallment of America. It would afford relief from that political plexus which had made it impossible for one European nation to move, even in matters relating to America, without creating a corresponding movement in each of the others. He was tired of negotiating the things which related exclusively to America in London, Paris, and Madrid.(14)

While Congress was debating the subject of our relations with Spanish America, General Jackson, in an attack upon the Seminoles, invaded the Spanish territory of Florida and put to death, in a most summary manner, Arbuthnot and Ambrister, British

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subjects charged with aiding and abetting the Indians in their attacks upon the United States. It is true that he bore instructions from the president and Mr. Calhoun, the secretary of war, which, in the absence of other instructions and in the light of our previous policies in dealing with the Indians, might have justified his course. However that may be, his acts alarmed the president and his cabinet, aroused British and Spanish war talk, and placed Jackson prominently before the country as the object of praise and criticism. Under the circumstances the president could not well disavow Jackson's conduct, and the magnanimous Adams adroitly placed the blame upon the impotency of Spain to preserve law and order within her own territory.

Except as a subject of diplomatic negotiation Jackson's conduct in Florida would have passed simply as the ill-advised act of a rash and daring general, but the politicians would not have it that way. Somehow the rival candidates for the presidency, Clay, Crawford, Adams, and even others, now recognized in him their most formidable opponent. Led by the Richmond Enquirer, the press of the country attacked him under the heading "Arbuthnot and Ambrister,"(15) thus precipitating the great Seminole debate in the Congress of 1818--1819, during which Jackson loomed large as the most talked of and probably the most popular man in the whole country. As every other possible error of the Seminole campaign had been officially explained, the House Committee on Military Affairs attempted to censure Jackson for the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister. At once a minority of the same

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committee reported a resolution extending to him the thanks of the country for his services in terminating the Seminole campaign, and the debate was staged.

To one whose ancestors had fallen victims to the savage foe and whose childhood visions were filled with pictures of the scalping-knife and the tomahawk this occasion presented a rare opportunity for a word upon the frontier and for a defence of him who stood as its best impersonation. To Floyd it mattered not that more than half of Virginia's representation in Congress followed the cue of the Enquirer. Their course was actuated largely by politics and diplomacy; he spoke for those forces making for national expansion and for the rights and safety of the frontier. He therefore justified Jackson upon every score.

In view of the semi-independent condition of the Indian tribes and of the fact that our government had only treaty relations with them, some argued that Congress alone could have authorized the war with the Seminoles and that Jackson had exceeded his authority, whatever may have been the wishes and intentions of the president in the matter. In answer to these contentions Floyd reviewed the history of previous administrations to show the origin of Indian wars. Whatever the causes he found that defensive measures had usually thrown the initial step for the United States upon her president, who had without exception been sustained in his course by Congress. At least that was the procedure in the wars of 1789, 1791, and 1793. Nor was the war with the Seminoles any exception. Granting that the

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president was in a measure responsible for it, had not Congress come to his rescue with liberal appropriations and supplies to maintain it? Jackson had therefore acted in keeping with established precedents and had not exceeded his authority.

To the other point of this contention Floyd replied by denying the sovereignty of the Indian tribes. Their espousal of the British cause in the American Revolution had forfeited all such rights, a fact attested by our refusal to treat with them as separate nations in the peace negotiations of 1783. Her later resumption of diplomatic relations with them and the fact that they made war upon the United States without becoming traitors mattered not. Treaties made with them were only ceremonies indulged as a means of conciliating favor, and treason was a meaningless term to a savage. Besides the question of their alleged sovereignty had been definitely settled at Ghent. Both Clay and Adams had then opposed the desires of the British for a sovereign Indian state between the United States and Canada.

Moreover, Floyd justified Jackson's acts in Florida. With definite instructions from the secretary of war to conduct the fight with the Seminoles "in the manner he [Jackson] might think best" he had indeed entered the territory of a neutral power in pursuit of a common enemy and tried in vain to proceed with the good will and permission of the local authorities. When all hope of cooperation had passed, then it was that he attacked the Indian towns and discovered that their war-poles were decorated with the scalps of his fellow countrymen and that their wigwams were stored with stolen plunder.

