Portrait: William Johnson

A North View of Fort Johnson

A View of Niagara Fort

EARLY MAP OF WYOMING AND LACKAWANNA VALLEYS.

FORTY FORT, WYOMING

Massacre at Wyoming, July 3, 1778 These circumstances did not escape the keen eye of Colonel John Butler, and in June, 1778, he took the war-path from Niagara, with a company of his own rangers, a regiment of Johnson’s Greens, and a band of Senecas under their chief Sayenqueraghta, commonly called Old King; in all about 1,200 men. Reaching the Susquehanna, they glided down the swift stream in bark canoes, landed a little above the doomed settlement, and began their work of murder and pillage. Consternation filled the valley. The women and children were huddled in a blockhouse called Forty Fort, and Colonel Zebulon Butler, with 300 men, went out to meet the enemy. There seemed to be no choice but to fight, though the odds were so desperate. As the enemy came in sight, late in the afternoon of July 3d, the patriots charged upon them, and for about an hour there was a fierce struggle, till, overwhelmed by weight of numbers, the little band of defenders broke and fled. Some made their way to the fort, and a few escaped to the mountains, but nearly all were overtaken and slain, save such as were reserved for the horrors of the night. The second anniversary of independence was ushered in with dreadful orgies in the valley of Wyoming. Some of the prisoners were burned at the stake, some were laid upon hot embers and held down with pitchforks till they died, some were hacked with knives. Sixteen poor fellows were arranged in a circle, while an old half-breed hag, known as Queen Esther, and supposed to be a granddaughter of the famous Frontenac, danced slowly around the ring, shrieking a death-song as she slew them one after the other with her tomahawk.

The next day, when Forty Fort surrendered, no more lives were taken, but the Indians plundered and burned all the houses, while the inhabitants fled to the woods or to the nearest settlements on the Lehigh and Delaware, and the vale of Wyoming was for a time abandoned. Dreadful sufferings attended the flight. A hundred women and children perished of fatigue and starvation in trying to cross the swamp, which has since been known to this day as the “Shades of Death." Several children were born in that fearful spot, only to die there with their unhappy mothers. Such horrors needed no exaggeration in the telling, yet from the confused reports of the fugitives, magnified by popular rumour, a tale of wholesale slaughter went abroad which was even worse than the reality, but which careful research has long since completely disproved.

The Six Nations

Massacre at Cherry Valley, Nov. 10 The popular reputation of Brant as an incarnate demon rests largely upon the part which he was formerly supposed to have taken in the devastation of Wyoming. But the “monster Brant,” who figures so conspicuously in Campbell’s celebrated poem, was not even present on this occasion. Thayendanegea was at that time at Niagara. It was not long, however, before he was concerned in a bloody affair in which Walter Butler was principal. The village of Cherry Valley, in central New York, was destroyed on the 10th of November by a party of 700 Tories and Indians. All the houses were burned, and about fifty of the inhabitants murdered, without regard to age or sex.[22] Many other atrocious things were done in the course of this year; but the affairs of Wyoming and Cherry Valley made a deeper impression than any of the others. Among the victims there were many refined gentlemen and ladies, well known in the northern states, and this was especially the case of Cherry Valley.

Sullivan’s expedition Washington made up his mind that exemplary vengeance must be taken, and the source of the evil extinguished as far as possible. An army of 5,000 men was sent out in the summer of 1779, with instructions to lay waste the country of the hostile Iroquois and capture the nest of Tory miscreants at Fort Niagara. The command of the expedition was offered to Gates, and when he testily declined it, as requiring too much hard work from a man of his years, it was given to Sullivan. To prepare such an army for penetrating to a depth of four hundred miles through the forest was no light task; and before they had reached the Iroquois country, Brant had sacked the town of Minisink and annihilated a force of militia sent to oppose him. Yet the expedition was well timed for the purpose of destroying the growing crops of the enemy. The army advanced in two divisions. The right wing, under General James Clinton, proceeded up the valley of the Mohawk as far as Canajoharie, and then turned to the southwest; while the left wing, under Sullivan himself, ascended the Susquehanna. On the 22d of August the two columns met at Tioga, and one week later they found the enemy at Newtown, on the site of the present town of Elmira,—1,500 Tories and Indians, led by Sir John Johnson in person, with both the Butlers and Thayendanegea. Battle of Newtown, Aug 29, 1779In the battle which ensued, the enemy was routed with great slaughter, while the American loss was less than fifty. No further resistance was made, but the army was annoyed in every possible way, and stragglers were now and then caught and tortured to death. On one occasion, a young lieutenant, named Boyd, was captured while leading a scouting party, and fell into the hands of one of the Butlers, who threatened to give him up to torture unless he should disclose whatever he knew of General Sullivan’s plans. On his refusal, he was given into the hands of a Seneca demon, named Little Beard; and after being hacked and plucked to pieces with a refinement of cruelty which the pen refuses to describe, his torments were ended by disembowelling.

