The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1890-05-31
clAY.uARsHALL DUEL.
The Historic Meeting between Two
Great Statesmen---True Story.

The Historic Meeting between Two
Great statesmen---True Story.
Early in January, 1909, there oc-
Cured duel between Henry Clay
and the elder Humphrey Marshall.
both of whom had been United
States Senators, and both of whom
were at that time members of the
Lower House of the Kentucky Leg
islature. Humphrey Marshall was
a first cousin of Chief Justice John
Marshall, and went from Virginia
and settled in Kentucky at an early
date-1782-after having served as
a Captain i'll the Revolutionary
War. He was a man of the first
order of character as well as Of in
tellect, but rugged, stern and un-
conquerable in will. He was an
intimate friend of Washington's
and an ardent Federalist all his
days; and, although he was exceed
ingly prominent in Kentucky at
first, being elected to various dis
tinguished positions, his extreme
Federalism, added to other causes,
eventually caused him to become
politically as dead as door-nail in
the 'grand old Commonwealth"
EXPOSING coNsPIRAcIEs.
But much of Humphrey Mar
shalps unpopulaiity in Kentucky
arose from the fact that he defeated
two or three formidable conspira-
cies Tin which number of the lead
ing menofthe State were implicated
by exposing them. 1t was he who
defeated and prevented the almost
successful conspiracy Of General
James Wilkinson, Judge Benjamin
Sebastian and other prominent Ken
tuckians of the day to turn over to
the emissaries of the King of Spain,
then regnant in Louisiana. all that
territory west of the Allegheny
Mountains, east of the Mississippi
river and north of the Yazoo river,
which, by the terms Of the conspir-
acy was to be held as a dependency
of the Spanish Crown. 1t was also
Humphrey Marshall who, in 1906
took the first step toward the arrest
of Aaron Burr and the consequent
exposure and defeat of his gigantic
conspiracy for erecting all the coun-
try west of the Alleghaney Noun
tains, including the Louisiana
country and Mexico, into a mag
nifcent empire of which he was to
be the Emperor. These matters are
all treated at length in Humphrey
Marshall's History of Kentucky"
published in 1S24-a work which
has been so persistently destroyed
by interested parties and their de-
scendants as to be now one Of the
rarest of American books. Aaron
Burr was arrested first in Lexing-
ton, KY, in 1906, and shortly af-
terward was brought up for trial in
the United States Court at Frank
fort, where upon some informahty
or technicality, the Judge being his
friend and his ally, he was dis
charged with splendid certificate
of character, only to be shortly af-
terward brought more severely to
grief by higher tribunal.
ENMITY OF CLAY AND MARSHALL.
In the affair at Frankfort Henry
Clay, then a United States Senator,
was one of Burr's counsel, fact
which Humphrey Marshall after
ward harped upon so persistently
as portent of evil and guilt upon
the part of Clay as to make the two
men deadly enemies. AS has been
stated both Clay and Marshall were
elected members Of the Kentucky
Legislature of 1SOS-O9. Mr.. Clay
was then a Democrat and Mr.. Mar
shall was the only Federalist in the
House, and even he had been elected
in a Democratic county. 1t was
believed that the two men would
engage in an alteration upon al
most any provocation, so bitter was
their known enmity to each other.
1t has been stated by Prentice that
Mr.. Clay was defeated for the
Speakership of the House, to which
he aspired, in order that he might
be upon the floor the more efectu-
ally to crush and put down 'sOld
Humphrey Marshall, as he, though
still a young man, was then called.
A casus belli was not long want
ing between two men determined
from the first upon war, and the
following resolution, introduced by
Mr.. Clay, apparently in all SINGER
ity, was made the ostensible occa-
sion of the beginning Of hostilities !:
The members of the General Assembly
will clothe themselves in productions of
American manufacture, and will abstain
from the use of cloth or linens of Euro
pean fabric until the belligerant nations
respect the rights of neutrals by repeal
| ing such of their orders and DEGREES as
relates to the United States.
Writing of this resolution many
years afte rward, when the matter had
again been brought upon the tapis
by the publication of Prentice's
"Life of Clay" Mr.. Marshall said /
And is this the basis of the "American
system2" Is it the terrapin system onlyf