was the faint roar which echoed back a thousand mountain miles from Kentucky but an answer to that cry? an assurance that "to him that hath shall be given?" There is something divinely significant to me in the coincidence of the opening shock of the Revolution, and the arrival in Kentucky of the first considerable body of determined, reputable men.
The story of the Revolutionary War in the West has been told in preceding pages, as the merest record of fact. It is unnecessary to state that it was the most important conflict ever waged there, and it is equally trite to observe that the struggle centered around Kentucky. Boone's Road had made possible the sudden movement of population westward, and this pioneer host immediately drew upon itself the enemies that otherwise would have scourged the frontiers of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. The first and principal portion of the Kentucky pioneers—those who fought the Revolutionary battles—entered Kentucky by the Cumberland Gap route. James Lane Allen writes: "That area [Kentucky] has somewhat the shape
