The Frankfort roundabout. [volume] (Frankfort, Ky.) 1882-1908, 1891-04-18
The Capital Permanently
Located.

After hundred years OF strife and
contention over the location Of the
Capital Of Kentucky it was a wise
and graceful thing in the Constitu-
tional Convention to put an end to
the controversy by permanently
locating the Capital at Frankfort by
the overwhelming vote Of 81 to "a.
The members Of the convention felt
that hundred years of fruitless con-
tention over this subject was quite
enough, and in spirit Of justice, and
guided alone by motives looking to
the public good, raised themselves
into the empire of exalted statesman
ship and by vote bordering on
unanimity commanded the peace
between the warning sections of the
State with voice that will be re-
spected and approved from the Big
Sandy to Hickman, and from the
Ohio river to the Tennessee line, and
the man or the city attempting to
renew this vexed question again,
during the next century, will be re-
garded by all as disturber of the
public peace, and on enemy to the
progress and welfare Of the State.
This same question was distinctly
submitted to the people Of Kentucky
when the Constitution was adopted
in 1893, and again in 1850, and now
again in 1891, and the verdict each
time was in favor of the little city of
Frankfort, where the heroes and
statesmen of Kentucky, for hundred
years, lie sleeping in their narrow
houses in the Cemetery on the hill.
The State House and the Arsenal and
the Penitentiary might have been
put upon wheels and carried away to
Lexington or Louisville, but the
heroic memories of Theodore
O'Hara, young Clay and Mckee and
all that host of imm ortals who es-
tablished and gave to Kentucky her
enduring fame, could not be taken
away from the beautiful cemetery at
Frankfort, where their bodies lie
moldering in the grave-where their
noble deeds are inscribed on their
monuments, and where their immor-
tai spirits still hover in the air to
guard the repose Of the dead and the
honor of the State. 1t required
craftsmanship Of the most exalted
character to recognize both the in
justice and the impossibility of re-
moving the entire capital away from
Frankfort, but the good people of
Kentucky may now congratulate
themselves, and their children and
their children's children to the latest
generation, that the present Consti-
tutional Convention was equal to the
emergency:of the occasion; and the
spirits of the heroic dead no doubt
rejoice that the glowing memories
and sacred dust over which they
have charge have not been disturb
ed.
Frankfort fully recognizes that it
was pardonable ambition on the part
Of anylother city or town to desire to
possess SO rich a treasure as the cap
ital of the noble and historic State of
Kentucky, and bows her thanks in
becoming modesty, in this her hour
of triumph, to every member of the
Convention as we'll as to every citi-
zen Of the State for the great honor
thus for the third and last time 80
handsomely conferred upon her; and
her people feel and willingly give
expression to the thought, that they
would besunworthy of the rich treas
ure thus confided to their keeping,
were they to fail to make the sincere
on this great, and to
themlespecially, most agreeable &C.
cassion,l that they desire above all
things else the permanent repose
and prosperity Of the entire Com
and that they cherish no
ill-will against those whose natural
and laudable ambition prompted
them to contest for the location of
Kentucky'sHproud capital elsewhere
than at Frankfort-tha we have no
enemies to.punish but earnestly de-
sire to.co-operate in the most friend
ly spirit with the good people of
every section of the State for the
purpose of building up the waste
nlaces of orr grand old Common