Sometimes these attacks were made on the authority of the _Gazette_; at other times they appeared in the form of letters from outsiders, or of resolutions by the various Democratic societies and political clubs.

They were written with a violence which, in striving after forcefulness, became feeble.

They described the people of Kentucky as having been "degraded and insulted," and as having borne these insults with "submissive patience." The writers insisted that Kentucky had nothing to hope from the Federal Government, and that it was nonsense to chatter about the infraction of treaties, for it was necessary, at any cost, to take Louisiana, which was "groaning under tyranny." They threatened the United States with what the Kentuckians would do if their wishes were not granted, announcing that they would make the conquest of Louisiana an ultimatum, and warning the Government that they owed no eternal allegiance to it and might have to separate, and that if they did there would be small reason to deplore the separation.

The separatist agitators failed to see that they could obtain the objects they sought, the opening of the Mississippi and the acquisition of Louisiana, only through the Federal Government, and only by giving that Government full powers.

Standing alone the Kentuckians would have been laughed to scorn not only by England and France, but even by Spain.