Kentucky’s first senator, John Brown, is almost unknown in the nation and in Kentucky. He was a son of colonial Virginia and a father of Kentucky statehood, but historians have often minimized his contribution, slurred him as a “Spanish conspirator,” or deliberately excluded him from the historiography. He was the only Kentuckian active in national politics before statehood (1792) and was a friend of James Madison, advisor to George Washington, and student of John Witherspoon, George Wythe, Edmund Randolph, and Thomas Jefferson. There is no book about John Brown, per se, and few works which place Kentucky’s settlement during that period in a global context.
Kentucky histories have tended to focus inwardly, whereas this work places the settlers in their contemporary, emerging, and developing setting. It was an atmosphere of threat, uncertainty, vulnerability, and change. Furthermore, the story is humanized by the original correspondence, ranging from family members to United States presidents. John Brown was a half step from the top rung of American power (he became president pro tempore in the Senate on two occasions) and as such belonged to an essential group of people who made things happen in the post-revolutionary federal period. This biography situates John Brown’s achievements by describing the factors affecting the development of Kentucky from early settlement, to its separation from Virginia, and its established statehood within the United States constitutional republic.
