enjoyment. Musters of the militia and annual elections were redletter days. The entire able-bodied male population attended both. Frequent "shooting matches" determined the champion marksman. The itinerant priest or preacher held religious services in private dwellings in bad weather, and in good occupied the groves-"God's first temples."

Now and then this primitive life was disturbed by the neighboring savages north of the Ohio river. Parties of Indians would stealthily approach the unsuspecting settlers of the wilderness. Horses would be stolen, families would be murdered, barbarously murdered, neither age nor sex being spared. Scalped and mutilated bodies and the ashes where the home once stood were often all that remained to tell their tragic story. The bloodthirsty savage had fled like the wind. Pursuit quickly followed, and it was rare that the mission of vengeance failed.

In the fall of 1786 Colonel John Hardin, formerly mentioned, and eminently a man for the times, led an expedition of volunteers against Indians, who had committed depredations in his neighborhood. The Indians were overtaken; three were killed, but the rest escaped. The same year he was quartermaster in Colonel George Rogers Clarke's expedition to the Wabash. In 1789, among other depredations, a considerable party of Indians stole all of Colonel Hardin's horses, and escaped in safety across the Ohio. This year he was appointed county lieutenant, with the rank of colonel. This gave him command of the militia of the county. In a subsequent expedition he encountered a camp of thirty Shawanees on a branch of the Wabash. He defeated them, with a loss of two killed and nine wounded, and recovered some of the horses he had previously lost. Save that of St. Clair's, it is said he accompanied every expedition against the Indians after his removal to the State. In the spring of 1792 he was sent by General Wilkerson to the Indians of the North-west Territory with overtures of peace. Accompanied by an interpreter, he reached an Indian camp, a day's journey from where Fort Defiance was afterward built. He encamped with the Indians during the night. Next morning they savagely and basely shot him to death. Thus fell one of the most heroic men that ever bore the name of Hardin. He was a man of unassuming manners and great gentleness of deportment, yet of singular firmness and inflexibility. For several years before his death he had been a member of the Methodist church. Hardin county, Ky., and a town, laid out on the spot where he was murdered in Ohio, were

named in his honor.* The courageous life and tragic death of this brave man were full of noble teaching to Kentuckians, and especially full of precious lessons to his kindred.

A vivid picture of these early days is thus drawn by Felix Grundy (once a Bardstown lawyer) in a speech in the United States Senate:

"I was too young to participate in these dangers and difficulties, but I can remember when death was in almost every bush, and every thicket concealed an ambuscade. If I am asked to trace my memory back and name the first indelible impression it received, it would be the sight of my eldest brother, bleeding and dying under the wounds inflicted by the tomahawk and scalping knife. Another and another went in the same way. I have seen a widowed mother plundered of her whole property in a single night; from affluence and ease, reduced to poverty in a moment, and compelled to labor with her own hands to support and educate her last and favorite son-him who now addresses you. Sir, the ancient sufferings of the West were great. I know it. I need turn to no document to teach me what they were. They are written upon my memory-a part of them upon my heart. Those of us who are here are but the remnant-the wreck-of large families lost in effecting the early settlement of the West. As I look around I see the monuments of former suffering and woe. Ask my colleague what he remembers. He will tell you that while his father was in pursuit of one party of Indians, another band came and murdered two of his brothers. Inquire of yonder gentleman from Arkansas what became of his brother-inlaw, Oldham. He will tell you that he went out to battle, but never returned. Ask that representative from Kentucky where is his uncle, the gallant Hardin. He will answer that he was intrepid enough to carry a flag of truce to the hostile savages; they would not recognize the protection which the flag of peace threw around him, and he was slain. If I turn to my old classmate and friend, now a grave and potent senator, I am reminded of a mother's courage and intrepidity in the son, whom she rescued from savage hands when in the very grasp of death."

The period of Mr. Hardin's boyhood was the heroic age in Kentucky history. Existing conditions produced a type of men surpassed by no other time or country. The progress of civilization has undoubtedly lowered this exalted standard. An old Kentuckian, long expatriated, yet proud of the early history of the Commonwealth, thus writes the author:

"That there has been a marked deterioration in the men of Kentucky within the last half century seems to me to be a fact too patent for controversy: How is it to be explained? I shall not attempt the task, as nothing better than a plausible theory can be offered.

Collins' History, Vol. II., page 316.