Devastation of the Iroquois country Such horrors served only to exasperate the American troops, and while they do not seem to have taken life unnecessarily, they certainly carried out their orders with great zeal and thoroughness. The Iroquois tribes were so far advanced in the agricultural stage of development that they were much more dependent upon their crops than upon the chase for subsistence; and they had besides learned some of the arts of civilization from their white neighbours. Their long wigwams were beginning to give place to framed houses with chimneys; their extensive fields were planted with corn and beans; and their orchards yielded apples, pears, and peaches in immense profusion. All this prosperity was now brought to an end. From Tioga the American army marched through the entire country of the Cayugas and Senecas, laying waste the cornfields, burning the houses, and cutting down all the fruit-trees. More than forty villages, the largest containing 128 houses, were razed to the ground. So terrible a vengeance had not overtaken the Long House since the days of Frontenac. The region thus devastated had come to be the most important domain of the Confederacy, which never recovered from the blow thus inflicted. The winter of 1779-80 was one of the coldest ever known in America, so cold that the harbour of New York was frozen solid enough to bear troops and artillery,[23] while the British in the city, deprived of the aid of their fleet, spent the winter in daily dread of attack. During this extreme season the houseless Cayugas and Senecas were overtaken by famine and pestilence, and the diminution in their numbers was never afterwards made good. The stronghold at Niagara, however, was not wrested from Thayendanegea. That part of Sullivan’s expedition was a failure. From increasing sickness among the soldiers and want of proper food, he deemed it impracticable to take his large force beyond the Genesee river, and accordingly he turned back toward the seaboard, arriving in New Jersey at the end of October, after a total march of more than seven hundred miles.

Reign of terror in the Mohawk valley Though so much harrying had been done, the snake was only scotched, after all. Nothing short of the complete annihilation of the savage enemy would have put a stop to his inroads. Before winter was over dire vengeance fell upon the Oneidas, who were now regarded by their brethren as traitors to the Confederacy; they were utterly crushed by Thayendanegea. For two years more the tomahawk and firebrand were busy in the Mohawk valley. It was a reign of terror. Blockhouses were erected in every neighbourhood, into which forty or fifty families could crowd together at the first note of alarm. The farmers ploughed and harvested in companies, keeping their rifles within easy reach, while pickets and scouts peered in every direction for signs of the stealthy foe. In battles with the militia, of which there were several, the enemy, with his greatly weakened force, was now generally worsted; but nothing could exceed the boldness of his raids. On one or two occasions he came within a few miles of Albany. Once a small party of Tories actually found their way into the city, with intent to assassinate General Schuyler, and came very near succeeding. In no other part of the United States did the war entail so much suffering as on the New York border. During the five years ending with 1781, the population of Tryon county was reduced by two thirds of its amount, and in the remaining third there were more than three hundred widows and two thousand orphan children.

JOHNSON HALL

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The wilderness beyond the Alleghanies This cruel warfare, so damaging to the New York frontier settlements and so fatal to the Six Nations, was really part of a desultory conflict which raged at intervals from north to south along our whole western border, and resulted in the total overthrow of British authority beyond the Alleghanies. The vast region between these mountains and the Mississippi river—a territory more than twice as large as the German Empire—was at that time an almost unbroken wilderness. A few French towns garrisoned by British troops, as at Natchez, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia on the Mississippi river, at Vincennes, on the Wabash, and at Detroit, sufficed to represent the sovereignty of George III., and to exercise a very dubious control over the wild tribes that roamed through these primeval solitudes. When the thirteen colonies declared themselves independent of the British Crown, the ownership of this western territory was for the moment left undecided. Portions of it were claimed by Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, on the strength of their old charters or of their relations with the Indian tribes. Little respect, however, was paid to the quaint terminology of charters framed in an age when almost nothing was known of American geography; and it was virtually left for circumstances to determine to whom the western country should belong. It was now very fortunate for the United States that the policy of Pitt had wrested this all-important territory from the French. For to conquer from the British enemy so remote a region was feasible; but to have sought to obtain it from a power with which we were forming an alliance would have been difficult indeed.

