The American Revolution Part 30

[Sidenote: Lord Dunmore's War, 1774]

[Sidenote: Logan and Cresap]

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 Tagahjute, 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. Captain 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.sacre 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 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 a.s.sociated was some time afterwards tomahawked by a brother Indian, in the course of a drunken affray.

[Sidenote: Battle of Point Pleasant and its consequences]

The war thus ushered in by the Yellow Creek ma.s.sacre 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 pa.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Andrew Lewis]

[Sidenote: Settlement of Kentucky]

In 1775, Richard Henderson of North Carolina purchased from the Cherokees the tract between the Kentucky and c.u.mberland 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 inst.i.tuted, 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.

[Sidenote: and of eastern Tennessee]

[Sidenote: Defeat of the Cherokees on the Watauga]

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. In 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 c.u.mberland rivers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE COUNTRY BEHIND THE MOUNTAINS, 1770-80.]

[Sidenote: Its consequences]

Robertson 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]

[Sidenote: 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 a.s.saults, 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 ma.s.sive, with ruddy cheeks, auburn hair, and piercing blue eyes sunk deep under thick yellow brows.

[Sidenote: 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 friends.h.i.+p 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.

[Sidenote: 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 a.s.sisted in the a.s.sault 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.

[Sidenote: 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 c.u.mberland 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLARK'S FINAL SUMMONS TO HAMILTON

_Colonel Clarks Compliments to Mr Hamilton and begs leave to inform him that Col. Clark will not agree to any other Terms than that of Mr Hamilton's Surendering himself and Garrison, Prisoners at Discretion._

_If Mr Hamilton is Desirous of a Conferance with Col.

Clark he will meet him at the Church with Capt^n Helms._

_Feb 24th 1779 Ge Clark_ ]

[Sidenote: 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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.

[Sidenote: Marauding expeditions]

[Sidenote: Tryon's proceedings, July, 1779]

To 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 ma.s.sacred. 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 mediaeval freebooter. In July the enterprising Tryon conducted a raiding expedition along the coast of Connecticut. At New Haven he burned the s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps. 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.

[Sidenote: Clinton captures the fortress at Stony Point, May 31, 1779]

In so far as these barbarous raids had any a.s.signable military purpose, it was hoped that they might induce Was.h.i.+ngton 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. A 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 mora.s.s, 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 mora.s.s, 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.

[Portrait: Anthony Wayne]

[Sidenote: 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 Was.h.i.+ngton'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.

Was.h.i.+ngton'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 ma.s.s, 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 a.s.sault 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOME OF ANTHONY WAYNE]

[Sidenote: 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 Was.h.i.+ngton into risking a battle for the sake of keeping his hold upon Stony Point. But Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton.

[Portrait: Henry Lee]