"More than fifty years ago, in conversation with an old Virginia lawyer, himself a man of marked ability and originality of thought, he remarked to me that as soon as the Virginians in Kentucky quit fighting Indians and betook themselves to stock-raising, the race began to degenerate. This process he considered as then going on, and predicted the time as not far distant when they would be sunk to the level of stock-breeders everywhere. He was an extravagant talker, and his language made little impression on me at that time. I am now inclined to think more favorably of his views, and that there is some hidden incompatibility between stock-raising and the higher flights of the human mind. Solomon seems to have had a perception of the same fact, when he asked: 'What can a man know whose task is of bullocks?'"*

That one's physical surroundings affect character was an opinion of Victor Hugo:

"The configuration of the soil decides many a man's actions. The earth is more his accomplice than we believe. The education of lights and shadows is very different. The mountain is a citadel; the forest an ambuscade. The one inspires audacity, the other teaches craft. In the Alps of Switzerland, rather than the dikes of Holland, would one search for a hero."

Without contrasting them or measuring them by a common standard, it is conceded that the type of the pioneer differs from his descendant of the third and fourth and subsequent generations. The latter with less daring is more intelligent, with less vigor lives longer, with less fortitude is more patient, with less activity accomplishes more. To the pioneer belongs the warrior's laurel-to his descendant the moral and intellectual achievements of peace.

"Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war."

* Letter from Preston Hay, Esq.,of Jackson, Miss.

CHAPTER III.

Ө

A LAW STUDENT.

N entering his twentieth year, young Hardin was fairly educated. He was not only well grounded in the English branches, but had made considerable progress in Latin and Greek. Besides, he had studied much of the more solid literature of the last century. His early promise had been followed by a development of decided mental vigor and strong purpose. It was but natural that he should seek an arena for the abilities of which he was conscious. Already the ambitious talent of the West-that formerly sought employment and renown in arms and adventure-had turned to statesmanship and the law. The legal profession was especially rich in opportunities by reason of the great litigation that deluged the country.

His kinsmen, Robert Wickliffe, of Lexington, and Martin D. Hardin, then of Richmond, had studied law with the well-known George Nicholas, and, though yet young, had already become prominent in the profession. A circumstance like this was not without influence on young Hardin. From Martin D. Hardin he no doubt received advice and encouragement as to his future. So it was, whatever the cause, that in April, 1804, he entered the law office of the latter at Richmond, as a student.* Of his experience while there little is known. That town, first settled in 1785, was then inconsiderable in population and primitive in manners. It was chiefly important as the seat of justice for the county of Madison-an honor rescued surreptitiously from a rival town-Milford. The modern Richmond has forgotten its rival in the enjoyment of an enviable prosperity-a prosperity little anticipated by those who founded the village on the Town Fork of Dreaming creek. But Madison county was then, as it has always been, the fairest among her sisters. Fertile as a garden, abounding in wealth, rich in tradition, distinguished as the home of talent and genius, noted for its brave men and beautiful women, it has ever stood for the best type of all that has given fame to Kentucky. In the year 1800, of the forty-seven counties in the State, Madison ranked fourth.

Mr. Hardin's Owsley speech.

It was amid such surroundings that Martin D. Hardin began his short but brilliant career. He was the eldest son of Colonel John Hardin, was born in Pennsylvania in 1780, and in early boyhood emigrated with his parents to Kentucky, where he grew to manhood. He was admitted to the bar when twenty years of age. He began public life as a member of the State Legislature in 1805, and rapidly increased his reputation for talents. He was not only a scholarly lawyer, but of exalted moral worth.* The influence of so skillful and excellent a teacher upon so receptive a student, for good, can not be readily overestimated.

At that period in the history of the profession in Kentucky its leaders were usually not without one or more students in their offices. The law student not only enjoyed the use of his preceptor's library, but had the benefit of counsel and instruction. The course of instruction consisted of oral examinations, explanations of legal principles, and directions in the forms of pleading and conveyancing. Professional teachers in universities and law schools have since supplanted, in a large degree, the old mode of teaching the law in the West. It is, however, doubted if any seat of learning ever graduated from its halls a larger average of well-equipped lawyers than were those that took their course in the office and under the instruction of the justiycelebrated George Nicholas, of Lexington.

There were no public law libraries at that day in Kentucky. Legal publications in the United States were few and of little importance. Story was yet an experiment as a young lawyer, and Kent did not commence his "Commentaries" until nearly twenty years later. American authors were scarce, and, for the most part, they contented themselves with annotating reprints of English works. It is doubtful if the Year books of England or the works of Glanvil, Bracton, Britton, or Fleta, or even the less ancient treatises of Stamford, Cromton, or Lambard and Dalton were to be found in any library in Kentucky in 1805. As the student was being inducted into the mysteries of the legal science, and by way of a first degree had his spirit broken on the wheel, as it were, or, in other words, was set at "Coke upon Littleton," it may be doubted if he regretted anything more ancient. The following books were usually found in the libraries of the best equipped lawyers: Tucker's Blackstone, Adams or Tillinghast on Ejectment, Tidd's Practice, Espinasse's Nisi Prius, Hale's Pleas of the Crown, Foster's Crown Law, Gilbert's Evidence, Bacon's Abridgment, Fonblanque's Equity, and Noy's Maxims. To these were often added a