Rivalry between Pennsylvania and Virginia for the possession of Fort Pitt The commanding approach to this territory was by the town and fortress of Pittsburgh, the “Gateway of the West,” from which, through the Ohio river and its tributary streams, an army might penetrate with comparative ease to any part of the vast Mississippi valley. The possession of this gateway had for some years been a subject of dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia. Though the question was ultimately settled in favour of Pennsylvania, yet for the present Virginia, which had the longest arm, kept her hold upon the commanding citadel. To Virginia its possession was then a matter of peculiar importance, for her population had already begun to overflow its mountain barriers, and, pressing down the Ohio valley, had made the beginnings of the state of Kentucky. Virginia and North Carolina, lying farther westward than any of the other old states, were naturally the first to send colonies across the Alleghanies. It was not long before the beginning of the war that Daniel Boone had explored the Kentucky river, and that Virginia surveyors had gone down the Ohio as far as the present site of Louisville. Conflicts ensued with the Indians, so fierce and deadly that this region was long known as the “Dark and Bloody Ground.”

During this troubled period, the hostile feeling between Pennsylvania and Virginia was nourished by the conflicting interests of the people of those two colonies in respect to the western country and its wild inhabitants. The Virginians entered the country as settlers, with intent to take possession of the soil and keep the Indians at a distance; but there were many people in Pennsylvania who reaped large profits from trade with the barbarians, and therefore did not wish to see them dispossessed of their border forests and driven westward. The Virginia frontiersmen were angry with the Pennsylvania traders for selling rifles and powder to the redskins, and buying from them horses stolen from white men. This, they alleged, was practically inciting the Indians to deeds of plunder and outrage. In the spring of 1774, there seemed to be serious danger of an outbreak of hostilities at Fort Pitt, when the attention of Virginia was all at once absorbed in a brief but hard-fought war, which had a most important bearing upon the issue of the American struggle for independence.

