mm mmW - 'mm W m m vO o. -j^/. v-^ :%''% S^ ^T ■s- .aV '^ ,^' C^<^. oV ^^J^ ^ ■>. .\^' V^. .-N^ ^ ,0-' 8^ '->, A ■^ :^\d^ <^ '. "^ v'-' A' -. ..^^ ■%. >.^' .^' -^. ■'>- v-^ 0- .. »-, < ' V , / • ,^^ ■'''^. •■is '^< ^^' •''■P. ( NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMER- ICA. With Bibliographical and Descriptive Essays on its Historical Sources and Authorities. Profusely illus- trated with portraits, maps, facsimiles, etc. Edited by Justin WiNsoR, Librarian of Harvard University, with the cooperation of a Committee from the Massachusetts Historical Society, and with the aid of other learned Societies, in eight royal 8vo volumes. Each volume, net, $5.50; sheep, 7iet, $6.50; half morocco, net, $7.50. (Sold only by subscription for ike entire set.) READER'S HANDBOOK OF THE AMERICAN REV- OLUTION. i6mo, $1.25. WAS SHAKESPEARE SHAPLEIGH? i6mo, rubri- cated parcliment paper, 75 cents. CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, atid how he received and imparted the Spirit of Discovery. With portraits and maps. 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. CARTIER TO FRONTENAC. A Study of Geographical Discovery in the interior of North America, in its his- torical relations, 1534-1700. With full cartographical Illustrations from Contemporary Sources. 8vo, gilt top, f 4.00. THE MISSISSIPPI BASIN. The Struggle in .America be- tween England and France, 1697-1763. With full car- tographical Illustrations from Contemporary Sources. Svo, gilt top, J4.00. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT: The Struggle for the Trans-Ailepiheny Region, 1763-1797. With full carto- graphical Illustrations from Contemporary Sources. Svo, $4.00. ' HOUr.HTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, Boston and New York. Cf)e ^Mesttoarli ^o\)ement THE COLONIES AND THE REPUBLIC WEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES 1 763-1 798 WITH- FULL CARTOGRAPHICAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM CONTEMPORARY SOURCES i/ JUSTIN WINSOR BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1897 NOV S2 1897 Copyright, 1897, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. <^ '^i" The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotypcd and Printed by II. 0. Uoughton & Company. Sir HENEY W. DYKE ACLAND, Bart., K. C. B., D. C. L., LL. D., F. R. S., Honorary Physician to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. My dear Sir Henry, — When a few clays ago at the Bodleian you addressed a party of sixty American librarians, you showed what I have long known, that you have a kind appreciation of my countrymen, with some of whom your friendship has lasted from the time when you accompanied the l*riiice of Wales to the States in 1860. You have since then traversed our land on other visits, during which you have evinced to me your interest in our history, particularly when some years ago we together looked over the ground hallowed by the devotion of Lady Hai'riet Acland. I therefore like to connect your name with this book, which is a story of how much of our territorial integrity we owe to British forbearance, when the false-hearted diplomacy of France and Spain would have despoiled us. Ever your friend. Great Malvern, Worcestershire, August S, 18'J7. CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER I. PAGE An Introductory Survey 1 CHAPTER II. The Property Line, 1763-1764 4 Illustrations : Guy Johnson's Map of the Fort Stanwix Line, 15 ; Hutchins's Map of the Indiana Grant, 17 ; Guy Johnson's Map of the Country of the Six Nations, 18, 19. CHAPTER III. Louisiana, Florida, and the Illinois Country, 1763-1768 . . 22 Illustrations : Hutchins's Map of the American Bottom, 27 ; Country of the Southern Indians (1762), 31 ; Evans and Pow- nall's Map of the Northwest, 39. CHAPTER IV. The Kentucky Region, 1767-1774 43 Illustrations : Portrait of Daniel Boone, 45 ; View of Pitts- burg, 51 ; Kitcliin's Map of Pennsylvania, 54, 55. CHAPTER V. The Quebec Bill and the Dunmore War, 1774 63 Illustration : Cr^vecoeur's Map of the Scioto Valley, 67. CHAPTER VI. South of the Ohio, 1769-1776 77 Illustrations : Boonesborough Fort, 83 ; Map of Colonel An- drew Williamson's Campaign in the Cherokee Country, 94, 95o vi CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER A^II. The Fortunes of the Mississippi, 1766-1777 101 Illustrations : Portrait of Jonathan Carver, 102 ; Carver's Map of his Proposed Colonies, 105 ; Map of the Vicinity of New Orleans (1778), 109. CHAPTER VIII. George Rogers Clark, Arbiter and Suppliant, 1776-1779 . . 116 Illustration : Map of the Rapids of the Ohio, 119. CHAPTER IX. The Sinister Purposes of France, 1774-1779 144 CHAPTER X. A Year of Suspense, 1780 166 Illustration : Fortifications of St. Louis, 172, 173. CHAPTER XI. East and West, 1781 188 Illustration : ]\Iap of the Disputed Boundaries of Penusylvauia and Virginia, 197. CHAPTER XII. Peace, 1782 203 Illustrations : Bonne's Map of the Thirteen United States, bounded by the Allcghanies, 211 ; Dunn's Map of the Source of the Mississippi (1776), 214 ; Carver's Map of the Source of the Mississippi, 215. CHAPTER XIII. The Insecurity of the Northwest, 1783-1787 225 Illustrations : Imlay's :\Iap of Kentucky, 249 ; Washington's Sketcli of the Potomac Divide, 253 ; Hockewelder's MS. Map of the IMuskingnni and Cuyahoga Valleys, 255 ; Cr^vecccnr's Map of tlic Western Country, with the Divisions under Jeffer- son's Ordinance, 259 ; View of Fort Mcintosh, 269. CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER XIV. The Northwest Occupied, 178G-1790 280 Illustrations : Map of the Ohio Company's Purchase by Collot, 291 ; View of Fort Harmar, 293 ; Crevecceur's Map of the Ohio Country, 294, 295 ; Chart of the Ohio River, 297 ; Creve- cceur's Map of the Mouth of the Muskingum, 300, 301 ; Har- ris's Map of Marietta, 303 ; CoUot's View of Marietta, 305 ; View of the Campus Martins, 307 ; Barlow's Map of the Ohio Company's Purchase, 312, 313 ; Sketch of Fitch's Map of the Northwest, 322. CHAPTER XV. [IE Southwest Insecure, 1783-1786 .... Illustration : Filson's Map of Kentucky, 332, 333. 326 CHAPTER XVI. fiE Spanish Question, 1787-1789 351 Illustrations : Plan of New Madrid, 363 ; Jedediah Morse's Map of the Northwest, 364, 365. CHAPTER XVII. ^certainties in the Southwest, 1790 375 Illustrations : Morse's Map of Georgia, 377 ; Samuel Lewis's Map of the Alabama Region, 381 ; Country of the Creeks, 383 ; Pond's Map of the Grand Portage, 391 ; Morse's Map of the Northwest Coast, 393. CHAPTER XVIII. tE Conditions of 1790 Illustrations : Portrait of Brissot, 403 ; Ohio Flatboat, 412. 398 CHAPTER XIX. '^rmar's and St. Clair's Campaigns, 1790-1791 Illustration : Map of Moravian Settlements, 423. 415 CHAPTER XX. E Northwest Tribes at Last Defeated, 1792-1794 .... 434 Illustrations : Map of Pittsburg and Wayne's Camp, 445 ; View of Niagara River, 449 ; Camp at Greenville, 452. viii CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER XXI. Jay's Treaty and the Territorial Integrity of the North- west Secured, 1794~179() 4(,. Illustrations : Guthrie's Map of Lake Sviperior and the Grand Portage, 469 ; Pond's Map of the Source of the Mississippi, 471 ; Lewis's Map of the Genesee Country, 475. CHAPTER XXn. Wayne's Treaty and the New Northwest, 1794-1797 .... 4K Illustrations : Grants and Reservations in the Ohio Country, 489 ; Morse's Map of the Northwestern Territory, 492, 493 ; Scott's Northwest Territory, 494, 495 ; Rufus Putnam's Map of Ohio, 496, 497 ; The Genesee Country, 499; The Mohawk and Wood Creek Route, 501 ; Map of the Lake Erie Route, 503 ; Scott's Northwest Territory, 505 ; Heckewelder's Map of the Alleg'liany and Big Beaver Rivers, 507 ; Map of Western Routes, 509 ; Collot's Map of Pittsburg and Wheeling, 510 ; Morse's Map of Pennsylvania, 513. CHAPTER XXIII. The Unrest of the Southwest, 1791-1794 5: Illustrations : Map of the Tennessee Government, 517 ; Tlie Chickasaw Country, 522 ; Map of Kentucky, 524, 525 ; Bar- ker's Map of Kentuckj', 527 ; Toulmin's Map of Kentucky, 529 ; Spanish ]\Iap of the Grand Portage, 534, 535 ; River of the West, 537 ; Map of the Tennessee Region, 545. CHAPTER XXIV. Pincknf:y's Treaty and the Kentucky Intrigue, 1795-1796 . . 5tV- CHAPTER XXV. The United States Completed, 1790-1798 . 5.' INDEX 5 THE WESTWARD ^MOVEMENT. CHAPTER I. AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY. The public and secret treaties of 1763 left France without a foothold on the American main. By the terms of the Peace of Paris, the Bourbon flag' fluttered in the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The suspicion of what lay beyond these little fisliing stations at the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence had two centuries and a half before prompted the ambition of France to penetrate the continent by the great river of Canada. A century later her pioneers, following that current to its upper sources, had passed on to the Mississipjn, which forms the central artery of the continent. Here, a third of the way across the land's broad ex})anse, and not suspecting the greater dis- tance beyond, France had nurtured the hope of ascentling the western affluents of that parent stream, till she had com- passed, with her survey and jurisdiction, a greater France, stretching from the Alleghanies to the South Sea. This expec- tation had been dashed. Where she had counted upon seeing her royal standard shadowing soil and native alike, her flag- was now seen drooping at a few posts beyond the Mississippi, and awaiting" the demands of Spain to lower it. During the period which followed the Treaty of Ryswick 1097), a scheme had often been broached among the English, »nt liad never prospered, which looked to thwarting the policy if France in the Great Valley. Tliis was to unite England and Spain in a movement to drive the French from tlie contiiu'ut, -nd divide the northern parts of the New World between their -spective crowns. This conjunction liad now come to pass, )ut not by any such international pact. 2 AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY. In the same treaty of 170|3, Great Britain had acknowledge . a limit to the western exte^ion of her seaboard colonies 1 accepting the Mississippi Riveras a boundary of her Americ; possessions. * The Atlantic colonies, with their impractical ' sea-to-sea charters, took no exception to such a reasonable ci: tailment of their western limits ; but when the king's proclami- tion followed, and the colonies found themselves confined to t ■■ seaward slope of the Appalachians, their western extensi- . made crown territory to be given over to the uses of ih>: Indians, and all attempts to occupy it forbidden, — there wei ■ signs of discontent which were easily linked with the resentme: i that defeated the Stamp Act. So the demand for a wester, i^ existence was a part of the first pulsation of resistance to t ■ mother country, and harbingered the American Revolution. To keep the opposition, which had thus been raised, with bounds, and once more to apply a territorial check, the Queb;i bill, in 1774, afforded one of the weighty charges, colored wi; current political rancor, which made up the Declaration of 1 dependence. Britain had always denied that New France coi. cut athwart her colonial charters by any natural, geographic definition and extend to the Ohio and Mississippi; but in t Quebec bill it served her purpose to assume that Canada h ■. of right that convenient extension. In. the war which ensued, Virginia took the lead which s! ' had always taken in respect to this western region, and b • expedition under George Rogers Clark rendered it easier for t" • American commissioners, who negotiated the treaty of 1782, Xinclude this amjile domain within the American union, doing this they loyally defeated the intrigues of all the otli parties to the general treaty, — France, whom in the earlier wr . with England's help, the colonies had overcome ; Englan from whom,vwith French assistance, they had gained their inc pendence ; anclvSpain, whose insidious and vacillating poli they were yet-^nrW^r and successfully to combat. Each these powers had ^hoped to curtail the ambition of the youi Republic. Vergennes had succeeded in crippling England, b he feared the stalwart figure of the young nation born of En land's misfortune. He was ready, if he could, to use Englai in her new complacency to cripple the youthful America. The treaty of Independence was not so effective but th ' f AN INTRODUCTORY SURVEY. 8 there soon followed other efforts to prevent for a while the rounding out of the Republic to its legitimate bounds. Eng- land, on the side of Canada, and Spain, on the side of Louisiana, sought to regain something they had lost. The retention by Great Britain of the lake posts, including as they hoped the lake front, though with some show of right, was disgraced by base intrigues with Kentucky. All her schemes were brought to an end by Jay in the treaty of 1794. The occupation of the eastern bank of the Mississippi from the Yazoo country, southward, by Spain, and the plotting of Miro with Wilkinson and his associates to establish a Spanish protectorate south of the Ohio, were defeated at last by the treaty of San Lorenzo in 1795. Adding the time which was necessary to carry out these treaties, it is now an even hundred years since the title of the United States to this vast region lying between the Appala- chians, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi was unmistakably confirmed. For more than thirty years after the peace of 1763, the colonies and the Republic struggled to maintain the Ameri- can spirit on this eastern-central area of the continent. Inde- pendence achieved, for twelve or fifteen years the United States strove to round out its territorial promise. The history of this western region during all these years was constantly moulded by its geography, and it is the purpose of the present volume to show the ever varying aspects of this struggle. To establish what was called the Property Line was the first signal step taken in behalf of the seaboard to assert a right to enter upon this teri-itory, and to that initiatory measure we devote the opening of the story. CHAPTER II. THE PROPERTY LINE. 1763-1764. Two yeai's before the Treaty of Paris (1763), James Otis had argued in Boston against issuing Writs of Assistance to detect evasions of the revenue. A service of law, which in England had been constantly accepted, aroused in an unwilling people a rebellious spirit. How to restrain this threatening impulse was already a serious question ; and there was regret with some that Canada had not been left at the peace in French hands, to remain a menace to the colonies, and hold them dejjendent on England's protection. The existence of this recalcitrant temper had been often cited in the arguments of those who preferred Guadaloupe to Canada in the settling the account with France. Lookers-on in the colonies, like Kalm, had perceived the force of this view. Choiseul saw it, and predicted the fatal outcome of England's final choice. Vergennes, chagrined at the drop in political influence which France had experienced, welcomed this hope of disaster to an ancient rival of France, which her sacrifice of Canada might produce. Colden and others in the colonies were conscious that the loyal subjects of England must face new hazards when the British flag was hoisted at Quebec. This New Yorker repre- sented to the Board of Trade in London that New England was the nursery of this threatening passion, and that it was neces- sary, if her republican hopes were to be chilled, to curtail the Yankees' bounds by extending New York to the Connecticut River. In September, 1764, word reached Albany that the king in council had stretched the jurisdiction of New York over what is now known as Vermont. Francis Bernard went farther. He not only urged this extension to the Connecticut, but he wished that the boundaries of the rest of New Enoland should THE FRENCH AND INDIAN. 5 be redistributed, in a sort of gerrymandering waj', so as to insure a government majority in every part, and during 1766 and 1767 he was in close correspondence with the home govern- ment on this point. Murray, who had been appointed governor at Quebec in October, 1763, did not reach his post till August of the next year. It was not long before he was making reports to the home government which w^ere startling on two points. One was that the British then in Canada " were the meanest and most immoral people he ever saw% while the [French] Canadians were frugal, industrious, and moral, and had become reconciled to the English rule." The report also anticipated the action which, ten years later, the daring of the seaboard colonies forced the English ministry to take in the Quebec bill. Murray's proposition was to annex the region lying beyond the Allegha- nies to Canada, as a means of overawing the older colonies. The gentleness of Murray with the Canadians was in rather painful contrast with Gage's plan of using them against the Indians. He advised Bradstreet (May 3, 1764) "to employ them in every service that can render them the most obnoxious to the Indians. Whatever is to be done most disagreeable to the Indians, let the Canadians have a large share in it. This will convince them, if anything will, how vain their hopes are of success from that quarter." If this policy was inspired by the home government, as well as another policy wdiich was aimed at the repression of the natural subjects of the crow^n, one could well have predicted the later alliance of 1778. A recent historian, in his I^.rjx/nsion of England, speaks of the prevalence in the mother country at this time of a " not unnatural bitterness," which accompanied the fear that Britain had enabled her colonies to do without her. Seeley once again, writing of the century of English history from Louis XIY. to Napoleon, advises the English reader to recognize the fact that his countiy's real history during tliis interval was in the New World, where England successively fought France and her own colonies, in the effort to sustain her power. AVith this in mind, the student of British rule would not find, he adds, "that century of English histoiy so iminteresting." The fall of Xew France lind produced sharp effects upon the 6 THE PROPERTY LINE. relations of America and England. The war had increased the British debt by £850,000,000. The rights of the mother coun- try, which affected the commerce and industry of her colonies, were at this time both brutal and mercenary. Viscount Bury says : " It may fairly be stated that the advantage reaped by a few shipowners from the operation of the navigation laws was purchased by an actual money expenditure of more than £200,000,000, in less than half a century." England was con- tent to let the American pioneers break out the paths for a newer and perhaps greater Britain ; but it was her policy first of all to make these plodders of the wilderness pay tribute to the stay-at-home merchant. That such injustice was according to law and precedent did not meet the questions which the Americans raised, — questions such as are constantly needing adjustment to newer environments. The population in the seaboard colonies was doubling, as Franklin cominited, in twenty-five years. The bonds of inter- colonial sympathies were strengthening, and the designations of New Englander and Virginian were beginning to give place to American. With these conditions among the colonists^ it was not unnatural that a proposition of the ministry to tax them on a system repellent to colonial views created distrust. A period of doubt is always one of rumors. Bernard's plea for readjust- ing the New England bounds made John Adams and others suspect that the British government intended to revoke the colonial charters and make the colonies royal provinces. The terms of the royal proclamation of 1763, which Gage received in New York on November 30, indicated, as already said, that under the new dispensation the westward extension of the colonies' bounds would be curtailed by the mountains, and the spaces of the Great Valley would be confirmed to savagery. There were further symptoms of this in the movement now going on in Pennsylvania to induce the king to recompense its proprietary and make it a royal domain. The king might indeed be preferable to a stubborn master. If the heady motions of the ministry were without tact, there was some warrant for its belief that the colonies, despite acts of trade and navigation, were prosperous enough to share the burdens of the mother country. Maryland and Virginia were dispatching large shipments of wheat to England. Philadel- THE PROCLAMATION OF 17 63. 7 pliia alone, the readiest port for sliipi^ing such products as came over the mountains, was now sending abroad four hundred ves- sels annually carrying exports to the value of £700,000. New England built and sent across the sea for sale fifty ships a year. If such things indicated to the government a source of reve- nue, it was beginning to warn some observers that the colonies had it quite within their power to sustain a practical autonomy. When, in 1762, the ministry secured an uncompromising adlier- ent in making William Franklin the governor of New Jersey, the act had no such effect upon his father, and it was not long- before Benjamin Franklin was warning the ministry that " griev- ous tyranny and oppression " might drive his compatriots to revolt. The colonies had indeed struggled on, in facing the French, without cohesion ; but injustice — and it mattered little whether it was real or imagined — was yet to bind them toaether, as the dangers of a common foe had never done. The immediate struggle over the Stamp Act, which was closed by its repeal in 1766, produced for a time at least that political quiet which induces enterprise. The attention of the pioneers was again drawn to the western movement, and the hu- mane spirit once again dwelt on the prohibition which the luckless proclamation of 1763 had put upon the ardent pioneer. Bouquet, falling in with the views of the ministry, was now urg- ing- that all grants west of the mountains should be annulled. This would include the abolishment of the Ohio Company, and would very closely affect the Virginia gentlemen. It was also Bouquet's opinion that the policing of this west- ern wilderness and the enforcement of the proclamation should T)e intrusted to the military. There was need of it. Since Governor Penn in June, 1765, had again opened the Indian trade by proclamation, the packmen had crossed the moun- tains, and a following of vagabonds was occasionally i)rovoking the Indians to retaliate for the wrongs which were done them. Thus occasional scenes of devastation on the frontiers of Penn- sylvania and Virginia were calling- for mutual ex])lanations between the white and the red man ; still the great body of the Indians had, since the close of Pontiac's war, ceased their havoc. The trouble was mainly with the whites. " I am really vexed," wrote Gage to Johnson (May 5, 1766), " at the behavior of the lawless banditti upon the borders ; and what aggravates the 8 THE PROPERTY LINE. more is the difficulty to bring them to punishment." There was a limit to the Indian forbearance, but there were ten years yet to pass before the warwhoops of the Dunmore turmoil awoke the echoes of the Ohio woods. During this interval the main dispute of the frontiers, be- tween the home government and the natives, was how to protect the hunting-grounds of the tribes and at the same time give some scope to the ambition of the pioneer. Sir William John- son, as Indian agent, had faced hard problems before ; but he never had a more difficult question than that which now con- fronted him. The French had indeed publicly withdrawn from the situation, but he could not divest himself of the belief that they were still exerting a clandestine influence, which was more difficult to deal with. A part of this influence lay in the ex- periences of the Indians with the French. " When I was in Canada," said Gage, " I could not find that the French had ever purchased land of the Indians, — only settled amongst them by permission and desire." Again he writes to Johnson, " We are plagued everywhere about lands. The French had never any dispute with the Indians about them, though they never purchased a single acre ; and I believe the Indians have made difficulty with us because we have gone on a different plan." Things had now come to such a pass on the frontier that Johnson saw the necessity of establishing some definite line of separation between the colonies and their Indian neighbors, and of maintaining it. When a savage said to him that the Eng- lish always stole the Indian lands by the rum bottle, Johnson knew well all that it implied. With a purpose on each side, the one to sell and the other to buy, and with liquor as the barter- ing medium, nothing could shield the Indian from wrong. In order to make a beginning in the interests of right and to pro- mote peace, Johnson dispatched George Croghan to England to sound the government on the project of such a line ; and while Croghan was there Johnson instructed him to memorial- ize the Board of Trade about the desirability of securing land south of the Ohio to satisfy the demands of the Ohio Company, and the claims of the soldiers enlisted by Dinwiddie in 1754, under a promise of land. Preliminary to this, and for the pur- pose of bringing the Indians to terms of mutual confidence THE SOUTHERN BOUNDARY. 9 among themselves, Johnson had exerted himself to make peace between the leading tribes o£ the North and South. The Vir- ginians, as Gage wrote to Johnson some time before (March 3, 17G6), were intent on such a plan, hoping thereb}^ to prevent the Cherokees taking revenge on the Iroquois, for some murders committed by the young men of the latter. In December, 17G7, three Cherokee chiefs j^resented themselves at Johnson Hall, on this errand. The Iroquois were siunmoned, and on March 4, 17G8, the friendly pact between them was made. The movement for this boundary settlement had in the start a greater impulse at the South than at the North. It had for some time devolved upon John Stuart, as the Indian agent for the southern colonies, to deal with the Cherokees in matters touching both the whites and the savages. He had brought about a conference at Augusta, where the Creeks had ceded some territory to Georgia " in proof of the sense they have of His Majesty's goodness in forgetting past offenses." As it happened, the irresponsible conduct of the Carolina traders was rendering it necessary to act promptly, particularly if peace was to prevail among its tribes, since the whites always suffered in such times. The rivalry of the French had much conduced in the past to make the English liberal in their gra- tuities. That open rivalry failing, the generous habit of the English had slackened, and the Choctaws had not failed to remark upon it. The French at New Orleans used this neglect to point a moral for the occasion. The inroads of the wliites upon the tribal territories had always been a source of alarm to the Indians, and Stuart had, in August, 1765, urged restraining them by a fixed line. We fine], in 1766, that a deputation of Indians was in England, pleading with the government against the injustice of the colonists; and this may have had something to do with the repeated warn- ings which Stuart received in 1766 to avoid an Indian rupture. The instances of encroachment were cumulative, but the Indians took new alarm when these trespasses seemed to be made on a system, as was implied in the movement to extend the province bounds to the west. This pur])ose had been in part determined upon to protect the few settlers who were well within the 10 THE PROPERTY LINE. Indian territory. The bounds of South Carolina had been ah-eady pushed upon the country of the Catawbas, and in April and May, 1766, there had been preliminary surveys towards the Cherokees ; but in December, the running of the line had been postponed till the spring, and when completed it was not carried to the North Carolina limit. Governor Tryon had succeeded Dobbs in the executive chair of North Carolina in 1764, and it fell to him to handle this question of bounds, as it did later some more serious questions. In February, 1767, Shelburne had advised him to deal tenderly with the Indians, for tidings had reached the ministry of what he thought unaccountable risks which the people of the back country were taking in their treatment of the Indians. On the 1st of June, Tryon met the Cherokees at Tyger River, and he had what was called " a straight and good talk " with them. There were mutual phrases of concession, and each confessed that it would be much easier to live in harmony, but for the " rogues " on either side. A line planned in October, 1765, was considered, and on June 13 it was agreed upon. This line, beginning at Reedy River, ran north to Tryon Mountain, which is described as being within three or four miles of the springs of the streams flowing towards the Mississippi. Thence the line ran to Chiswell Mines, and along the Blue Ridge, east of north, sixty or seventy miles. On July 16, the decision was made public, and all who had settled beyond were warned to withdraw by New Year's of 1768. It was further determined that no grants should be made reaching within a mile of the line. There was still the region back of Virginia and extending to the Ohio, which it was even more necessary to bring under control. Hillsborough had instructed Stuart to force the Cher- okees, who were the main southern claimants of this region, to an agreement. This agent met the tribe at Hardlabor, S. C, on October 14, 1768. These Indians professed to hold the territory east and north of the Cherokee [Tennessee] River — their usual route to the Mississippi — as a hunting-ground, but were content to yield all east of the Kanawha, from its mouth upwards, and on this basis the treaty was made. This deci- sion was approved by the Board of Trade and recommended to the king. This was necessary, as it threw open to the pioneers THE VIRGINIANS. 11 the valley of the Greenbrier and other eastern affluents of the Kanawha on the west of the Atlantic divide, and was thus at variance with the royal proclamation. It was at once so far established as a " ministerial line " that Hillsborough included it in the prohibition which he had attached in April to the line farther south, when he warned all who should transgress by passing- it. He had already informed Stuart that the king- would never consent to new grants below the Kanawha, and might recall some already made. This meant much, for the king's " friends," under Grafton, had come into power, and it seemed they were to be his thralls, not his advisers. This definition of bounds by the Kanawha was only less offen- sive to Virginia than the proclamation of 1763 had been, for it was still a virtual curtailment of her territorial pretensions. Washington and others interested in the Ohio Company had looked upon the proclamation as simply an ostensible show of words for satisfying the Indians without really abridging the rights of the colony. A jiact of the government with the Indians, as the Hardlabor agreement had been, was somewhat more serious, and it was not long, as we shall see, before this difficulty was almost entirely removed. There was among the colonists of the Old Dominion a marked diiference of character between the tide-water people and those who had crossed the mountains, or had entered the Shenandoah Valley from the north. Burnaby, who had trav- ersed the colony a few years before, had found " a spirit of enterprise by no means the turn of Virginia ; " but he derived his opinion from his intercourse with the large landed propri- etors near the Atlantic rivers. These found nothing more exciting than their Christmas revelries, their hunts in the wil- derness, their county politics, and their annual shipments of tobacco at the river fronts of their plantations. They showed little disposition to develop the country away fi-om their own neighborhoods. While, however, this was true of most of the gentlemen of the lower country, there were a few among them quite ready, as we shall see, to act in the faith which Bur- naby shows he imbibed, when he speaks of the Potomac as a water-way to the great divide, and "of as great consequence as any river in America." But the development of the frontiers of Virginia was not 12 THE PROPERTY LINE. dependent on the tide-water gentry and their inferior servitors, but rather upon the virile folk, particularly the Scotch-Irish, who had broiight the valley of Virginia into subjection, and were now adding to their strength by an immigration from ]VIaryland, Pennsylvania, and north Virginia. These, crossing the divide by Braddock's road, were pushing down the Monon- gahela, and so on to the Ohio country. They carried with them all that excitable and determined character which goes with a keen-minded adherence to original sin, total depravity, predesti- nation, and election, and saw no use in an Indian but to be a target for their bullets. No region in North America at this time had the repute of being so inviting and fertile as this valley of the great eastern tributary of the Mississippi. In 1765, the present town of Pittsburg had been laid out at the forks of the Ohio, two hun- dred feet from the old fort which had sprung in air from a mine, at the time of Forbes's a]iproach in 1759, and of which we have a relic of Bouquet's enlargement in a brick bastion, still or of late preserved as a dwelling in the modern town. The place was now the centre of a frontier vigor, which kept pace with the growing influence of the anti-Quaker element in the province. It was to this latter conservative and sluggish faction that the Germans mainly adhered. These were in large part a boorish people, impregnated with the slavish traits of the redemptioners ; good farmers, who cared more for their pigs than for their own comfort, uniting thrift with habits that scorned education, clannish, and never forgetful of the Rhine. They with the Quakers had made a party in the government, which, from principle and apathy, had in the late war sorely tried the patience of Franklin and those jealous of the ci-edit of the province. There had already begun to appear a palpa- ble decline of the Quaker power l)efore the combined energies of the Philadelphia traders and the frontier woodsmen, with not a little assistance from the enlightened activities of the better class of Germans. It was the energy of this restless faction which induced Burnaby to speak of the Pennsylvanians as " by far the most enterprising people of the continent." He contrasted them with the A'irginians, who, thougli having every advantage of easier communication beyond the mountains, had shown much less spirit. CROGHAN AND THE INDIANS. 13 From Pittsburg' the current of the Ohio carried a depth of three feet for seventy-five miles, to a settlement of some sixty native families, known as the Mingo town. This was the only cluster of habitations at this time between the forks and the rapids at the modern Louisville. Beyond this Indian town, the water was deep enough. The variegated banks, with the windings of the current, offered, as Colonel Gordon, a recent voyager, had said, '* the most healthy, pleasant, commodious, and fertile spot of earth known to European people," and a little later it was represented to Hillsborough that "• no part of North America would require less encouragement for the production of naval stores and raw material for manufactures in Europe." Such praise as this was later to reach a wider public in Thomas Hutchinss Description of Virginia^ etc., when published in London. This topographer had been a cap- tain in Bouquet's army, which put an end to the Pontiac war. He first surveyed the country through which Bouquet marched in 1703-64. AYe have a map, which is the result of his obser- vations at that time and on later visits. The movement by the Monongahela and by the valley of Virginia had naturally opened the way into what is now Ken- tucky and Tennessee. All this had alarmed the Indians, and in April and May, 1768, about 1,100 w^arriors of the Iroquois, Delawares, and Shawnees, beside women and children, assem- bled at the insti"ation of Georoe Croshan at Fort Pitt. '• With this string- of wampum," said that interpreter to them, " I clean the sweat off your bodies, and remove all evil thoughts from your minds, and clean the passage to your hearts. . . . A\'ith this string I clean your ears that you may hear." Then followed apologies for the murder of certain Indians b}^ wdcked whites. Another })ropitiation was made. '' Witli this belt I clean the blood oft' the leaves and earth, whereon it was sprinkled, that the sweet herbs may have their usual verdure." Beaver, a Delaware chief, replied : "• Take hold of the end of this belt, which we may stretch along the road between us, in order to clean it of the briars and brush, that we may all travel it in peace and safety." There was next a little altercation between a Shawnee and an Iroquois chief. The Shawnee wished the English to pull 14 THE PROPERTY LINE. down their forts, and thought that the boats which the English were building signilied an evil purpose of going in them down the river. The Iroquois stood for the English, and advised them to hold the forts they had taken from the French. When it was proposed to send messengers to the interloiDers on the Monongahela at Red Stone and warn them off, the Indians refused to lend a hand in the ejectment. The Shawnees again made bold to dispute the Iroquois pretensions to the Ohio country. So the symptoms were clear that trouble could easily be fostered in the valley, and during the previous summer some Indians had stopj^ed the bateaux of pioneers, and the river route was in general made dangerous by the mutual hostilities of the Cherokees and the northern tribes. In December, 1767, the Board of Trade had deemed the Kanawha River an equitable limit for the English settlements. Such a limit, restricting what Hillsborough judged the danger- ous extension of agriculture, also met the approval of that minister. Franklin, now in London as the agent of Pennsylvanif , pointed out to the government how delays were only making the colonies drift into a savage war. Shelburne was soon moved to action, and in April, 1768, Gage, who had received Shelburne's instructions to run the line, forwarded them to Johnson with a suspicion that it would be difficult to satisfy the demands of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, in whatever line was run. Gage had already urged, in February, that the plan had been satisfactorily carried out at the south by Georgia and the Carolinas. The task of establishing such a line imposed difficulties upon the negotiator. Johnson had only recently had difficulty in getting the Indians to consent to the running of the line between Pennsylvania and Maryland beyond the mountains, and he felt sure that both French and Spanish were endeavoring to entice the Ohio tribes to a counter conference on the Mississippi. When Johnson had first broached the subject of a line at a conference of Iroquois in the spring of 1765, he had found some difficulty in bringing them to his conception of what such a line should be. When the Indians had made some conces- sions, he was obliged to confess he had no authority to settle the question. Accordingly, after three years of delay, during FORT ST AN W IX TREATY. 