I shall pass over the details of our arduous midwinter march of one hundred and sixty miles to Vincennes across swamps and flooded plains. Also any account of the three separate mutinies of our French recruits and the almost irreparable loss of our boat, the Willing, and consequent lack of food and rest while we worked feverishly, knee deep in water, building canoes.

The timely capture, after we had crossed the swollen river and reached firmer ground, of an Indian canoe loaded with buffalo meat, corn, and (strange circumstance) several large kettles, alone saved our men from starving and our hazardous attempt from total disaster. On the afternoon of the eighteenth day we reached Vincennes, and with our numerous flags, which through all the suffering of the march we had never relinquished, mounted on long poles, Clark disposed his little band in squads, and ordered them to march some distance apart and to follow the winding road (easily seen from the village, though hidden from the fort) to the town.

Not only did we meet with no resistance from the townspeople, but numbers of them offered to assist us in storming the fort. Tabac and his hundred Indians, who were camping near the town, likewise offered their services as allies.

When the firing upon Fort Sackville began, General Hamilton was in Captain Helm's quarters playing piquet with his prisoner, while the latter brewed upon the hearth his favorite beverage—a spiced apple toddy. Helm's room had been pointed out to us, and we aimed at his chimney. Soot and plaster came tumbling down, half filled the kettle and ruined the smoking drink. The players sprang to their feet.

"I'll wager it's Clark, and his riflemen, General," said the jovial Helm. "They'll take the fort, for they are the finest marksmen in the world. Meantime they've spoiled our toddy, d—— 'em, and with malicious intent you may be sure; some villager has indicated my quarters to McElroy, I dare say, and he pays his respects to me, and announces their presence this way. D—— their sure bullets and their rude jokes; wish we had drunk that toddy sooner. Now look at it!" and he held out a ladle full, gritty with dried mud, and black with soot.

"You are cool ones, you Americans," said Hamilton, with an uneasy laugh. "Pray, how do you suppose Clark would get his men here through these floods?"

"They swam, maybe—oh, Clark and his riflemen are equal to anything. Might as well run up your white flag, General, and be done the sooner with this unpleasant business; we can finish our game then, and have Clark in to help drink my second brewing—he's good at that as at fighting; we'll make a jolly party."

"Curse your impudence, Helm! I'll not surrender the fort while there's a man to the guns!" and Hamilton departed, sputtering with angry excitement.

All night brisk firing was kept up on both sides; at the same time detachments of us worked like beavers to make a trench about a hundred yards in front of the main gate. Early next morning Clark sent in a flag with a bold demand for surrender, and during the respite afforded by its reception the men ate a hearty breakfast, provided by the well disposed townspeople. It was the first meal they had had in five days. This was the message sent by Clark under his flag of truce, and it is so characteristic of the man that I quote it verbatim:

"Sir—In order to save yourself from the impending storm that now threatens you, I order you immediately to surrender yourself with all your garrison, stores, etc., etc. For if I am obliged to storm, you may depend on such treatment as is justly due a murderer. Beware of destroying stores of any kind, or any papers or letters that are in your possession, for, by Heaven, if you do, there shall be no mercy shown you.

"G. R. Clark."

An angry and scornful refusal was returned by General Hamilton to this stern demand, and the firing was renewed. Wherever a port-hole was open, a dozen rifles were aimed upon it, and the bullets poured through like hail; the gunners were killed as fast as they were sent to the guns. Even the cracks in the walls afforded targets to the death-dealing bullets of the riflemen, and more than one of the garrison fell pierced through the eye.

The afternoon of the second day brought a flag of truce from General Hamilton, asking for a cessation of hostilities for three days, and a conference with Colonel Clark at the fort. Clark refused the terms offered by Hamilton, but agreed to a conference in the village church. At this conference Clark's bold determination again won, and next morning Fort Sackville was surrendered, with all its stores and supplies, and General Hamilton and his garrison became prisoners of war.

This was on the twenty-fifth day of February, 1779. It is a date deserving enrollment among eventful days of American history. Henceforth the Northwest was Virginia territory, until ceded by her to the Union. In the negotiations which preceded the final treaty with England, it was this fact—that Virginia troops had fought for, and conquered the right bank of the Mississippi—which gave potency to the claim of our commissioners, that the Father of Waters and not the Alleghanies, or the Ohio, was our rightful boundary line on the west.

Among our Revolutionary heroes, George Rogers Clark should stand high, not only because of his daring and his achievements, but because of the important and far-reaching results of his conquest.