Lord Dunmore’s War, 1774 This border war of 1774 has sometimes been known as “Cresap’s War,” but more recently, and with less impropriety, as “Lord Dunmore’s War.” It was conducted under the general direction of the Earl of Dunmore, last royal governor of Virginia; and in the political excitement of the time there were some who believed that he actually contrived to stir up the war out of malice aforethought, in order to hamper the Virginians in their impending struggle with the mother-country. Dunmore’s agent, or lieutenant, in western Virginia, Dr. John Connolly, was a violent and unscrupulous man, whose arrogance was as likely to be directed against friendly as against hostile Indians, and it was supposed that he acted under the earl’s secret orders with intent to bring on a war. But the charge is ill-supported and quite improbable. According to some writers, the true cause of the war was the slaying of the whole family of the friendly chief Logan, and doubtless this event furnished the occasion for the outbreak of hostilities. It was conspicuous in a series of outrages that had been going on for years, such as are always apt to occur on the frontier between advancing civilization and resisting barbarism. John Logan, or TagahjutÈ, was of Cayuga descent, a chief of the Mingos, a brave and honest man, of fine and stately presence. He had always been kind and hospitable to the English settlers, perhaps in accordance with the traditional policy of his Iroquois forefathers,—a tradition which by 1774 had lost much of its strength. In April of that year some Indian depredations occurred on the upper Ohio, which led Dr. Connolly to issue instructions, warning the settlers to be on their guard, as an attack from the Shawnees was to be apprehended. Logan and CresapCaptain Michael Cresap was a pioneer from Maryland, a brave man and sterling patriot; but as for the Indians, his feelings toward them were like those of most backwoodsmen. Cresap not unnaturally interpreted the instructions from Dunmore’s lieutenant as equivalent to a declaration of war, and he proceeded forthwith to slay and scalp some friendly Shawnees. As is apt to be the case with reprisals and other unreasoning forms of popular vengeance, the blow fell in the wrong quarter, and innocent people were made scapegoats for the guilty. Cresap’s party next started off to attack Logan’s camp at Yellow Creek; but presently bethinking themselves of Logan’s well-known friendliness toward the whites, as they argued with one another, they repented of their purpose, and turned their steps in another direction. But hard by the Mingo encampment a wretch named Greathouse had set up a whiskey shop, and thither, on the last day of April, repaired Logan’s family, nine thirsty barbarians, male and female, old and young. When they had become dead drunk, Greathouse and two or three of his cronies illustrated their peculiar view of the purport of Connolly’s instructions by butchering them all in cold blood. The Indians of the border needed no stronger provocation for rushing to arms. Within a few days Logan’s men had taken a dozen scalps, half of them from young children. Mingos and Shawnees were joined by Wyandots, Delawares, and Senecas, and the dismal tale of blazing cabins and murdered women was renewed all along the frontier. It was in vain that Lord Dunmore and his lieutenant disclaimed responsibility for the massacre at Yellow Creek. The blame was by all the Indians and many of the whites laid upon Cresap, whose name has been handed down to posterity as that of the arch-villain in this rough border romance. The pathetic speech of the bereaved Logan to Dunmore’s envoy, John Gibson, was preserved and immortalized by Jefferson in his “Notes on Virginia,” and has been declaimed by thousands of American schoolboys. In Memory of Michael Cresap First Cap Of the Rifle BatalionsIn his comments Jefferson spoke of Cresap as “a man infamous for the many murders he had committed upon these injured people.” Jefferson here simply gave voice to the tradition which had started into full life as early as June, 1774, when Sir William Johnson wrote that “a certain Mr. Cressop had trepanned and murdered forty Indians on the Ohio, ... and that the unworthy author of this wanton act is fled.” The charge made by Jefferson was answered at the time, but continued to live on in tradition, until finally disposed of in 1851 by Brantz Mayer.[24] The origin of the misconception is doubtless to be traced to the insignificance of Greathouse. In trying to shield himself, Connolly deposed Cresap from command, but he was presently reinstated by Lord Dunmore.

In June of the next year, Captain Cresap marched to Cambridge at the head of 130 Maryland riflemen; but during the early autumn he was seized with illness, and while making his way homeward died at New York, at the age of thirty-three. His grave is still to be seen in Trinity churchyard, near the door of the north transept. The Indian chief with whose name his has so long been associated was some time afterwards tomahawked by a brother Indian, in the course of a drunken affray.

Battle of Point Pleasant and its consequences The war thus ushered in by the Yellow Creek massacre was an event of cardinal importance in the history of our western frontier. It was ended by the decisive battle at Point Pleasant, on the Great Kanawha (October 10, 1774), in which the Indians, under the famous Shawnee chief Cornstalk, were totally defeated by the backwoodsmen under Andrew Lewis. This defeat so cowed the Indians that they were fain to purchase peace by surrendering all their claims upon the hunting-grounds south of the Ohio. It kept the northwestern tribes comparatively quiet during the first two years of the Revolutionary War, and thus opened the way for white settlers to rush into Kentucky. The four years following the battle of Point Pleasant saw remarkable and portentous changes on the frontier. It was just at the beginning of Lord Dunmore’s war that Parliament passed the Quebec Act, of which the practical effect, had it ever been enforced, would have been the extension of Canada southward to the Ohio river. In contravention of old charters, it would have deprived the American colonies of the great northwestern territory. But the events that followed upon Lord Dunmore’s war soon rendered this part of the Quebec Act a nullity.

Settlement of Kentucky In 1775, Richard Henderson of North Carolina purchased from the Statue: Andrew LewisCherokees the tract between the Kentucky and Cumberland rivers, and at the same time Boonesborough and Harrodsburg were founded by Daniel Boone and James Harrod. As a party of these bold backwoodsmen were encamping near the sources of the southern fork of the Licking, they heard the news of the victory which ushered in the War of Independence, and forthwith gave the name of Lexington to the place of their encampment, on which a thriving city now stands. These new settlements were not long in organizing themselves into a state, which they called Transylvania. Courts were instituted, laws enacted, and a militia enrolled, and a delegate was sent to the Continental Congress; but finding that Virginia still claimed their allegiance, they yielded their pretensions to autonomy, and were organized for the present as a county of the mother state. The so-called “county” of Kentucky, comprising the whole of the present state of that name, with an area one fourth larger than that of Scotland, was indeed of formidable dimensions for a county.

