With the slow and sinuous approach of the serpent, the General
Government, little by little, gained power over Kentucky, and then,
throwing off the mask, proceeded to outrages so regardless of law and
the usages of English-speaking people, as could not have been
anticipated, and can only be remembered with shame by those who honor
the constitutional Government created by the States. While artfully
urging the maintenance of the Union as a duty of patriotism, the
Constitution which gave the Union birth was trampled under foot, and the
excesses of the Reign of Terror which followed the French Revolution
were reenacted in our land, once the vaunted home of law and liberty.
Men who had been most honored by the State, and who had reflected back
most honor upon it, were seized without warrant, condemned without
trial, because they had exercised the privilege of free speech, and for
adhering to the principles which were the bed-rock on which our fathers
builded our political temple. Members of the Legislature vacated their
seats and left the State to avoid arrest, the penalty hanging over them
for opinion's sake. The venerable Judge Monroe, who had presided over
the United States District Court for more than a generation, driven from
the land of his birth, the State he had served so long and so well, with
feeble step, but upright conscience and indomitable will, sought a
resting place among those who did not regard it a crime to adhere to the
principles of 1776 and of 1787, and the declaratory affirmation of them
in the resolutions of 1793-'99.
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