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Signs pointed to St. Marks, a Spanish town, as the place whence the Indians received their ammunitions, guns, and instructions and where they sold their plunder. With the case thus clearly established against the Spaniards, it was no time for finespun distinctions regarding the sovereign rights of the nation to which they owed allegiance. An experienced Indian fighter had found his prey and would give no quarter either to the inhabitants of St. Marks and later, for a similar reason, to those of Pensacola. Their nationality was a question of trivial importance; they were made captives; and Floyd was certain that the spirit of the law of nations would justify Jackson in his treatment of them.

For Arbuthnot and Ambrister, Floyd could not feign the "sickly sorrow" of time-serving editors and interested politicians. To him they were simply "British agents," for more than a generation the authors of the horrors and cruelties of our Indian wars. They were of those the mere mention of whose name created "a sudden start of horror in the widowed mother of a family on the frontier, as it tears open the sluices of her grief, which time had smoothed but could not destroy." They were in a class with Simon Girty and Alexander McKee and would have been considered undeserving of clemency in any age. Their activities in Florida brought to Floyd's recollection those early days on the frontier, when helpless females had been butchered while kneeling and begging for mercy and toothless infants had been snatched from their mother's breasts and thrown upon the ground to die. Satisfaction and retaliation therefore demanded their death, and

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Floyd was not particular in his choice of an executioner. It was just as well to leave the patriotic service to a general with his army as to a frontiersman with his rifle.

In the course of this debate Clay reviewed the conditions that had given Greece an Alexander, Rome a Caesar, England a Cromwell, and France a Napoleon and closed with the warning that the United States should beware of her military despots. In view of his subsequent attitude towards both Jackson and Clay, Floyd's answer to the above argument is the most interesting feature of his speech on this occasion. He was unable to trace the fall of free governments to the usurpations of military despots. On the other hand he traced them directly to the legislative halls and thence to the "hollow, treacherous eloquence of some ambitious, proud, and aspiring demagogue" who either needed the help of a military leader or was willing to do his bidding. In proof of this position he called attention to the fact that Caesar had retired to the distance, "whilst the two great factions preyed upon the liberties of Rome." Also, he insisted that the French Revolution was the product of insincere orators; that Cromwell had been the leader of a faction; and that the French orators, in legislative assemblies, had aided and abetted the Napoleonic usurpations.

The Seminole debate ended in a vote of confidence in Jackson, thus sending him upon another phase of his triumphant conquest of popular favor. The date of the vote marked the beginning of a new regime in American politics. Henceforth Jackson

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was the coming man, and it was to be well with those who had been friendly to him and bad for those who had not. Thus far Floyd was in the favored class; the influence of environment had placed him there.

Meanwhile Missouri had applied to Congress for admission to statehood, and a heated debate had followed over the various proposals for the retention and the exclusion of negro slavery within her proposed boundaries. Again Floyd was not in accord with a majority of Virginia's representatives in Congress, who desired the retention of negro slavery in Missouri at any price. Thus while they debated, he remained quiet. His silence was probably due to the influences of his early environment, to the interests of his constituents, and to his personal convictions. The fact remains that he was one of the four representatives from Virginia and the only one from a district west of the Blue Ridge, who voted for the Missouri Compromise in its final form.(16) Judging from his subsequent utterances he seems to have preferred immediate statehood for Missouri to an extension of the slaveholding territory of the Union, though there is little evidence to show that he opposed the latter on general principles.

At the subsequent session of Congress, that for 1820--1821, Floyd felt called upon to defend the sovereignty of the state of Missouri. Under the enabling act of 1820, out of which the compromise of that date had grown, she had made a constitution which required her legislature to enact a law "to prevent free negroes and mulattoes from coming to, or settling in" Missouri under any pretext whatsoever.

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Since some of the northern states accorded such persons all the rights and privileges of citizens, the anti-slavery forces in Congress demanded that the "free negro clause" be expunged from the constitution of Missouri, threatening, notwithstanding the enabling act, to keep her from the Union in case their desires were not complied with. The points thus raised involved the rights of the people of Missouri under the enabling act, also their power over their own local institutions.