and of eastern Tennessee The settlement of Tennessee was going on at the same time. The movement of population for some time had a southwestward trend along the great valleys inclosed by the Appalachian ranges, so that frontiersmen from Pennsylvania found their way down the Shenandoah, and thence the stream of Virginian migration reached the Watauga, the Holston, and the French Broad, in the midst of the most magnificent scenery east of the Rocky Mountains. At the same time there was a westward movement from North Carolina across the Great Smoky range, and the defeat of the Regulators by Governor Tryon at the battle of the Alamance in 1771 no doubt did much to give strength and volume to this movement. The way was prepared in 1770 by James Robertson, who penetrated the wilderness as far as the banks of the Watauga. Forts were soon erected there and on the Nolichucky. The settlement grew apace, and soon came into conflict with the most warlike and powerful of the southern tribes of Indians. The Cherokees, like their kinsmen the Iroquois at the North, had fought on the English side in the Seven Years’ War, and had rendered some service, though of small value, at the capture of Fort Duquesne. Early in the Revolutionary War fierce feuds with the encroaching settlers led them to take sides with the British, and in company with Tory guerrillas they ravaged the frontier. Defeat of the Cherokees on the WataugaIn 1776, the Watauga settlement was attacked, and invasions were made into Georgia and South Carolina. But the blow recoiled upon the Cherokees. Their country was laid waste by troops from the Carolinas, under Andrew Williamson and Griffith Rutherford; their attack upon the Watauga settlement was defeated by James Robertson and John Sevier; and in 1777 they were forced to make treaties renouncing for the most part their claims upon the territory between the Tennessee and the Cumberland rivers.

THE COUNTRY BEHIND THE MOUNTAINS, 1770-80.

Its consequencesRobertson and Sevier were the most commanding and picturesque figures in Tennessee history until Andrew Jackson came upon the scene; and their military successes, moreover, like those of “Old Hickory,” were of the utmost importance to the whole country. This was especially true of their victory at the Watauga; for had the settlement there been swept away by the barbarians, it would have uncovered the great Wilderness Road to Lexington and Harrodsburg, and the Kentucky settlement, thus fatally isolated, would very likely have had to be abandoned. The Watauga victory thus helped to secure in 1776 the ground won two years before at the Great Kanawha.[25]

George Rogers Clark Such were the beginnings of Kentucky and Tennessee, and such was the progress already made to the west of the mountains, when the next and longest step was taken by George Rogers Clark. During the years 1776 and 1777, Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, was busily engaged in preparing a general attack of Indian tribes upon the northwestern frontier. Such concerted action among these barbarians was difficult to organize, and the moral effect of Lord Dunmore’s war doubtless served to postpone it. There were isolated assaults, however, upon Boonesborough and Wheeling and in the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh. While Hamilton was thus scheming, a gallant young Virginian was preparing an effective counter-stroke. In the late autumn of 1777, George Rogers Clark, then just twenty-five years old, was making his way back from Kentucky along the Wilderness Road, and heard with exultation the news of Burgoyne’s surrender. Clark was a man of bold originality. He had been well educated by that excellent Scotch schoolmaster, Donald Robertson, among whose pupils was James Madison. In 1772, Clark was practising the profession of a land surveyor upon the upper Ohio, and he rendered valuable service as a scout in the campaign of the Great Kanawha. For skill in woodcraft, as for indomitable perseverance and courage, he had few equals. He was a man of picturesque and stately presence, like an old Norse viking, tall and massive, with ruddy cheeks, auburn hair, and piercing blue eyes sunk deep under thick yellow brows.