In the last few years, observing the rapidity with which our vast Western territory is being settled and civilized, noting the rapid increase of its population and prosperity, I begin to set a true value upon the importance of this territory to the republic. Not only has it given us room for necessary expansion, but it has quickened all our energies, kindled our imaginations, and furnished a safe outlet for the vigorous, throbbing life of our young nation. Moreover, there is no way to calculate the important part this common territory has played in uniting, into a firm and reasonable union, the several States of America. It gave us a common interest, at a time when we thought our state interests divergent; furnished us a means of satisfying with land grants our discontented and unpaid soldiers; and is teaching us, through experience learned in governing a joint possession, broad principles of democratic government. In truth, the more I think upon it, the more highly I rate the achievement of George Rogers Clark—in which those of my race bore a worthy part.

"Since fate has not ended our rivalry for us, McElroy," said Clark—when affairs had been satisfactorily settled at Vincennes, Helm reinstated with a somewhat larger garrison, and the other troops ready to return to Kaskaskia—"the decision rests still with Queen Eleanor. We must force her to a choice, somehow, and certainty is preferable to this suspense."

"The sooner we know her decision the better I shall be suited," I responded, "for, now that my year's parole has expired, I am eager to get back to the regular service, especially as reËnforcements from Virginia can now be counted upon. Moreover, you are not likely to need a large force to enable you to hold what we have won."

"I agree with you," replied Clark. "You have stood by me and the enterprise, like a brave man, and a true comrade, McElroy, and I am glad our business is finished before your duty calls you back to Virginia. You have been my right hand, though all my officers and men have alike acquitted themselves nobly, from first to last."

"With a leader such as we have had, only worthy conduct is possible," I said, my eyes suddenly dim.

"Thank you for that word, McElroy. That worthy men should deem me a worthy leader, is all the praise I ask. And whatever may come between us in the future, comrade, let us not forget that we have stood together in peril and in suffering, have shared risks and dangers in a cause dear to the hearts of both—not even the love of woman should separate comrades such as we have been."

"Nor shall it," I answered earnestly. "God bear me witness, Clark, that I shall feel no malice should Ellen's heart answer to yours. I shall wish you both happiness in all sincerity, and seek solace in my duty."

"No fear, McElroy; you have the sturdiest and best traits of a noble people. I have some of them, doubtless, as my Saxon blood gives me right, but mixed, I fear, with a strain of wildness. I doubt if the anchors of duty are strong enough to hold me to a wise, sane life—unless Ellen's love shall help to weight them. As you have said, comrade, an adventurous, reckless life has strong temptation for me; therefore, if Ellen's love is not for me—and I forebode it is not, though I'm not yet ready to resign all hope—I shall take it for a sign that a kind fate is sparing her the woeful doom of a drunkard's wife." He added, after a brief pause, during which a deep melancholy settled upon his face, "Sometimes a man is doomed from his birth; from the beginning he moves on to a prefixed destiny, and all his struggles to save himself from the end he fears, avail nothing."

My reply combatted Clark's fatalism with all the arguments I could command, but I soon saw that his views on the subject of his destiny were fixed; that with all his cheerful courage, and calculating boldness, there was in his nature that strange vein of superstition or fatalism which has marked so many military heroes:—Hannibal, Alexander, CÆsar, Robert Bruce, Frederick the Great, and others less renowned. Nor can one lay the fatalistic views Clark held to the charge of his religion. Though Scotch-Irish by birth, he knew no more of Presbyterian doctrines than did Father Gibault, and he had no religious principles.

Clark, as I have said, was a fatalist, though he had no religion. I was and am a Presbyterian, yet I have always believed in cause and effect, the working of natural laws to natural ends. Nevertheless, though it be apparently a contradiction, I believe in an overruling Providence, and the care of God over the most insignificant of His creatures. Therefore, when I knew myself to be ill, on that last day of our return march, and said to Clark, "It seems, after all, comrade, as if fate meant to settle this matter of rivalry between us," I meant it not as it was said, but as Clark might look upon it. My future lay, I knew, in God's hands, and even in that hour of evil apprehension—for I realized that my illness would be a long and serious one—I felt satisfied to leave it there, and to trust my life and Ellen's to His guidance.

A faith that can sustain a man, and leave him calm and undismayed in each crisis of his life, is worth much to him—call it by what name or sect, distinguish it by whatsoever creed, you will. And these small variations of our small minds, are, I conceive, little taken into account by the Infinite, who knows we are but children, in mental and spiritual development, and values our faith and our honest striving without regard to the creeds with which we confuse ourselves.