Allan Bowie Magruder, poet and historian, was born in Kentucky, about 1775. He received an academic education, studied law, and was admitted to the Lexington bar in 1797. He contributed very fair verse to the Kentucky Gazette in 1802 and 1803, which attracted considerable comment in the West. That his fame as a poet was wide-spread, is indicated by a letter from an Ohio writer published in the Lexington Intelligencer, January 28, 1834, in which Magruder's verse is highly praised and further information concerning his career is sought. After stabbing poor Tom Johnson's little pamphlet of rhymes to the heart, Magruder is placed upon his pedestal as the first real Kentucky poet; and that his work was superior to either Johnson's or George Beck's is obvious, continues the caustic correspondent. The truth is, of course, that the verses of neither of the three men merit mention for anything save their priority; and the young Lexington lawyer's muse was not as productive as Tom's or Beck's, no more than three or four of his poems having come down to us. His first prose work was entitled Reflections on the late Cession of Louisiana to the United States (Lexington, 1803). This little volume of 150 pages was issued by Daniel Bradford, for whose periodical, The Medley, Magruder wrote The Character of Thomas Jefferson (June; July, 1803). This essay attracted the attention of the President, and he appointed Magruder commissioner of lands in Louisiana, to which territory he shortly afterwards removed. He was later a member of the State legislature; and from November 18, 1812, to March 3, 1813, Magruder was United States Senator from his adopted State. The next few years he devoted to collecting materials for a history of the North American Indians; and he also made notes for many years for a history of Kentucky, which he finally abandoned, and which he turned over to his old friend, John Bradford, who made use of them in his Notes on Kentucky. Allan B. Magruder died at Opelousas, Louisiana, April 16, 1822, when but forty-seven years of age. He was a man of culture and of high promise, but once in the politics of the country his early literary triumphs were not repeated, and he appears to have never done any writing worth while after his removal from Kentucky.

Bibliography. The Lexington Intelligencer (Lexington, Kentucky, January 28, 1834); Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1888, v. iv).

CITIZEN GENET AND JEFFERSON

[From The Medley (Lexington, Ky., July, 1803)]

When Citizen Genet, the ex-minister of the Robesperian fanaticism, appeared in America, he attempted to impose his new philosophy of light and liberty upon the government. He had nothing to boast of, on the score of superior diplomatic skill. His communications to the secretary of state, were evidently of the tampering kind. They were impressed with all the marks of that enthusiastic insanity, which regulated the councils of the faction; and which, were calculated to mistake their object, by disgusting their intended victims. The mind of Mr. Jefferson, discovered itself, in an early period of his correspondence with the French minister. The communications of Genet were decorated with all the flowers of eloquence, without the force and conviction of rhetorical energy. Accustomed to diplomatic calculation, and intimately combining cause with effect, Mr. Jefferson apprehended the subject, with strength and precision; considered it—developed it—viewed it on all sides—listened to every appeal, and attended to every charge—and in every communication, burst forth with a strength of refutation, that at once detected and embarrassed, the disappointed minister of a wily and fanatic faction.

It is, in most instances, useless to oppose enthusiasm with the deliberate coolness of reason and argument. They are the antipodes of each other; and of that imperious nature, which mutually solicit triumph and disdain reconciliation. The tyranny of the Robesperian principles, were calculated to inveigle within the vortex of European politics, the American government and people. The coolness and sagacity of the secretary of state, composed their defence and protection. The appeal was mutually made to the government; and it is a fortunate circumstance, that there existed this tribunal to approbate the measures of the secretary, and to silence forever, the declamatory oracle of an insidious faction. Checked and defeated on all sides, his doctrines stripped of their visionary principles, and himself betrayed into the labyrinth of diplomatic mystery, their ex-divinity, shrank into the silence of contempt; declaring with his last breath, that Mr. Jefferson was the only man in America, whose talents he highly respected.