Clark’s conquest of the northwestern territory, 1778 When he heard of the “convention” of Saratoga, Clark was meditating a stroke as momentous in the annals of the Mississippi valley as Burgoyne’s overthrow in the annals of the Hudson. He had sent spies through the Illinois country, without giving them any inkling of his purpose, and from what he could gather from their reports he had made up his mind that by a bold and sudden movement the whole region could be secured and the British commander checkmated. On arriving in Virginia, he laid his scheme before Governor Patrick Henry; and Jefferson, Wythe, and Madison were also taken into his confidence. The plan met with warm approval; but as secrecy and dispatch were indispensable, it would not do to consult the legislature, and little could be done beyond authorizing the adventurous young man to raise a force of 350 men and collect material of war at Pittsburgh. People supposed that his object was merely to defend the Kentucky settlements. Clark had a hard winter’s work in enlisting men, but at length, in May, 1778, having collected a flotilla of boats and a few pieces of light artillery, he started from Pittsburgh with 180 picked riflemen, and rowed swiftly down the Ohio river a thousand miles to its junction with the Mississippi. The British garrison at Kaskaskia had been removed, to strengthen the posts at Detroit and Niagara, and the town was an easy prey. Hiding his boats in a creek, Clark marched across the prairie, and seized the place without resistance. The French inhabitants were not ill-disposed toward the change, especially when they heard of the new alliance between the United States and Louis XVI., and Clark showed consummate skill in playing upon their feelings. Cahokia and two other neighbouring villages were easily persuaded to submit, and the Catholic priest Gibault volunteered to carry Clark’s proposals to Vincennes, on the Wabash; upon receiving the message this important post likewise submitted. As Clark had secured the friendship of the Spanish commandant at St. Louis, he felt secure from molestation for the present, and sent a party home to Virginia with the news of his bloodless conquest. The territory north of the Ohio was thus annexed to Virginia as the “county” of Illinois, and a force of 500 men was raised for its defence.

Capture of Vincennes, Feb. 23, 1779 When these proceedings came to the ears of Colonel Hamilton, at Detroit, he started out with a little army of about 500 men, regulars, Tories, and Indians, and after a march of seventy days through the primeval forest reached Vincennes, and took possession of it. He spent the winter intriguing with the Indian tribes, and threatened the Spanish governor at St. Louis with dire vengeance if he should lend aid or countenance to the nefarious proceedings of the American rebels. Meanwhile, the crafty Virginian was busily at work. Sending a few boats, with light artillery and provisions, to ascend the Ohio and Wabash, Clark started overland from Kaskaskia with 130 men; and after an arduous winter march of sixteen days across the drowned lands in what is now the state of Illinois, he appeared before Vincennes in time to pick up his boats and cannon. In the evening of February 23d the town surrendered, and the townspeople willingly assisted in the assault upon the fort. After a brisk cannonade and musket-fire for twenty hours, Hamilton surrendered at discretion, and British authority in this region was forever at an end. An expedition descending from Pittsburgh in boats had already captured Natchez and ousted the British from the lower Mississippi. Shortly after, the Cherokees and other Indians whom Hamilton had incited to take the war-path were overwhelmed by Colonel Shelby, and on the upper Ohio and Alleghany the Indian country was so thoroughly devastated by Colonel Brodhead that all along the frontier there reigned a profound peace, instead of the intended carnival of burning and scalping.

Settlement of middle Tennessee The stream of immigration now began to flow steadily. Fort Jefferson was established on the Mississippi river to guard the mouth of the Ohio. Another fortress, higher up on the beautiful river which La Salle had discovered and Clark had conquered became the site of Louisville, so named in honour of our ally, the French king. James Robertson again appeared on the scene, and became the foremost pioneer in middle Tennessee, as he had already led the colonization of the eastern part of that great state. On a bold bluff on the southern bank of the Cumberland river, Robertson founded a city, which took its name from the General Nash who fell in the battle of Germantown; and among the cities of the fair South there is to-day none more thriving than Nashville. Thus by degrees was our grasp firmly fastened upon the western country, and year by year it grew stronger.

CLARK’S FINAL SUMMONS TO HAMILTON

See Transcription

Importance of Clark’s conquest In the gallery of our national heroes, George Rogers Clark deserves a conspicuous and honourable place. It was due to his boldness and sagacity that when our commissioners at Paris, in 1782, were engaged in their difficult and delicate work of thwarting our not too friendly French ally, while arranging terms of peace with the British enemy, the fortified posts on the Mississippi and the Wabash were held by American garrisons. Possession is said to be nine points in the law, and while Spain and France were intriguing to keep us out of the Mississippi valley, we were in possession of it. The military enterprise of Clark was crowned by the diplomacy of Jay.[26] The four cardinal events in the history of our western frontier during the Revolution are: (1) the defeat of the Shawnees and their allies at Point Pleasant in 1774; (2) the defeat of the Cherokees on the Watauga in 1776; (3) Clark’s conquest of the Illinois country in 1778-79; (4) the detection and thwarting of the French diplomacy in 1782 by Jay. When Washington took command of the Continental army at Cambridge, in 1775, the population and jurisdiction of the thirteen united commonwealths scarcely reached beyond the Alleghanies; it was due to the series of events here briefly recounted that when he laid down his command at Annapolis, in 1783, the domain of the independent United States was bounded on the west by the Mississippi river.