Floyd regarded the demands upon the "sovereign State of Missouri," in this connection, as opposed to the nature and intent of the federal constitution and as dangerous in practice. As the representative of an old state, he was unwilling to dictate to a new one in the exercise of its sovereign power, because, under such precedents, he did not know how soon Congress might desire to encroach upon the reserved rights of the former. Already he had seen an alarming tendency among legislators to find justification for their acts of centralization and federal usurpation in the law and history of England and in their desire to convince the crowned heads of Europe of the self-sufficiency and nationality of the United States of America. Then followed an exposition of his conception of the nature of the federal government. Said he:

If gentlemen would only expunge from their memories the progress of European liberty and institutions, they would find in America a number of states, or separate, independent, and distinct nations, confederated for common safety, and mutual protection, taught wisdom by the eternal feuds of Spain, England, France, and Germany, now consolidated into large empires.

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These states before the confederation could make war and peace, raise armies, or build a navy, coin money, pass bankrupt laws, naturalize foreigners, or regulate commerce. . . Informed by Europe they knew Jealousies would arise, and constant strife render armies in every nation necessary to their defence, which would endanger their liberties and homes.

These states then, in their sovereign and independent characters, were willing to enter into a compact, by which the power of making war and peace, and regulating commerce, possessed alike by all, should be transferred to a congress of the states, to be exercised with uniformity, for their mutual benefit; thus avoiding the evils of "superanuated and enslaved" Europe. These two were the only powers ever intended to be granted by the states. All other powers conferred by the compact are necessary to carry these two into execution.(17)

This rather circumscribed but defensible exposition of the nature of the federal government was followed by the presentation of the point in question. Floyd argued that the enabling act of Congress had given the people of Missouri the necessary power to create a "sovereign state" which they and they alone could destroy. After the state had been formed Congress had no other power than that of admitting it or excluding it from the Union. In case of its refusal to admit Missouri, she became at once a "foreign state" or a "state out of the Union." In any event she was not to be dictated to regarding her sovereign rights, if she would preserve them. As Congress would not tolerate the presence of a rival state west of the Mississippi, there was only one other course open to it: the immediate recognition of Missouri as a state in the Union under her duly authorized and legal constitution. Delay and ultimate refusal would make necessary a war to force her return to her former territorial status.

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The question of Missouri's sovereign rights under her constitution came up again, when the two houses of Congress met in joint session to canvass the returns of the presidential election of 1820. She had finally yielded the point of her original constitution regarding the proposed exclusion of free negroes and mulattoes but had not yet made the necessary changes in that document to have it conform with the requirements of the majority in Congress. Nevertheless, she claimed to be a state in the Union entitled to a vote in the electoral college. On the other hand there were those who denied her this right arguing that she was not a state and that she could not be until Congress had approved the final draft of her constitution.

In his speeches on the proposed amendment of Missouri's constitution under the enabling act Floyd had already answered the points raised by those who would have excluded her from the electoral college. Accordingly he now introduced the following resolution: "That Missouri is one of the states of the Union, and her vote for president and vice-president ought to be received and counted."(18) The debate which followed precipitated one of the liveliest "scenes" ever witnessed on such an occasion. Amidst the repeated disorder which followed both Floyd and John Randolph were so persistent in their interruptions as to necessitate an adjournment of the joint session. They each voted against the compromise whereby the presidential vote was counted as so many with the vote of Missouri and

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so many without it.(19) John Quincy Adams later described their action as an effort to bring Missouri into the Union "by storm."(20)

In the other important debate of this session, that occasioned by the successful effort to reduce the official and numerical strength of the army, Floyd favored retrenchment but seems to have had no part with those who would have humiliated and injured Jackson by relieving him of his command. As has been seen he had no fears of a military despot, but his faith in the valor and patriotism of the frontiersman was an abiding one. In all matters of defence he was, therefore, willing to place chief reliance upon the state militias. Some thought them inadequate for the defence of the frontier, but Floyd knew that standing armies were equally inadequate for that purpose. Memory carried him at once to the days of his childhood in the "dark and bloody land," where the pioneer had protected himself and the federal army, where mothers and daughters had constituted a part of the home guard, and where the laborer, with his rifle at his side, had played an important part in the winning of an empire.