With a view to organizing a civil government and impressing upon
the Virginia authorities the need of defending the western
settlements, the men of Kentucky held a convention at Harrodsburg
in the spring of 1775 and elected two delegates to present their
petition to the Virginia Assembly. Clark was one of them. The
journey to Williamsburg was long and arduous, and the delegates
arrived only to find that the Legislature had adjourned. The
visit, none the less, gave Clark an opportunity to explain to the
new Governor--"a certain Patrick Henry, of Hanover County," as
the royalist Dunmore contemptuously styled his successor--the
situation in the back country and to obtain five hundred pounds
of powder. He also induced the authorities to take steps which
led to the definite organization of Kentucky as a county of
Virginia.

In the bloody days that followed, most of the pioneers saw
nothing to be done except to keep close guard and beat off the
Indians when they came. A year or two of that sort of desperate
uncertainty gave Clark an idea. Why not meet the trouble at its
source by capturing the British posts and suppressing the
commandants whose orders were mainly responsible for the
atrocities? There was just one obstacle: Kentucky could spare
neither men nor money for the undertaking.

In the spring of 1777 two young hunters, disguised as traders,
were dispatched to the Illinois country and to the neighborhood
of Vincennes, to spy out the land. They brought back word that
the posts were not heavily manned, and that the French-speaking
population took little interest in the war and was far from
reconciled to British rule. The prospect seemed favorable.