15 which the ministry had been instructing him to keep a peace with the Indians, and with some untoward happenings in the interval, it was not without misgivings that Sir William, accompanied by two hundred boats of merchandise £or presents, reached Fort Stanwix on September 20, 17G8. Prominent Note. — This map is a section of Guy Johnson's map of the Fort Stanwix line, sent by Sir William Jolnisou to Lord Hillsborough, and reproduced in Docs. rel. to the Colon. Hist, of N. Y., vol. viii. p. 136. among his advisers in attendance were Governor Franklin, Guy Johnson, and George Croghan. The Indians assembled so slowly that it was October 24 before it was deemed prudent to open the conference. By this time it was certain that nearly thirty-two hundred cavernous mouths were to be fed, and that other entertainments must be provided with equal prodigality. Johnson, indeed, soon found that there was difficulty in get- ting a sufficient allowance from the treasury at headquarters, owing to the great cost of quartering troops in Boston, now going on to meet the rebellious manifestations of that commu- nity. So the seven weeks of feasts and talks went on. Thomas Walker had come with authority from Virginia to undo the Stuart treaty and the Kanawha line, if he could. There were other delegates from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl- vania, together with a number of agents repi-esenting the traders who had suffered losses in the Pontiac war. 16 THE PROPERTY LINE. This large assembly of savages was, in fact, a considerable j^art of the whole number of tribes interested in the outcome of the conference. Johnson at this time estimated that the Iroquois numbered perhaps ten thousand souls, and of these two thousand could be considered warriors. Their allies could furnish probably another two thousand, made up among others of three hundred Shawnees from the Ohio country, six hundred Delawares from the Susquehanna, and two hundred Wyandots from Sandusky. These four thousand Iroquois and depend- ents, so great had been their losses, were probably not more than half as many as the Ottawa confederacy. This larger amalgamation of the savage power, including the Twightwees and Miamis, hemmed in the others on the west, and blocked the way to the Mississippi. Johnson now reckoned them at eight thousand warriors, of whom about three thousand were on the Detroit River. He makes no mention of any tribes in what is now Kentucky, and Croghan seems to confirm the belief that the territory between the Ohio and the Tennessee was destitute of savage dwellers, and this was the region now the particular object of negotiation. It was not till November 5 that a conclusion was reached at Fort Stanwix, when, in consideration of a considerable sum of money, the Indians consented to a line, beyond which the English agreed to prohibit settling. The Iroquois chiefs signed with the colonial delegates ; but the Delawares and Shawnees, though assenting, were not allowed to sign, since they were dependent upon the Iroquois. The territory which was thus alienated was vested, under the terms of the treaty, in the crown, and could only l)e occupied by royal grant. It was soon claimed that, so far as these lands were concerned, the royal proclamation was annulled. Johnson, in directing the negotiations, had exceeded his authority, and, as the Virginians claimed, he had thwarted the purposes which Dr. Walker had been sent to advance. John- son had been directed to confirm Stuart's line by the Kanawha, and to yield to the Cherokee pretensions as respects the terri- tory west of that river. The Iroquois, however, asserted their rights in this region against the Cherokees, and Johnson thought it imprudent to arouse their resentment by declining their cession of it. Johnson satisfied his own conscience in the FORT STANWIX TREATY 17 [From the French translation of Hutchins, Description topographique de la Virf/inia, Paris, 1781.] matter by recallino; that the Cherokees some years before had recognized the Iroquois rights to it. He felt also that, by con- firmins: it to the crown, the sfovernnient would not be embar- rassed in controlling its settlement as they liked. In this way what became later known as " The Property Line " practically gave Kentucky over to present occupation. 18 THE PROPERTY LINE. LAKE ON TA RIO Bv du'y4-itMfr% of t*f sur Vti/Jt'/iS /'rrpiLr IS nir/tnf fAat part wifA{/t wkicA. tArv prt^wt/'i ^/t OJtJiry rcsit/e M/l/rtff th^ hmi t.< • / A T^rk ui Fi.'t ffujti^ri Cpn-^ ptu-t 4^tA^ i'rfft/,' JB^Z Note. — The line is sliowii on a larger scale in a map constructed by Jolmson upon Evans's Kittanniug followed that river to its mouth. The reg^ion east of the Kanawha and west of the Mononga- hela had already two days before (November 3) been deeded by the Indians to Trent, as the agent of the traders, whose prop- erty in the recent war had been despoiled to an extent, as was contended, of <£86,000. Out of this transaction difficulties soon arose. The Ohio Company held the land thus conveyed to be THE " INDIANA " GRANT. 19 tf the- On€uUi fyr liu fruuiry sIlU Miii^x { % ^M r, C ' V open 1 i ' y O^ % yVjUy ^j Shenoctailj- iertooi-:'/ passadiiis' . ,- v, - It - I ^s.'ts nay ■ (.<)tmp*tiriil To H' -^^xceUency. XS ■sV»j>-,^r WILLIAJVI TrTOxV ESQf; ,.\% ^""^1 i CaiJtain Geueral & Govern©*, iti CSfim ti ^ >I.ANAT10X e ^f a,,..pj.^,.,^,Ce of ^VM-YO^K&.^Sl ^.,..,j.r,ry-"r.,ts\ . This Map ,yjr y)^^/^ , , J ^ ol tlie Country of the VI. Nations /'^^ , , , , \ii'?yo\y^X^7^'ilhj\rioftheQ.diacerLt(ilcn«}\i ' , . ,■ ^ U ).} hunthlij irucrihcd hy hu c.'CCi'/lrnctr 1 (jt^ Jo f} TIM) II /7/>.~7'--' / I J J map, improved, in the Documrntnrn Hist, of X. V., vol. i. p. 5ST. The line reaching the Ohio at included in their own prior grants, wliicli were known as " Indiana," and stood in the names of Samuel "Wharton, Wil- liam Trent, Georo-e ]\Iorgan, and others. Virginia recognized no rights in it but her own, as coming within her charter, and she claimed that some of her own people had already settled within the disputed territory. All disputes were finally sunk in the troubles of the Ke volution. 20 THE PROPERTY LINE. The line, as established at Fort Stanwix, followed up the Ohio from the Cherokee River, passed the forks, and went up the Alleghany to Kittanning. It then ran west to the most westerly branch of the west fork of the Susquehanna ; thence over Burnet's Hills to Awandoe Creek, and so to the Delaware. It then ascended this river towards Owegy and Wood Creek, and stopped at a point half way between Fort Stanwix and Lake Oneida. The line, by reason of Johnson's independent action, was not approved by the king, but the government did not venture to invalidate it. When it thus practically became the law, new conditions arose. It opened a larger area to settlement than the royal proclamation had decreed, and vesting new rights in the crown, it was held by most, except the Virginians, to place a bar, to the extent of the territory ceded by the Indians, to the westward' claims of Virginia. This line of demarcation between the Indians and the settle- ments was now unbroken from where it started at the earlier grant near Lake Ontario to the southern end of the Appala- chians, except for an interval where the bounds back of South and North Carolina had not been made to join. This debatable ground remained for some time the scene of insecurity : the doubtful jurisdiction invited vagabonds and lawless traders, who traversed the country between the Catawbas and the Cherokees. It was of such hazardous conditions that Stuart, the Indian agent, spoke, when he commented upon the ''I'age for settling far back," which crowded settlers upon the boundary, and left the country scant of inhabitants on the way thither. " The Indians detest such back inhabitants," he adds, " which accounts for their reluctancy to give up any of their lands, being anxious to keep such neighbors at a distance." The dispute between the Iroquois and the Cherokees would, it was feared, seriously involve the interests of such as received grants in what are now the States of Kentucky and Tennessee. It was not long before Gage was warning Johnson of " an agi- tation among the Indians." That the Iroquois should have been paid for territory which the Cherokees claimed was galling to the pride of the latter. The Cherokee [Tennessee] River bends near Cumberland MOVEMENTS Full OCCUPATION. 21 Gap, separated by a divide from the springs of the Kanawha. The area in controversy, including the valley of the Cumber- land, lay between these rivers and the Ohio. The purposes of the home government and those of the pioneers regarding this territory were equally at variance, the one sustaining, in opinion at least, the treaty of Stuart, and the other that of Johnson. Gage was fully aware of the risks of occupying the region south of the Ohio. To do so, in his judgment, could hardly fail to bring on a war with the southern Indians. The ministry, in view of the opposition which had been developed to the royal proclamation, was not unwise in winking at what it dared not undo. This opening of a fertile country to occupation induced the steady movements westward to and beyond Cumberland Gap which took place in the next few years. Dr. Thomas Walker, whose name is so often associated with these early movements, and who had been more or less familiar with Powell's Valley and the neighboring region for twenty years, soon secured a grant hereabouts. Throwing it open to the pioneers, a rush of settlers to occupy it followed. In the spring of 17G9, there was a race of rival parties seeking to reach the spot first and secure the land. Victory came to Joseph Martin and his com- panions, and they were earliest squatted in the rich valley, shadowed with black walnuts and wild cherries, which lies between Cumberland and Powell mountains. The modern Martin's Station, where they pitched their tents, was on the hunter's trail to Kentucky, and twenty miles from Cumberland Gap. The situation, however, was precarious, for there were roving bands of southern Indians, who were incensed that the pledge given in the Stuart treaty had not been observed. While Martin and some of his people were exploring farther west, hostile savages swooped down on those in camp, and the settlement was broken up. There is no lack of suspicion that in this and other marauding, the vicious trader was supplying the barbarian with his gun and powder. So it was that the proclamation of 1763 was practically de- fied, and the ministry had not dared to interpose its authority. CHAPTER in. LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. 1763-1768. It is curious to find tlie French traveler, Pages, in 1767, speaking- of the Mississippi as bounding on New England ! The reservation of the trans-AUeghany country to the Indians' use, by the proclamation of 1763, had not eradicated from the conceptions of the French the old sea-to-sea claims of the English charters. They had too long confronted this English pretension to do more than recognize the curtailment of their claims by making that river the western boundary of those colonies, as required by the recent treaty. In the colonies themselves, the claim was certainly dormant. Massachusetts, for her rights, was abiding her time. Connecti- cut was even now, on the strength of such a title, claiming a portion of Pennsylvania, and for the next few years, in the struggle between the two provinces, the New England colony was to be in the main successful in sustaining her Susquehanna Company, though it was at the cost of life and property. Both colonies, in the effort to defend what they thought their own, had devastated homes and wasted crops, and each was alter- nately the aggressor. Virginia was still vigilantly looking after her western inter- ests, and she did it to some piirpose ten years later, when her George Rogers Clark did much to save the Northwest to the young Republic. Franklin, in 1754, would have swept all such pretensions away by his barrier colonies. During the years that had intervened, he had not forgotten his purpose, as we shall see. The peace of 1763 had had its effect upon the Indian ti'ade of the far West. The English seaboard merchants had become conscious how much this traffic had slipped away from their ST. LOUIS AND THE FRENCH. 23 western agents. Such diminution had been the subject of repeated representations. George Croghan was exphiining it to General Gage in New York and to Dr. Franklin in London. Carleton complained that French and 82)anish traders were gathering furs within twenty leagues of Detroit. Gage com- mented upon it to Conway, and hinted at the clandestine ways which were used by the Indians and French. Sir William Johnson also found artifice in the French methods, but it would seem to have been nothing more than that the traders got ten- pence a pound more for skins in New Orleans than in any British market. The unwelcome outcome of the business was the preeminence which the new settlement at St. Louis, under French enter- prise, was likely to acquire. Hutchins speaks of the site of the new town as " the most healthy and pleasurable situation of any known in this part of the country," and hither (he adds), " by conciliating the affections of the natives," the French traders have drawn the trafttc of the Missouri, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Illinois rivers away from the English posts. St. Louis had become in a few years a town of about one hun- dred and twenty stone-built houses. The occupants of these dwellings, including a hundred and fifty negroes, numbered about eight hundred. Not far off was Ste. Genevieve, a place of more than four hundred inhabitants. These two settlements constituted the only French villages on the western bank of the Mississippi. Neighboring, but on the eastern bank, and so within the English jurisdiction, were some three hundred more French, with a serving body of nearly as many blacks. Tliese were the communities which were seeking to turn the Indian l)roducts into channels which would carry them down the Mis- sissippi on their way to the sea. The French Canadians, who were now looking to the English to i)rotect their western trade, complained that unless the English were more enter- l)rising and built new 2>osts, the Indian ti-ade toward the Mis- sissippi would all slip away. Neither did the English, who were now coming into Canada in order to reap a harvest in the fur trade, view the conditions witli more com])laeency. Carleton, who had ruled in Quebec since September, 1766, opened a correspondence with Johnson in order to seek a remedy, but Gage saw it was simply a game of sharp practice at which both 24 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. sides were privileged to play. When it was reported to him that the French aud Spanish were endeavoring to lure the savages to their interest, he' replied that " we have no reason to reproach them, as we aim at the same thing," and he spoke the truth. He was quite as complacent when one warned him of the Indians' efforts to embroil the English with the French, "■ They might well like to do it," he said, "" for our quarrels are the Indian harvests." The trade of that part of this distant country lying west of the Lake of the Woods had been drawn in large part to the English factors at Hudson's Bay. From Lake Superior the traders were already pushing to Rainj^ Lake, and by 1770 they had established posts on Lake Winnijieg and beyond, as well as farther south on the upper branches of the Mississippi. Trading- west of Detroit had been prohibited except by license, and under such a privilege Alexander Henry had en- joyed the freedom of Lake Superior. But police control in such conditions was impossible, and it was not unlikely that the trader without a license turned his tracks down the Great Valley, rather than risk detection on the St. Lawrence. The English commander at Fort Chartres was always complaining that the traders on the oj^posite sides of the Mississippi acted in collusion. There were ninety carrying places between the Lake of the Woods and Montreal. It was not strange that the trading canoes were oftener seen gliding on the almost uninter- rupted current of the Mississippi, where they were easily thrown into companionship with the French packmen, as far north as the Falls of St. Anthony and higher up. Such intercourse boded no good to the English. Unfortunately, Major Rogers, their commandant at Mack- inac, was hardly a man to be trusted. He had become badly in debt to the traders, and had schemes of detaching that post from Canadian control and using it to secure w^elcome and advancement from the French. This movement demoralized the Indians, and Gage soon found it necessary to instruct Johnson to use his interpreters to ensnare the traitor, and in December, 1767, he was arrested for treason. The effect of Rogers's disaffection upon the Indians was to be dreaded, as convincing them of the weakness of the English rule and the ultimate return of the French domination. There THE AMERICAN BOTTOM. 25 were too apparent grounds for believing in the hold which the French still had upon the Indians. Johnson assured Gage that the savages were as fond as ever of the French. " Whatever they ardently wish for, it is natural for them to expect even after several disappointments," said that observer. It seemed to the French themselves that the savages greatly desired a reinstatement of the French power. To unsettle this savage regard for their rivals and to rehabili- tate this Indian trade, so that the seaboard could profit by it, was now a vital question with the English. The obvious move- ment was to make the Illinois country subservient to such a. pur- pose, just as the French in the earlier days had always made it. The author of a tract on The Expediency of securing our American Colonies hy settlinc/ the Country adjoining the River Jlississi/>pi had, as early as 17G3, ])ointed out how the forks of the Mississippi, as its junction with the Ohio was termed, cover- ing a region stretching to the Illinois, was '' the most necessary l^lace of any in America, — the key of all the inland parts." Gage, on April 3, 1767, wrote to Shelburne that it was desir- able to have an English fort at this point in order to control the dependent country : and just before Captain Harry Gordon, Chief Engineer of North America, had pointed out the situation of Fort Massac as admirable for that purpose. Beck, in his Gazetteer (1823), points out that the first settlements at Cahokia and Kaskaskia were made in the most fertile land in Illinois. They were upon a piece of alluvial land, later known as the American Bottom, whose existing aboriginal mounds showed that it had long before supported an affluent ])o])ulation. This region, lying between a range of bluffs and the river, extended north from Kaskaskia for a hundred miles, and contained an area of about five hundred and twenty square miles. It was mostly a treeless prairie, but there was a fringe of heavy timber along the river. Its very fertility rendered it miasmatic, but steady cultivation had impx-oved its salubriousness. As an agricultural region, Hutchins called it " of a superior soil to any other part of North America " that he had seen. Carver tells us that this was the general reputation which the country bore. During the years immediately following the peace, and par- ticularly before the cession of the trans-Mississippi country to 26 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. Spain was known, there had been some confusion among the population, owing- to a general exodus of the French across the Mississippi. The village neighboring to Fort Chartres had become almost depopulated in this way, and the flight of its inhabitants was not altogether untimely, in view of the speedy encroachments which the current of the river was making on the soil. The English a little later (1772) found it necessary to abandon Fort Chartres, " the most commodious and best built fort in North America," as Pittman called it, because the river had undermined its walls in places. To understand how the very qualities which rendered this bottom-land so rich made it also unstable, we find this fort, when it was rebuilt in 1756, two miles inland ; at the time we are now considering, sixteen years later, it was partly washed away, while to-day the ruined magazine and the ragged walls are again more than a mile from the river. In 1772, a new defense, called Fort Gage, was built on the bluff opposite Kaskaskia, and thither the Eng- lish garrison was transferred. There was need of it, if England was to give the region the protection it needed. The Cherokees and Chickasaws, not long before, had invaded the country and eonunitted depredations in the neighborhood of Kaskaskia. The native defenders, the tribes of the Illinois, had at this period lost their vigor. Early in 1768, or at least in time for Gage to have heard of it in New York in the sum- mer of that year, — and this evidence seems better than what induced Pai'kman to put it a year later, — Pontiac had been treacherously killed in Cahokia. " The French at Illinois and Post Vincent," says Gage (July 15, 1768), " complain of our setting the Cherokees and Chickasaws to molest them, and that the death of Pontiac, committed by a Peorie of the Illinois, and believed to have been excited by the English to that action, had drawn many of the Ottawas and other northern Indians towards their country to revenge his death." Johnson, from rei)orts which reached him, feared, as a consequence, another outbreak like the Pontiac war. But the Illinois were the only sufferers, and their misfortunes lay them open to the revenge of the Pottawattamies, the Winnebagoes, and the Kickapoos, and there was a direful scene of suffering at Starved Rock. To such " a poor, debauched, and dastardly " condition had these people come, who in La Salle's time had crossed from the west- THE ILLINOIS TRIBES. 27 KASKASKIA AND CAHOKIA AND THE AMERICAN BOTTOM. ern bank of the Mississip])i and confronted the Iro(inois, that Hntchins describes them as too indolent to obtain skins enough to barter for clothing. IMttnian's account of them is much to the same effect. lie counts their male adults at three hundred and fifty, whom it 28 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. is a mockery to call warriors. If they slunk before the braver tribes towards the Wisconsin, they had, in the Miami confeder- acy, other warlike neighbors to repress them on the side of the Wabash. The white population of all this country, including that at Vincennes, was perhaps not far from two thousand, consisting almost wholly of French, who from ties with the Indians, or from habits of content, had not sought to escape the English rule, though they objected to serve as British militia. Perhaps English observers exaggerated their social degradation, but Lieutenant Eraser, who had just been among them, called them debauched and every way disgraced by drunken habits. Such was the country, in climate, soil, and denizen, white and red, which was now attracting attention. Sir William Johnson was writing of its capabilities to the Board of Trade, and di- recting thither the notice of Conway. The reasons which he urged for making it the seat of a British colony were that an English population would prevent the practice promoted by the four hundred French families already there, of sending furs down to New Orleans. The commander at Fort Chartres had been unsuccessful in prohibiting this, and the Spanish traders went with impunity up the Illinois and Wabash rivers. Gen- eral Gage asked Don Ulloa at New Orleans to prevent this, and a little later ordered armed boats to patrol the river to inter- cept the outlaws. Johnson's plan included the maintaining of English posts on the east bank of the Mississippi, the acquir- ing lands of the Indians and settling soldiers upon them, and the creation of a land company, which would agree to settle an occupant on every hundred acres. Meanwhile, General Phineas Lyman, in behalf of some offi- cers of the late war, was writing to Shelburne, and developing schemes by which he would establish colonies all along the Mississippi from western Florida to the Falls of St. Anthony. The active mind of Haldimand worked over, as we shall see, the problem in his quarters at Pensacola, and he sent a plan to Gage, now in New York, who forwarded it to the home govern- ment. This plan outlined a military colony at the Natchez, and advocated the making of small grants of land to the Louisi- ana French along the river, in order to induce them to settle upon them and so escape a servitude to the Spanish, which had now become their palpable fate. I NEW ORLEANS. 29 To understand the attitude of Haldimand's mind and the con- ditions which prevailed in the lower j^arts of the Mississippi, it is necessary to revert to the influences which the secret treaty of 1763 were exerting in that region. New Orleans at this time contained, within a stockade having a circuit of about two and a half miles, not far from four thou- sand souls. This population for the most j^art was living in some seven or eight hundred dwellings, standing as a rule in gardens of their own. These houses, built of timber, with brick filling, were of a single floor, elevated about eight feet from the soil so as to furnish storage below. The wet ground, in fact, did not admit of digging cellars. The occupants of the out- skirts were mostly Germans and Acadians, scattered along the river on both sides, nearly to the Iberville. Including these, the entire population of the town and its dependencies may have reached near ten thousand souls. In seasons of high water they were all living in some danger of inundation, for the rush- ing river at such times was only kept to its channel by an unsubstantial levee, wdiich extended for about fifty miles up and down its banks. Several travelers have left us their observations of New Orleans at a period just subsequent to the Peace of Paris. Captain de Pages, of the French navy, whom we have already mentioned, speaks of seeing Tonicas and Choctaws in the town, bringing fish, fruit, and game to barter for brandy and trinkets. The more active merchants, however, were rarely in the town except to replenish their supplies, and were usually up the river in search of peltry. They oftener than otherwise wintered on the St. Francis River, which entered the Mississippi on the western side, ninety miles below the Ohio. From this i)lace they sent their furs and salted meats to New Orleans for a market. In the season of travel, they moved up the river in little flotillas of bateaux, which were generally of about forty tons burden, and were manned l)y eighteen or twenty hands. It took about three months to row, pole, and warp such crafts from New Orleans to the Illinois country, and the l)argemen were often obliged at night to guard their camps from the attacks of the Chickasaws and other marauders. Arrived at the upper waters of the Mississip]u, the packmen scattered along the various trails. They were found on the higher reaches 30 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. of the Missouri, and were known to be in the habit of ascend- ing that river three and four hundred leagues, gathering that trade of which the English were now so covetous. They went among the Sioux in the region west of Lake Superior. They even turned east towards Canada, and are thought to have instigated the savages of the Great Lakes to hostile demonstra- tions against the English. AVe find more or less contemporary testimony on these points in such observers as Lieutenant John Thomas, of the Royal Artillery, and Philip Pittman, who had passed from the Illinois region down the valley to Pensacola. But in March, 1764, a Colonel Robertson, who had just arrived at New York from New Orleans, assured Gage that the French in Louisiana were certainly not instigating the upper tribes against Detroit. Pensacola was now become the centre of English interests on the Gulf shore, and had attained a prominence that it never had, possessed under the Spanish rule. It had been promptly occu- pied by the English in 1763. The post then consisted of a high stockade, inclosing some miserable houses, and there were a few equally dismal habitations without the defenses. Such was the place where Bouquet, now a brigadier, had been put in com- mand in August, 1765, as a fit field for his recognized abilities, and where the southern fever was in a few d|iys to cut short a brilliant career. Whoever the commander, Pensacola was des- tined to be the centre from which the English were to control, as best they could, the conflicting interests of the neighbor- ing tribes, and gain what advantage was possible from their treaty rights of navigation along the Mississippi. The prin- cipal savage peoples within the radius of this influence were the Choctaws, the Creeks, and the Chickasaws, and they presented some perplexing problems. The Choctaws were for a time dis- tracted by the rival solicitations of the French and English and warring with the Chickasaws ; but this conflict the English after a while checked, only to turn the Choctaws against the Creeks, now angry with the English traders, and discontented with the absence of gifts, which the French had taught them to expect of Europeans. In their restless condition they were marauding along the English borders, but they promptly dis- owned their young warriors if they were apprehended, — per- 32 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. haps more promptW than the English disowned the " crackers," as the lawless whites of the borders were called. The English ^vould have been glad to play off some o£ the lesser tribes against both Choctaws and Creeks, but the Alibamons were flying north to escape the toils. The English even thought of luring the Natchez, because of their hatred of the French, to cross the Mississippi and stand as a barrier against their savage neighbors ; but the scheme was hardly practicable. The Creeks growing troublesome, Governor Johnston, who had succeeded Bouquet, had determined, in October, 1766, to attack them, while Gao'e was advising that Johnston should draw in for safety his distant garrisons. When Johnston's purpose was known to the home government, it dreaded a general uprising of the tribes, and recalled him for his rashness. Haldimand was now ordered to take his place, and enforce a more peaceful policy. So one of the first matters to which the new governor, on his arrival early in 1767, directed his attention was how to divert from the lower Miss'issippi the trade of the Illinois country. The obvious solution of this problem was to establish a post on the Mississijjpi, just north of the Iljerville Eiver, and then deepen the channel of that stream, so as to render its naviga- tion easy and at all times certain. This would carry the stream of traffic through Lake Pont- chartrain to Mississij^jji Sound, and on to Mobile and Pensa- cola, which might thus be made to flourish at the expense of New Orleans. Already in March, 1767, Gage at New York had received reports of measures looking to this end, and had approved tliem. The engineering feat was not an easy one, and its difficulties were palpable. When the Mississippi was at a low stage, the bed of the Iberville was twelve feet above it ; in the season of freshets it was as much or more below, but the current was then all the more obstructed by driftwood. Three years before (1764), the English had made one futile attempt to divert the scanty flow of the great river so as to deepen the lesser channel. It now happened that before any serious effort could be made to attack the difficulty afresh, a new policy of strengthening the English garrisons at St. Augustine, INIobile, and Pensacola, in view of needing the troops to quell disturbances now brew- THE SPANIARDS IX LOUISIANA. 33 iiig in New England and likely to spread south, drew away the troops at the mouth of the Iberville and at the Natchez. On this policy Haldimand and the civil governor were at variance, and the general reported to Gage not only the bad effect on the Indians of the evacuation of the Mississippi posts, but the detriment it would prove to the trade which they had hoped to create. Aubry, the French governor at New Orleans, had not been unmindfid of these events, and they gave him some relief from his anxieties as respects his English neighbors. The hope of the English to possess New Orleans by some device had not been out of sight, even when the Iberville pro- ject seemed promising, for the outlet of the Mississippi was looked to as a means of lessenin"- the financial obliaations of the colonies to the mother country, which had accumulated between 1756 and 17(35 to near £11,000,000. There was a prosi)ect, if the mouth of that river was left in the hands of the French, that they would outi'ival the English in tobacco as they had in sugar, and cotton was just beginning to be an export from New Orleans. John Thomas, in his record of events, is confident that fifteen hundred English and two hun- dred Indian auxiliaries could conquer Louisiana. Haldimand was questioned by Gage as to the feasibility of such an effort. That officer thought it not a difficult task, and counted u])oii the readiness of the French inhabitants to throw themselves on the English side in case of a rupture with the Spaniards, which now seemed probable. It is necessary to go l)ack a little to see how this condition of a French antagonism to Spain had become supposable. At the beginning of 1764, Gage in New York had learned of the proposed change of masters in New Orleans, which had been assured by the secret treaty of 1763. '" I have a very extraor- dinary ])iece of good news to tell you," Gage wrote to John- son, .Januar}^ 23, "•which is that the French are to cede all Louisiana to the king of Spain, by whicli we shall get rid of a most troul)lesome neighbor and the continent be no longer embroiled with their intrigues. The French minister has de- clared this to Mr. Neville, with the compliment that it was done purely to avoid future disputes and quarrels with the English nation. I don't know whether they are yet acquainted 34 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. with these resokitions on the Mississippi." They were not. The secret provisions for a transfer were not known in New Orleans till October, and a few months later, February 4, 1765, crAbbadie, the French govei-nor, died, and Aubry became the acting governor. In the following summer, he and the council received word from Havana that a Spanish commandant had been appointed, and would soon present himself at New Orleans. Tliis official was Antonio de Ulloa, now a man of nearly fifty, who had acquired some name by being associated with a scien- tific expedition to the equator to measure the arc of the me- ridian. On March 5, 1766, he arrived at New Orleans and became aware of a strong opposition among the Louisianians to the intended transfer. Some time before, there had been a large meeting in New Orleans, which resulted in a leading merchant — Milhet by name — being sent to France in the hope of inducing the government to revoke the treaty of cession. This messenger- found Bienville in Paris, then a man of eighty-five, and wit i him he sought an audience of the king, which Choiseul man- aged to avert. It was a cherished hope of that minister, that the time was coming when France could be avenged upon Eng- land for all she had lost. In 1764-66, he had kept a spy. Monsieur Beaulieu, in the English colonies watching for events that he could take advantage of. Some time afterwards we know that De Kalb, on January 12, 1768, ai*rived in Philadeli)hia, to see how nearly ripe the colonial discontent was for that break with the mother country which Turgot believed imminent. The minister was again actuated by this same hope a little later, when Spain had secured herself at New Orleans, and he pointed out that her true policy was not to try to colonize Louisiana, for which she had no aptness, but to rule her new province so liberally, even to fostering it as a republic, that the Americans would be lured by sympathy to declare their own independence, — a movement that Choiseul had no hesitation in desiring at whatever cost. It seemed at first as if Ulloa was going to impede such a tendency by acts of conciliation towards the unwilling French, but the atmosphere soon changed. He had brought with him two companies of infantry, but they were not sufficient to enforce authority, and it was evident that the French — neither ULLOA AND AUBRY. 35 troops nor populace — would tamely submit to a change of flag. Indeed, Aubry was apparently the only friend whom the Spanish governor had found. Ulloa had tried in various ways to appease the opposition, and in May, 17G6, he had issued a conciliatory order, permitting continued intercourse with the French West Indies ; but within four months all such commu- nication was interdicted. Thus the situation became critical. The French were doubt- less unfortunate ; and Ulloa, put to the test, was shown to be destitute of tact, and in some acts seemed inhuman. Aubry was soon convinced of the Spaniard's inability to govern. With a hostile population of six thousand, not including blacks, — for Ulloa had ordered a census and obtained some definite fig- ures, — it was clearly imprudent for him to set up his authority without further communication with his government. Aiibry had had definite instructions (April 20, 1766) to cede the province, and in his intercourse with Ulloa was complacent, if not time-serving ; but he was without the hardihood of char- acter needed in such an emergency, either to make Ulloa banish liis indecision, or to control the French. Accordingly, when Ulloa felt it prudent to retire to the Balize, Aubry soon foUowed him. Here the two made a documentary recoixl of the transfer of government, but there was not the courage to publish it. Ulloa now established his headquarters on the opposite side of the stream from the French fort, which, in the growing of the delta seaward, was now two miles from the Gulf, when, in 1734, it had been built directly upon the open water. At that time, the island which Ulloa now occupied did not exist. In December, 1767, Jean Milhet returned from France, and declared that there was to be no effect fi-om the colony's pi-o- test. The immediate result was that Aubry and Ulloa agreed upon a plan of joint rule till their European masters could intei'pose more effectively. Detachments were now sent up the river to establish three posts, the better to patrol the river and to be prepared for decisive action, and when the Spaniards deserted from Ulloa's regiments, French were enlisted to take their places. One of these detachments was at the mouth of the Iberville, opposite the position which the Englisli later tried to occupy. Another was opposite Natchez, and a third was at the mouth of the Missouri, All these posts were distinct 36 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. obstacles to the English project of securing the trans-Mississippi trade ; but the forts were too far apart for mutual support in any contest with the English. Gage had already determined on a stricter observation of the river, and had ordered the arrest of all French traders found on its eastern banks ; and before August, 1768, he had sent a message to Ulloa of his purpose. Events which were taking place in Boston — royal regiments landing under cover of shotted guns — prefigured the coming- revolution of the English colonies, and the tidings were to carry joy to Choiseul's heart. A fear of this outbreak had necessi- tated, as we have seen, the evacuation of the British posts on the Mississippi, and it had proved the best protection of the Spaniards. The attitude which the Louisianians were now assuming showed doubtless some of that revolutionary fervor which characterized the New England patriots. Indeed, Aubry suspected that it was not so much devotion to France as a desire for independence which was now impelling the growing discontent. He even informed his government that some of the imprudences of Ulloa might drive a part, at least, of the French over the river to the protection of the English flag. The stubbornness of Ulloa brought a natural result when, in October, 1768, a conspiracy organized in secrecy, in which some of the leading colonists were concerned, broke forth. The crisis was reached. Ulloa fled to a frigate in the river, and before the mouth was closed the Supreme Council decreed, notwith- standing Aubry's protest, that the Spaniards must leave. On October 31, Ulloa sailed out of the river, and on December 4, 1768, he announced the result to Grimaldi, the Spanish minister. Such a daring act on the part of the council needed explana- tion, and this body dispatched a messenger to Paris to nuike a representation. Ulloa was in advance, and when his repoi-t was made known in France, it was not an unwelcome thought to the enemies of England that revolutions were contagious, and that the English colonies were growing ripe for the infection. Though such encouraging sentiments were lacking, the French government itself proved steadfast in their obligations with Spain. As soon as the Louisianians became aware by a return mes- sage that there was no hope in Paris, they turned to the English in Florida for sympathy and aid, but got none. O'REILLY IN NEW ORLEANS. 