Clark’s last years were spent in poverty and obscurity at his sister’s home, near Louisville, where he died in 1818. It was his younger brother, William Clark, who in company with Meriwether Lewis made the famous expedition to the Columbia river in 1804, thus giving the United States a hold upon Oregon.

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Marauding expeditionsTo return to our story,—Lord George Germain’s plan for breaking the spirit of the Americans, in so far as it depended upon the barbarous aid which his Indian allies could render, had not thus far proved very successful. Terrible damage had been wrought on the frontier, especially in Pennsylvania and New York, but the net result had been to weaken the Indians and loosen the hold of the British upon the continent, while the American position was on the whole strengthened. The warfare which the British themselves conducted in the north after the Newport campaign degenerated into a series of marauding expeditions unworthy of civilized soldiers. They seem to have learned a bad lesson from their savage allies. While Sir Henry Clinton’s force was beleaguered in New York, he now and then found opportunities for detaching some small force by sea, to burn and plunder defenceless villages on the coast, in accordance with Lord George’s instructions. During the autumn of 1778 the pretty island of Martha’s Vineyard was plundered from end to end, the towns of New Bedford and Fair Haven, with all the shipping in their harbours, were burned, and similar havoc was wrought on the coast of New Jersey. At Old Tappan some American dragoons, asleep in a barn, were captured by Sir Charles Grey’s troops,—and thirty-seven of them were bayoneted in cold blood. Fifty-five light infantry belonging to Pulaski’s legion were similarly surprised at night by Captain Ferguson and all but five were massacred. In May, 1779, General Mathew was sent with 2,500 men to Virginia, where he sacked the towns of Portsmouth and Norfolk, with cruelties worthy of a mediÆval freebooter. Tryon’s proceedings, July, 1779In July the enterprising Tryon conducted a raiding expedition along the coast of Connecticut. At New Haven he burned the ships in the harbour and two or three streets of warehouses, and slew several citizens; his intention was to burn the whole town, but the neighbouring yeomanry quickly swarmed in and drove the British to their ships. Next day the British landed at Fairfield and utterly destroyed it. Next they burned Green Farms and then Norwalk. After this, just as they were about to proceed against New London, they were suddenly recalled to New York by bad news.

In so far as these barbarous raids had any assignable military purpose, it was hoped that they might induce Washington to weaken his force at the Highlands by sending troops into Connecticut to protect the private property and chastise the marauders. After the destruction of the Highland forts in October, 1777, the defence of this most important position had been entrusted to the powerful fortifications lately erected at West Point. Clinton captures the fortress at Stony Point, May 31, 1779A little lower down the river two small but very strong forts, at Stony Point on the right bank and at Verplanck’s Point on the left, guarded the entrance to the Highlands. While the fort at Stony Point was building, Sir Henry Clinton came up the river and captured it, and then, with the aid of its batteries, subdued the opposite citadel also. Stony Point was a rocky promontory washed on three sides by the waters of the Hudson. It was separated from the mainland by a deep morass, over which ran a narrow causeway that was covered at high tide, but might be crossed when the water was low. This natural stronghold was armed with heavy batteries which commanded the morass, with its causeway, and the river; and the British garrisoned it with six hundred men, and built two additional lines of fortification, rendering it well-nigh impregnable.

