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this, he volunteered in a company which was raised in Rockbridge
for the purpose of aiding Lafayette in his military operations in
Virginia, with which company he continued until it was disband-
ed by order of the General. His education, which had been in-
terrupted by those events was again resumed and he entered
William and Mary College, after leaving which he commenced
the study of the law in the office of Mr. Jefferson. The inter-
course which grew out of this connexion ripened into a personal
and political friendship, which remained uninterrupted until the
death of Mr. Jefferson, Upon completing his legal studies he
determined-to emigrate to the western country, although it was
at that time the theatre of dangers of the most appalling charac-
ter. His first intention was to settle upon the Holstein, but af-
ter a brief residence there, he determined to remove to Kentucky
which he entered for the first time in the winter of seventeen
hundred and eighty two. From that early date to the period of
his death, embracing a span of fifty four years, he had been a resi-
dent of the western country. He was a most prominent and dis-
tinguished actor in the events which preceded the separation of
Kentucky from Virginia, and for many years subsequent to it.
No one contributed more than he did to bring about that separa-
tion, and to procure for Kentucky admission into the Union as
an independent State, while his efforts to obtain for the entire
west the full benefits of an unobstructed commerce were unceas-
ing and, eventually, most signally successful. In the year 1765,
he was elected a Senator in the Virginia legislature, from the
then district of Kentucky; and in 1787, the legislature elected
him a member of the old Congress, intending by that election to
manifest the interest which Virginia felt in her western counties.
By that election he became the first member ever sent from the
western country to the Congress of the United States! What
a change did he not live to see  From a region inhabited
by a few thousand souls, surrounded by almost impenetrable
forests, and in daily combat with ferocious savages, he has seen
the tide of population flow in until the valley of the Mississippi
teems with six or seven millions of inhabitants, and holds the
balance of power in the National Councils! Not only did he
live to see Kentucky taking her rank as an independent member
of the Confederacy, but he beheld in the west, alone, eleven im-
portant and powerful sovereignties where the foot of civilized
man had scarcely trodden when he first visited the land. No one
witnessed these almost maigical changes with more patriotic pride
than he did, and it was a pleasure to hear him contrast the dan-
gers and difficulties which he had encountered with the secu-
rity, the abundance and the happiness which now every where
abounded.