37 Tiie anxious days slipped on, and in July, 1769, it was known in New Orleans that O'Keilly, an Irish Catholic in the Spanish service, with a fleet at his back, had arrived at the Balize. The next day, this Spanish commander sent to the town instruc- tions committed to him for Aubry. He informed the French governor at the same time of his purpose to assume command, whatever obstacles were interposed. He had three thousand troops to add weight to his determination. The town grew excited over the news. White cockades appeared on the streets. There was prospect of trouble. La Freniere, and other leaders of the conspiracy which had sent Ulloa off, recognized the gravity of the situation, and success- fully exei'ted themselves to allay the excitement. To help restore confidence, these conspirators, now more prudent, went down the river to welcome the new governor. The way seemed open for a peaceful occupation. It was hoped the past would be forgotten. But appearances were ensnaring. O'Reilly reached the town on August 17, and on the next day Aubry made a formal surrender. The purpose of O'Keilly was for a brief period cloaked ; but in the end La Freniere and the other conspirators were seized and executed, while still others were imprisoned. By the latter part of November, 1769, the new government was in possession everywhere. O'Reilly's conduct was doubtless shaped by his instructions, and Jay, who later knew him in Spain, thought him " a man of excellent abilities, and possessed of great know- ledge of men as well as of thinsfs." O'Reilly had found the English merchants in complete con- trol of the commerce of New Orleans, and he took immediate measures to dispossess them, and to cut off English communi- cations across the Mississippi. As soon as Gage had heard of O'Reilly's success, he congratulated himself that if he could only spread the tidings among the Western Indians, he could effectually dispel their hopes of further French aid. While the Spaniards were thus endeavoring to form a barrier against the English, they were dis])atching messages to the Indians of Florida, — a region to whose loss, under the treaty of 1763, they had not become reconciled. These added new difficulties to those which beset the loyal officers of the British 38 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. crown all along the Gnlf and Atlantic coast. They had little time to think further of the forcible acquisition of New Orleans, for the prowling savages were hanging about their interior posts, so as to compel their abandonment, one by one. The Tombigbee fort was evacuated in the spring of 1768, and not an armed station now protected the English traders in the upper country. A wavering and sinister policy, as Adair com- plains, had well-nigh alienated all the neighboring tribes from the English, and made it a common reproach among them to be an ally of that treacherous race which sold firearms to friend and foe alike. Meanwhile the new political commotions in the older English colonies were checking the unfolding of English power on the Ohio and by the Illinois. To such projects we must now turn. Governor Franklin of New Jersey and Sir William Johnson, feeling with their Tory instincts full confidence in the mainte- nance of the royal power on the seaboard, were together plan- ning the establishment of a colony in the Illinois region. To advance their schemes. Sir William addressed the ministers and Governor Franklin wrote to his father, then in London, who, from his important services in the recent war, was recognized even there as a man of influence. The elder Franklin proved an earnest advocate of the new measures, which were not un- like in their purpose the project of barrier colonies, to which he had committed himself at the time of the Albany congress in 1754. The expectation at first was to buy needed territory from the French settlers, and Franklin marked out for Lord Shelburne the limits that were proposed on the small-scale map which makes a part of Evans and Pownall's larger sheet. This plan of compensation was soon abandoned, and the government was petitioned for a grant. General Gage and a body of Phila- delphia merchants joined the others in this new memoi'ial. Their aim was to acquire a tract of 63,000,000 acres stretching from Lake Erie to the Mississippi, and bounded in one direction by the Fox and Wisconsin rivers and on the other by the Ohio, Wabash, and Miami (Maumee). Against the eastern Hounds of the ])roposed colony, and along the Wabash and Miami, lay a French population of some five or six hundred, which were grouped at Vincennes, and at Forts Ouiatanon and Miami. A CORNER .MAP IN EVANS AND POWNALL'S LARGE MAP. 40 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. These settlers were in the main agricultural, and gave much of their labor to the vine ; while they varied life with an occa- sional hunting season. They had pined under the change of flag much less than the French nearer the Mississippi, and had in fact established family ties with the neighboring Indians, which served to bind them to the soil, and there was indeed much in their country to attract. Wharton had said of it in 1770 : "' The Wabash is a beautiful river, with high and upright banks, less subject to overflow than any other river (the Ohio excepted) in this part of America. It is navigable to Ouiata- non, 412 miles, in the spring, summer, and autumn, with bat- toes drawing about 3 feet of water. Boats go 197 miles further to the Miami carrying place (nine miles)." The severest wu-ench to the feelings of the French, whether here or along the Mississippi, came with the establishment, under orders from Gage, of a court and jury according to Eng- lish usage, whither all causes were to be taken. The change from the civil law of the French, applied by judges in their own villages, was a dismal reminder of their new allegiance to a distant master. The project of a new colony, which should seek to harmonize conflicting interests, give a stable government to the uncertain French, and protect the trading body, appealed variously to those who were lookers-on or had responsibilities. Some like Lord Clare looked to it, as he told Franklin, solely with a view to securing the country against a possible revolt of its French inhabitants. Such also was, in effect, the opinion held by Haldi- mand, studying the problem at Pensacola, and dreaming of the reci])rocal interests of his own province and the upper Missis- sipi:)i. He had urged his view upon Gage, and had expressed the belief that such a post on the Illinois could be made to sus- tain itself by agriculture. Shelbiu-ne fell in with the broader views which were pressed by Franklin, and so became in a way the sponsor of the project when he laid the scheme before the Board of Trade in October, 17(36, who, if constant to the views which they had expi^essed more than once during the last twenty years, might be reasonal)ly expected to favor the project. It was held by the s]ionsor and advocates that such a colony would raise up a population to demand British manufactures ; ENGLISH COLONIAL AIMS. 41 that by it the fur-trade could be wrested from the French aud Spanisli ; that its settlements would serve as a barrier against the Indians ; that the country could provision the forts ; and that it would be the means of giving a civil government to the French people now scattered there, and repining under the martial law. Such views, however, availed nothing. The Lords of Trade in March, 1TG7, reported adversely on the project. They held that such a colony could but poorly answer the end for which colonies should be created. A pamphleteer of the time clearly defines the views, current not only with the Lords of Trade, but with the generally conservative, better-class English subjects. " A colony is profitable," says this writer, " according as its land is so good, that by a part of the labor of the inhabitants bestowed on its cultivation, it yields the necessaries of life sufficient for their sustenance ; and by the rest of their labor produces staple commodities in such quantity, and of such value, as brings for the mother country, in the waj' of com- merce and traffic, all manufactures necessary for the proper accommodation of the colonists, and for the gradual improve- ment of the colony, as tlie number of people increase." Be- lieving in such conditions, Hillsborough, the first colonial sec- retary, contended that Murray's scheme of extending (Quebec to the Mississippi was the only prudent measure. Indeed, in his conservative view the object of colonization being " to im- prove the commerce, navigation, and manufactures of England, upon which her sti-ength and security depend," the creating of colonial ])ower distant from the sea, and caiising delay in com- munication, was expressly detrimental to public policy and an unwarranted charge upon the public treasury. Further there seemed, in his judgment, no occasion to annul the proclama- tion of 17G3, in order to promote settlements which were cer- tain in the end to make their own wares instead of buying them from the mother country. Such sweets of commercial inde- pendence, once tasted, were sure, he contended, to create a desire for political autonomy. Further, he argued, there w^ere no ])eople to s])are for building up an effective colony, and Ireland, in particular, ought not to be depopulated in the interests of such a settlement, while the seaboard communities of America needed, as he thought, rather to be strengthened than (le])leted. In his counter arguments Franklin had depended, not so miich 42 LOUISIANA, FLORIDA, AND THE ILLINOIS COUNTRY. upon drawing his colonists from the border settlements, as securing them in the more distant plantations like Connecticut; and he and many others felt sure that the efforts of the minis- try to keep settlements on the Atlantic slope and to increase the growth of Florida and the maritime provinces would cer- tainly be thwarted by the climatic conditions of those regions. To Hillsborough's plea for a restriction of manufactures, Shelburne rejDlied that an active people cooped up by the mountains was much more likely to engage in handicrafts than if allowed to subdue a virgin soil like that beyond the Alle- ghanies. Wynne argued the point in his British Empire in America (1770). "Great Britain," he says, "a country of manufactures without materials ; a trading nation without commodities to trade upon ; and a maritime power without either naval stores or sufficient material for shipbuilding, could not long subsist as an independent state without her colonies." He then argues that to secure intervals for the soil to lie fallow required, for a country aiming to subsist by agriculture alone, that such laborers should have on an average forty or fifty acres of land. In fact, some of the seaboard colonies had no more than ten or twenty acres to the man. Prohibit such colonies from sending their surplus population beyond the mountain, and you force them, he said, to live in part by manufactures, and prej^are the way for independence. That it is not possible to restrain a people hungry for land is indi- cated, he further said, in the continual disregard which had been shown to the proclamation of 1763. No such arguments, however, prevailed, and the ministry were supported in their conservative views generally by most of the royal governors, and by prerogative men in the colonies. The opponents contended that a purely militaiy control of such distant regions was best adapted to retain the French settlers in subjection. Amherst was urging such establishments, not only on the Mississippi, but on the Ohio and at Detroit. Early in 1768, the movement lost force, Franklin bowing to the will of the ministiy ; but Lyman, who had been a strenuous advocate and impatient at the obstacles, had already intimated a willingness to proceed without the sanction of the govern- ment. More prudent council, however, followed, and the pro- ject before long took another shape. CHAPTER IV. THE KENTUCKY REGION. 1767-1774. The prohibition of settlement under tlie royal proclamation of 17(33, after five years of mingled distrust and indifference, had been practically annulled over the greater part of Ken- tucky by the treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768. Washington had always under his breath called that edict " a temporary expedi- ent to quiet the Indians. It must fall, of course," he said, " when the Indians consent to our occupying the lands." In anticipation of such consent he had, in 1767, taken into his confidence an old acquaintance, Colonel Crawford, who was now living on the Youghiogheny. It had been agreed between them that Crawford should proceed quietly beyond the Monon- gahela as if bound on a hunting expedition, and select and de- fine the most desirable lands. The object of secrecy was to prevent rivalry, and while Crawford inspected and surveyed the lands, Washington was to bear the cost as w^ell as the fees for subsequent patenting. He avowed his purpose to secure pre- emption of large areas, of compact acreage and as near Pitts- burg as possible. Such a frontier service meant not a little risk, for the Indians were everywhere jealous of the encroach- ments of the whites. Charles Beatty, who at this time was traversing the country west of Fort Pitt, encountei-ed the signs of devastations at all points, and even the Chippeways were known to be plundering the bateaux on the Ohio. It was one of the strongest grounds of remonstrance against the royal proc- lamation, that it prevented settled ways and police control over a region where the government was poAverless to bar out ad- venturous and vagrant occupants. The House of Burgesses in Virginia were representing to the king that, if settlements were not permitted, this over-hill country would become " the resort of fugitives and vagabonds, defiers of law and order, who in 44 THE KENTUCKY REGION. time might form a body dangerous to the peace and civil gov- ernment of this colony." The royal proclamation had been a part of the policy of the government to strengthen, by turning the current of population thither, the newly acquired provinces of Nova Scotia and the Floridas. Still the Board of Trade had not yet taken the ad- verse stand which it later assumed towards the trans-Alleghany movements, and though prepared to check settlements in so remote regions as the Illinois country, were not quite ready to deny the possibility of a westward extension to the seaboard colonies, if made by easy advances beyond the mountains. The pioneers were, in fact, well on their march. We have seen how, in 1767, their movements had alarmed the Indians, and Croghan had tried to quiet the tribes in a conference at Fort Pitt in May, 1768. Gage had little confidence in the re- sults. " When the proposed limits shall be fixed," he said, " I despair not of living long enough to hear that the frontier people have transgressed them ; " and there were, he felt, diffi- culties ahead in the determination of the Indians not to allow settlers on the prescribed lands till they were paid for them. Johnson, while he was arranging for the gathering of the tribes at Fort Stanwix in the aiitumn of that year, had been fearful lest Colonel Cresap's purchasing Indian lands near the Gi'een- lirier River, during the previous season, would disturb the tribes. But the daring hiuiters had gone much farther west. James Smith, now a man of thirty, who had passed his early manhood in captivity among the savages, was at this date spending eleven months in coursing the valleys of the Cherokee and Cumber- land rivers, — the earliest, perhaps, except one Henry Scrag- gins, a hunter, to traverse this region. William Bean and his family had built a hut on a branch of the Watauga, — the first permanent habitation in the northeast corner of the modern Tennessee. Further south, James Harrod and Michael Stover had ventured to the neighborhood of the modern Nashville. But fate was playing with a more famous name. The promi- nence which Daniel Boone maintains in this western story is due to his own recitals as preserved by his contemporaries. The honest habit of his talk is not completely hidden in the ambitious tone which Filson has given to Boone's language, in his early account of Kentucky. Boone's rugged, but tender DANIEL BOONE. 45 personality was hard to shroud. We see his tall and slender tigure, too muscular to be gaunt. His eyes idealized his head. He was old enough at five-and-thirty for a ripened manhood to make him thoughtful. His experience had both toughened his sinews and made his senses alert. Any emergency brought DAMEL BOONE. him well-nigh to the normal perfection of a man. His kind- ness draws us to him. His audacity makes us as confident as himself. Naturally, what we know of him are glim])ses at his best, but we imagine for a background the dreary monotony of the wilderness. Such a character becomes subdued to the land- scape about his figure. His fringed hunting-shirt, belted so that 46 THE KENTUCKY REGION. its ample folds carried his food, may be ragged ; his leggings may be tattered by the brush ; his moccasins cut by the ledge ; his knife clotted with the blood of a wolf ; but the rich copse and the bounding elk share our scrutiny with his person, and we look to the canopy of magnolia, laurel, and ash, to the spread of the buckeye and graceful catalpa, to the foaming stream and the limestone vagaries, — and all that the man stands for in bravery and constancy is mated with the enchantments of nature. John Finlay, a trader from North Carolina, had before this th ridded the Cumberland Gap, and trudged on to the striking scenes on the Kentucky River. Impressed with the country, he had returned to the banks of the Yadkin, and had there imbued Boone with a desire to go thither too. The two, with some companions, started to make a new trial of the region. It was in the later spring of 1769 that Boone with James Rob- ertson, a young Scotch-Irishman, stood on a mountain path and looked down upon the rapid flow of the Watauga, winding in its rich valley, two thousand feet above the sea. We shall see that this first sight of the vale of the Watauga was not forgotten by Robertson and Boone. Two years' further wander- ing beyond, amid newer delights in the landscape, carried them back to the Yadkin valley in the spring of 1771, with instant purposes and resolves. While these tentative efforts were making by wandering hunter and trader, projects of larger scope were developing. In 1769, Dr. Lee of Virginia, with thirty-two other Americans, — Washington cooperating, — and two Londoners, were organ- ized as the Mississippi Company, and were petitioning the crown for a grant of some back lands to the extent of two and a half million acres. Gage, who was watching the movement, advised (November 9, 1769) that the new province be put on a military basis, as a barrier between the present provinces and the Indians. Lee's application was in effect pigeon-holed by the Board of Trade, while, under other influences, a better rec- ognition was made of a rival movement. This was a project of speculators, mostly Americans from north of the Potomac, — a combination not unlikely to incite the jealousy of the Virgin- ians. The petitioners included among them a London banker, THE WALPOLE COMPANY. , 47 Thomas Walpole by name, who was so put in the front of the neo-otiations that his name became attached to the scheme. Franklin and Governor Pownall were the two most conspicuous advocates from the colonies. The stock of the company was divided into seventy-two shares.' Pownall intended that the government of the new colony should be modeled upon the charter of Massachusetts, whose workings he had known. The company craved permission to buy of the Indians two million four hundred thousand acres of land, situated between latitude 38° and 42°. In general terms, the tract they desired lay west of the AUeghanies and south of the Ohio, and above the bound- ary of North Carolina. It was bounded on the west by a line drawn from the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Scioto to Cum- berland Gap. These limits covered the tract called " Indiana," which the traders had bargained for at Fort Stanwix in recom- pense for their losses in tlxe Pontiac war. These sufferers now petitioned the king to be otherwise recompensed. The bounds also embraced the patent of the old Ohio Company, and it was a 2)oint of grievance with the members of this older company that the new organization shoidd be " indebted to discoveries made at the expense of the Ohio Company." Colonel George Mercer, who was in London watching the interests of the Ohio Com- pany, failing to receive instruction for which he had apjdied, finally agreed, on his own responsibility, to merge that com- pany's interest in the new jjroject, so that the old Virginia claimants received a thirty-sixth part of the shares in the Wal- pole Company. By the end of that year (1770), Colonel Mercer wrote to Washington that he had prevailed upon the new company to allow out of their intended grant two hundred tliousand acres, which, under a proclamation by Governor Dinwiddie, had been granted to Washington and the soldiers who served with him in the opening campaign of the recent war. By these measures there was gained a certain solidarity of interest, needful in negotiating with the government. An o])position to the project, not unexpected, as in the contest for the Illinois colony, was headed by the colonial minister. Lord Hillsborough — representing under Lord North a Tory govei-nment destined to last for nearly a half century — ^made an adverse report to the king in council on behalf of tlie Commissioners of Trade and Plantations. Tliis report enforced 48 THE KENTUCKY REGION. what was called the " two capital objects " of the royal procla- mation. These were, first, to keep the colonists within reach of the trade of the mother country, and, second, to hold them in due subjection. Aiiy permission to settle the reserved Indian territory would be detrimental to these aims. The report was, I of course, as we see it now, a failure to discern the inevitable expansion of the British people. As the contest moved on, no one in the discussion warmed with the throes of prescience more effectively than Edmund Burke. '* Many of the people in the back settlements," he said, '' are already little attached to par- ticular situations. Already they have topped the Appalachians. From thence," he went on to say, with scant knowledge of the country, "' they behold an immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow." He intimated that such a population, if alienated, might turn upon the oppressor. They could elude any police in flying from section to section, if grants were denied them. Such indei3endence, he said, "" would be the hapless result of aii endeavor to keep, as a lair of wild beasts, that earth which God by an express charter had given to the children of men." There happened, when he was speaking upon the point in Parliament, to be a season of want among the English communities. He used it with effect. " The scarcity which you have felt would have been a devastating famine, if this child of your old age, ■ with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youth- ' ful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent." At another moment, making it the occasion for a graceful compli- ment to Lord Bathurst, as having a memory to cover the inter- val, Burke reminded the House that in 1772 the trade of England with the American colonies alone was nearly what it had been in 1704 with the entire world. Hillsborough said that the timely supplies to which Burke referred were practically interdicted by the distance and by the tardy service of transportation over the mountains. It was asserted, in reply, that produce could be carried from the Ohio country by the river, and over the passes to tide-water at Alex- andria, cheaper than it could be hauled from Northampton to London. Flour, beef, and naval stores could be floated down the Ohio to Florida and the West Indies easier than they could be taken to such markets from New York or Philadelphia ; and if forwarded by river and sea to those ports from the Ohio, it ADVANCE OF SETTLERS. 49 would cost but half the expense of land carriage. It was said that to go by sea from Philadelphia to Pensacola took a month, and it took no longer by the river from Pittsburg. The Ohio, said Franklin, is navigable for large boats at all times, and from January to April it can cany vessels of large tonnage. Since the war, he added, the distance by a new road from Fort Cum- berland to navigable water over the mountains has been reduced from seventy to forty miles. Thus easy is it, he reasoned, to put this temperate and much-producing region into close com- munication with the sea, — a region that has its silkworm and the mulberry, flax and cotton, for the manufacturer, hemp and iron for naval stores, and grapes and tobacco for the solaces of life. Xo such statements availed, however, to swerve Hillsboroxigh from his position. Lord Dunmore did much to strengthen the oi)position when he wrote from Virginia that any such grant would be sure to bring on an Indian war. These were two years of uncertainty in London. It seemed at times as if the applicants would get their grant, but every period of hope was succeeded by another of disheartenment. Meanwhile on the Ohio and its tributaries events were going on which made the decision less dependent on the government. Already in 1770, settlers were moving steadily on, and there was a proposal in the air to found a colony on the lands ceded at Fort Stanwix and call it Pittsylvania. The packhorse and the shirt of jeans, buckskin leggings scraping together with lithe steps, were seen and heard everywhere along the route, whether by Fort Bedford and Loyalhannon, or by Fort Cum- berland and Redstone old fort. Plunging into the shelter of the large timber of the Kanawha and its branches, startling the elk, the bear, and the wild turkey, often following the beaten '' traces " of the buffalo, the pioneers opened of themselves the paths which Captain Legge had thought to have done by an organized company of axemen. P)lazing a tree near a spring, they marked it with a date and the acreage, and established the tacitly recognized '• Tomahawk Claim ; " on clearing and plant- ing, they established what passed under the designation of a " corn title." Sometimes adventurous parties of hunters pushed on even so far as the Green River and the mouth of the Cum- berland, and wandered about the site of the modern Nashville. 50 THE KENTUCKY REGION. The Walpole movement found little favor in Virginia. This combination of northern interests ignored the claim of Virginia to a western extension under her charter. If this expansion was not maintained, her right to give patents of this over-mountain domain was lost. Hillsborough, in July, 1770, had notified the Virginia authorities of the movement, but in their reply in October they made no protest, and ac- knowledged that "^ when that part of the country shall become sufficiently populated, it may be a wise and prudent measure." Before it became known that provision had been made to pre- serve Dinwiddie's grant to the soldiers of the late war, there was a strong feeling of injury in which Washington shared. Moreover, the claims of the Cherokees — who were to be ap- peased by the recognition, for they had been of late, as Cameron the Indian agent discovered, in a hostile mood — had been es- poused by Virginia against the pretensions of the Iroquois as recognized at Fort Stanwix. While the Walpole petition was pending in London, and before Mercer's message about the engulfing of the old Ohio Company in the new project had been received, Washington started west to take for himself a new look at the country. He left Mount Vernon on October 5, 1770, and in a little more than a week was with Crawford on the Yonghiogheny. Pie had various motives, — one was to see land which Crawford had already selected for him, another was to understand better the difficulties of the portage connecting the Potomac and Ohio, so as to further the trade of what he called " a rising empire." Near Redstone old fort, at the head of navigation on the Monongahela, where for some years the authorities had been trying unsuccessfully to oust the settlers, he found that Michael Cresap had built himself a house. Here he talked with that frontiersman about what he then supposed was the injury to his comrades of 1754, in their rights being covered — at least to the extent of four fifths — by the proposed Walpole grant. He looked upon himself as in some degree — so he had written in April to Lord Botetourt — " the representative of the officers and soldiers who claim the right to two hundred thousand acres of this very land." Settlements at this time had fairly Note. — The opposite view of Pittsburg is from the Atlas of Collot's Journey in North America. 52 THE KENTUCKY REGION. begun along the Monongahela, and two years later occupancy was in full progress, and was stretching on to Laurel Eidge. Most of the settlers were coming by the Braddock route, which Washington had followed, but a lesser number poured in by the Pennsylvania route from Bedford and Ligonier. On October 27, 1770, Washington was at Fort Pitt, now garrisoned by two companies of Royal Irish. He found rows of traders' houses along the Monongahela side, but the most active of the packmen were evidently the Pennsylvanians, di- verting the trade over the gaps toward Philadelphia, while they met the Indians in Virginia territory south of the Ohio. This, with the neglect which the petition of the Lees and himself had received, could but convince Washington that the intei-ests which supported Forbes and Bouquet in preferring a new route over the hills, ten years and more ago, were not short-lived. These rival agencies were further kept alive by the controversy over counter claims to this over-hill country about the forks of the Ohio. Everything was favoring the prominence Penn- sylvania was now acquiring among the older colonies. From 1771 to 1773, something like twenty-five thousand Presbyterian Scotch-Irish arrived at either Philadelphia or Newcastle, and they added greatly to the sturdier stock of the colony. Frank- lin, now in England, was considering how the prosperity of the colony could be increased by a system of canalizing her rivers. This western contest of Pennsylvania with Virginia was an evil destined to be surmounted, but during these years when Westmoreland County was formed, it proved irritating and even dangerous. Both colonies had, after the treaty at Fort Stan- wix, been issuing warrants for the same territory, while they bid against each other by alternately lowering the selling price. Washington, leaving Pittsburg in October, 1770, went with a party down the Ohio to the Kanawha, and early in Noveml)er he was examining the land about that stream. Returning to Pittsburg, he gave an entertainment at an inn in 'that place, and here met for the first time a nephew of George Croghan, Connolly by name, who, as a creature of Lord Dunmore. be- came a few years later notorious in furthering his lordship's schemes in this region in opposition to the claims of Pennsyl- vania. This land dispute turned upon the meaning to be given to the rather impracticable definition of Penn's charter for his WASHINGTON'S LANDS. 53 western bounds, — five degrees west of the Delaware, a stream of in-and-out readies. It was of importance for Pennsylvania to hold the forks within her jurisdiction, which it could do if Pittsburg could be made to lie within a westward curve to match a similar bend of the Delaware. To accomplish this, it was claimed by Croghan that certain interested parties, work- ing with SculFs map of the province, undertook to misplace the forks to accommodate that locality to some favoring curve. Such an act, if fraudulent, wronged in its consequences the new Walpole colony by depriving it of so eligible a site as the forks. No one since AVeiser's death had been so important a medi- ator with the Ohio tribes as Croghan. Gage was writing of liini : " Croghan is generous ; gives all he has, and whilst he has anything to give the Indians will flock about him.*' The new patentees had made it for Croghan's advantage to watch their interests at the fcn-ks. He had thought that their lands would find purchasers at £10 the hundred acres, and half-penny sterling cpxitrent. When he had offered some of his own lands, lying between the Monongahela and Raccoon Creek, to Wash- ington, that vigilant speculator refused the chance because of the unsettled conditions, both as regards the controverted bounds of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the pending Walpole grant, all of which might affect Croghan's title as derived from the Indians. Still Washington did not hesitate to add to liis own rights under the Dinwiddie proclamation by buying simi- lar claims of otliers, and when he died, nearly thirty years later, his will shows that he still owned various lots on tlie Kanawha, aggregating nearly fourteen thousand acres in four ])arcels, beside a fine area above the modern Charleston, which lie and Andrew Lewis had secured after being attracted by a bituminous spring upon it. AMien it was known that the Dinwiddie grant was preserved, Washington, who had returned to Mount Vernon by the first of December, 1770, sent Captain William Crawford in the following May to mark out its bounds. Washington's journey had convinced him that the wagon road then in use, extending about two hundred miles from where it left the Monongahela to Alexandria, could be shortened to sixty and perhaps to twenty miles, if the Potomac could be made navigable by some system 54 THE KENTUCKY REGION. -». -a JrLj^atv T'enit.s miiiiiil iiimmr- S'' Note. — This map shows an attempt to define tlie western bounds of Pennsylvania by of canalization, such as Franklin was contemplating foi- the Susquehanna and its branches. Some such enterprise was necessary if Virginia was going to hold a successful rivalry with Pennsylvania. No other Virginian added so much per- sonal interest to his urgency for the province's behoof, inas- much as he eventually held over thirty thousand acres through- out the Ohio valley. Washington's interest in the soldier's claims was superadded to his own, and he wrote to Dunmore in June, 1771, that " the officers and soldiers confide in me to transact this business for them." FRANKLIN AND HILLSBOROUGH. 55 At the same time WasLiiigton repre- sented that a report of the ultimate suc- cess of the Walpole ])etitioners was gain- ing ground notwith- standing the op})osi- tion of the Board of Trade. The advo- cates had carried the question to the king- in council, and on July 1, 1772, Franklin read before that body his masterly answer to Hillsborough's ob- jections. Franklin's statement was an em- phatic denial of the Virginian claim to a western extension, for he held that the Alle- ghanies bounded the province, while the rights of all the colo- nies were derived from the Iroquois cession of lands, which they had obtained by conquest from the Shawnees. He was in due time answered by George INIason, in behalf of the Virginians. The Iroquois argument had been often used against the French, and it indicated how the policy of the min- istry had changed since the war, tliat it was now necessary to use this reasoning against the government's ])osition. Treaties with the southern Indians, held at Ilai-dlabor in 17G8, and again at Lochabar, in South Carolina, October 18, had acknowledged that the Cherokees' right to this i-egion to- wards the Kanawha was sui)erior to that of the Iroquois, but curves corresponding to those of the Delaware River. 56 THE KENTUCKY REGION. that tribe got no recognition from Franklin, and a large emi- gration had already begun to flow west, looking to the security which the treaty of Fort Stanwix gave them. Franklin said that he relied, to keep up this western exodus, " on the voluntary superflux of the inhabitants of the middle provinces." The brothers Zane had built their cabin at the mouth of Wheeling Creek, the first white man's habitation, perhaps, in that section of the wilderness. Franklin reckoned that not less than five thousand families, averaging six heads each, un- able to meet the demands of the large landowners east of the mountains, had before this sought lands on the Ohio. This computation did not include several thousand families whicih had passed the gaps, but had tarried within the proposed limits of Pennsylvania. Among these last, in 1769, had been Zeisberger and his Mo- ravians, but in 1772, to escape the troubles of Pennsylvania with the Susquehanna Company, they had pushed up the west branch of the Susquehanna in search of a new home. We have Bishop Ettweln's journal of their flight. Having worshiped for the last time in their old church, on June 11, 1772, they be- gan their wearisome march. On July 18, "they were climbing a precipitous mountain " to a spring, the headwaters of the Ohio." " Here," says the bishop, " I lifted up my heart in prayer as I looked westward." The band was probably now on the north branch of the Mahoning, an affluent of the Alle- ghany. They floated down the stream to Beaver Creek, and in August they had laid the foundations of a white settlement in Ohio, on the " second bottom " of the Tuscarawas valley (Muskingum), amid its w^alnuts and sycamores, its cedars, locusts, and laurels. Such was the varied complexion of the emigration which Bui'ke had perceived that it was impossible to withdraw, and against which Gage's proclamation was to be so fruitlessly directed. Instead of threats, these people needed protection and the service of a stable government. This population, as Franklin argued, was now become, in part at least, " so ungov- erned and lawless " that nothing but some sort of subjection to the forms of government could prevent an Indian war. There was a tendency, in all considerations of the government about America, to delay, but Franklin's urgency and arguments at last VANDALIA. 57 prevailed, and on August 14, 1771, the king, in council, ap- proved the Walpole grant. The immediate result was that Hillsborough, who in the beginning was desirous of pushing the advocates to larger deniantls than they thought prudent, and apparently with a purpose in this way to compass their ultimate discomfiture, now resigned in disgust. After this, Franklin's reply, having accomplished its purpose, disappeared from the book-stalls. The effect in America was only the beginning of new delays. A message was at once sent to Sir William John- son, who instructed Croghan to cause " the different nations and tribes to be made acquainted that it was His Majesty's pleasure to form a new colony or settlement in Ohio." This movement had been sedulously watched in Virginia, not only by those who sought the cover of a Virginia patent to these same lands, but there is some reason to believe it had been observed by Dunmore in no friendly spirit to the claims of the soldiers. In the following spring (1773), Dunmore and Washington had planned a journey beyond the mountains, l>ut the governor went finally alone. In an interview which he had with Crawford, the governor promised to issue to Wash- ington a patent for lands at the mouth of the Kanawha, " in case the new government did not take place before he got home." Washington, meanwhile, had found much discourage- ment in all his Ohio plans. Crawford was obliged to inform him that he had to work hard to keej) squatters off the property which had been surveyed for him, and that nothing but hiring men constantly to occupy a claim was sufficient to prevent intruders building houses upon it. We find W^ashington accordingly i)ronqited to turn to other claims, which the proclamation of 1763 had reserved for the participants in the war, and he thought for a while of the pos- sibilities of patenting lands in Florida, amid those '" scorcliing and unwholesome heats " of which Franklin had of late been writing. ]Meanwhile, the new Company of the Ohio was nurturing larger views, and on May 6, 1773, the king in council extended the bounds of the projected government, now spoken of as Vandalia, to the line of the Kentucky River. Already the In'others McAfee were preparing to take squatters' rights along this stream, near where Frankfort now stands, whither the 58 THE KENTUCKY REGION. traces of the buffalo had led them, through the uninhabited limestone region. Not far from the same time, Captain Wil- liam Thompson, an agent for the war claimants in Pennsylvania, had sent a party along the Kentucky, and these had reported that the lands were the finest they had ever seen, and likely soon "to sell at twenty-five shillings an acre." The attractive aspect of this country was now well under- stood, adorned as it was with broad-leaved trees without under- brush, with ripening grass beneath the shade showing blue to the distant eye, with the earth teeming from a fertility that was constantly nurtured by the decay of the underlying rock, and with occasional broad stretches, where the trees had been burned and vast herds of buffalo roamed. This extension of the grant had rendered the mouth of the Kanawha more central than before, and strengthened the opinion which Washington had held, that it was the natural seat for the new government. Towards the middle of May, it became common talk in Pittsburo- that Dunmove had "ranted patents for the two hundred thousand acres due to Washington and his comrades in the neighborhood of the Kanawha, and Croglian wrote to AVharton al)out it and said, " It is creating great confusion on the frontier, both among the whites and the Indians." The tribes had been taught to look upon the pro- jected colony as an alternative which could be turned to their advantage in the recompense they expected for their lands. The Shawnees, in particular, were aroused, and considered the Virginia claims inimical. Frontiersmen so experienced as Dr. Walker were advocating an escape from conflict with the Cherokees by turning their thoughts to western Florida. This large grant of the soldiers, already recognized, as we have seen, by the Walpole Company, produced new difficulties by its very extent. With an eye to improvements, Washington sought to have it surveyed so as to Include as much tillable ground as pos- sible. He soon discovered from the re})orts which he received that he must secure it in at least twenty different localities, unless he was content to include contiguously large unproduc- tiv^e mountain areas. It is not easy from Washington's letters always to distinguish which of these western lands he had patented as a private ventui*e from his claims either under the Dinwiddie or the later royal proclamation. By July, 1773, BULLITT AND LOUISVILLE. 