The storming of Stony Point, July 16, 1779 The acquisition of this spot seemed like the auspicious beginning of a summer campaign for Clinton’s army, which had been cooped up in New York ever since the battle of Monmouth. To have kept on and captured West Point would have gone a long way toward retrieving the disaster of Saratoga, but Washington’s force was so well disposed that Clinton did not venture to attempt so much as this. Such hopes, moreover, as he may have based upon the Connecticut raids proved entirely delusive. Washington’s method of relieving Connecticut and destroying Clinton’s scheme was different from what was expected. Among his generals was one whom the soldiers called “Mad Anthony” for his desperate bravery, but there was much more method than madness about Anthony Wayne. For the union of impetuous valour with a quick eye and a cool head, he was second to none. Twelve hundred light infantry were put at his disposal. Every dog within three miles was slaughtered, that no indiscreet bark might alarm the garrison. Not a gun was loaded, lest some untimely shot betray the approaching column. The bayonet was now to be put to more warlike use than the roasting of meat before a camp-fire. At midnight of the 15th of July the Americans crossed the causeway at low tide, and were close upon the outworks before their advance was discovered. The garrison sprang to arms, and a heavy fire was opened from the batteries, but Wayne’s rush was rapid and sure. In two solid columns the Americans came up the slope so swiftly that the grape-shot made few victims. Shoulder to shoulder, in resistless mass, like the Theban phalanx of Epaminondas, they pressed over the works, heedless of obstacles, and within a few minutes the garrison surrendered at discretion. In this assault the Americans lost fifteen killed and eighty-three wounded, and the British sixty-three killed. The rest of the garrison, 553 in number, including the wounded, were made prisoners, and not a man was killed in cold blood, though the shameful scenes in Virginia were fresh in men’s memories, and the embers of Fairfield and Norwalk still smouldered. The contemporary British historian Stedman praises Wayne for his humanity, and thinks that he “would have been fully justified in putting the garrison to the sword;” but certainly no laws or usages of war that have ever obtained among the people of the United States would have justified such a barbarous proceeding.[27]

HOME OF ANTHONY WAYNE

Evacuation of Stony Point The capture of Stony Point served the desired purpose of relieving Connecticut, but the Americans held it but three days. Clinton at once drew his forces together and came up the Hudson, hoping to entice Washington into risking a battle for the sake of keeping his hold upon Stony Point. But Washington knew better than to do so. In case of defeat he would run risk of losing the far more important position at West Point. He was not the man to hazard his main citadel for the sake of an outpost. Finding that it would take more men than he could spare to defend Stony Point against a combined attack by land and water, he ordered it to be evacuated. The works were all destroyed, and the garrison, with the cannon and stores, withdrawn into the Highlands. Sir Henry took possession of the place and held it for some time, but did not venture to advance against Washington.

Henry Lee’s exploit at Paulus Hook. To give the British general a wholesome sense of his adversary’s vigilance, a blow was struck in an unexpected quarter. At Paulus Hook, on the site of the present Jersey City, the British had a very strong fort. The “Hook” was a long low neck of land reaching out into the Hudson. A sandy isthmus, severed by a barely fordable creek, connected it with the mainland. Within the line of the creek, a deep ditch had been dug across the whole isthmus, and this could only be crossed by means of a drawbridge. Within the ditch were two lines of intrenchments. The place was garrisoned by 500 men, but, relying on the strength of their works and their distance from the American lines, the garrison had grown somewhat careless. This fact was made known to Washington by Major Henry Lee, who volunteered to surprise the fort. On the night of the 18th of August, at the head of 300 picked men, Lee crossed the creek which divided Paulus Hook from the mainland. A foraging expedition had been sent out in the course of the day, and as the Americans approached they were at first mistaken by the sentinels for the foragers returning. Favoured by this mistake, they surmounted all the obstacles and got possession of the fort in a twinkling. Alarm guns, quickly answered by the ships in the river and the forts on the New York side, warned them to retreat as fast as they had come, but not until Lee had secured 159 prisoners, whom he carried off safely to the Highlands, losing of his own men only two killed and three wounded. This exploit, worthy of the good Lord James Douglas, has no military significance save for its example of skill and boldness; but it deserves mention for the personal interest which must ever attach to its author. In the youthful correspondence of Washington, mention is made of a “Lowland Beauty” for whom he entertained an unrequited passion. This lady married a member of the illustrious Virginian family to which Richard Henry Lee belonged. Her son, the hero of Paulus Hook, was always a favourite with Washington, and for his dashing exploits in the later years of the revolutionary war became endeared to the American people as “Light Horse Harry.” His noble son, Robert Edward Lee, has taken rank among the foremost generals of modern times.

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