59 lie had certainly got such hold of more than twenty thousand acres of these Ohio valley lands as to warrant an advertisement of them in the Maryland Journal. These lands were among the first surveyed, and he describes them as " by the beautiful hand of nature almost fit for the scythe." To render them more attractive to settlers, he represents that in due time the land carriage to them by the jVIonongahela route would be reduced to a few miles. Just what these lands were is not clear, but it is apparent that Washington had secured the favor of the royal governor, and was willing to profit by it to the exclusion of his war-time comrades, if his caution to Crawford to be discreet in speaking of the patents will bear that inference. Dunmore had said (September 24) that he did wot intend to make any grants on the Ohio under the proclamation of 17G3, but at the same time Washington believed the contrary, and that these grants were to be made below the Scioto, on the supposition entertained at that time that the meridian of the Scioto was to be the western limit of Vandalia. A certain Ca])tain Thomas Bullitt, in company with one Han- cock Taylor, was at this time moving down the Kanawha and the Ohio, locating prospective towns on a grant of over a thou- sand acres, awarded under the Dinwiddie proclamation, one of which included the present Charleston on the Kanawha, Bullitt was invested by the College of William and Mary, one of its prerogatives, with the authority to approve surveys, and had thus become conspicuous in these western movements, though there were complaints that when wanted, to give such approval, he was not always to be found. He was, as it seems, moving on about his own business, and as the summer wore on, Taylor and he had separated at the mouth of the Kentucky, and while Taylor went u]) that stream, making survey about the modern Frankfort, Bullitt went on to the rapids of the Ohio, and laid out the plot for a settlement where Louisville now stands, the first regular town mapping in Kentucky. The spot was not occupied till two years later, though, on a lot above the falls, John Cowan had built a log house in 1774. Washington had instructed this same Bullitt in September, 1773, to survey for him a tract of ten thousand acres, as far below the Scioto as it ma}'' be necessary to go to get good 60 THE KENTUCKY REGION. bottom-lands in oue, two, or three lots. He had already bought out the rights of Captain Stobo and Lieutenant Van Braam, other soldiers of the recent war, which, added to his own claim for five thousand acres, made up the ten thousand held by him under the Dinwiddle proclamation. But the destiny of this Ohio country turned, it was thought, upon the future of the Walpole movement, and the delays in organizing the govern- ment of the colony on the spot — Dartmouth seems on May 17, 1773, to have offered Major Legge the governorship of some new colony on the Ohio, with a salary of XI, 000 — were greatly embarrassing to Croghan, who at Pittsburg was acting, as we have seen, as its agent. Haldimand had arrived in New York in July, 1773, to suc- ceed Gage in the chief command in North America. He was early made aware of the stream of settlers passing down the Ohio to the lower parts of that river, and Croghan had reported how Bullitt and others were '' going down the river with num- bers of people to settle the country, which, they were informed by the king's message, was not to be settled." General Brad- street had not long before bargained with the Indians for a tract of three hundred thousand acres, but the Board of Trade had refused confirmation of an act " which cannot be reconciled with the spirit and intent of the king's instructions." Haldi- mand urged Sir William Johnson to take steps to stop such infringements of the royal proclamation, but that Indian agent felt himself powerless, with no government on the river to en- force the prohibition. This lawless influx had begun here and there, as in Bradstreet's case, in private purchases from the Indians. Such clouded titles led Chief Justice Marshall, at a later day, when the United States succeeded to the royal rights, to invalidate claims well earned by the hardships of pioneers. By December, 1773, Croghan is representing " the emigra- tion as surprising. I am told [he says] that there can't be less than sixty thousand souls settled between Pittsburg and the mouth of the Ohio, — so that the policy of the people in Eng- land in delaying the grant of the new colony, in order to pre- vent emigration, answers not their purpose, as it does not prevent the settling of the country." The delays further produced much discontent among the WASHINGTON'S PLANS. 61 Indians, eager to profit by the settlement. Croghan says that these anxious savages flocked by hundreds to Pittsburg, expect- ing food and gratuities. The leaders of the colony had jironiised their agent what was needed for this hospitable purpose, but they forgot their pledge, and Croghan complains that the Indians were " eating up what he had gathered for the winter's use of his family." To give the presents which were necessary, he says, he was forced " to pawn what little plate he had and some other valuable things." While the company held back and left its agent in this unseemly plight, private enterprise revived with the spring (1774). During the winter Washington had been consider- ing a plan of bringing over two or three hundred Palatines to Alexandria, and passing them over the mountains to settle his lands. He sought information as to the best measures to that end, hoping to " give up indentures and make them freemen and tenants " as soon as they could raise a crop of corn. He proposed to remit their rent for four years if they took un- cleared land, and for two years if there was a house on it and five acres cleared. His inquiries did not encourage him. The Palatines preferred Pennsylvania with greater religious liberty, and did not look kindly upon the Episcopal tithes to be encoun- tered under Virginia rule. The restrictive navigation laws were also in the way, for these people were to be ship])ed from Holland, and outward cargoes for payment must incur charges in England by transshipment there. This led Robert Adam to suggest that Washington might find it less burdensome to get Scotch or Irish, or even convicts and indented servants might be more handily found in Baltimore. By spring the obstacles seemed no less, and on May 1 we find the scheme laid aside. Washington had reckoned that he had land enough for three hundred families ; but the outcome of all his plans was that two small ])arties of servants and hired men went over the mountains, and were soon scattered. In April, John Floyd led a surveying party down the Kana- wha, and did some surveying for Washington and Patrick Henry. Simon Kenton and a party were strolling near the lower Blue Licks. Both parties, however, soon discovered indications of the rising Indian war. Daring the early summer 62 THE KENTUCKY REGION. (1774), James Harrod and a party of forty laid out in central Kentucky the town of Harrodsburg, not the earliest settlement of the future State, but the first to have in it, perhaps, the ele- ments of perpetuity, with all the initial flourish of a tomahawk claim and a patch of corn. The year wore out, and nothing was done to relieve the anx- iety either of Croghan or the soldiers. The king turned a deaf ear to the urgency for dispatching a governor to the new col- ony; and Dunmore dallied, as Washington alleges, for "other causes" than procrastination in considering the soldiers' grants. Political events strained the relations of the mother country and the colonies, and in April, 1775, the first gun at Lexington in Massachusetts pushed all into the limbo of forgotten things. While the news of the conflict near Boston was still fresh in London, Walpole did not despair (May 30) of those " better times on which the country now depends for its preservation." CHAPTER V. THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR. 1774. In 1774, there came for the first time a sharp conflict be- tween Virginia and the home government as to jurisdiction over the territory north of the Ohio. The intei'pretation which Vir- ginia had always given to the very obscure definition of her bounds in the charter of 1G09 had been long denied by France, and when that contested region was wrested from France, the peace of 1763 had limited its western extension by the Missis- sippi. The royal proclamation, which soon followed, had pre- vented the pushing of the settlements thither, but had not given it over absolutely to other jurisdiction. Ten years or more later, while Virginia was waoino- war against the savages there- abouts, to enforce her claim and protect her settled frontiers, the British Parliament strove to pnt a limit to her territorial pretensions in this direction by giving the Quebec government an absolute jurisdiction over the region. There were other purposes, both ostensible and latent, in this legislative move- ment, which were entered ujion to curb not only Virginia, but the other seaboard colonies, in an inevitable westward march. Ever since Carleton had been in command in Quebec, he had felt the necessity of yielding something more to the French Canadians than had been allowed by the capitulation at Mon- treal in 1760, and by the acts of 1763. He contended that a further concession could alone make them good British sub- jects, and that a guarded revival of French law, customs, and religion, while placating one hundred and fifty thousand Cath- olics of the pi-ovince, — as Carleton counted them, though his estimate is probably much too large, — would not seriously impair the fortunes of four hundred Protestants, their fellow- subjects. In 1770, Carleton had gone to England, leaving in his place Cramahe, a Swiss Protestant in the English service. 64 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR. During the four years of his absence, Carleton was in occasional consultation with the ministry about what seemed to him some needed transformation of the government of the province. This consideration was at times affected, and perhaps shaped, by petitions of the Canadians, not largely signed, and forwarded by Cramahe. They touched the restoration of the French laws and a rehabilitation of the Catholic religion. While such questions were in abeyance, the revolutionary commotions in Boston did not fail to render of doubtful con- tinuance the loyalty of the seaboard colonies, now numbering jjrobably, according to the most careful estimates, considerably under three millions of people. If such disaffection could not be stamped out, it became a question of restraining it by terri- torial bounds, and covertly if not openly. This danger had already delayed the entire fulfillment of the Vandalia project south of the Ohio. It was known that there was a tide of immigration rolling along the Ohio, and, in spite of the agree- ment at Fort Stanwix, threatening its northern banks. It was necessary, then, to find some barrier to check the current, lest it should buoy up and carry along the seething commotions of the seaboard. No such barrier was so obvious as that which the French had attempted to maintain in the recent war, — the line of the St. Lawrence and the Alleghanies. To make this barrier effective, it was necessary to consolidate, as far as possible, the region behind it in a single government. Murray and his suc- cessor, Carleton, had already urged an extension of their execu- tive authority from Quebec westward, and the opportune time had come for doing it, under an ostensible plea of regulating the fur trade of the region. If the traders were gratified by such professions, the debates and remonstrances show that the pro- posed reinstatement of the Roman Church and the suppression of English law drew out fervent opposition ; and there is, moi-e- over, no evidence that the Canadians themselves, as a popula- tion, felt any elation over the prospect. This may have been due in some part to a latent sympathy among them with the revolutionary classes of the older colonies, — a sympathy with which Congress, as it turned out, blundered in an attempt to deal. A new petition from Canada, dated February, 1774, and signed by only sixty-five persons, asked for a restoration of the VIRGINIA AND PENNSYLVANIA. 05 " old bounds of Canada," over which the English and French had so long disputed, and the ministry in granting- it were ensnared into the somewhat ridiculous acknowledgment of what they had formerly denied. To restore such limits, however, would please the Canadians and some fur traders, and became a good cloak for ulterior purposes respecting the seaboard colonies. The jealousy of New York was aroused, and for a while it was uncertain if the western part of that province would not be sacrificed to the ministerial purpose. New York owed it to Edmund Burke that this territory was saved to its jurisdiction. Immediate opposition naturally came from the Penns, whose proprietary rights would be curtailed, and from Virginia, whose royal governor, interested with many of her peoi)le in land schemes in the Illinois country, was already i)reparing for an invasion of the territory. The movement for a colony north of the Ohio, over which Franklin and Hillsborough had contended, had come to naught, much to the relief of Virginia ; but here was a project seeking the active sanction of Parliament, and likely to thwart any jmrpose which her royal governor might have of issuing patents to this ver}'^ land. Dunmore, the governor, was a man not easily balked. He had already taken possession of Fort Pitt despite the protests of Penn, and was determined to hold it as a gate to the over- river country of Virginia. This precipitate conduct had alarmed Haldimand, the military head of the continent, lest the disti'ac- tions of this intercolonial land-dispute should embolden the savages to take an advantage. Both sides arrested settlers engaged in vindicating their respective colonies, and the trouble had become so alarming in the spring of 1774 that surveyors of both sides were rushing to the contested region, and plotting their claims. This dispute, serious enough in itself, was embittered by the craft of Connolly, the creature of Dunmore, and comi)licated beside by the diversity of individual claims, whether based on Indian deeds or tomahawk titles, or on the assertion of might against right. The spring of 1774 led to renewed negotiations between the colonies in the midst of mutual criminations. Penn offered the calculations of Provost Smith of the college at Philadelphia and of Dr. Rittenhouse, that Pittsburg was 66 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR. at least six miles within the bounds which he claimed, and in May, James Tilghman and Andrew Allen, commissioners sent by Penn to Williamsburg, offered as a compromise a curved line for the western boundary, parallel to the tortuous course of the Delaware. Dunniore insisted that the live degrees of longitude should be measured on the 42° parallel, and that a meridian boundary line should be run at the western end of this measurement. Neither side would yield, and Dunmore continued to issue patents covering the controverted area. The Indians, observing this antagonism, and disapj^ointed that the delay in the organization of the Vandalia colony had deprived them of purchase money for their lands, and fearing to lose them through occupation by rival claimants, grew troublesome along the frontier. One Walter Kelly had hutted his family on a creek up the Kanawha, eighty miles from a stockade of the Greenbrier Company, which was the nearest support. Warnings, which were bringing nearly all the re- moter settlers under cover, were neglected, and Kelly's little home was devastated by ruthless Shawnees. But such was the fearlessness of the frontier that two brothers, Morris by name, soon occupied the same spot, and planted a family stock, where it flourishes to-day. This baleful condition of the border was not altogether unwelcome to Dunmore. It gave the color of necessity to a proclamation (April 25, 1774) ordering the militia to be in readiness. By this force he might intimidate Pennsylvania, i:)unish the Indians, and maintain the sovereignty of Virginia beyond the Ohio. A few score men, land-grabbers and adventurers, had already assembled at the mouth of the Kanawha, and a hunting party sent out by them had been attacked by wandering Shawnees. As the spring wore on, these bold fellows at the Kanawha, animated by a desire for revenge, resolved on a sudden onset upon the Indian towns on the Scioto, in the disputed territory. They sought a famous frontiersman, Michael Cresap, and made him their leader. He had only recently moved to the upper Ohio from the frontier of Maryland. There was also in their niunber a young and daring spirit, George Rogers Clark, who Note. — The map on the opposite page, based on information afforded by General Richard But- ler, is taken from Crfevecceur's Leltres (Pun CuUivateur, vol. iii., Paris, 1783. /mcirti 68 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR. had been brought thither to look after a grant which he had obtained at Fish Creek. This body of borderers, with its impromptu organization, was further recruited at the site of the modern Wheeling by additional hotheads, with whom it mattered little whether the stories of murders, which were in- creasing, were of whites by savages, or of the Indian by the frontiersman, — and there was no dearth of either kind of tale. Ebenezer Zane, the principal settler of this spot, had made here a tomahawk claim in 1769, whei'e he was joined the next year by his brothers, Jonathan and Silas. There was at this date (1774) a number of log houses clustering about those of the Zanes. The hotheads w^ere counseled to be prudent by the leader of this settlement, and CresaiJ seemed inclined to be cautious, but the trepidation was too Avidespread for perfect restraint. One observer tells us that in a single day a thousand bewildered settlers crossed over the Monongahela towards the east, and the whole country was finally stripped of inhabitants, except they were " forted." The war, if it came, was sure to have one advantage for the whites, and that was the single and unhampered purpose of Virginia to maintain her own, and this she w^as prepared to do without the aid of her neighbors. Sir William Johnson, in New York, was doing his best to hold back the Iroquois, but that part of these confederates which had advanced into the modern State of Ohio could not be restrained from making common cause with the Delawares and Shawnees. Logan was one of these migrated Iroquois, and it was his fate to become the pivot of events. He had been bred at Shamokin, and had long been known as a friend of the English. A small camp of his family and followers, on the north side of the Ohio, crossing the river to get rum, was set upon and killed by some lawless whites. Indian runners spread the news of the massacre, and Logan was soon, with such a band as he could gather, spreading devastation along the Monongahela and Holston, — and Dunmore's war was begun. The country north of the Ohio, where Dunmore expected to operate, was designated in the Parliamentary bill, now near Its passage, as " heretofore a part of the territory of Canada." THE FRENCH ON THE WABASH. 69 This phrase struck sharply at the pride of Dunning and others, jealous of English honor, and Lord North at one time proposed to leave the words out. It was nrged by the opposition that nnder such an acknowledgment, if the time should ever come for France to regain Canada in a diplomatic balance, she could fairly contend for this conceded limit. While this apprehen- sion strengthened the opponents of the bill in England, the news of its progress through Parliament brought other fears to land speculators in Virginia. Some travelers and adventurers in the summer of 1773 had, nnder the lead of one William Murray, formed a company at Kaskaskia which became known as the Illinois Land Company, and with these the governor and various gentlemen of tide-water Virginia were associated. They had bargained with the Indians for large tracts of land, bounded by the Wabash, the Mississippi, and the Illinois, and the deed had been passed. Was their purchase now imperiled by this bill ? What was to be the effect of the measure upon the French traders and denizens of that country, and ujjon their relations to the Indians ? The French on the Wabash and beyond, occupying lands which the royal proclamation of 1763 had pledged to the Indians, had been for ten years a source of perplexity to the commanding general in New York. In September, 1771, Gage had reported that the tribes thereabouts were constantly im- periling the English traders, and " it is natural to suspect," he says, " that the French instigate the Indians against us to keep the trade to themselves." He then intimates that it may be- come necessary to dislodge the French at Vincennes. Early in ISIarch, Gage received royal orders to warn the French at that l)lace to remove immediately, and it is for us, he adds, " to let the neighboring Indians know that we shall have traders among them to take the place of the French." In April, 1772, Gage issued a proclamation of his intent to remove all settlers from, that country, English as well as French. They were given time to withdraw voluntarily. The warning was a cruel one to the French, who had enjoyed unquestioned homestead titles for seventy years. When their protests were sent to New York, Gage dallied in his decision. This gave time for the resignation of Hillsborough, forced by Franklin, to throw the control of the question into the tenderer hands of Lord Dart- 70 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR. mouth, and the i^oor Freuch were respited. They went on, pursuing their avocations, hunting- and trading, and Patrick Kennedy, who was at this time exploring the Illinois, reports meeting them on its banks. It seems clear that the routes from Detroit, the home of the congeners of these Illinois French, were constantly traversed by these people, either by the Mau- mee or the Illinois River, — a journey in either case of near nine hundred miles to the MississipjDi, often the depot for their furs. Haldimand, in succeeding Gage, opened communica- tion with their western aliens. He had advised Gage that it would be difficult to controvert their land titles. Now under Dartmouth's orders he had cautioned the English commander at Fort Gage to be conciliatory towards them. A little later, Haldimand was endeavoring to get more direct information of their condition. He was instructing Lieutenant Hutchins to leave Pensacola and take the route north by the Mississippi, so as to bring him reports. Later still, he sent Lieutenant Hall to placate the Indians and prepare the French settlers for the stabler rule of the new bill. Gage, in London, was not less anxiously consulting with North and Dartmouth, and conferring with Carleton about its provisions. Haldimand was meanwhile constantly reporting new disorders on the Ohio, with a suspicion of French intrigue behind the savage irrup- tions, and there was need of haste in applying the assuaging effects of the bill. But its opponents were questioning the scheme because they thought it hopeless and unpatriotic to check an inevitable westward progress. Haldimand under- stood the real purpose of its promoters, when he said that the bill was aimed at preventing the Americans getting possession of the continent. Lord Lyttelton recognized the fact that to confine the Americans by such a barrier was to thwart their contest for empire. Wedderburn said distinctly that it was one object of the bill to prevent the English settling in that country, and that the new barrier would allow '' little tempta- tion " to send settlers north from the Vandalia grant. It was not only this territorial exj^ansion of Que])ec, but the concessions wliich the bill made to French Catholics, greater than any English Romanist could dare expect, and the grant of French law in British territory, which increased the steady aversion to it of English merchants, and which aroused the lord THE BILL PASSED. 71 mayor and magistrates of London, because they supposed it imperiled British honor. For the seaboard colonists to enter that territory and find French law instead of English law, and to encounter an established Catholic religion, was not likely to strengthen the loyalty whose decadence the ministry was de- ploring- in the older colonies. " Does not your blood run cold," said Hamilton, " to think that an English Parliament could pass an act for the establishment of arbitrary power and popery in such an extensive country ? " However politic the modern historian may think this rehabilitating of French customs to have been for the vastly preponderating French element north of the St. Lawrence, to include the Ohio country in such provi- sions is not approved even by such defenders of the ministerial policy as Kingsford, the latest historian of Canada. There is indeed little to support the charges that the bill was but the first step in reducing " the ancient, free, Protestant colonies to the same state of slavery," by setting up " an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies." These were phrases used by Congress in an address to the people of Great Britain a few months later (October 21, 1774), and still more solemnly in the Declaration of Independ- ence. They were simply loose sentences used for political ends. The Parliamentary opposition, which was dignified by the stip- port of Chatham and Burke, never ventured to think of any such effect on tlie Atlantic side of the Alleghanies from these untoward provisions, whatever the bravado utterances of Thur- low may have indicated. " I do not choose," said Burke at one time, " to break the American spirit, because it is the spirit that has made the country." The bill was inti'oduced on May 2, 1774, into the House of Lords, weary with the long sessions which the discussion of the Massachusetts coercive acts had caused. It went to the Com- mons, and passed that body on June 13, while Logan was ren- dering an Indian war in the designated region inevitable, and was sent back with amendments to the Lords. In this body, by a vote of fifty to twenty in a house that seated five hundred and fifty-eight members, and after the season was so far advanced that many peers had gone to their estates, it was passed on June 18, and four days later was approved by the king. In this way the government stultified itself. 72 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUNMORE WAR. Before the news could reach Virginia, bnt while the prospect seemed certain that such a bill would become law, Dunmore, OB July 12, instructed Andrew Lewis to descend the Kanawha with a force and cross the Ohio into the Shawnee country. Meanwhile, Major Angus McDonald passed the mountains with a body of militia, and, moving down the Ohio to the modern Wheeling, he found himself in command of about seven hun- dred sturdy fighters. Here, with the aid of the Zanes and following plans suggested by George Kogers Clark, he built Fort Fincastle, later known as Fort Plenry. Towards the end of July, he dropped down the river to Fish Creek, whence he made a dash upon the Shawnee villages on the Muskingum, — creating the first success of the war. Dunmore himself had left Williamsburg on July 10, and by the last of September he was at the head of about thirteen hun- dred men at Fort Fincastle. He kept out some experienced scouts, Clark, Cresap. Simon Kenton, and Simon Girty among the number. He sent Crawford forward to build Fort Gower at the mouth of the Hockhocking. The Indian agents, Johnson and his deputy, Croghan, — who was now living on the Alleghany just above the forks, — watched this war of Virginia and the Shawnees with solicitude. Sir William got his tidings of it through the Iroqiiois, and they associated all the barbarity of the whites with the name of Cresap. Logan certainly agreed, as his famovis speech shows. Rev. William Gordon had some time before transmitted to Dartmouth what purported to be a letter addressed by the French king to the Six Nations. In this they were told to keep up their courage, and they would, as they found oppor- tunity, enter Canada with eighty ships, while " an equal number entered the Mississippi to the aid of his southern children." The English were well aware of the uncertainties of a general savage uprising, with France on the watch. " There is too great a spirit in the frontier people for killing Indians," said Croghan, " and if the assembly gives in to that spirit, instead of securing the friendship of the Six Nations and' the Dela- wares by negotiation, no doubt they will soon have a general rupture." He adds that the Six Nations have tried to prevent the war with the Shawnees. With such an Iroquois as Logan aroused, there was little chance of peace. FIGHT AT POINT PLEASANT. 73 The real stroke of the war came on the very site of the con- templated capital of Vandalia, in the angle formed by the jnnc- tion of the Kanawha with the Ohio, — Point Pleasant, as it was called. The conflict here was the most hotly contested fight which the Indians ever made against the English, and it is all the more remarkable as it was the first considerable battle which they had fought without the aid of the French. Lewis, on arriving at the spot, learned from Dunmore's messages, which the governor's scouts had hidden near by, that the gov- ernor with his forces would be on the Ohio at a point higher up, where Lewis was instructed to join him. The next day new orders came, by which it appeared that Dunmore intended to turn up tlie Hockhocking Kiver, and that Lewis was expected to cross the Ohio and join him in the Indian country. When Lewis was thus advised, his rear column had not come up, and his trains and cattle were still struggling in the wilderness. The force which he had with him at Point Pleasant was a motley one, but for forest service a notable body, and not a frontier settlement but had contributed to it. There were in it Shelby, Christian, Robertson, and Morgan, — heroic names in these western wilds. While Lewis was making ready to obey orders, a squad of men, out hunting, discovei-ed that a horde of Indians was upon them. Cornstalk, a Shawnee chief, had divined Dunmore's plan, and, with a strategic skill unusual with Indians, had crossed the Ohio for the purpose of beating his adversary in detail. The opposing armies were much alike in numbers, say eleven hundred each, — perhaps more, — and in forest wiles the difference was hardly greater. Cornstalk soon developed his l)lan of crowding the whites toward the point of the peninsula. Lewis pushed forward enough men to retard this onset, while he threw up a line of defense, behind which he could retire if necessary. He sent, by a concealed movement, another force along the banks of the Ohio, which gained the Indians' flank, and by an enfilading fire forced the savage line back. In the night, Cornstalk, thus worsted, recrossed the Ohio. Meanwhile, Dunmore, ascending the Hockhocking, marched towards the Scioto, making some ravages as he went. Corn- stalk, after his defeat, had hurriedly joined the tribes opposing Dunmore, but he found them so disheartened by his own dis- 74 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUN MORE WAR. comfiture that he soon led a deputation to Dunmore's camp and proposed a peace. The governor, hearing- of Lewis's ajj- proach, and not feeling the need of his aid in the negotiations, and fearino- that the elation of the victorious borderers mi^ht disquiet the now complacent tribes, sent messages to Lewis that he should withdraw, which Lewis reluctantly did. A treaty followed. All prisoners were to be given up ; all stolen horses returned. No white man was to be molested on the Ohio, and no Indians were to pass to its southern bank. It was also agreed — in mockery, as the tribes must have felt — that no white man should cross to the north. Four chieftains were given to the whites as hostages. Logan kept aloof, and was sullen. He was a fighter and not a councilor, he said ; but he sent in the speech to which refer- ence has been made, an eloquent burst of proud disdain, if we can trust the report of it.. His string of scalps had satisfied his revenge. There were acts on Dunmore's part, such as his failure to succor Lewis, and his refusal to let him share in the treaty, which, when his conduct and that of his minion, Connolly, were later known in his eagerness to quell the patriotic uprising in tide-water Virginia, led many to suspect him of treachery in the negotiation with the Indians, and of a purpose to secure them to the royal side in the impending revolutionary struggle. There is no evidence that, at the time, this distrust prevailed. As late as March, 1775, the Virginia Assembly thanked him for his success. Yet it is true that he had, before he entered upon his campaign, dissolved the Virginia Assembly in May, 1774, in disapproval of their votes of sympathy for oppressed Boston. Dunmore had, indeed, obtained all he hoped for by bring- ing peace, in reestablishing a new hold for Virginia upon the territory, which, as he later learned, was on the first of the following May to pass, by action of Parliament, under a new jurisdiction. The grasp which Virginia had now taken had cost her X150,000, but it was to be of great importance in the coming struggle with the king, for she had administered a de- feat to the Indians, which was for some time to pai-alyze their power in that region. It was a grasp that Virginia was not to relax till she ceded her rights in this territory to the nascent union when the revolt of the colonies was ended, — a hold that THE COMMISSION TO CANADA. 75 before long she was to strengthen through the wisdom and hardihood shown in her capture of Vincennes. Before the battle of Point Pleasant had decided the fate of the Indians, the passage of the bill, which in early summer had created so little attention in Parliament, was met in London by " a prodigious cry " in September, — a clamor that William Lee, then in England, did his best to increase by " keeping a continual fire in the papers." The bill was not to go into effect till the spring of 1775, and Carleton having returned to Canada, Dartmouth, in January, sent him instructions about putting it in force. The minister's letters must have crossed others from the governor, informing him of the opposition to the bill even among the French people of the province, and of the measures which the revolting colonies were taking to gain the Canadians to their cause. In Montreal the bust of the king had been defaced. Already in the previous September, Congress had reechoed the " prodigious cry " of London, and had declared the re- establishment of the Catholic religion in Quebec to be " danger- ous in an extreme degree ; " but this mistake in language was discovered, and John Dickinson drafted for that body a concil- iatory address to the Canadians, which, in March, 1775, Carle- ton informed Dartmouth the disaffected on the St. Lawrence were printing and distributing in a translation. Within a year the lesson of prudence had been forgotten, and singularly enough while Congress (February, 1776) was appointing a commission, with one Catholic member (Charles Carroll) and a Catholic attendant, to proceed to Montreal, the ardent Hugue- not blood of John Jay had colored an address of Congress to English sj^mpathizers by characterizing the Catholic faith " as a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets." It was only necessary for the loyal Canadians to translate and cir- culate Jay's imprudent rhetoric to make the efforts of tlie com- missioners futile. Congress again grew wiser when it framed tlie Declaration of Independence, and Dr. Shea has pointed out that the allusion to the Quebec Bill in that document is " so obscure that few now understand it, and on the point of religion it is silent." Congress thus failed to undo the Quebec Act by gaining the 76 THE QUEBEC BILL AND THE DUN MORE WAR. jieople it was intended to shield ; and it was left for Virginia, under a pressure instigated by Maryland, to do what she could to make the territory, of which Parliament would have deprived her, the nucleus of a new empire beyond the mountains. England stubbornly adhered to her efforts to maintain the act north of the Ohio, as long as the war lasted. Before the actual outbreak, Franklin, in his informal negotiations in Lon- don, had told the ministry that there could be no relief from the dangers of " an arbitrary government on the back of the settlements " but in a repeal of the Quebec Act. He claimed it to be the right of the Americans to hold the lands which the colonists had acquired from the French, while at the same time it was their duty to defend them and set up new settlements upon them. Dunmore was naturally of another mind, and we know that after his treaty was made he schemed with the Dela- wares and the ministry to get a royal confirmation to that tribe of the country north of the Ohio and east of the Hockhocking, as a ready means to bar out the Virginians. CHAPTER VI. SOUTH OF THE OHIO. 1769-1776. Numerous rivulets, springing along the Blue Ridg-e in North Carolina, and broadening as they leap down the slopes, ulti- mately gather and flow towards the sea in two principal streams, — the Yadkin and the Catawba. There was a Scotch-Irish stock in this mountainous region, which was proving difficult for Governor Tryon, the royalist executive of that province, to manage. This recalcitrant spirit of indejiendence found an attractive seclusion in the free wilderness life which returned hunter and adventurer pictured beyond the mountains. One of these restless spirits dwelling- on the Yadkin has already been presented to us in Daniel Boone. In the valley interposing between the Blue Ridge and Iron Mountain, — the present western boundary of Noi*th Caro- lina, — a network of small streams unite and flow nortli to the Kanawha and Ohio. Other spraying threads of glistening life, drawing into a single channel, break through the Iron Mountain, when, increased by various tributaries, it becomes known as the Watauga, an affluent of the Holston, one of the chief branches of the Tennessee. To the valley of this stream, lying in what is now the northeast corner of the State of Ten- nessee, Daniel Boone had come, as we have seen, in 1769. There was soon after planted across the Indian war-path which this valley afforded — up and down which the northern and southern Indians had for years followed one another — the first permanent settlement beyond the mountains south of the Virginia grants. William Bean had built himself a cabin here, and his son was the first white child born in Tennessee. The communications of the region were easiest from Virginia and down the tributai^ies of the Kanawha. On October 18, 1770, a ti'eaty of Virginia with the Chero- 78 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. kees, made at Loeliaber, in South Carolina, had extended the bounds of the OKI Dominion so far westerly as to correspond in the main with the present eastern line of Kentucky. Virginia thus secured from the Cherokees, in the very year in which their famous Sequoyah, the subsequent inventor of their alpha- bet, was born, their rights to much the same territory which had been ceded by the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix in 1768. If the southern bounds of Virginia (36° 31' north latitude) were where these Watauga people supposed, this Cherokee cession covered their valley, and they were under the protection of Virginia laws, so far as those ordinances coidd prevail in so distant a region. The new Lochaber line began at a point on the Holston — into which the Watauga flowed — and extended northward, and there was little knowledge of what it encoun- tered, till it struck the mouth of the Kanawha, whose springs were adjacent to those of the Watauga. The line really threw the upper parts of the valley of the Big Sandy River and the southwest angle of West Virginia ■ — excepting the extreme point of that angle — into the conceded territory. The main object of the treaty was to placate the Indians for the encroach- ments along the alluvial bottoms of the Kanawha, which the surveyors had been making in that region under the Fort Stanwix grant. That concession of the Iroquois had proved extremely irritating to the Cherokees, because it assumed to deal with their territory. Before the truth about the latitude of the Watauga settle- ment was known, there was a significant immigration thither, bringing upon the stage of western settlement some notable personages. In 1770, a supple and robust young man, whose blue eye had the alert habit of a hunter, and whose native air of command attracted notice wherever he went, and perhaps the weightiest man of all these trans- Alleghany pioneers, passed that way, bound on further explorations. In him, James Rob- ertson was first introduced to the little stockaded hamlet, where a few hardy adventurers were breasting the wilderness. The next year (1771) he came among them again, this time resolved to stay, for he had brought with him a train making sixteen families, whom he had induced to enter upon this new world. It was after the battle of the Alamance (May 16, 1771), where Tryon's force had dispersed the Regulators, — a body of asso- WATAUGA ASSOCIATION. 79 ciates against horse thieves and tax-gatherers, — and some of that disaffected body, eager to find otiier conti'ol than a royal governor, were in this emigration. liobei'tson built himself a cabin on an island in the river, and events soon placed him in the forefront of a little colony, organized on manhood snft'rage and religious liberty. In it he acquired leadership, though he was more deficient in education than was usiial with pioneers, for he was only beginning to acquire the penman's art. In the same year (1771), Jacob Brown had formed a settle- ment on the Nollichucky, a branch of the Holstou next south of the Watauga, and it was he who, on the discovery being made, by the surveyors extending the southern line of Virginia, that both of these settlements were without the government of Virginia, entered into an agreement with the Cherokees, by which the joint communities, now numbering eighty souls, secured a lease of these valleys, in consideration of six thousand dollars' worth of goods, for a term of eight years. By this they avoided such an infringement as a purchase would be of the proclamation of 1763. These little communities, thus thrown out of the control of Virginia, and having no connection with North Carolina, though within her charter limits, were placed in much the same condi- tion in these western wilds that the Mayflower pilgrims were in a hundred and fifty years before, when, stranded beyond the patent of Virginia, they were forced into forming a compact of government. It was tlms, in the spring of 1772, that Robertson undertook a leading part in making what was called the Watauga Associa- tion. This was a combination of the people of the Watauga, Carter's, and the Xollichucky valleys, under written articles, for civil government and the protection of law. It was also a union, based on necessity and the Indian consent. With these environments they were ready to face the demand for their renioval made by Cameron, the British Indian agent, on the ground of their defying the royal proclamation. Tlie govern- ment, which the articles instituted, proved rugged enougli to survive all strains that were put iq>on it for six years. In Augiist, 1776, the association j^etitioned the North Carolina Assembly to be allowed to come under its protection. This paper is still existing in Sevier's handwriting. They professed 80 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. a desire "to share in the glorious cause of liberty" with their brothers on the seaboard. In 1778, the region was organized as Washington County in North Carolina. This change brought but slight disturbance to the existing forms of government. . That this little republic of the wilderness lasted so success- fully was indeed owing to the character of the men who formed it. While in the throes of birth, the little community wel- comed to its shelter two other remarkable persons. Captain Evan Shelby was a frontier cattleman of no uncertain charac- ter, whose Welsh blood had been invigorated by his mountain career. John Sevier brought to the wilderness a handsome mien, which befitted his gentle Huguenot blood. His life as an Indian trader had given him an eager air, but a certain self- conscious dignity beamed from his blue eyes, and waves of brown hair haloed a well-poised head, carried erect, and show- ing a countenance lightened at times with gleams of merriment. He was now not more than six and twenty years old, with a life of striking incident and humane interests still before him. Pie was, says Phelan, the " most brilliant military and civil figure " in the history of Tennessee. In these three men, Robertson, Shelby, and Sevier, the Watauga settlement was fortunate in these formative days, for being without the pale of established civil control, the colony became easily the asylum of vagabonds and culprits escaping justice by flying over the mountains. With such intestine disturbances, and with the savages about them, the character of its chief rulers could be the only security which such an isolated community could possess. No copy of their self-imposed constitution of restraint has been preserved ; but we know enough of the workings of their simple govern- ment to see how the laws of Virginia, so far as applicable, with an executive committee to enforce them, and a sufficient method of record for lands, sufficed to answer all requirements. It was the earliest instance of a government of the people by the peo- ple, and under a written compact, beyond the mountains, and was established by men of American birth. In the year 1773, following this organization, Boone headed a party and started west. He had with him the first women and children who had passed the Cumberland Mountains. They passed beyond all civilization after they had tarried foi a brief interval amono^ a few families settled west of the Holsnn and I COLONEL HENDERSON. 81 along the Clinch River, the other principal fork of the Ten- nessee. It was in September, 1773, when Boone and his adventurous families were joined by a band of hunters, and the company numbered eighty when a few weeks later ( October 10) they were attacked in Powell's valley by the Indians. In the fight they lost enough to discourage them, and so turned back to the settlements on the Clinch. It was now apparent that an Indian war was coming, and in the following S2:)ring (1774) the signs of it were everywhere, as has been depicted in the pre- ceding chapter. There were at the time various stray wanderers, hunters, and surveyors, pursuing devious ways, or squatted here and there throughout this remoter country. Now that Lewis, as we have seen, had been ordered with the Virginia forces down the Kanawha, and since the gage of war had been ac- cepted, Boone was sent to thrid this country and give warning. He and his companions found Harrod, McAfee, and their com- pany just beginning a settlement at the modern Harrodsburg. After Boone's caution, they abandoned their purpose. Other parties of whites, which they encountered, were informed of their danger. Boone's farthest point was the rapids of the Ohio. After an absence of sixty days and more, during which he had covered over eight hundred miles, he returned to his friends on the Clinch. Lewis's victory at Point Pleasant in October, 1774, rendered the navigation of the Ohio comj^aratively safe, and ojjcned the way for easy transportation to the regions of the lower Cum- berland and Tennessee. The blow which the savages had received proved enough to paralyze them for a while, and Ken- tucky, at this particular juncture, owed much to this resi)ite. The new opportunity encouraged a movement which for a time promised to regulate the western emigration on a more extended scale than had been before attempted. The reports which Boone had made of this western region had aroused many, among others Colonel Richard Henderson, a Virginian, now about forty years old. It was under his direction that a com- pany had been formed in North Carolina to buy land of the Indians and establish a colony beyond the mountains. In the early days of 1775, jNIartin, with a party of eighteen or twenty, had built some cabins and a stockade at what was later known 82 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. as Martin's Station, about fifty miles beyond the Clinch River hamlet. The McAfees, about the same time, began a settle- ment on Salt River. Benjamin Logan had in another region begun a fort, to which the next year he brought his family. On Mai-ch 18, James Harrod and a party of fifty reoccupied the ground which he had abandoned on Boone's warning in 1774. This reoccupation of the region was in progress when Hen- derson and eight other North Carolinians, on March 17, 1775, at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, concluded a treaty with the Cherokees, by which they acquired the Indian title to about one half of the modern State of Kentucky and the adjacent part of Tennessee lying within the southerly bend of the Cumberland. The ceded territory was bounded by the Ken- tucky, Holston, Cumberland, and Ohio rivers, and received the name of Ti-ansylvania, — the particular grounds for bestow- ing which name, beyond its apparent meaning, are not known. The negotiation was not a sudden dash of business, for twelve hundred savages looked on and increased the usual Indian deliberation. They heard the speeches on both sides. One harangue, at least, from the Indians was a mournful protest against the white man's encroachments. The purchaser's blan- dishments at last prevailed, and for X10,000 worth of goods the instrument conveying not far from eighteen million acres of territory received the assent of Oconostota, an aged chief. The Raven and The Carpenter, other head men of the tribe, also joined in the conveyance. Two days later, the Watauga asso- ciates, with less regard for the royal pt-oclamation than before, by the payment of <£2,000 worth of merchandise, converted their existing lease into a purchase, and threw their interests into the general scheme. When a successful termination of the negotiation seemed certain, and a week before the deed was signed, Boone started under Henderson's direction to open a trail to the Kentucky, blazing and clearing a way which eventually was known as The Wilderness Road. It formed a connection between Cumber- land Gap and the remoter borders of the new colony. He was attacked on the way (March 25), losing some men, but push- ing on to a level bit of ground, with sulphur springs near by, he halted. Here, on April 18, he began a fort which took the name of Boonesborough. It served for the protection of the B ONE SB OR UGH. 83 score of companions which he had with him. Henderson later joined the little post, adding about thirty new men for the garrison, and, to give life to the movement, opened a land office. On May 23, there was a meeting of delegates in the fort. This assem- bly adopted some laws, including one for improving the breed of horses, and stands for the first legis- lative body which was ever held be- yond the mouijtains. Henderson, as the moving spirit in this action, was credited with having " epito- mized and simplified the laws of England." The popidation at that time throughout this district was variously estimated at from one hundred and fifty to three hundred, including land jobbers, squatters, and domiciled settlers, with as yet but few women among them. These scattered knots of people had such contact with the old plantations as could be made through the more eastei"ly hamlets on the Watauga, Nollichucky, and Clinch rivers. They formed a wedge of civiliza- tion, thrust between the Cherokees on the one hand and the Shawnees on the other. Adventurous spirits among them were pushing reconnoissances along many a tributary stream of the principal rivers. It seems pretty clear that if there was an excess of Scotch and Teutonic blood in this body of pioneers, there was a preponderating influence of English spirit. This dominant mood kept the varied racial impulses to a single purpose, and at a convention held at Pittsburg, jNlay 16, 1775, it gave an unmistakable support to the revolt which was now gaining head on the seaboard. Just before this, one Charles Smith found rebellious sentiments prevalent in this region, and advised Dartmouth that the coming of eight or ten thousand Irish in one year, "' uncultivated banditti," was in large part the source of such disloyalty. That English BOONESBOROUGH FORT. [From James Hall's Sketches of His- tory, Life, and Manners in the West, Pliiladelpliia, 1835. There were block- houses at the angles (1 is Colonel Hen- derson's, witli his kitchen at 3). At the corners and at the gates (9) were stockades (2 2, etc.). The intervals were filled with cabins, presenting blank walls to the enemy.] 84 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. minister obtained much the same advice from the Bishop of Derry, who told him that nearly thirty-three thousand " fanati- cal and hungry republicans " had gone thither within a few years. The over-mountain country was doubtless attracting a fair share of this rampant overplus of Ireland. In the autumn of 1775, there were marks of a determinate fviture in this pioneer life. Boone, much to the colony's loss, had gone back to North Carolina during the summer, and now in September returned to his stockade with his wife and chil- dren. There were in his train the families of various others, who like himself were seeking new homes. The influence of all this was most fortunate. There was, meanwhile, a purpose in the older communities to hold the course of the Ohio against any force which the troublous times might array. In September, the Virginia militia had taken possession of Fort Pitt, and outposts were established at Fort Henry (Wheeling) and at Point Pleasant. Henderson's scheme, with its feudal tendencies, was proving inopportune. He was, as one observer said, " a man of vast and entei'prising genius," but an exacting domination made him enemies. Some who had been his adherents petitioned the Virginia Assembly to be relieved of the oath of fealty which he had exacted. The proprietors under his grant met in Sep- tember, 1775, and memorialized Congress for admission to the united colonies. They claimed a title to their lands acquired in open treaty " from immemorial possessors." They appealed for countenance to Jefferson and Patrick Henry, but got no encouragement. Dunmore, who had now become active on the royal side, was as impatient of Henderson's projects as the patriots were, and fulminated a proclamation against him for his contempt of the royal prohibitions, and for affording " an asyhnn for debtors and other persons of desperate circumstances." Governor Tryon, of North Carolina, who had himself been ambitious of territorial dignities and a baronetcy, was as prompt as Dunmore in launching his disapprobation. The obstacles on all sides were more than Henderson could overcome, and his project was abandoned, though there was later, as we shall see, an effort made in Congress to effect some equitable provision for his out- INDIAN DEPARTMENTS. 85 lay. " His scheme," says John Mason Brown, " was the hist appearance on American soil of the old idea of government by lords proprietor. It was too late for success." In April, 1775, Dunmore had threatened to incite a servile insurrection in the east ; and in May he informed the home gov- ernment that he was planning to arouse the western Indians. Dr. Connolly, then at Pittsburg, had already been instructed by Dunmore " to endeavor to incline the Indians to the royal cause," and Connolly succeeded so far as to induce the tribes to transmit a large belt to the governor. While Comiolly was doing this he was in correspondence with Washington, and learned from him ^ that matters " on the seaboard " were draw- ing to a point." As the summer wore on, Connolly found that the same sort of danger as on the coast — which in June had driven Dunmore on board a British frigate at York — grew ai)ace along the frontiers. On June 30, the Continental Congress had set up three In- dian departments : the northeru, including the Six Nations and tribes at the north : the southern, embi'aeing the Cherokees and other tribes farther towards the Gulf ; while the middle department had its central point at Pittsburg. Here three commissioners, later appointed, were expected to deal with the tribes and counteract the sinister efforts of the royalists. Dun- more, who had expected at this time to meet Indian delegates at Fort Pitt, so as to ratify the treaty which he had made in 1774 at Camp Charlotte, found it prudent not to trust himself on such a mission. The Virginia Assembly sent instead James Wood, with Simon Girty as guide, to seek the Indians and keep them quiet. Tlieir efforts were effective enough to induce tlie tribes (October) to decide for neutrality. The outbreak near Boston in April had precipitated the inev- itable. A band of hunters, encam})ing on a branch of the Elk- horn in the Kentucky wilds, hearing of the act of war on Lexing- ton green, gave that name to the spot on which they w^ere, and the name survives in Kentucky, as in jVlassaehusetts, to attest the brotherhood of tlie hour. It was another manifestation of this fraternal sympathy which made Franklin bring forward his plan of confederation. The same sj-mpathy prompted Thomas Paine to say that " nothing but a Continental form of gov- 86 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. ernment can keep the peace of the Continent." It gave the Tories of the frontiers occasion to feel the coercive power of the men who were shaping the political views of the West in a con- vention at Pittsburg. It made Michael Cresap enlist his old companions of the fi-ontiers, and march them to Boston. A narrative of Connolly has been preserved, which shows his movements during the summer and autumn. He had been in Boston, and had there planned with General Gage — who had ar- rived in that town in May, 1774 — a movement which Dunmore had hoped to assist in carrying out. In November, he was in Williamsburg in conference with Dunmore, now sheltered on his man-of-war. It was then arranged that Connolly, accompanied by Cameron and Smyth, — who has left an account in his Trav- els., — should make a " secret expedition to the back country," going in a flatboat up the Potomac, and thence passing by the Ohio, Scioto, and Sandusky to Detroit. They started on No- vember 13. It was expected that a considerable force would gather at Detroit, some coming from the Illinois. In the spring this little army was to advance by PresquTsle to Pittsburg and crush the rebellion thereabouts. Leaving a garrison here, it was intended to take and fortify Port Cumberland and seize Alexandria, to which point Dunmore was to come with a fleet. A successful result would have cut off the southern colonies from the northern. They had provided that if Pittsburg suc- ceeded in resisting, the force should fall down the Mississippi, collect the garrison at Port Gage (Illinois), and on reaching New Orleans take transports to Norfolk, where Dunmore w^ould await them. The plan soon miscarried through Connolly's sending a letter of effusive Toryism to Pittsburg, and the later recognition of him at Hagerstown on November 19, 1775, by an officer just from the American camp before Boston, who had seen him on his recent visit to that vicinity. While being conducted east, he managed at Fredericktown, in Maryland, to write to McRae, who was in Pittsburg, telling him of his capture, and that their " scheme " must fail, and directing McRae to go down the river, warning by messenger the commander at Detroit and in the Illinois, and then to descend the Mississippi and return by water to Viririnia. INDIANS IN WAR. 87 Connolly's companion, Smyth, managed to escape, but was recaptured, and found to be bearing other letters from Con- nolly, further attesting his intrigues. The arrest of Connolly probably deferred for two years the active participancy of the Kentucky settlers in the war on the western borders. There were lying along the western frontiers from New York to the Mississippi, at this time, a body of Indians that might perhaps have furnished ten thousand braves to any hostile movement which enlisted their sympathies. As it turned out, there was little Tory influence for these two years brought to bear upon them, and Zeisberger and Kirkland, by their missionary efforts, held in restraint at least the western Iroquois and the Delawares. While Connolly was arranging in Virginia for this north- western movement. Colonel Henry Hamilton, formerly a cap- tain in the fourteenth regiment, had been put by Carleton in command of Detroit. This town and its dependencies stretched up and down the river, with a population mainly Fi-ench and perhaps two thousand in numbers. Only four days before Con- nolly left Williamsburg, Hamilton had i-eached (November 9, 1775) his post. He soon made up his mind that it was simply a question whether he or the Virginians should first secure the alliance of the savages. There is little doubt that either side, British or Americans, stood ready to enlist the Indians. Already before Boston the Americans had had the help of the Stockbridge tribe. Washington found the service committed to the practice when he arrived at Cambridge early in July. Dunmore had taken the initiative in securing such allies, at least in purpose, but the insurgent Virginians had had of late more direct contact with the tribes, and were now striving to secure them, but with little success. It was evident, with Ham- ilton in command at Detroit, and with the lurking enmity sub- sisting between the savages and the frontier pioneers, that in the end a conflict must come. Had Dunmore's plan been successful at the north, a counter plan, which we shall see was developed later, might earlier have found a body of British troops with Indian allies march- ing from the Gulf, up through the country of the Creeks and 88 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. Chickasaws, and gaining theii" assistance in an attack upon the back country of Virginia and Carolina. To make any such project effective, it was necessary for the English agents among the Indians to accustom the tribes to a policy quite different from that which had fostered dissensions among them, in order to turn their savage wrath from the colonial borders. The political revulsions on the seaboard had convinced the British conmianders in America that instead of repelling the Indians from the Appalachian border, as of old, it was become politic to mass them and hurl them against it. This change of front in the Indian agents created some suspi- cion in the savage breast. The Creeks particularly were wary, and some of them had already lent assistance to the rebellious colonists. Of the thirty thousand to thirty-five thousand warriors which it is estimated there were at this time living east of the Mis- sissippi, there were nearly ten thousand among the southern tribes which Stuart was intricuinor to combine. Among them the Cherokees, a mountain folk, had lost something of their old prominence through their long wars. They had been forced by the Creeks to make common cause with them in land treaties with the English, having in this way joined them in June, 1773, at Augusta (Georgia) in ceding something like two million acres on the Savannah, stretching towards the Oconee. In this way the two tribes had striven to liquidate, by what they re- ceived for the lands, the claims against them of the English traders. The Chickasaws were less numerous, but they maintained their old reputation as hard fighters. The Catawbas, who in times past had so defiantly stood their ground against the Iro- quois, were now reduced so much as to be of little moment in any enumeration. The Choctaws were nearest the Spaniards, and a ruder people than the other tribes ; but the Creeks were certainly the most powerful of all. Early in 1772, they had resisted all importunities of the northern tribes to make com- mon cause with them ; yet for some years they had given the borderers of Georgia and Carolina much ground to dread their treacherous savagery. They had, however, been quiet since October, 1774, when they had been forced to a peace. Under Stuart's instructions, the jjersonal assiduity of his lieutenant HOSTILE CHEROKEES. 89 Cameron was doing much to band all these southern tribes in the British interest, though Cameron himself felt some com- punctions in urging them to actual conflict. The Americans, l)y an intercepted letter, learned that the British agents had been instructed to maintain " an immediate connnunication with our red brothers," through Florida. The British ministry had planned an attack on Charleston (S. C.) for the early summer of 1776, and Germain had di- rected Stuart, in conjunction with the loyal borderers of Caro- lina, to time an Indian rising so as to produce a distraction amono; the rebellious Carolinians at the same time. Stuart formed, as the ministry intended, a double base at Mobile and Pensacola ; he carried thither a supply of ammunition, to be conveyed thence into the Indian country, and so make up to the tribes the resources from which they had been cut off by the attitude of the revolting Georgians and Carolinians. It was a game at which both sides could play, and Wilkinson, the Ameri- can commissary, was doing what he could to secure the neu- trality, if not the active aid of the savages, by a rival distribu- tion of rum and trinkets, — a measure that before long Germain was asking Stuart to copy. That agent, coursing through the up-country, says that he encountered on the Tennessee River several boats, conveying settlers from the Holston to riv^er sites as far down the Mississippi as Natchez, whither, it was no un- usual complaint at this time, persons flying from justice be- took themselves, mingled with others who fled from the turmoil which the war was creating on the seaboard. Stuart thought that the present exodus was helped by the promised neutrality of the Creeks and Cherokees. Stuart wrote to the colonial secretary that this apathy of these tribes did not disturb him, for he had no doubt that, when the pinch came, the savages could be induced to aid the British. Early in 1776, Stuart had confidently reported that every- where the Cherokees were painted black and rod for war, and that the rebels had succeeded in enticing oidy a few of their head men to meet commissioners at Fort Charlotte. Nothing was stirring the southern tribes so effectually as northern emissaries, who brought tidings of a wides])read pur- pose among the Indians beyond the Ohio to make common cause with the British aoainst the colonial rebels. These mes- 90 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. sengers also alleged that the French in Canada, appeased by the Quebec Bill, were assisting them. These northern dele- gates, particularly the Delawares, assured their southern kins- folk that their fathers, the French, who had been long dead, were alive again, and were quite a match for the four or five thousand armed provincials which they had seen or heard of at Pittsburg and in other posts on the way. There was indeed a long-cherished purpose, on the part both of the home government and of Carleton at Quebec, that the movement ujion the southern frontiei-s should be supported by an equally hostile demonstration along the borders of Penn- sylvania and Virginia. The task of arousing these northern tribes, as it happened, was not so easy as to fire the southern Indians, for the lesson which Lewis had given them at Point Pleasant was not forgotten. Hamilton, the new commander at Detroit, possessed of verbal instructions from Carleton, had reached that post in November, 1775, and it was soon a struggle between him, instructed to mass the Indians for a raid of the borders, and Morgan, the American agent for the Indians, whose task was to detach the Indians from the British interests. Morgan had succeeded Richard Butler in charge of the Indians of the middle depart- ment in the previous April, and found for his support at Pitts- burg a Virginia company under Captain John Neville. In June, he had sent messengers to the Shawnees and Wyandots to meet him in council, and in October, he got together some six or seven hundred Mingoes, Shawnees, and Delawares, and exacted from them a promise of neutrality. Hamilton's influ- ence was too great with the Ottawas, Wyandots, Pottawatta- mies, and Chippewas for Morgan to prevail ui^on them to join in the pact. The retreat of the Americans from Canada had made it pos- sible for Carleton in June to send word to the western stations that he no longer needed their help. This gave Hamilton the freedom he desired, and he notified Dartmouth that he and his Indians were ready for the contest. He says that an embassy from the eastern tribes to the great western confederacy had just been at Detroit with a belt, and that he had torn it before their faces. These messengers were an Englishman, a Delaware WATAUGA ATTACKED. 91 chief, and Montour, the half-breed. They had brought a copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette, and from this Hamilton had learned of the action of Congress on July 4, and how the Declaration of Indej)endence had declared his dependent braves " merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions," — a description which he knew how to reveal to his Indian allies. Meanwhile, the savage conflict had been precipitated at the south. The Cherokees had decided upon war, and they had reason to count upon aid from the very tribes which Morgan was sti'iving to coerce. As early as May, 1776, Stuart had sent warning messages to the Watauga settlements, declaring what they might expect if they encouraged rebellion. These colonists at once drew in their outposts, and sent to Virginia for rein- forcements. In June, the blow fell. The Powell valley com- munity was raided and broken up, and there was alarm through- out the various Tennessee settlements, now numbering perhaps six hundred souls. The main assaults were from two bands moving at the same moment, and counting, perhaps, three or four hundred each. The borderers fortunately had received warning of the point of attack from a friendly half-breed woman. The threatened neighborhoods had therefore ample time to draw their dependents witliin their stockades. Such a force, " forted " at Eaton's Station, aroused by the devasta- tions of an approaching band, sallied on July 20, one hundred and seventy in number, and mai-ched to confront it. The whites had encountered only a small party of savages, and, while returning, were near the Long Island Flats of the Ilolston, when the Indians, supposing them on the retreat, fell impetu- ously on their rear, but not before the borderers had time to deploy. A sharp contest followed and the enemy fled, only four of the whites being hurt. The same day, another body of savages attacked the stockade at Watauga, where James Robertson commanded and Sevier was second. The fort held one hundred and forty souls, of whom forty were fit to fight. The enemy hung about the spot for three weeks, and then retreated, just as there appeared a force of three hundred men to succor the besieged. These two movements were the princijial ones, intended as a diversion to 92 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. assist the British attack on Charleston, but they were ill-timed. Parker, the English admiral, had been repulsed at Fort Moul- trie nearly a month earlier, so these savage demonstrations failed in every way to advance the British plans, and in the end left the southern colonies free to retaliate upon the Cherokees, the head and front of the harrowing work along the borders. The united tribes of this nation, so long the allies of the Eng- lish against the French, had been stirred by Stuart and Hamil- ton's friends among the Ohio Indians to these acts of hostility, and were destined to have their power completely broken. The Cherokee people were grouped in three settlements. Their lower towns lay against the South Carolina frontiers, and could send between three and four hundred men upon the warpath. The middle towns farther north, joined with their villages in the mountain valleys, were more than twice as powerful ; while the over-hill settlements, the most northern of their positions, were nearly as strong for defense as the middle towns. Accord- ingly, the several sections could furnish, perhaps, two thousand braves for a campaign, and the more remote districts of the same stock might add enough to make their available fighting force not far from two thousand five hundred. Respecting the retaliatory campaign of the whites which we are now to touch upon, there is much confusion of statement among those who have in large part told the story from hear- say, and there are few contemporary records to help us to a certainty as to dates, movements, and numbers. In the lead- ing features of the campaign, however, there is little obscurity. The patriots in Georgia appear to have been the earliest to move. In March (1776), Colonel Bull, with a force of militia, had marched toward Savannah to overawe the Tories, and he is said to have had some Creeks in his ranks, for that tribe had of late been propitiated by a show of justice on the part of the Georgia authorities in the piuiishment of offenses com- mitted against members of their body. In July, Governor Bullock was preparing a force to invade the lower Cherokee lands, and under Colonel Jack aboiit two hundred savages devastated some of their hamlets on the Tugaloo River. While this was going on. General Charles Lee, now in com- mand at Charleston, begged (July 7) the Virginia authorities to league the southern colonies in a joint expedition, and on the THE CHEROKEES ATTACKED. 93 30th, Congress recommended sucli a project to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The Virginians were quite ready for their task. Jefferson, in August, was urging a foray into the heart of the Indians' country, with a determination to drive them beyond the Mississippi. President Page began prepara- tions, and notified the govei'nors of the Carolinas that he was going to send a force against the upper towns of the Cherokees, and pressed them to attack the middle and lower towns. Colonel William Christian was selected for the command of the Vir- ginia forces. He was joined, as he went on, by a company from Pennsylvania under Martin, and by some recruits from the parts of North Carolina contiguous to the Virginia bounds. His force grew to be some two thousand strong. A trader, Isaac Thomas, served him as guide. His plan was to rendez- vous on the Holston, and on October 1, he started with such other contingents from Watauga and the Tennessee settlements as could be recruited. His expectation was to reach Broad River on October 15, where he looked for resistance. His orders were to make a junction with General Rutherford, who commanded a North Carolina force, moving at the same time ; but his communication with him failed, and on October 6, he wrote to Governor Henry that Rutherford might possibly be fortunate enough to reach the over-hill towns before him, and begin the work of devastation. Christian reached the Broad River a little aliead of his expectations, and crossed it by an unfamiliar ford in the night. He now found that the Indians had fled and lay in force before their towns, at a distance of four or five days' march. Early in November, he reached the towns, without a battle, and began destroying cabin and cro])s. For two weeks he was thus employed, and then, forcing the Indians to a truce and exacting an agreement from them to meet commissioners and arrange for a permanent peace in the spring, he began his return march. He had not lost a man. His force was generally impressed with the attractions of tliis over-hill country. During this march he had not seen or heard of Rutherford, who, with an army of two thousand men and a train of supplies, had started from the head-streams of the Catawba on Sep- tember 1. He is thought to have had with him a small body of the vanishing Catawbas. He kei)t about a thousand of his 94 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. ../^sj/^V^ -^**^Sftfc^^^j T most effective troops and a small body of liorse well ahead, and making a forced march, he found the Cherokee towns abandoned. He had expected to meet here Colonel An- drew Williamson with a force from South Carolina, but that failing, he ravaged the valley towns alone, and then pushed over the mountains and made havoc among the middle towns. He escaped on the way an ambush which had been prepared for him, by reason of taking an unaccustomed path. Returning on September 18 to the middle towns, he met the South Carolinians there. Williamson had, since the early days of Au- gust, been leading a force of some eleven or twelve hundred rangers among the lower towns, burning and destroying all he could. He now pushed ahead by the route which Rutherford had avoided and fell into the ambush. He was staggered for a while, but rallying his men, he drove the savages back and crossed the mountains successfully. Rutherford coming on, the two devastated the settlements, and late in September turned back. Here, again, a fearful penalty had been imposed upon the enemy, and the lar- gest force of all the Cherokee bands had been brought to obedience, though they had inflicted more loss upon Williamson than any other contingent had suffered. His casualties counted up on October 7, when he reached Fort Rutledge on his return, ninety-four in killed and wounded. The whites cov\ld reckon as the outcome of the campaign the almost complete prostration of the Cherokee nation. It proved an effectual warning to the neighboring tribes, and a respite for the frontiers. The government at Philadelphia were as much relieved as the frontiers, and the Committee of Secret Corre- spondence wrote to their agents in Europe that " they had now little to apprehend on account of the Indians." The whites had established new and enlarged bounds to the territory open cQ /■/ri- i?i /'/~/f ^/-/a^??. WILLI A MSON'S CAMP A IGN. 95 for tlieir occupancy. Tliey had brought the Tennessee settle- ments well within the jurisdiction of the older governments, and Watauga, as we have seen, was now ready to be annexed to North Carolina. During- the next year (May 20 and July 20, 1777) definitive treaties were made by which lands on the Savannah were ceded to Georgia and South Carolina, and on the Holston to North Carolina and Virginia. The Chicka- mauga tribe of the Cherokees refused to join in the cessions, and moving- down the Tennessee, a hundred miles below the mouth of the Holston, they settled on what is known as the Chickamauga Creek. Other sections of the nation withdrew from immediate contact with the English. Thouoh humbled 96 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. tliey were not quelled, and the intermittent outrages which were reported in the settlements told how revenge still swayed them. Sevier and his rangers had enough to do in hovering about them to repress their audacity. Of the two movements in the regions beyond the mountains likely to bring the claims of Virginia for a western extension to a sharp issue, — of which beginnings have been already sketched, — one was the resurrection of what was known as the Indiana grant. This had been made at the time of the Fort Stanwix treaty to an association of traders, seeking in this way to recoup themselves for losses incurred in the Pontiac war. Nothing had happened to make the grant of use, from the time it was secured, in 1768 till the proprietors held a meeting in September, 1775. Four months later (January 19, 1776) they transferred their interests under this Indian title to three Phila- delphia merchants, who not long after (March, 1776) deter- mined to open a land office for the sale of the lands. With the unsettled quarrel which then existed between Pennsylvania and Virginia about their bounds, it was far from propitious for these merchants that their project must encounter the landed, interests of a rival province. The new grantees were quite willing to make allowances to such settlers as were already in possession, but with the pretensions of Virginia to back them, these squatters did not pi'opose to be mulcted at all. Meanwhile, the people of the upper Ohio regions determined to bring an end, if possible, to the harassing complications im- posed iqjon them by the rival States and asi)iring companies. They sought (August, 1776) an autonomy of their own, by asking Congress to set them up as the State of West Sylvania. They claimed, rather extravagantly, that there were twenty-five thousand families between the mountains and the Scioto, and. they would include them in a territory to be carved from Vir- ginia and Pennsylvania beyond the mountains, and to extend well into Kentucky. The project failed, and three years later (1779) Virginia forced an issue by declaring the native title of the Indiana grant invalid. The Vandalia and Indiana com- panies memorialized Congress (September 14, 1779) against the Virginia pretensions. In the end Congress (1782) sus- tained the grant, and a new company took the question (1792) TEA NS YL VA NIA . 97 to the Supreme Court of the United States. Here the cause lingered till Virginia secured a change in the Constitution. This, the eleventh amendment (1794), prohibited individuals of one State bringing- suit against another, and the question dropped. The other movement to effect Virginia's western claims was more rapidly closed, notwithstanding- an attempt to bring- it before Congress. This was the Transylvania project already traced in its initial stages. By the close of 1775, Henderson had established an agent at Philadelphia. In December, this ])erson was reporting to his principal that John and Samuel Adams were agreed to induce Congress to give countenance to the new colony. Even Jefferson was quite willing to forget the charter limits of Virginia, if a firm government could be estab- lished at the back of that province, and its jurisdiction main- tained as far as the Mississippi, in opposition to the provisions of the recent Quebec Bill. In such views he had a natural abettor in John .Vdams, who was anxious lest the British, reach- ing- this western country by the St, Lawrence, should stir the tribes to embrace Dunmore's plan of harrying- the country be- yond the Alleghanies. It was in part this fear that had induced Congress, in March (1776), to send a commission to Canada, whose work, as we have seen, was so hampered by Jay's out- spoken denunciation of the Catholic Church. Jefferson, notwithstanding his sympathy with Henderson's movement, was not quite i)repared to favor congressional recog- nition of the new colony until Virginia had first agreed to it. I)ut he reckoned too surely upon Virginia recognizing that the borders needed any such sacrifice on her part. The war with the mother country had gone too far to be controlled by any moderate faction. France had already made ready to afford the revolting- colonies the pecuniary assistance which they needed. Events were fast drifting to the verge of independence, and there were warnings of it everywhere. A Scotch-Irish settlement at Hanna's Town in western Penns}^- vania had but just (May, 1776) given encouragement to such a movement, and not far from the same time the loyalists of the Watauga settlement had been drummed out of the valley. With the inevitable in view, Congress in May, 1776, had 98 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. called upon each State to set up a form of government suffi- cient for the crisis. In June, Fort Moultrie had been attacked, while Stuart sought, as we have seen, by an Indian uj)rising in the South, to make a diversion to assist the attack. Three days later, resolutions of independence were laid before Con- gress (June 7), and the die was cast. Within a week Virginia passed her declaration of rights, and two weeks and a half later (June 29) she adopted her constitution. This last docu- ment gave her the opportunity to make a solemn declaration of her territorial rights. It was the beginning of a long con- troversy, which settled the destiny of the American West. She I'ecognized the diminution of her charter limits of 1609, so far as the subsequent grants to Maryland and Pennsylvania im- paired them, but she insisted on her own definitions of those grants, and abated otherwise nothing of her trans-Alleghany claims. Jefferson shortly after tried to improvise a temporary line to divide the region on which Virginia disputed with Penn- sylvania, but no line could prevent existing settlers of one province becoming occupants of the other. Maryland, mean- while, had raised a question which was far-reaching. Congress on September 16, 1776, in decreeing grants of land for services in the army, put Maryland (being a province of definite west- ern bounds) to a disadvantage as compai'ed with Virginia as well as with other States, whose original charters gave them a western extension. So Maryland began that movement, in which in the sequel her persistency acquired that trans-Alle- ghany domain jointly for all the States. Virginia herself removed all complications that the existence of such an independent government as Transylvania could in- terpose by declaring private purchase from the Indians without validity, and by promptly throwing the protection of her laws over the whole region. So Transylvania vanished, when all Kentucky was set up, December 7, 1776, as a county of the Old Dominion. Two years later, in accordance with the recommendations of a committee headed by George Mason, Virginia made the Tran- sylvania proprietors some recompense for legislating them out of existence, by making to them a grant of two hundred thousand acres, between the Ohio and the Greenbrier River. In accej^t- ing this the proprietors disavowed their Cherokee title. This KENTUCKY. 99 denial of autonomy to Transylvania was the beginning of a new life in the great forest-shaded country of Kentucky, where the limestone lay bedded below and the blue grass flourished above. Jefferson said that nothing could stay the tide of emigration. It was indeed not a little swelled by the timid and half-hearted in the patriot cause whom the war was turning away from old associations. Some northern Indians passing athwart the west- ward paths of these wayfarers were struck with the multitude of fresh tracks of man and beast. This emigrant inarch fol- lowed what was known as the Wilderness Road, — already re- ferred to, — which, passing Cumberland Gap, proceeded, by the route which Boone had marked out, in a northwesterly direction to the great gateway of the enticing level lands of Kentucky. These began in the neighborhood of Crab Orchard, ji;st short by a score of miles of the site of Danville, first laid out in 1784. Its course is at present intertwined with the modern railway. Not far away was Crow's Station, just coming into prominence as a sort of political centre of these distant communities. This vicinity was in the southeastern angle of a tract of country, roughly square, of about a hundred miles on each side, of which the three remaining angles were at the falls of the Ohio (Louis- ville), at the most northern turn v/hich that river makes some twenty miles below Cincinnati, and at Limestone, the present Maysville, three hundred miles below Pittsburg and one hundred from Wheeling. So this fertile tract, with three of its angles touching the encircling Ohio, and a fourth at its mountain-gate, included the territory watered by the Licking and Kentucky rivers in their more level courses. These streams thridded a vast forest of broad-leaved trees, whose lofty triinks, unembar- rassed by undergrowth, supported a canoj^y of verdure beneath which the country was easily traversed. The entrance for the overland pioneers near Crab Orchard was also the exit for nearly all who were returning to the Virginia settlements. In this way the traveler avoided the laborious pull against the cur- rent of the Ohio, whether bound for Pittsburg, or taking the alternative route up the Kanawha and Greenbrier. Fi-om near Crab Orchard, the pioneers seeking settlement turned much in the same direction in which the railways cross the country to-day. The borderer descending by the Ohio, and landing at Limestone, followed along the outline of this squarish tract to 100 SOUTH OF THE OHIO. Crab Orchard, and so could pass south to the Tennessee coim- try, by what Evans and Gibson's maj) marked as " the only way passable with horses from the Ohio three or four hundred miles southward." The overland wanderer less often took this same route in reverse. Commonly he passed by another trail through Harrodsburg, and so crossed the Kentucky near Frank- fort, and went on to the mouth of the Licking, opposite the later Cincinnati. A lesser number, probably, passed by a south- westerly curve, within sight of the mountainous barrier in that direction, and came upon the Ohio at the site of the modern Louisville. It was complained, as respects this latter spot, that a few gentlemen " had engrossed all the lands at and near the falls of the Ohio,'' which with the sanguine was likely to be " the most considerable mart in this part of the world." ( CHAPTER VII. THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 1766-1777. The war, which in the end had wrested the valley of the St. Lawrence from the French, and, as it turned out, had made the English share the valley of the Mississippi with the Spaniards, had in its beginning put an end to all schemes for penetrating the country lying west of the Mississippi and beyond the sources of the St. Lawrence. There was still the same uncertainty that there had always been regarding the sources of both these great rivers. It had been a question, even, if they did not unite somewhere, just as the waters of Lake Michigan and the Illinois commingled in the spring freshets. At all events, their sources might not be far apart. Wynne, in his General Jlistort/ of the Brithh Empire in Amerieu (1770), rather slur- ringly mentions a pretense that the St. Lawrence " was derived from remote northwestern lakes, as yet unknown to Europeans." To solve this question and the other antiquated notion that there was, not far from these neighboring springs, yet another fountain, whose waters flowed to the Pacific, was a dream that had puzzled a Connecticut Yankee who had been brooding- over the speculations of Hennepin, La Hontan, and Charlevoix. This man, Jonathan Carver, now four-and-thirty years old, was harboring some rather lordly notions of the future of the Mis- sissippi. "As the seat of empire," he says, "from time imme- morial has been gradually progressive towards the West, there is no doubt but tliat, at some future period, mighty kingdoms will emerge from these wildernesses, and stately palaces and solemn temples supplant the Indian huts." In this frame of mind, and three years after the Peace of Paris, he had deter- mined to probe the great western mysteries, and started from Boston in June, 1766, on a quest for he hardly knew what. Ar- riving at Mackinac, the westernmost of the English posts, he 102 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. secured some goods for presents to the Indians and, on Sep- tember 3, he proceeded by tlie Green Bay portage and, entering the Mississippi, turned north and, passing the Falls of St. Anthony, reached his northernmost point at the St. Francis River. When near the site of the modern city of St. Paul, he comprehended what he conceived to be the vantage-ground JONATHAN CARVER. [From liis Travels, London, 1781.] of that pivotal region of the northern valley of the Mississippi, with its down-current access to the Gulf of Mexico, and by the Iberville River to Mobile and Pensacola. Looking to the east, he dreamed of a water-way, yet to be made practicable, through the lakes to New York. Towards the setting sun, an up-current struggle along the Minnesota River might reveal some distant portage or centring water, whence a descending stream would carry the trader to the Pacific on his way to China. At a later day, Carver's heirs claimed that, as evidence of his confidence in the future of this spot, he had acquired from the Sioux a title JONATHAN CARVER. 103 to the site of St. Paul, but unquestionable evidence of any deed was never produced. The British held it to be a transaction in contravention of the proclamation of 1763, and later, the United States, succeeding to all rights, through the Committee on Public Lands reported adversely on the claim in 1823 to the Senate of the United States. It was Carver's notion that the continent was broadest on the parallel which went athwart this commanding region, about the mouth of the Minnesota, which was almost midway in the passage from sea to sea. Here was destined to be a seat of British power. One of his maps marks out a north and south belt, bounded by the Mississippi on the west and by the meridian of Detroit on the east, and stretch- ing from the Chickasaw country on the south to the Chippewas and Ottawas on the north. Within this area he pricks out the bound of eleven prospective colonies of English. On the east, the Ohio and other tributaries of the Great River opened the way for these prospective populations to the passes of the Alle- ghanies and the old colonies of the seaboard. Carver found the country north of the Illinois and as far as the Wisconsin little known to the traders, and charged the French with having deceived the English about it in their maps. Farther north, up to the Mille Lacs region and the springs of the Mississippi, he still found the French maps at variance with the Indian reports. It was here at the north, within a radius of thirty miles or less, that Carver placed the great continental divide, and in the midst of the best of hunting countries, where the white man had not yet penetrated. From this point, he said, one could go east by streams that connect with Lake Superior and the water-ways leading to the Atlantic. One went north from Red Lake through Winnipeg and the Bourbon River to Hudson's Bay, making the passage to Europe through Davis's Strait, as has been advocated in our day. Just south of these northern springs lay the White Bear Lake, with a passage from it open to the Gulf of Mexico. In either direction there was a route of not far from two thousand miles, as he calculated, to the salt sea. Speaking of the conti- guity of these sources, and referring to a belief, long current, of a common source for streams flowing to different seas, he says : " I perceived a visibly distinct separation in all of them, notwithstanding in some places they approached so near that 104 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. I could have stepped from one to the other." In one of his maps, close by this source of the Mississippi, Carver places a smaller lake, out of which flows the "Origan" River, — a name now first used, — which, becoming in its passage the great river of the west, — the ultimate Columbia, — debouches at last somewhat vaguely into the Pacific near the Straits of Anian, a supposable northwest passage, long known in speculations. This was to be the great western outlet of his manifold colonies of the Mississippi basin. This seaside spot was already i)re- empted for the English, as he avers, by the discoveries of Sir Francis L^-ake, while to this distant west the trails of French fur-traders for nearly a century running from Prairie du Chien, near the mouth of the Wisconsin, had opened a land carriage in the same direction. Carver himself explored but a single one of the western affluents of the Mississippi, and that was the St. Peter, as the Minnesota was then called. It was on this water among the Sioux of the plains that he passed the winter of 1766, and he says he found that the French had prejudiced that tribe against the English. Of the physiography of the more distant west, he gives us some hints as he got them from the savages, the marked feature of which is unbounded plains " which probably terminate on the coast of the Pacific." The spur of the Rocky Mountains discovered by Verendrye is, to Carver's mind, nothing but an isolated " mountain of bright stones " lying north of the river of the west. It was in a lake near this mountain that he makes the Assiniboils River rise, which, flowing to Lake Winnipeg, is next carried on with a divided current, the one to Hudson's Bay and the other to Lake Superior. He hears of natives, living beyond this mountain, small of stature, using vessels of gold, and suo^cestino- an emigration north from Mex- ico. With a mixed burden on his mind of speculation and knowledge, and having failed to receive the goods from Mack- inac which he expected, Carver, in the summer of 1767, began to retrace his steps. After lingering some time at Lake Pepin he sought the Chippewa River, and ascending it, crossed a port- age which took him by a descending stream to Lake Su])erior near its western end. Carver's observations put Lake Supe- rior between 46° and 49° north latitude, not far from its true position, a correction of earlier English maps by something 'A''/-/,. '////;, ■:'7 ,..^' X i- ■ s %^ '/lt.'""l \ // /• / ■M,? CARVER'S COLONIES. [From a "New Map of North Ainorica, 1778," in Jonathan Carver's Travels thrnvgh the Interior Parts of Xnrth America. London, 1781. It sliow.s also tlie connection of Lake Superior with the Lake of the Woods and Hudson's Bay (James's Bay).] 106 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. like eight degrees, while Kitchin, who a few years later, in 1774 and before Carver's maps were published, was out by nearly ten degrees, — both carrying the water by so much too far to the north. In contour and detail there had been up to this time no map of this lake so accurate as its first survey made by the Jesuits a century before. All the intervening maps had shown many islands spotting its surface. In Carver's time a similar ignorance of the interior spaces of the lake prevailed. It was due, perhaps, to the barkentines of the French keeping near the shoi-es, and to the Indians' dread of enchantments with which they supposed such islands to be invested. Passing through the Sault Ste. Marie in October, 1767, Carver moved eastwai'd by the lakes, and after an absence of two years and five months reached Boston in October, 1768, having traversed, as he reckoned, a course of near seven thou- sand miles. He tells us that an English gentleman, Richard Whitworth, became so interested in the traveler's views of the way to find a passage from the Mississippi to the Pacific that, in 1774, he nearly perfected arrangements for doing it, in company with Carver himself and a party of fifty or sixty men, when the opening scenes of the Revolutionary War put a stop to the enterprise. A proposition made by Bernard Romans, in 1773, met with a like discouragement. Carver's narrative was not published till ten years later, in 1778, when his recital found neither England nor her colonies in any better position to profit by his experiences. While Carver's book was still in manuscript, and he had been seeking government employ as an Indian agent in the region west of Lake Huron, the future of the Mississippi had been consigned to other hands than his prospective colonists of the eleven provinces. Spain still controlled the French of Louisiana. In New Orleans this alien power had proved vexatious. In the upper parts of the valley the French had no love for the English ; but it was a question whether the Spanish rule was not annoying- enough sometimes to give some hope to Gage that a part, at least, of those who had fled across the river might return to the English. A few years after the Englisli commanding general had expressed this anticipation, the progress of the American ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN. 107 revolt had interjected a vigilant power in the yonng confeder- ation between the English on the one side and the French and Spanish on the other. Such conditions foreboded a new struggle for the possession of the Mississippi and its eastern affluents, but with complications greater than had attended the conflict which was ended by the Peace of Paris in 1763. It was once more a question, who should control or share the vast country lying between the Appalachians and the Great River ? Each power entei*ed upon the struggle with its own purpose. In the north, England early (1774) attempted a preemption of the region above the Ohio through the Quebec Bill. France at once saw that the terms of that legislation recognized her own long-defended claim to include that territory within the bounds of Canada. It was plainly to be seen that such an acknowledg- ment might make it easier for France to wrest that country in its entirety from the grasp of England, if the fortunes of war should lay open to her the chances of a diplomatic triumph over England. In the south there were the rival interests of England and Spain. The possession of West Florida and New Orleans respectively brought these two powers into a dangerous contiguity. Events seemed tending to bring on a conflict, either at New Orleans or higher up the river. It was a question for the young Republic, if in these opposing interests, north and south, she could make good her territorial rights beyond the Alleghanies, to an extent equal to what, as colonies, she had contended for, and wliich the treaty of 1763 had recognized. All these complications involved the relations of the American people not only to England, which was trying to subjugate them, but also to France, which was expected to assist them. It was a matter of more serious concern that the rulers of France had no intention of resisting England for any other purpose than re- venge and profit to France. The relations of the young Repub- lic to Spain were more embarrassing, for any assistance from that country depended upon the Bourbon compact between France and Spain proving broad enoiigh to force the latter countiy into a war with England for the behoof of France in An)erica. In this event, a common hostility to England might league the American rei)ublic and the Spanish monarchy. In this impending struggle for the line of the Mississippi, as bounding the nascent commonwealth, America had military 108 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. resources almost ludici'ously inadequate, and success was only to be acquired by using this Bourbon rivalry of England in such a way as would protect American interests. Oliver Pollock, a native of Pennsylvania of Irish stock, had gone as a young man to Havana to engage in business, and removed, when he was about thirty years old, to New Orleans in 1767. Two years later, when O'Reilly took possession and the number of his troops produced a famine, this American merchant received a cargo of flour from Baltimore. Prices of cereals were ruling high ; but Pollock saw his opportunity, and publicly sold his produce at from half to two thirds of the current rates. The Spanish government marked its gratitude by giving Pollock a license of free trade with the colony for the rest of his life. The concession gave him a standing in New Orleans, which was of importance for Pollock's counti-ymen in the approaching crisis. The Spanish authorities at this time were strengthening the ramparts of New Orleans, and were bringing succor nearer by opening a new route to Mexico, for it had not escaped them that England only needed a pretext to capture New Orleans if she could. The English reciprocated the anxiety, and found the Spanish possession of Havana a constant menace to Pen- sacola, Haldimand, when commanding at this latter post, had been made aware by Grage, writing from his New York head- quarters, that it was wise never to let slip the pui-pose of seiz- ing New Orleans, if opportunity offered. The canalization of the Iberville had not indeed proved a prosperous scheme for diverting trade to Florida, and the navigation of the Missis- sippi was but a vexatious privilege to the English. When there had been, in 1770, a passing diplomatic flurry with Spain, over the Falkland Islands, Gage had cautioned Haldimand to be prepared for a hostile movement, if there was any ojipar- tune turn of the negotiations. It had long been Gage's plan for stop])ing the clandestine traffic across the river by holding its mouth, which he contended was the only way in which the trade of the river could properly be developed in the English interest. Note. — Tlie opposite map is a section from a "Carte de la Floride, etc., poiir le service des vaisseaux du Roi, par ordre de M. de Sartine, conseiller d'Etat, 1778," and shows Haldimand's Iberville route. / > 1 " ^i_ ■.^ . (^ >" ,' ^ - V ^^- /I no THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. Mucli to the discontent of the British settlers at Natchez and elsewhere, he had refused, with New Orleans in Spanish hands, to maintain armed posts for their protection. The English possessions in West Florida, as the bounds of that province had been defined, included the country about Natchez. The population in this region had been increasing since 1770. Some of the French in Louisiana, disaffected by the Spanish rule, had passed over the river to the English side ; but the greater j^art of the increase had been emigrants from east of the Appalachians. Some had come from Pennsylvania and Jersey ; others from Virginia and Carolina ; but larger numbers had come from Connecticut, turning a current of emi- gration which, under more favorable circumstances, might have settled the Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania. General Phineas Lyman, whom we have seen in London a few years before unsuccessfully urging the formation of a colony in the Illinois country, had returned to New England in the faith that a grant which he had urged for the soldiers of the late war would be made on the lower Mississippi, under royal orders to the gov- ernor of West Florida. He had in Dece;.nber, 1772, asked Dart- mouth to encourage their plan. With this expectation he had induced a body of " military adventurers " at Hartford to order a reconnoissance of their proposed home, and in 1773, Lyman and party sailed from New York for Pensacola. Here they found that no royal instructions had been received. Pending the expected arrival of such, Rufus Putnam, as topographer, headed a party to explore the Mississippi as far north as the Yazoo. The wished-for orders still not coming, the proposing settlers agreed to purchase a tract of land on easy terms. The result was that several hundi'ed families, in May, 1776, came out from New England, only to find that even this arrange- ment had been forbidden by orders from England. So the struggling settlers found that they must shift for themselves. There were some among them who scantily sympathized with the political revolt in New England, and Lyman himself had congratulated the ministry that the " spirit of Boston " was not spreading. The new homes, which they too rosily pic- tured, were destined, they thought, to give them a release from the turmoil they had left. There was, however, enough of tlie revolutionary fervor of the Atlantic seaboard in others who had HAMILTON'S RAIDS. Ill settled there to make an important factor iu shaping the des- tiny of this southern region. We have seen that Hamilton at Detroit had had some suc- cess in counteracting the influence of Morgan among the north- ern tribes. Though the Delawares had mainly rejected his hatchet, the Shawnees and Wyaudots had generally accepted it. A comparison of dates seems to show that Hamilton was acting in anticipation of orders which he had asked of Ger- main. These, when received (dated March 26, 1777), conformed to Hamilton's suggestions, and directed him to organize Indian raids against the American frontiers. We have his own state- ment, in the following July, that he had up to that date sent out fifteen distinct parties on such fiendish errands. The purpose of the minister was that those loyal to the crown among the frontier folk should be gathered in bands, and should be encour- aged by a bounty of two hundred acres to each to aid in these marauding exploits. Dunmore had made out a list of such loyal adherents, as known to him, which Germain transmitted to Hamilton. The purpose of all this deviltry, except so far as they hoped to profit by the savage sympathy, was to distract the attention of Congress and diminish the numbers of Wash- ington's main army. The Kentucky posts, with a population, perhaps, of six hun- dred, and only a half of them arms-bearing, had grown confident in their seclusion. Morgan, who was now commandino' at Fort Pitt, had represented to headquarters in January, 1777, that if militia were drafted to take the place of the garrisons at Forts Pitt and Randolph, the regular companies doing duty there could be sent to reinforce the eastern army. Such self-reliance gave Hamilton what he thought an opportunity. Some two hundred of his Indians crossed the Ohio. One horde unsuc- cessfully attacked Harrodsburg (March, 1777), the garrison re- ceiving a few hours' warning. Another, consisting of about a hundred Avarriors, was repulsed at Boonesborough (April 24). Before May was passed, they again fell upon the stockade which Boone had erected, and began on May 30 a more protracted siege of Logan's Fort, — the modern Standford. — which ended .j only with the relief whicli Colonel Bowman and a hundred ll Virginians brought to it in August, as he was scouring the 112 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. country in search of the foe. The Indians contrived to con- vey Hamilton's prochiniation to repentant rebels, by leaving it on the body of a man whom they had killed outside the fort. By the first of June, 1777, Hamilton at Detroit and General Edward Hand at Pittsburg — now in command of the western frontier — were each developing- their counter movements for the summer's campaign. The Americans had begun preparations in the spring by send- ing Philadelphia boat-builders to the Monongahela, to make ready some bateaux. Early in the summer, American agents at the Holston River had sought to protect the valley approaches on that side by a pact with the southern Indians. The main outposts of Pittsburg, subject to Hand's control, were Fort Randolph on Point Pleasant at the mouth of the Kanawha, and Fort Henry at the modern Wheeling. Two hundred and fifty men of Colonel Wood's regiment were garrisoning these posts. Of the neighboring Indians only the Delawares con- tinued friendly, and they were kept in restraint lai'gely through the influence of Zeisberger, the Moravian. The English were fortunate in holding Niagara, a position which, as Hutchins said of it, " secured a greater number of comnumications through a large country than probably any other pass in interior America," and it was here, just at this turn of affairs, that the Indians were gathering to assist St. Leger, in that attempt to aid Burgoyne which was foiled at Oriskany. Detroit, however, was the chief strategic point for the English ; and Hamilton, now in command there, was later put, by orders from England, in chief control of the military affairs in the Ohio valley. His main business was to harass the frontiers, open communication with Stuart at the south, and watch the Spaniards beyond the Mississippi. His outposts were at Sandusky and about the headwaters of the Scioto, and he had succeeded, as we have said, in banding the Shawnees, Wyandots, and Mingoes in the British interest. It was Hamilton's purpose, if possible, to organize a corps of chasseurs from the French settlers within his control, and to officer them from their own peojile. An English officer, Abbott by name, was early in the season started towards Viu- ROCHEBLAVE. 113 cennes, with some such purpose. When he ci-ossed the portage of the Maumee, he found five hundred Indians there ready for their savage raids. In the absence of any troops to support him, Abbott, who had readied his post on May 19, found that he had to yield to their exorbitant demands, and in July (1777), while he was stockading Vincennes, he found it necessary to bind the French settlers by an oath and forego the chasseurs. The other purpose of intercepting the American supplies by the river seemed hardly more promising. The cannon which he mounted were sent to him by the commander at Fort Gage in the Illinois country, to which the armament of Fort Chartres had been removed in 1772. This officer was Rocheblave, who had been for some time busy watching the Spanish at St. Louis, and trying to divine a purpose on their pirt which in his imagination took many shapes. He tried at times to induce the Kickapoos to unravel it, but it did not comfort him to find that these Indians were receiving messages from the " Boston- nais," as they called the Americans, and were communicating them to the Spaniards. Upon the Foxes both he and the Span- ish governor played their wiles in the effort to gain them, and to the savages' advantage, no doubt. The Ottawas were urged to receive Spanish favors, so that they could fathom, by the op- portunities which dependence could offer, the plots at St. Louis. Rocheblave seems to have made the best impression upon a vagrant horde of the Delawares, Avho frequented his post, and he reported that he felt he could depend upon them. But the belts which he found passing between the rebels and Spaniards on the one side, and the savages on the other, were a constant riddle to him. He had heard, moreover, that the Spanish com- mander had spoken knowingly of something that was to haj^pen wlien the maize grew to be eighteen inches high. Certain French officers, too, were known to have Spanish commissions, and he found that, despite his endeavors, French aid was ena- bling the Americans to run supplies up the river. Diu'ing all this Hamilton had submitted to Carleton a plan for attacking New Orleans ; but Carleton was cautious, and warned him not to be too i)rovoking with his neighbors, but rather to be prepared to resist any attack from them. Hamilton replied that the Si)anish hostility was confirmed, and they had begun to seize English vessels at New Orleans. 114 THE FORTUNES OF THE MISSISSIPPI. While the season closed at Kaskaskia with Rocheblave dream- ing of a Spanish conquest and a governorship at New Orleans, some bloody work was going on around the little fort near Wheeling Creek. This stockade had been known as Fort Fin- castle, till lately being improved (1776), it was renamed Fort Henry, after Patrick Henry, now governor of Virginia. Gen- eral Hand had not succeeded in raising the two thousand men which he had hoped for his campaign, and with no more than eight hundred men on his rolls he had not felt strong- enough to take the aggressive during the summer, and had accordingly kept himself rather on the defensive. He was, moreover, not quite sure of certain men who were about him. One of them, Alexander McKee, who had been deputy Indian agent under Sir William Johnson, was put under oath to have " no communication with the British." Simon Girty, who had also been arrested, had been wily enough to reestablish himself in Hand's opinion. Girty had for some time absented himself, but in August some friendly Moravian Indians had come in, bringing word that Girty was leading a force thither, and that Fort Henr}^ was to be the point of attack. This defense was an oblong stockade in open ground, inclosing about half an acre of ground, bastioned, and supplied with water. The occu- pants of the surrounding village were still in their cabins out- side the walls ; but scouts were out, and they had passed a quiet summer. As the season closed, confidence had been so far restored that some of the militia had gone home, and only two companies, of not over forty men in all, remained under Colonel David Shepherd. Hand did what he could to cover the inhab- itants before the stroke came. During the night of August 31, from two hundred to four hundred of Hamilton's Indians — accounts differ — ambushed themselves near by, and threw the community into confusion the next morning by a sudden ap- proach. There was time enough, however, to enable the out- side settlers to get within the defenses before the attack began. The garrison made some hazardous sallies, much to its loss of numbers ; but they served to keep the assailers at bay. The leader of the enemy, finding his followers discouraged, turned to destroying what he could in the surrounding village. Suc- cor for the besieged arriving, he disappeared with his savages in the forest. There is a good deal of confusion in the accounts EVENTS OF 1777. 115 which have come down to us, and though Wither says that Girty was the leader of the assault, it is by no means certain that he was present at all. The whole region was soon alarmed, and Hand, uncertain for a while whether to make counter incursions, at last drew in the men from his lesser outposts. Kittanning, for one, was abandoned, and the season in this part of the valley ended with little hope. The neighboring Delawares had proved steadfast, but a band of Shawnees adhering to Cornstalk had wavered. That leader and some of his people a little later ventured to Fort Randolph, where some militia, aroused by recent atrocities, ensnared and murdered them. It was hopeless to keep any of the Shawnees neutral after this. The campaign of 1777, in Washington's loss of Philadeljihia, had not been propitious for those struggling beyond the moun- tains, who were thus cut off from their main seaboard connec- tions ; but the defeat of St. Leger and the surrender of Bur- goyne at the north had happily intervened to put a new aspect upon the contest of the trans-Alleghany country, where so much desultory warfare had of late confused the outcome. CHAPTER VIII, GEORGE ROGERS CLARK, ARBITER AND SUPPLIANT. 1776-1779. In the early part of 1776, George Rogers Clark had cast his lot among the Keiitiickians. He found them living amid dan- gers and stirred by political unrest. Virginia, as the parent colony, was too remote to afford them protection. There were ugly rumors of savage contests in store for them through the concerted action of the British commanders at Detroit and Pensacola. There were those on the frontiers — and it suited Clark's nature to be in sympathy — who would not shrink from the responsibility of independent action ; but a soberer judgment prevailed, and it was decided not to take any decisive step before the authorities at Williamsburg were informed of the situation. On July 17, 1776, delegates from these forest communities met at Harrodsburg and chose Clark and another to undertake such an embassy. The people had already, on June 20, drawn up a memorial, in which they affirmed that the " prime riflemen " of Kentucky were not a body whose aidl should be declined in troublous times. They recognized that the colonies were drifting towards that independence of whose declaration it was too early then for them to have heard. The delegates found difficulty, without intimating an alternative of their own independence, to make the council listen to their demands for powder ; but Patrick Henry, then governor, as well as Jefferson, George Mason, and George Wythe, threw a strong influence in favor of the frontiers, and the grant was made. On August 2, the Assembly was induced to declare the sovereignty of Virginia over the Kentucky region, and her purj)ose to protect it. Later, the legislature, on December 7, created the county of Kentucky. During the spring of 1777, the tidings from the Indian country north of the Ohio had alarmed Colonel Crawford at i CLARK'S PLANS. Ill Fort Pitt. When the summer of)ened, Clark sent two young hunters to make their way to the Illinois settlements, and to discover the situation there. They reported on their return (June 22) that the French were in the main quiet in their villages, and that only a few of their young men were partici- pating in the British and savage raids, which were directed from Detroit. These centres of the French population were, however, used as starting-places of these marauding parties. Clark was fired by these reports with a purpose to attempt the conquest of this region, and on October 1 he again left Har- rodsburg for the Virginia capital. He tells us that he met on his way many adventurers struggling through the wilderness to find new homes. When he reached Williamsburg, he found the community rejoicing over the surrender of Burgoyne, — a good omen that gave him increased enthusiasnio On December 10, 1777, Clark laid his scheme before the governor. In case of failure in the plan, he proposed to join the Spaniards beyond the Mississippi. The Virginia council having approved Clark's plan, on January 2, 1778, the governor gave Clark a colonel's commission, and committed to him two sets of instructions, one expressing a purpose to defend Ken- tucky only, and the other, which was to be kept secret, author- izing him to attack Kaskaskia. In both he was given author- ity to raise, west of the AUeghanies, seven companies of forty men each. He was to apply to General Hand, who, a§ we have seen, had been in command at Fort Pitt since June 1, 1777, for a portion of the stock of powder which had been brought up the Mississippi from New Orleans, and such other supplies as could be furnished. Twelve hundred dollars in paper were given to him, and he was told to draw for further sums on Oliver Pollock at New Orleans, who would be instructed to honor his drafts. The legislature of Virginia, as Jefferson, Mason, and Wythe in their letters of congratulation assured him, was expected to appropriate as bounty to each man three hun- dred acres of the conquered territory. So the whole movement was a Virginia one, intended to secure her dominion over what she believed to be her charter limits. The men were enlisted under the impression conveyed by his public instructions. Three companies were raised, one hundred and fifty men in all, and these were rendezvoused at Redstone on the Monongahela, 118 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. where the boats were assembled. In May, 1778, having beside his troops a train of adventurous settlers, Clark moved on to Pittsburg and Wheeling. At both these places he picked up supplies. At the mouth o£ the Kanawha he found reinforce- ments. On his way down the Ohio, some of the accompanying emigrants left him at points where they could easily enter the wilderness. Others remained on the flotilla till May 27, when he reached the falls, near the modern Louisville. Here they were landed on Corn Island, where the rushing river broke up the reflections of canebrakes, vines, and lofty trees. A stockade was built to protect the eighty settlers, and to furnish a store- house for his excess of supplies. Ten of his soldiers were left as a guard. He had lost something by desertion on the way, and was glad of a small company from the Holston, which now joined him. They did not prove steadfast, however, for as soon as he made known his real instructions, they left him. His total available force had now been reduced to about one hundred and seventy-five men. If it had been larger, he might at once have advanced on Vincennes ; but hoping for other accessions, he determined to go to Kaskaskia first. While making his preparations to leave, intelligence of the French alliance reached him from Fort Pitt. It was good tidings which he hoped to break to the French at Kaskaskia with some effect. On June 24, he poled his boats up the river from the island in order to gain the main channel, and then, it being a high stage of the water, the flotilla shot down the rapids " at the very moment of the sun being in a great eclipse." It was a nearly total obscuration, and it was nine o'clock in the morning. It took two days to reach a creek just above Fort Massac, relays of rowers working day and night. He met on the way some hunters, who the week before had been in Kaskaskia, and engaged one or two of them as guides. The men were landed, and there was not a horse or cannon among them to give a show of efficacy to the courageous little array. It was on June 26 that they began their march over a route of one hundred and twenty miles, the first fifty of which lay through a swampy country. The open prairie, which came next, encouraged them in their weariness. On the afternoon of July 4, they were within three miles of Kaskaskia, and their food was exhausted. That post was in command of Rocheblave, CLARK TAKES K A SKA SKI A. 119 i^ la w r * > , J -^ .'^ &■■ 1*1 .-XT 1* '^^^ , 4 ,>, ' - ^^ I fte S" •'•2 ^* f [From CoUot's Atlas.'] a French officer who had joined the British after tliey had oc- cupied the region. To save expense, and without much appre- hension of th^ exposure of the post, its garrison had been greatly diminished, and Kocheblave had been kept there to watch the country and report upon events. The men that were left to him were in the guard hall of the fort making merry in a dance when Clark, after dark, and accompanied by his men, suddenly sprung into their company. There could be no resist- 120 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. ance, and " the self-styled Colonel, Mr. Clerke," as Rocheblave reported liim to Carleton, was thus easily put in possession of the post and of all within the town. The next morning the oath of fidelity was administered. After this the townspeople, whose spirits were distinctly gladdened by the news of the French alliance, wei'e suffered to go about their business. The successful commander now turned for sympathy to the Si^anish over the Mississippi, with whom he opened communi- cation. He found the commandant at St. Louis more than ready to countenance him. Wherever he turned, the French about him were ready to serve him. They had much disturbed Rocheblave of late by keeping up a trade with the Spaniards, which that officer was powerless to stop. With Kaskaskia in American hands, there was nothing to prevent such traffic across the Mississippi being carried on openly. Clark went to Cahokia — to which he had sent Bowman and thirty horsemen on the first day of his occupation of Kaskaskia — and met the northern Indians, and though he ran some hazards and encountered some treachery, the French stood by him, and in outward seeming, at least, the tribes were gained over. He sent a commission to the chief of the distant Foxes, but the British intercepted it. Gibault, a priest at Kaskaskia, in company with Dr. Lafont and a few others whom Clark could trust, was sent, on July 14, to Vincennes. Lieutenant Leonard Helm was also of the party, and was detailed to take the military command of the place. He administered the oath to those he found, and sent belts to the neighboring Wabash Indians. Gibault returned to Kaskaskia on August 1, and reported his success. Clark now enlisted enough resident Creoles to supply the gaps in his companies, made by the expiration of the term of his three months' men. The men thus released were sent to Virginia under an officer, who also took charge of Rocheblave as a prisoner of war. There soon arrived from St. Louis a man in whom Clark found a fast friend. This was Francois Vigo, a native of Sardinia, now a man somewhat over thirty years of age, accord- ing to the best accounts, though his gravestone makes him born in 1739. He liad come to New Orleans in a Spanish regiment, early in the days of the Spanish control. After leaving the POLLOCK AND VIGO. 121 army he turned trader, and had of late been living at St. Louis, where he had become a person of influence and property. Hearino- of Clark's success, he had hastened to Kaskaskia to see him. Without the financial aid of Vigo at St. Louis and of Pollock at New Orleans, it is doubtful if Clark could have sustained himself in the coming months. Governor Henry had already directed Pollock to draw on France for money to be sent to Clark, and at a later day Clark gave an ajffidavit that he received Pollock's remittances in specie. Li September, 1778, Pollock wrote to Congress that he had just sent a new remittance of seven thousand three hundred dollars to Clark. During that year he borrowed a large amount from the Spanish governor for like uses. Vigo let Clark have twelve thousand dollars, and took Clark's drafts on Pollock for that sum. When these drafts reached New Orleans, Pollock, who had been sending powder and swivels up the river to Clark, found himself obliged to raise money at 12^- per cent, discount to meet the obligation. Later, Pollock drew on Delap of Bordeaux on account of a cargo shipped to that port, in order to amass funds for Clark's continued drafts. Fearing that the vessel might not arrive and Delap would dishonor his draft, he solicited Congress in April, 1779, to direct Franklin, then in Paris, to assume if necessary the burden. Transactions like these before the close of the war reduced Pollock to penury. When Vigo died at Terre Haute in 1836, neglected and childless, something like twenty thou- sand dollars which he had paid to Clark remained unsettled. Ten years later (1846), Vigo's heirs memorialized Congress for restitution, but with little effect. In 1848, a conmiittee of the House of Representatives recognized the obligation. Here the matter rested till 1872, when Congress referred the question to the Court of Claims, which gave a decision in favor of Vigo's heirs. The government carried the case to the Supreme Court in 1876, when long-delayed justice was rendered, but the appli- cants who received, including interest, fifty thousand dollars, were mainly claim agents and lobbyists. The particular draft which was the basis of the suit was one drawn on Pollock, December 4, 1778, for 18716.40, which Vigo had cashed. While Clark was thus engaged securing funds, measures were in progress to organize the conquered territory under a 122 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. civil government. The provisions were quite at variance with the purpose which the English ministry had had in view iu pushing through the Quebec Bill, and threw back the bounds of Canada, where both the colonists and the parent government had long, through many wars, insisted that they belonged. The Virginia Assembly, in the autumn of 1778, had here created the county of Illinois, and had given to Governor Henry the authority to raise five hundred men for its defense, and to keep open communication with and through it. Henry selected, as governor of the new county, an active Virginian, who had gone, in 1775, to Kentucky, where he had played a part in the Transylvania movement, and had later been in Clark's command, — Captain John Todd. Henry sent him instructions which required him " to cultivate and emulate the affections of the French and Indians," to command the county militia, and to use them to assist Clark. Todd, on receiving these papers, returned to Virginia to perfect plans, and when he again reached Kaskaskia in May, 1779, he bore a letter of friendship to the Spanish governor at Ste. Genevieve, which he was expected to deliver in person. He was also en- joined to take under his special care the family of Rocheblave, now a prisoner in Virginia. In appointing the county officers, Todd was quite ready to give the French a large part of them, and he endeavoi-ed to fill the country with actual settlers, to the exclusion of speculators in land. It was a relief to Clark to find the civil administriation of the region in so good hands, for events were demanding his anxious attention. All along the valley north of the Ohio, the American cause had not pi'ospered, and in Kentucky there had been turmoil enough, though it was not always favorable to the British and their savage allies. During the summer there were bands of Tories, horse thieves, and other renegades, traversing the Ten- nessee country. The Watauga community, bestirring itself, had mustered and sent out two companies of militia. These effectually scoured the country, and those of the marauders who were not captured fled to the Cherokees, or escaped north- ward to the British. There was now only a hunter's hut on the site of the later BOONESBOROUGH. 123 Nashville, and perhaps a dozen families were clustered about Bledsoe's Lick, stockaded together and surrounded by Chick- asaws. These were relieved. Farther north, however, at Boonesborough, Hamilton, through his rangers and savages, tried hard to deliver a serious blow. Boone, who had been earlier captured at the Salt Licks, had been taken to Detroit, where Hamilton treated him con- siderately. Later he was carried into the Shawnee country a jirisoner, and succeeded in ingratiating himself with his mas- ters. Here he learned that Hamilton had gathered a band of over four hundred warriors, and was intending to let them loose upon the Kentucky settlements. In June, managing to escape, Boone reached his home in time to improve its defenses. The enemy not appearing, and anxious for definite knowledge, Boone started out with a squad of men to reconnoitre. He crossed the Ohio, and had a sharp conflict with the Indians on the Scioto. Learning that Hamilton's expedition was now on the march, led by both French and British officers and fly- ing the flags of both, it soon became a race for the goal. Boone surpassed them in speed, and reached Boonesborough in time to drive in the cattle and dispose his forty effective men for the onset. He had a score other men not equal to a steady fight. The enemy approached the fort on September 8, 1778, — if this is the date, for there is a conflict of testimony. The leader, whom Boone calls Du Quesne, but whom the English call De Quindre, demanded a parley. This was accorded by Boone, only to find it had been treacherously asked for, and he and his men, who went to the meeting, had a struggle to escape the snare. Gaining the stockade, the siege began, and lasted sev- eral days, till the enemy finally disappeared in the woods. This repulse and the raid of the Watauga men relieved the region south of the Ohio to the end of the year. Farther east, however, results had not been so cheering. In May, 1778, Congress had voted to raise three thousand men for service on the western frontiers. It was hoped that it might prove practicable to push this force across the country south of Lake Erie and ca]>ture Detroit. General Hand was relieved, and General Lachlan Mcintosh, a Scotchman, now somewhat over fifty years old, who had been with Oglethorpe in Georgia, 124 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. and had attracted Washington's attention, was assigned to the command at Fort Pitt. Washington, at Valley Forge, had ordered the Eighth Pennsylvania regiment, under Colonel Brod- head, to the frontiers, and the Thirteenth Virginia regiment, under Colonel Gibson, was directed to be in readiness. Vir- ginia was at the same time expected to concentrate a large force of militia. This army, when ready, was to advance in two divisions of about fifteen hundred men each, — one by the Kanawha and the other by the Ohio, and to vmite at Fort Randolph (Point Pleasant). News had already been received of an attack by two hundred savages, in May, at the mouth of the Kanawha, and later on the Greenbrier ; but the assailants had been foiled at both places. It was well into June, 1778, when Mcintosh began his march, but the ravages which were taking place in the Wyoming valley rendered it necessary to detach for a while Brodhead's command. It was August when the general, with this dimin- ished force, reached his headquarters at the forks of the Ohio. Before he was ready to move on, Brodhead rejoined him. There were at this time three main posts west of the Alle- ghanies, — Forts Pitt, Kandolph, and Hand ; but there were beside nearly two-score movable camps of rangers, who were patrolling the border. Mcintosh called them in, and hoped with his force thus strengthened to advance on Detroit. It was necessary to his plan to leave friendly tribes behind him, and at Pittsburg, on September 17, with a supply of ten thou- sand dollars' worth of presents, he began conciliatory methods with the Delawares, who were stretched along his expected path. The Moravians had pretty well established themselves among these Indians, though not so effectually but that a part of this heterogeneous people stood aloof in the British interests. The enemy had a firm foothold among the Shawnees who occupied the lower valleys of the Great and Little Miami and of the Scioto. The upper waters of these same streams were given over to tlie inimical Mingoes. Beyond these were the Wyan- dots on the Sandusky — not always steadfast in the English interests — and the Ottawas on the Maumee, whom Hamilton could better depend upon. Mcintosh tried to gather these hos- tile tribes to a conference, but fewer came than he had wished. Nevertheless, he thought he had gained over enough for his MCINTOSH'S MARCH. 125 purpose, and the Sliawnees had consented to his traversing their country. But in doing this he had lost time, and the season was become inauspicious for an active campaign. Accordingly he began the erection of a fort on the right bank of the Ohio, thirty miles below Fort Pitt, and near the mouth of Beaver Creek. Here, at Fort Mcintosh, as he called it, he established his headquarters on October 8, 1778. It was a good position to afford succor, when necessary, to the settlements which had already begun to extend to the Muskingum, and thirty miles up that river. The new fort was the first built north of the Ohio, and Mcintosh had, in and around it, a body of twelve hundred or more soldiers, mainly Virginians, — a larger number of armed men than had before operated in this country. His delay here in building what Brodhead, his successor, called a "romantic" fort was thought to have prevented the main ob- ject of his campaign, — the capture of Detroit. Mcintosh, checked in his advance as he was, had got far ahead of his trains. A herd of cattle, which was driven after him, did not come up till November 3, when there was still a lack in his supplies of salt and other things. Two days later, the general started again, but with cattle to drive and other obstacles, he made only fifty miles in a fortnight, and was then sufficiently ahead of his main supplies to cause alarm, for there were rumors of an opposing force. He was following pretty much the route which Bouquet had taken fourteen years before. He had not met the enemy ; but fearing concealed dangers, and needing a nearer refuge than Fort Mcintosh, in case of disaster, and believing in the policy of holding the country by a chain of posts, he built a stockade on the west branch of the Tuscara- was, an affluent of the Muskingum, and named it Fort Laurens, after the president of Congress. Its site was near the modern Bolivia and close to a spot where Bouqiiet had built a stockade, some distance above the Moravian settlements. This was Mcintosh's farthest point, and Detroit was safe, for, without sup])Hes and the season far gone, there was no longer hope to reach his goal. He put a bold fighter. Colonel John Gibson, in command of the post, with a force of one hundred and fifty men, to be used, if possible, in another advance in the spring. In December, the general returned to Fort Pitt, put his regulars into winter quarters, and sent his militia to their 126 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. homes. The year had ended with the American hopes nearly- dashed in the upper regions of the Ohio valley. Farther west the enemy had made a bold stroke against Clark. It looked all the more serious, if the British attack on Savannah should succeed and they should hold Augusta, — as they later did, — since it gave them two bases, not so very re- mote from each other. From these, with their available forces strengthened " by redeeming the army of the Convention," as Burgoyne's captured troops were called, they hoped to make a counter movement south of the Ohio. The expedition which once more gave them Vincennes, while Mcintosh was inauspiciously withdrawing to Fort Pitt, was conducted by Hamilton without the approval of Haldimand, now commanding at Quebec. That general held that such a movement carried the invading force beyond the reach of aid, while the government's policy had been to depend upon maraud- ing parties. Hamilton hiiuself had suggested this alternative course of flying bands early in the conflict, and Germain had ordered him, March 26, 1777, to pursue it. In June such orders were received at Detroit, accompanied by injunctions to restrain the barbarities of the savages. Such precautions were necessarily inoperative, and it might have been known they would be. The responsibility for the use of Indians during the war is pretty evenly divided between the combatants. The practice of it, however, by the ministerial party meant attacks on women and children and the spoliation of homes. The practice of it by the Americans gave no such possible misery to an invading army, which was without domestic accompaniments. The use of the Stockbridge Indians during the investment of Boston doubt- less antedated the employment of such allies by the royal com- manders. On Gage's reporting to Dartmouth this fact, the minister (August 2, 1775) told that general "there was no room to hesitate upon the propriety of pursuing the same meas- ure." The British government at the same time began the shipment (August, 1775) of presents to reward the constancy of the Indians. It was on September 2, 1776, that Hamilton, writing from Detroit to Dartmouth, urged that "every means should be HAMILTON AND THE INDIANS. 127 employed that Providence has put into his Majesty's hands," — a sentiment which, later ex^jressed by Lord Suffolk, hrono-ht upon him (November, 1777) the scathing- rebuke of Chatliaui. Congress did not formally sanction the use of Indians till March, 1778, and then it was conditioned on Washington's judging it to be " prudent and proper." Few if any British officers brought themselves so much under severe criticism for inciting savage barbarities as Governor Hamilton. lie sang war songs with the braves, he made gifts to parties that returned with scalps ; but that he explicitly offered rewards as an incentive to taking scalps would be hard to prove, though the Council of Virginia, after Hamilton became their prisoner, charged him with doing so. His glee at the successful outcome of savage raids was not unshared by many in the royal service. We have abundant testimony of this in the observa- tions of John Leech and others while prisoners \\\ the British posts. This gruesome hilarity was far, however, from being- universal. Such a cynical Tor}^ as Judge Jones shuddered at it. Lieutenant-Governor Abbott, at Detroit, in June, 1778, pro- tested against the use of Indians, and urged only the securing of their neutrality. De Peyster at Mackinac once addressed a band of braves as follows : " I am pleased when I see what you call live tneat, because I can speak to it and get information. Scalps serve to show you have seen the enemy, but they are of no use to me; I cannot speak with them." Even Hamilton himself at times grew tender, and on hearing that Ilaldimnnd had assumed command at Quebec, he hastened to inform him that the Indians " never fail [at his hands] of a gratuity on every proof of obedience in sparing the lives of such as are incapable of defending themselves." In June, 1777, Hamilton notified Carleton of a coming- Indian council, and told him that he could assemble a tliousand warriors in three weeks, " should your Excellency have occasion for their services." Shortly after this, Carleton was relieved of all responsibility in the matter, as the conduct of the war about the upper lakes had, under orders from England, been put entirely in the hands of Hamilton. When this new gov- ernor reached Detroit to take conmiand, he at once began the enrollment of five hundred militia. At Detroit, Hamilton was advantageously situated for an 128 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. offensive war. A British fleet consisting' of the " Gage," car- rying twenty-two guns and swivels, beside various smaller craft, — it was less than ten years since the British had launched their first keel at Detroit, — had command of the lakes, and could keep the post at Deti-oit in communication with De Peyster at Mackinac and with the British commander at Ni- agara, the other strategic points on these inland waters. Unfor- tunately for Hamilton, there was more or less disaffection at and around his post, and the health of Clark was a common toast even in the press-gang, which he kept at work on the for- tifications. The governor was never quite sure that somebody was not betraying his plans, nor was he certain that for a quart of rum an Indian would not carry tidings to General Hand, who was striving to open the road from Pittsburg to Detroit. Hamilton's force was perhaps five hundred in all, consisting of four companies of the King's Regiment under Lernoult, a single company of the 47th, and two companies of Butler's Rangers. While Clark had been preparing to descend the Ohio, Hand with five hundred men had made (February, 1778) an incursion into the Ohio country, but his movement had only that kind of success which gave his expedition the bitter designation of the " squaw campaign." His purpose was to destroy some stores which Hamilton had sent to Cayahoga (Cleveland) as a base for a campaign against Fort Pitt, and in this he utterly failed. Late in March, Hand was distressed at new developments. Alexander McKee, Simon Girty, Matthew Elliot, and others, had for some time been exciting suspicion at Fort Pitt, where they lingered, and at last they disappeared. There was little doubt they had gone over to Hamilton, and would try on their way to Detroit to turn the friendly Delawares against the Americans. They did this, though Heckewelder, the Mo- ravian, was sent on their tracks to prevent it. This emissary found that the renegades had passed to the Scioto, and were doing further mischief among the Shawnees. It was early summer (June) when Girty and his companions reached De- troit, and found Hamilton in the midst of councils held with the Indians. On July 3, on presenting a battle-axe to a chief, the governor said, " I pray the Master of Life to give you success," and with svich prayers he was sending out parties to intercept the boats ascending the Ohio with supplies for Fort Pitt. 1 I HAMILTON ALERT. 129 Thus occupied, Hamilton might well have thought he was on the whole the master of the situation, when, on August 1, 1778, he received the news of the capture by Clark of Kaskaskia. He did not at once comprehend the character of the conquest. He supposed that the captors were a party from the flotilla commanded by Willing, whom he describes as coming " of one of the best families in Philadelphia, but of infamous character and debauched morals." He further suspected that the Span- iards had as much to do with the incursion as Willing had. He looked upon the Wabash tribes now as his main depend- ence in resisting further raids, and sent Celoron among them with a belt. In a letter which he wrote to Germain he pite- ously complains that there was not now a British fort or garri- son between the lakes and the Gulf. Haldimand, before he could have got intelligence from Hamilton, was already coun- seling him to use the tribes of the Wabash, and fill the Ohio valley with rangers, so as to keep communication with Stuai't and the Cherokees. This plan was the gist of the British policy, and Haldimand, as soon as he learned how matters had gone with Rocheblave, was urging Hamilton to active endeav- ors ; but he never quite apjjroved permanent posts so far remote from the lakes. As soon as more detailed news reached Hamilton about the real actors in the capture of Kaskaskia and Vincennes, he lost no time in planning a recapture. He was still somewhat dis- trustful of the French about his post, and felt that all traders were rebels at heart, and so he watched them warily. It was necessary that Stuart in the south should know his jmrpose, and he sent a verbal statement to him by a messenger, who was to seek that Indian agent by way of the Chickasaw country. Hamilton at this time was dreaming of some large measures. He informed Haldimand that the forks of the Ohio should be seized and fortified, as well as those of the Mississippi at the mouth of the Ohio. The occupation of Vincennes he looked upon as but a first step to these plans. On September 28, 1778, he wrote to Haldimand that " tlie Spaniards are feeble and hated by the French ; the French are fickle and have no man of capacity to lead them ; the rebels are enterprising and brave, but want resources ; and tlie Indians can obtain their resources but from the English, if we act without loss of time." 130 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. It was important to Hamilton's plans that De Pe^^ster, at Mackinac, should cooperate with him, and that the rebels should not be allowed to obtain a foothold on the lakes in that direc- tion. The commander at Detroit had sent oif messages to Mackinac on September 16, asking De Peyster to send his Indians down the Illinois River by the Chicago portage. Arent Schuyler de Peyster, of a New York family, a some- what rattle-brained person, given to writing illiterate letters, but in some ways an enterprising and prudent commander, had been in charge at Mackinac since 1774. There had grown up about that post a considerable trade, and a portion of it in the direc- tion of the Mississippi employed a fleet of sixty canoes. Lately, and in ignorance of Clark's success at Kaskaskia, De Peyster had allowed one Charles Gratiot to go down to the Illinois country for trade, where he found the rebels ready purchasers of his wares. De Peyster learned of the true state of affairs at Kaskaskia only a few days before Hamilton had dispatched his message to him, and on September 21, 1778, he wrote to Hal- dimand : " The rebels are so firmly fixed in Illinois that I fear if they are not routed by some means, the whole Mississippi trade is knocked up." De Peyster, though he had feared an attack at Mackinac, met Hamilton's demand by dispatching Langlade and Gautier, with a band of Indians, towards St. Joseph, to create a diver- sion in Hamilton's favor. Their instructions were dated Octo- ber 26. At that time Hamilton, well posted on the doings of Clark through an Ottawa chief, had already left Detroit. Be- fore he started, he drew up his force on the common, read the articles of war, exacted a renewed oath from the French, and got Pere Potier, " a man of respectable character and venerable figure," to give the Catholics a blessing. On October 7, the invading force, consisting of about one hundred and seventy-five whites, regulars and volunteers, and three hundred and fifty Indians, left Detroit by the river. The flotilla, on its passage to the mouth of the Maumee, experienced such stormy weather that Hamilton in his anxiety suffered " more than can be expressed." That river was then ascended to the rapids, and above these obstructions they pushed on in boats, lightening them when it was necessary to pass the rifts. On October 24, 1778, they reached the nine-mile portage, and VINCENNES RETAKEN. 131 carrying over this, they shot rapidly down the Wabash on a freshet which Hamilton had created by cutting the beaver dams. The force was within three miles of Vincennes when Lieu- tenant Helm, still in command at that post, first obtained defi- nite tidings of the approach, though he had been distui'bed by rumors some days earlier. Plelm's men, who had been about seventy in number, began to desert under apprehension. We have a letter, which at this time he wrote to Clark, and which Hamilton later forwarded. In this he says he has only twenty-one men left. He continued inditing the letter till the enemy were within three hundred yards, and closes it with expressing a doubt if he had four men upon whom he could depend. Major Hay, representing Hamil- ton, had appeared in the place the day before (December 16), giving warning of the danger of resistance to the townspeople. On the 17th, Helm was summoned to surrender, and did so, — the usual story of his marching out with one man may })erha])S be questioned. Two days later, the British oath was admin- istered to the residents, numbering not far from six hundred souls, of whom a third were capable of bearing arms. The com- munity doubtless included at other seasons some hunters and traders, who were absent at this time. Almost the first act of Hamilton was to dispatch messengers to Stuart to propose a meeting of their respective forces in the spring on the Cherokee (Tennessee) Kiver, whence, assisted by the southern Indians, the united detachments could harry the rebel frontiers. Hamilton also notified the Spanish commander on the Mississippi that while he and Stuart struck the Alle- ghany frontier, a force from Mackinac would sweep the rebels out of the Illinois country, and warned him that if he expected innnunity from attack, he must not harbor the Americans. In this defiant spirit Hamilton began to fortify himself, keep- ing only eighty or ninety men with him, beside some French volunteers. He sent his militia back to Detroit and scattered his Indians. In the spring, he counted on their rejoining him with other reinforcements. The next year, 1779, opened with both parties anxioiis over the situation in the Ohio basin. The British, flanking it at Detroit, had by Hamilton's success pushed in a wedge at Viu- 132 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. cennes. Tlie communications of this latter post were tlirougli a friendly country, but its situation was exposed, with such a vigilant foe as Clark observing it, Kaskaskia in American hands had tolerably secure communications with New Orleans, and it was neighboring to Spanish sympathizers. But the British enjoyed far greater facilities of relief by the lakes than could be given to Clark by the Mississippi. Between the Wabash and the Alleghany there was a wide extent of country, inhabited in the main by those friendly to the British, though a portion of the Delawares still stood by the Americans, and there were symptoms of hesitancy on the part of the Wyandots. The advanced posts of the revolutionists in this direction were at Fort Laurens and at Point Pleasant, both in almost chronic alarm from the prowling savages. The general suspense was to be broken by a fortunate move- ment from Kaskaskia. Clark had for some time been busy in gaining over the neighboring tribes, and in sealing his friend- ship with the Sjianiards and French. His success in these endeavors had not led him to anticipate the daring incursion of Hamilton, which released the American hold on Vincennes. Clark's confidence in his immunity from danger appears in his letters to Governor Henry and to the Virginia delegates in Con- gress, whom he had addressed in November, 1778. Henry and Jefferson no doubt saw the great importance of sustaining Clark, for his success could but tell upon the ultimate negotiations for peace, and his continued hold on the Illinois country would work a practical annulment of the pretensions of the Quebec Bill. The Virginia Assembly proved itself ready to give Clark's men such encouragement as would come from a promise of bounty lands, and later (November 23) its records bore an entry of the formal thanks which they voted to the leader himself. To cause him to be unhampered by civic duties, the new county of Illinois had been set up. But a belief in the wisdom of this western campaign was not universal, and there were those who questioned the propriety of Henry's divergence from the single pui'pose of protecting the Kentucky and Tennessee settlements. Clark, however, was to silence opposition by a brilliant stroke. While Hamilton at Vincennes was preparing his plans for the s])ring, Clark was devising a sudden move upon the en- emy on the Wabash. A corporal and six men, deserting from CLARK'S ADVANCE. 133 Hamilton in January, 1779, had brought Clark the confirma- tion of rumors, if not indeed the first news of Helm's surrender. Already Hamilton's Indian scouting- parties were hovering about Kaskaskia, and one of them, under an Ottawa chief, barely missed Clark one day, when he was returning to Kaskaskia from Cahokia. But more comprehensive toils were threaten- ino- him and the American cause without his knowino- it. Hamilton's couriers had already come to a plan with the southern Indians for four separate movements. Kaskaskia was to be attacked for one. The Shawnees were to be assisted in an onslausfht on Fort Laurens for another. A third was to com- bine the Wabash Indians in a promiscuous swoop. A fourth was to station other savages at the mouth of the Cherokee River to intercept any flotilla of supplies and men jaassing either way. To these several bands Hamilton was to supply British officers and a horde of Ottawas, Hurons, and Chippewas. While Clark was brooding on his own projects and Hamilton was developing his plans, each in ignorance of the other's con- dition, Vigo had left Kaskaskia on December 18, 1778, before news of Hamilton's success had reached that place, in order to carry supplies to Helm. One of Hamilton's scouting parties captured him on the 24:th, and he was carried into Vincennes as a prisoner. Hamilton suspected that Vigo's professions of trade were a cover for other purposes, and kept him under arrest. Father Gibault interceded, and Vigo was set free on a promise that he would do nothing at Kaskaskia on his waj^ back detri- mental to the king's interest. Vigo avoided Kaskaskia, and went to St. Louis instead. It was not long before Clark knew from a source not difficult to divine that Hamilton had but eighty men with him. It was necessary for Clark to move quickly, and Vigo's readiness to back the American ci-edit helped Clark to get his sup])lies for the march. Vigo liimself came to Kaskaskia on January 29, 1779. A gallery, carrying small guns and munitions, was dispatched on February 4, under the command of John Rogers, down the Mississippi and up the Ohio and Wabash to a point ten leagues below Vincennes, where it was to await the arrival of Clark with a force which was to march overland. The leader, with a band of one hundred and seventy — some accounts say two hundred — adventurous 134 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. spirits, American and French, began a clay or two later his painful march of about one hundred and seventy-five miles. He had one hundred and twenty miles to go, in an inclement season, finding his way in parts through drowned lands, broken with ice. There were swollen rivers to cross, now by wading and now by ferrying. Supplies grew scant, and it was almost impossible to keep powder dry. If there is no exaggeration in Clark's narrative, there were times when he despaired of life ; but "' the finest stallion there is in the country," come of a New Mexican stock, bore the commander through, and his men fol- lowed him with dauntless pluck. His course was at first northwest, and he probably struck the St. Louis trail near the modern town of Salem, following a trail which fifty years ago was still visible ; and after this his track lay nearly east. On February 23, the weary and famished men, kept up by the inspiration of their leader, ap- proached the town. The Wabash was flowing by it, through a broad three leagues of submerged country, making a picture of desolation. Clark sent in a scout to the French inhabitants, and his message was kept from the garrison. Lying concealed till after dark, and taking as guides five men, whom he had captured, he rapidly entered the town. A scouting party, which Hamilton had sent out three hours before, fortunately missed them. Clark told off a part of his force to occupy the town, while a band of riflemen approached the fort, — Sackville, as it was called, — and, throwing up some earthworks, established themselves within range. During the night, after the moon went down, the party which Hamilton had sent out got safely in. By daylight the assailants' trenches were near enough to annoy the garrison with the dropping fire of their rifles, for which the townspeople had made good Clark's damaged powder. They had also given the hungry troops the only good meal they had had for a week. There was pretty soon a passing and repassing of flags, Helm, now on parole, bringing Hamilton's messages. Clark replied in a note which Haldimand, in sending it later to Clin- ton, called " curious for its impertinence of style." In a personal interview, the two commanders indulged in mutual crimination, and Hamilton was charged with a barbarous spirit. Clark was stubborn for an unconditional surrender, VINCENNES GARRISONED. 135 and Hamilton manoeuvred for some modification, but all to no purpose. Before the day was gone, the fort was surrendered, with nearly eighty officers and men. There had been little bloodshed, and Clark had only one man slightly wounded. Three days later, on the 27th, the " Willing," as Rogers's galley was called, arrived. She had buffeted longer than was expected with the strong currents of the Wabash. She added forty-eight men to Clark's little army, with some small guns and swivels. Very soon Clark sent Helm and a detachment up the river, which succeeded in capturing a train, under an escort of forty men, which was bringing supplies and dispatches for Hamilton. The party returned to Vineennes on February 27. On March 8, Hamilton and such prisoners as were not paroled, accompanied by a guard, were started on their way to Virginia. It was a long journey, and at least two thirds of the route they made on foot. They reached Richmond in May, and brought the first news of Clark's success, his earlier dis- patches having been intercepted. Hamilton remained in con- finement at Williamsburg till October, 1780, when he was sent on parole to New York. Later, on July 6, 1781, he made a report to Haldimand, which is our main source for the study of these campaigns for the British side. Two days after Hamilton had started, Clark wrote (March 10) to Harrison, the speaker of the Virginia Assembly, tliank- ing him for the vote of thanks which that body had passed, and expressing his great satisfaction at the prospect of rein- forcements. " This stroke will nearly put an end to the Indian war," he said, and he expressed the expectation of finishing it in two months, if amply supported by a new detachment. '' I hope to do somet^iing clever if they arrive," he added, referring to his project of a march on Detroit. He did not attempt to disguise his purpose in a note which he addressed a few days later (jSIarch IG ) to the commander at that post, to which he had sent others of his prisoners, who had taken an oath of neutrality. " My compliments to the gentlemen of the garri- son," he says ; ^ if they are building works, it will save us the trouble." Clark, in this buoyant mood, leaving in Vineennes a garrison of some forty men, under Helm, took seventy or eighty others, and on Mai^ch 20 embarked in the " Willing," accompanied by 136 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. five other armed boats. His purpose was to make ready in Kas- kaskia for further movements in the spring. Arrived there, he prepared, on April 29, duplicate dispatches to Henry and Jef- ferson, describing his campaign, and these have come down to us. His earlier letters had been taken, as has been said, from his messenger near the Ohio falls, where a party of Hurons had waylaid their bearer. But movements were already in progress south of the Ohio destined to cause disappointment to Clark. Cameron, now working in the British interests among the southern Indians, supposed that Hamilton was secure in Vincennes. He had already planned an inroad of Chickamaugas and other Chero- kees on the Carolina border, to distract attention from Hamil- ton's contemplated raid over the Ohio. When James Robert- son, the pioneer of the Cumberland region, heard of it, he sent warnings to the Watauga people. That hardy colony immedi- ately sprang to the task which was implied. A considerable body of riflemen, under Evan Shelby, were, by April 10, on their way down the Clinch. A part of this force was a regi- ment which made up the five hundred men intended for Clark and his Detroit campaign. Their diversion to a new field was never atoned for. Shelby's onset was rapid. He destroyed a large deposit of corn among the Chickamaugas, which had been gathered for Hamilton's intended invasion. He burned the towns of that ferocious tribe, and lost not a life amid all his acts of devasta- tion. All immediate danger to the Kentucky settlements was now at an end. During the respite a new immigration set in by the Ohio and the Wilderness Road, and to the number of eight or ten thousand souls a year, if statements of this kind are not in excess of truth. The Virginia surveyors, to help the influx, laid out a new road over the Cumberland ^Mountains towards " the open country of Kentucky," so as " to giv^e passage to packhorses." While this success of Shelby checked the southern Indians and dashed the hopes which the British had based on their ad- vantage in Georgia, there was among the royalists in the north HALDIMAND ANXIOUS. 137 great anxiety lest Clark's prestige and the use of Fort Laurens as a base for a new advance from Fort Pitt should together put in great hazard their signal position at Detroit. If lost, however, the blow would not be irreparable, for the Ottawa Kiver route would still afford an easy eonninuiieation with Lake Huron and the western tribes. De Peyster at Mackinac did not hear of Hamilton's capture till about the time of Shelby's raid. Langlade and Gautier had just reached Milwaukee, or as some say St. Joseph, when the unwelcome tidings scattered their Indians. De Peyster's position was an embarrassing one, for his intentions to succor Vincennes had been utterly foiled. He felt constrained to pro- tect his own post as well as he could, and to animate the Sioux against the French, in retaliation for their encouragement of the Americans. Haldimand, at his remote headcpiai'ters, I'emained for some time in dread lest Clark would send a force against Mackinac. The British commanding general, in New York, was sending word west in Febriiary, 1779, before it was known that Vin- cennes was in danger, that one hundred and thirty carpenters and two hundred wood-cutters had been sent by the rebels over the mountains to open a way, and that every saddler in Phila- delphia was hard at work making pack-saddles. We know that in May one hundred and fifty l)oat-builders were at work near Fort Pitt. Lernoult, at Detroit, received word of Hamilton's capture on March 26, 1779. An interpreter, having escaped from Vin- cennes in the confusion, had carried the tidings. Lernoult felt apprehensive, at once, of the safety of the train which Clark had captured, and saw how the route by the Maumee was thrown open to the Americans. He promptly sent to Haldimand for aid. While troops were on the way thither from Nii^gara. and before they arrived, Clark, just about being relieved by Todd of the civil government, had made up his mind (April 29) that his available force was insufficient to advance, and so ex2)ressed himself to the governor of Virginia. To add to Haldimand's anxiety, he was also uncertain al)()ut tlie fate of the Vincennes convoy, and knew how its su])plies would aid Clark, if he had captured it. He was also painfully conscious how difficult it had become to satisfy the Indians 138 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. with the supplies and gratuities which Haiuiitou, in his confi- dence, had promised them. Farther than this, he was at his wits' end to know who among the French, and ahnost nnder his hand, was corresponding with the rebels, for a letter of Lafay- ette and D'Estaing's proclamation to his countrymen, which had been issued at Boston, October 28, 1778, were insidiously cir- culating among them, creating not a little responsive excitement, not only among the old Canadians, but among the Indians. If this sympathy should invite raids from over the border, Haldi- mand had scarce a thousand men to guard a nuiltitude of points, and of these he had learned to place small confidence upon the German regiments. Sending his aid, Captain Brehm (May 25), to Detroit to insure better information in that direction, tidings after a while reached Haldimand from the Scioto and Muskingum valleys, which showed that the war was again starting with the spring. Colonel John Bowman, in May, had crossed the Ohio near the mouth of the Licking, with nearly three hundred Kentucky volunteers. He made a sudden dash upon a Shawnee town near the modern Chillicothe. Having burned the houses and secured some plunder, he returned. He had dealt a blow which disinclined the savages of the north to follow English leaders in a projected movement into Kentucky. So another concerted movement of the British was checked, for Cornwallis, after Lincoln's surrender at Charleston (May 12), had counted on sending a band of Tories to lead the aroused Creeks and Chero- kees upon the frontiers of Tennessee, while the northern In- dians came down on the other side. Meanwhile, the American plans on the upper Ohio were not more successful. All through the spring of 1779, scalping parties of AVyandots and Mingoes had been prowling about the exposed fort on the Tuscarawas, and ambushing convoys from Fort Pitt. Twice in the winter the savages attacked the fort, and Gibson being warned by Zeisberger, the enemy were forced to retire through the stubbornness of the almost starved garri- son, for Mcintosh had failed to get in supplies by way of the Muskingum. The most strenuous effort of the enemy had been made in February, 1779, after Girty had intercepted some of SULLIVAN'S CAMPAIGN. 139 Gibson's letters. Captain Bird, of the King's Regiment, accom- panied by Simon Girty and a few soldiers, now led a horde of savages. Starting np from a concealment near by, they surprised a party which Gibson had sent out, and gave the first notice of an investment of the fort. For nearly a month the blockade continued, and a few days after the enemy disap- jieared, Mcintosh arrived with relief, and found the garrison living on rawhides and roots. On the general's return to Fort Pitt, he was soon relieved of the command of the department by his second in command, Colonel Brodhead, whom Washington had selected on March 5, 1779. The new commander assumed charge of the department with small confidence in the condi- tions which Mcintosh's course had imposed, and with still less content with the huckstering element about Fort Pitt. " The cursed spirit of monopoly is too prevalent," he wrote (May 26), "and greatly injures the soldiers." At the end of May, he heard that Fort Laurens was again threatened, and was to be attacked " when the strawberries are ripe." He succeeded at once in throwing . supplies into that fort, now garrisoned by a body of seventy-five men, though the country which the convoy traversed was swarming with Indians. But in August it was thought prudent to abandon the post. The position of all the other forts in the department had been for some time precarious. In June, Fort Randoli^h at the mouth of the Kanawha was abandoned, leaving Fort Henry at Wheeling the most advanced post, while an inner line of stock- ades from Fort Ligonier to the new Fort Armstrong at Kittan- ning (built in June) were the chief protections of the frontier. While the region north of the Ohio was thus abandoned, Shelby's rapid movements had quieted, for the most part, that south of the Ohio, and encouraged some adventurous frontiers- men to cross the river and seek lands among the Delawares, relying upon their friendship. Brodhead had little confidence in that inccingruous people, and did what he could to prevent the risks. In August, 1779, General Sullivan was well started on his exasperating inroad among the Iroquois lakes of New York, partly to punish the Indians for their treachery, and partly to render more open the communication with the West. His 140 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. devastation was ample, but its effect was not lasting. Some portions of the Six Nations were beyond his reach. Such were some of the Senecas and Munseys, whose lands stretched into the northwestern parts of the present State of Ohio. To make a diversion in Sullivan's favor, and similarly to chastise this portion of that people, Brodhead, by calling- in his outposts and summoning volunteers from the county lieutenants, suc- ceeded in gathering about six hundred men near Fort Pitt. The response for volunteers had not been as general as he had wished, and he gave as a reason that the people are " intent upon going to Kentuck ; " but he succeeded in getting some, who, in the guise of Indians, were content to scour the country for scalps. Brodhead had been anxious to start on this expedition so as to get some advantage out of two hundred of his men, whose term of service expired on August 10 ; but it was not until the 11th that he set out, and in such spirits that he hoped he would be allowed, after punishing the Senecas, to march on Detroit. He marched up the Alleghany, and set to work burning houses, and destroying cornfields, and gathering plunder, later to be sold for the benefit of his men. He had lost neither man nor beast when, on September 11, he was back in Fort Pitt, having temporarily, at least, quelled the savage temper in this region. In October, he sent a force to drive off trespassers who had left the Monongahela and had crossed the Ohio, while he tried to persuade the Delawares not to molest any who escaped his vigilance. He was still dreaming of an attack on Detroit, and in Novem- ber he asked Washington's permission to make it before Feb- ruary, when the floods would interfere. He was advised by Washington to wait till spring, and gather supplies and infor- mation in the interim. It was discouraging when Brodhead heard of the death of David Rogers and the capture of the supplies which he was bringing up the river from New Orleans. If the reports which reached Fort Pitt were true, — and Brod- head had asked Zeisberger to get him information, — the garri- son at Detroit counted but about six hundred, regulars and militia. While thus neither Mcintosh nor Brodhead had accomplished GENERAL SUSPENSE. 141 mueh, there had been in Jeft'erson "and othex's a hirger confi- dence in the daring backwoods spirit of Chirk. By July 1, 1779, Clark had returned to Vincennes, only to be disappointed in meeting there but one hundred and fifty of the recruits whom he had expected from Virginia, and but thirty of the three hundred Kentuckians who had been promised to him. AVith an inadequate force, he was not tempted to carry out " the clever thing " which he had set his heart upon, and so, in August, leaving Helm at Vincennes, he returned to the falls of the Ohio. Here he again raised the question of an attack on Detroit ; but it was the opinion of his council of war that at least a thousand men were necessary for such a stroke, while with half that number he could successfully hold his own. To do this, it was thought, required a force of two hundred at the mouth of the Ohio, and a hundred and fifty each at Vin- cennes and Cahokia. Clark's i^osition at the falls, where his men had been prom- ised one himdred and fifty thousand acres in bounty land, alarmed De Peyster during the winter, lest Clark should fortify so good a strategic point. It was Clark's purpose to spend the time till spring in an incursion among the Shawnees on the Miami and Scioto; but the river fell and rendei"ed transportation difficult, and the ])lan was abandoned. On November 19, he wrote a letter to George Mason, which, with his letters of February 24 from Vincennes, and April 29 from Kaskaskia, constitutes the main sources for the study of his campaigns. Clark's memoirs, said to have been written at the request of Jefferson and INIadi- son, though more in detail, were written (1791) too long after- wards to be of comparable value. So the year (1779) was closing almost every where beyond the mountains with suspense on both sides, but with the opposing generals intent on preparations for a new eamj^aign in the spring. In August, 1779, Ilaldimand had sent some aid to Detroit, and had taken measure to reassure the Six Nations, whose si)ir- its had been rudely shattered by Sullivan and Brodhead. It seemed doubtful if Clinton could keep his promise of large rein- forcements for Canada, for by September the negotiations for exchanging the Convention troops which surrendered at Sara- 142 GEORGE ROGERS CLARK. toga bad fallen tlirough, and Soutli Carolina, where the British were strengthening their foothold, had made large demands on the resources at headquarters in New York. So Detroit, though a new fort had been built there, was far from secure when, late in the year, De Peyster came from Mackinac to take charge. That commander had left the garrison at the straits hardly more confident. The effect of Hamilton's discomfiture, when news of it had reached them in May, had been discouraging. It rendered the French uneasy, and, as De Peyster said, " cowed the Indians in general." Haldimand, when he heard of these results, asked De Peyster to send some Puants, Sacs, and Foxes down to Quebec to give them new courage at the sight of a British fleet, and later he sent a speech, for De Peyster to render to the tribes, in which he advised them " to keep the Bostonians [Americans] out of the country in order to enjoy peace and plenty." De Peyster had by this time asked to be relieved, and Sin- clair was sent to take the post, which in his superior's judg- ment was "in a critical situation." Not long before, a French trader, Godefroy Linctot, had deserted to the rebel cause, and in July, 1779, it had been believed at Mackinac that the rene- gade was preparing to attack St. Joseph with four hundred men. After this the Indians were slowly rehabilitated in the English interest, and before De Peyster left he had himself begun to be hopeful that " the Indians would clear the Illinois at one stroke," and welcome the Cherokees coming up from the south. Haldimand hardly shared De Peyster's confidence, and when Sinclair arrived in October, 1779, he found it not so easy to arouse the Indians for a spring campaign to the Illinois. Sinclair had been sent there with a distinct plan of campaign on the part of the home government. He was expected to descend the Mississippi, while Campbell from Pensacola took New Or- leans and came up to meet him. Germain in the previous June had notified Haldimand of this plan, and at a later date he had instructed Stuart to keep the southern Indians in open (commu- nication with Detroit. Germain's purpose had already been, temporarily at least, dashed by Galvez's prompt movement in September, 1779, on Natchez, later to be explained, and by all efforts at the north failino-. THE CUMBERLAND REGION. 143 Before the year (1779) closed, a new movement in the west- ern regions had been consnmmated, wiiich gave the pioneers a firm hokl on the Cumberland valley. During a season which was the severest the frontiersmen had experienced, and which was marked by suffering and famine throughout the west, James Kobertson, now closing a ten years' residence on the Holston, had spent the previous year among the Cherokees, laboring to keep them quiet. About November 1, 1779, with a train of immigrants from the Watauga hamlets, he started west. By the close of the year they had built a fort and a few cabins, which were the beginnings of the later Nashville. It was a region then known as the French Lick, and had been, since 1714, occasionally occupied by the French hunters. Vast herds of buffalo had long found the lick an attraction. Within the next three months Robertson's party built a stockade, and scat- tered their huts about the ground. This occupation of a new region was the most decided gain for the American cause which a year of anxiety had developed. Clark still held the Illinois country, to be sure, but he was surrounded with little of that domesticity which comforted Rob- ertson at the French Lick. With little homogeneousness in the Illinois population, there was scant confidence in its future. Now and for some time yet, Clark's ability to maintain himself depended on the pecuniary aid which Vigo and Pollock ren- dered. In November (1779), the Virginia Assembly had de- cided to strengthen Clark's position, but their action was wholly dependent on the credit which the governor of that State could obtain at New Orleans. For three and a half years fi'om March, 1778, Clark dispensed fifty thousand dollars in specie, or nearly two and a quarter millions in currency. Up to the close of 1779, he drew in nearly equal parts fifty thousand dol- lars or more in specie from Pollock and from the Virginia treasury. Pollock's account with Virginia, mainly for the sup- port of Clark, shows that he advanced in specie down to Au- gust, 1781, over ninety thousand dollars. CHAPTER IX. THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. 1774-1779. Louis XV. of France had died in 1774, and in the mid- summer of that year, Maurepas, affable and courtly, but ^Yhat- ever you jjlease in principle and a known enemy of England, had been put at the head of the cabinet of the new king-, Louis XVI. The minister of foreign affairs w^as Vei-genues, now a man of fifty-three, a patient and polite diplomat of the intrigu- ing school. He was perfectly unscrupulous when occasion re- quired, and an adept in the arts of deceit. " A little good- natured wisdom," said Jay at a later day, " often does more in politics than nuieh slippery craft. By the former, the French acquired the esteem and gratitude of America, and by the latter their minister is impairing it." It was his policy to be prepared for war, and to watch for an opjDortunity to catch England at a disadvantage. He must have looked on with some satisfaction when he saw his Anglican rival strive, by the Quebec Bill, to hem in her revolting colonies by the same geographical confines which France in claiming to the AUeghanies had so long struggled to maintain. A few years later, as we shall see, Vergennes him- self would gladly have pressed the same restraint upon the nas- cent American Republic, if Franklin, Adams, and Jay had given him the opportunity. Already the alliance which was to follow the downfall of Burgoyne was a purpose of Vergennes, but he could not at this juncture escape anxiety lest the concil- iatory counsels of Chatham would prevail, and lest England, by plunging into a French war, would, as her cabinet dared to hope, succeed in winning back the loyalt}^ of her colonies. He was, indeed, astounded at the imbecility of the English ministry in neglecting opportunities of appeasing the rebels. He was told that the obstinacy of the king was at fault. The monarch VERGENNES. 145 might indeed be stubborn, but the real fault was the blindness of the Tory party to the change which was taking place in what that age called the prerogative of the king, and in the principles of the British Constitution. There w:as an unwillinaness to recognize the fact that revolutions are no respecters of vested political interests. The Tories failed to understand that civic progress is often made on the wreck of the present. Vergennes was possessed by a similar obtuseness. Still, an occasional light was thrown into his mind by his consuming- desire to humble England. Egregiously perfidious himself, he was continually prating of English perfidy. Congratulating himself, somewhat prematurely, that Spain was won to his views, Vergennes, on August 7, 1775, in a communication addressed to the Spanish minister, distinctly foreshadowed his purpose of active intervention in the Amer- ican war. In October, M. Bonvouloir sailed in the " Charm- ing Betsy " for Philadelphia, under secret instructions from Vergennes, to observe what was going on in the American Congress. He was also to seek occasions to let the Americans know of the sympathy of France. Doniol's bulky acknowledgment of French heartlessness, as his great work has proved to be, as well as Stevens's Facsimiles, show us how detestably insincere Vergennes could be. Near the end of 1775, he put on record his opinions for the edifica- tion of his king. He told his royal master that French aid alone could make sure the success of the colonies. He assured him that it was the true policy of France to cripple her natural enemy. AVhen the struggle in America had weakened Eng- land, the time, he said, would come publicly to assist the revolt. jNIeanwhile, he explained, France must keep the American courage up, by promises, till such a propitious turn of the con- test comes. The American Congress was at the same time playing into Vergennes's hands. Late in November, they had instituted a Committee of Secret Correspondence, with Franklin at its head, and on December 12 this committee instructed Arthur Lee, then in Loudon, to make approaches to the Continental powers. When the new year (177G) opened, Vergennes found himself, through the intrigues of his enemies, in a degree of embarrass- 146 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. ment which was increased by the indecision of the king. Be- fore January was gone, a letter from Beauniarchais, saying that England was nearly hopeless, was so skillfully used in Ver- gennes's hands that the king withdrew his opposition, and the way seemed clear. Still, the influence of Maurepas and Turgot was against pre- cipitating a war, which, in the latter's judgment, might, by emancipating the British colonies, give the signal for the revolt of all colonies of whatever power. Turgot was indeed in a fair way to prove too much of an obstacle, and in May he was dismissed. Early in March, encouraging reports came from Bonvouloir, and Gerard de Rayneval formulated the results for Vergennes's eye. It was represented that if the humiliation of England was carried to an extent of assuring the independence of the colonies, France could have no fear of them in their exhaustion. War with England was represented as inevitable, whatever the result of their assisting the colonies. Vergennes had no disposition to retreat, and on May 2, 1776, he definitely requested the king to approve a grant of money to the colonies, and the royal assent was given. Up to this time the minister had abstained from positive action in aid of the colonies ; but he had winked at the help which was being given in the French ports. It was a turning-point, and a policy was begun of decided significance. Tlie troops which England had already disjjatched to America alarmed Vergennes, lest a way be found in the sequel to hurl them against the French West Indies. At the same time, he aroused Spain by picturing a like danger, if these troops should be moved against New Orleans. The ministers at Madrid were not slow to see how Louisiana could aggrandize Spain, if England, in the first instance, and, after that, if her severed de- pendencies, could be kept back from the Mississippi. Nothing could conduce so much to this end as the exhaustion of both parties in the war, and the greater the exhaustion, the better prospects for France and Spain. It was thus, with Spanish connivance, the hope of Vergennes to lure the Americans to a collapse by giving them hope that they could obtain a subsidy of money. On May 3, 1776, Vergennes proposed to Spain that she should advance a million dollars to the Americans. FRANCE AND SPAIN. 147 Grimaldi, in advising his royal master to accede to the propo- sition and sharing Vergennes's sinister aims, congratulated him on a movement which might .not only force England to destruc- tion, but would at the same time exhaust the Americans. The colonists would in this way become in the end an easy prey to the Bourbons. Meanwhile, the American Congress, ignorant of the con- cealed purposes of France, had sent Silas Deane to Paris as its agent. The Committee of Secret Correspondence had given him, on March 3, his instructions. Deane soon found himself the sport of two parties in the gay cajoital. On the one side he was shadowed by a complacent American named Bancroft, who reported everything to the English ministry. On the other, Vergennes, with whom Deane had his first meeting in July, (1776), played the sympathizing friend to conceal his inimical wiles. With diplomatic blandness the French minister prom- ised all that America could need. Not long afterwards came tidings of the Declaration of In- dependence. Vergennes was now aroused, and active inter- ference seemed imminent, while Beaumarchais had attained a position where he could assure the American Committee of Secret Corresi^ondence that his fictitious house of Hortales et Cie was ready to be an intermediary in bringing Congress and the French government into closer relations. Still later, (August, 1776), Vergennes, while urging his royal master that the time for action had come, also suggested to Spain that she could now throw off the mask. Spain hesitated, as Portuguese affairs perplexed her, but on October 8, she assented. Almost at the same time, news reached Paris of Washington's defeat on Long Island, and that untoward event called a halt in the autumn of 1776. Meanwhile, events were moving rapidly in America, and Spanish officials were winking at aid given the colonies at New Orleans. Intelligence of the action on July 4, 1776, at l^hiladelphia, had hardly reached Fort Pitt when, under orders of Congress, and by direction of the State of Virginia, Captain George Gibson and Lieutenant Linn started, on July 19, down the river in the disguise of traders. When, in August, they arrived 148 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. at New Orleans, they found the Spanish governor, Uuzaga, in no complacent mood. He had been uneasy under the suspicion that in diplomatic ways all was not going" well. He was appre- hensive that England would succeed in pacifying her colonies, and could then, with their aid, turn upon Louisiana. To get information, he had already sent a spy to Philadelphia. Gibson and his companion found, however, prompt sympathy in Oliver Pollock. This American had begun active exertions in behalf of his countrymen in April, 1776, when he had unsuc- cessfully tried to persuade Unzaga to protect American vessels against British warships. With Pollock's aid Gibson's acts were partly concealed from the British spies, and he bought twelve hundred pomids of powder. A part of it, under Pol- lock's direction, was shipped north by sea, while the greater bulk of it, nine thousand pounds, in one hundred and fifty kegs, was placed on barges to ascend the river. This was done while English spies were watching for some overt act, and, to make it appear that he was committing some offense against Spanish law, Gibson allowed himself to be thrown into prison. Linn, in charge of the barges, started homeward on Septem- ber 22, 1776. It was a long pull against the current for nearly eight months, and it was May 2, 1777, before the lieutenant delivered his dangerous burden to Colonel William Crawford, at Wheeling, " for the use of the Continent." The expedition, in its slow progress, had run great risks of being intercepted. After Linn had started north, Pollock wrote from New Or- leans to Congress, tendering renewed services and recounting the beneficial effect which the Declaration of Independence had made in that town. He said that the governor was ready to ! open trade with the Americans, and would protect their cruisers and prizes, should they come into the river. He also added that this Spanish official was ready to unite Avitli Congress in maintaining a regular express by the Mississippi and Fort Pitt, between Philadelphia and New Orleans. Pollock's sym- pathies had not escaped the notice of the English spies. His surrender was demanded by the British commander at Pensa- cola, but was refused. An English sloo])-of-war was lying down the river, and Pollock was fearful that some untoward accident i might throw him into its commander's hands. Accordingly j he desired Congress to give him a commission in some capacity, GALVEZ AND POLLOCK. 149 so that he could have its protection in an emergency. In the same letter Pollock adds that the Spanish governor had sent orders to the mouth of the river to put American vessels enter- ing the passes under the Spanish flag. On the 1st of February preceding (1777), Don Bernardo de Galvez, the commander of a regiment in the garrison at New Orleans, succeeded to the governor's chair. He very soon opened communication through Major Cruz, at St. Louis, with Colonel Morgan on the Ohio, and took Pollock into his confi- dence as one whom Unzaga assured him he could trust. Galvez was a young man of twenty-one, of powerful family connection, and likely to bring Spanish and French interests into close relations. Jay, who later knew his relatives in Spain, informed the president of Congress that " the one on the JNIis- sissippi has written favorably of the Americans to his brothers here, and it would be well to cultivate this disposition.'' The op])ortunity to do so was not lost. The new governor soon strengthened himself by bringing emigrants from the French West Indies. In retaliation for British captures on the lakes back of New Orleans, he boldly seized some English vessels trading between the Balize and Manchac. He began to build some boats to carry long-range guns, which would be more than a match for the light guns which any v^essel could take over the bar at the mouth of the Mississippi. Pollock soon devised some audacious plans. In April, 1777, he sent a vessel north under Lemire to inform Congress that Galvez stood ready to furnish cash and supplies to any American force intending to capture Pensacola, and a little later (May 5) he urged Congress to make a decision, and, if favorable, to send blank commissions to be used in raising troops in New Orleans. Colonel George (Gordon, 'commanding at Fort Pitt, had fore- stalled any action of Congress, and before Linn's return he had sent word to Galvez that if the Spaniards woidd supply trans- ports, he was hoping to send one thousand men down the river prepared to attack Mobile and Pensacola. A little later, the Spanish governor was assured that he need have no apprehen- sion, but that the Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws coidd be depended upon to stand neutral. Nothing came of the project, but the Committee of Secret Correspondence took on their part 150 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. an important step when they a})pointed, in June, 1777, Pollock their commercial agent, and directed him to ship at once forty or fifty thousand dollars' worth of cloths and strouds to Phila- delphia by three or four swift vessels, promising to send flour in return to balance the account. It was not long before the British blockade of the Atlantic coast had become so close that Congress found it impossible to send the flour out of port. In October, Pollock was told to run the necessary risks of forwarding supplies along the coast, as transportation by the river was too slow and, because of Indian forays, too hazardous for their present exigencies. On September 26, 177G, a few days after Linn's barges had cast off their moorings at New Orleans, Congress had appointed some commissioners to Europe. At their head was Franklin, and he was not without hope that in the final settlement he could induce the British ministers to sell Florida and Quebec to the new Republic. His companions in the mission were to be Arthur Lee, now in London (for Jefferson had declined to be one), and Deaue, already in Paris. The latter, active in mind, had conceived a new plan for relieving the stagnation of events, and on December 1, before Franklin arrived, he had written home, outlining a scheme to attract immigration, and to find money for the depleted treasury of the colonies. He thought that the country which the Quebec Act had aimed to alienate from the colonies would be " a resource amply ade- quate, under proper regulations, for defraying the whole ex- pense of the war, and for providing the sums necessary to pur- chase the native right to the soil." To give this land its value he proposed that it sliould be made a distinct State, of twenty- five million acres, to be confederated with those other colonies which had made a declaration of independence. The settling of it was to be left to one hundred or more grantees, while Congress reserved for their own advantage one fifth of the land, mines, etc. To induce immigration, he relied upon the sym- pathy with the American struggle which, desj)ite the calcu- lating selfishness of the Vergennes ministry, was marked among the French people. Before the month (December) closed, the American commissioners, Franklin being now on the sjiot, had their initial meetino- both with Vergennes and the Count FLORIDA BLANC A. 151 d'Aranda. They got some encouragement in the promise that American privateers should have equal protection in the French and Spanish ports. Vergennes, however, had lost some of his boldness, or was veiling it, when, a few weeks later (February, 1777) Grimaldi was succeeded at Madrid by the Count Florida Blanea. This man, who thus became the Spanish king's prime minis- ter, was forty-six years old ; he had risen from an inconspicuous station, and by force of character had well crowded with action his mature life. He disliked England, was jealous of France, and hated revolutions. He certainly was not quite ready to make good all the promises which Grimaldi had made. He had his eye on Portugal, and he wished rather to have French aid in securing that little kingdom, than to join in the struggle in British America. He thought, also, that France and Spain could work together better in Brazil, a Portuguese dependency, than in North America. Vergennes felt otherwise, and this lack of accord, as well as the bad news from Washington's army, seemed at present to be fatal to an agreement. To offset the ill effects of the military miscarriages near New York, Congress was quite prepared (December, 177G) to prom- ise its assistance in capturing Pensacola from the British and share its advantages as a port, as well as the navigation of the Mississi])pi, with Spain ; but this willingness was not known till April, when Franklin opened the question with Aranda. A few weeks before (March 4, 1777), Arthur Lee had met Gri- maldi at Burgos, but he could get no promise of active assist- ance. He farther learned that Florida Blanea was apologizing to England and playing shy with Vergennes. Nevertheless, it was intimated that the Americans would find powder and other supplies at New Orleans, which they could take, if they liked, on (a-edit. In France there was an active public ojiinion, asking for ac- tion, largely induced by the influence of Fi-anklin. But Ver- gennes repelled the request of the American connnissioiun-s for guns and ships, and made a show of preventing Lafayette and De Kalb embarking for America. By April 20, however, La- fayette, who had fled to S]>anish territory, \mt to sea, though ostensibly for the West Indies. This exodus, or some other incident, had aroused Stormont, 152 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. the British ambassador in Paris, to a belief that an expedition to aid the rebels was arranged by a French general officer, and he suspected that he could get more particular information if he could pay fifteen hundred guineas for it. His government was not quite as credulous, and directed him not to pay the money. Before long the French cabinet was assuring the London states- men of their determined neutrality. This led the British min- istry in July to propose a treaty, in which both England and France should guarantee their respective possessions in America. Vergennes was not to be caught, and before many days had passed, he and the king were pretty well agreed that the ex- pected crisis for determinate action had come. There was some difficulty in making the king see wisdom in abetting a rebellion against a royal brother : but Vergennes had little sympathy with any such sentiments, when the purpose to punish England was in the balance. It had come to be simply a question of the opportune moment for a public declaration. Franklin, in Sep- tember, was assuring Congress that the commissioners were much too far from accomplishing their object. The final fruition of all his hopes was nearer than Franklin could have judged. The autumn had brought mingled elation and regret in the colonies. Washington had failed at Brandywine and German- town ; but Burgoyne had capitulated at Saratoga. An army worsted was no offset to an army captured, and Jonathan Aus- tin Loring, when he sailed, on October 30, as the messenger of good tidings to the American commissioners in Paris, carried also conviction to the hesitating cabinet of France. Early in December, 1777, and not many hours apart, the startling news reached Lord North in London, just as he had returned at midnight from a debate in Parliament, and it was broken to Franklin at Passy by the Boston messenger. It was soon heard by Vergennes. " There must be no time lost," he said. He let the king, who was wondering what Spain would do, understand that an advantage was likely to accrue to whom- ever first welcomed the Americans to the company of nations. Beaumarchais, when he was trying to induce the French king to advance the Americans a million, told him that " to sacrifice one million to make England spend a hundred is but advancing a million to obtain nine and ninety." The present news was a stronger plea than any argument of his could be, BURGOYNE'S SURRENDER. 153 and having- received it from London, he had hopes of being- the first to break it in Paris. He was hurrying- to that capital as fast as his horses couhl gallop, when his carriage over- turned, and he was put to bed in agony in a neighboring liouse. It was December 6, and he sent a message ahead, dictated from a couch of pain. It was too late. The king- was already en- gaged in inviting- propositions from Franklin. Two days later (December 8), the American commissioners, in language that had probably been arranged with Vergennes, made their re- sponse in a document which was at once dispatched to Spain. It had no immediate effect. Spain's Mexican and Brazilian fleets, with their treasure, were still awaited, and it was not pru- dent to incite England to their capture. Beside, Spain's rup- ture with Portugal was still unhealed. At least, such were the professions. Vergennes, meanwhile, was having conference with the American commissioners, and on December 17 they were in- formed that France was ready for an alliance and would make an acknowledgment of their independence. Ten days later (December 27), Vergennes was sending word to Madrid that Spain was losing- the opportunity of centuries to cripple the power of England, and recover Gibraltar, Minorca, and Florida. France had already pledged her power to the extent, in one way and another, of about three million livres, as Vergennes and Franklin both knew. The new year (1778) opened in France with the American commissioners greatly satisfied with the outlook. " Ever since Burgoyne's fate was known," wrote William Lee, " we are smiled at and caressed everywhere." Louis XVI., following up the arguments of his minister, was sending- word to his Bour- bon brother of Spain that he had come to an understanding with the American commissioners, " to i)revent the reunion of America with England."' Every obstacle removed, on Febru- ary G, 1778, the treaty was signed. Stormont, the Englisli ambassador in Pai'is, divined what was in progress, and a cer- tain " Mr. Edwards " was probing the secrets for hiiu, — per- haps, under a new guise, the same Dr. Edward Bancroft who had been dogging the steps of Deane. Stormont M'as paying- well for what inf(n-mation he secured, and was naturally im- mersed in the misery of not knowing just how much to believe 154 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. of all that was betrayed to him, while, as the negotiations pro- ceeded, Maurepas, in his intercourse with him, was blandness itself in his denials. Within two days, it was confidently be- lieved in London that the French king had at last succumbed, and had banished his qualms of conscience in recognizing rebels. It was supposed that the allied parties had agreed to give Canada and tlie West Indies to France, if the fortunes of war threw those regions into their hands. On March 10, 1778, Vergennes instructed Noailles in London to break the news to Lord Weymouth, and on the 13th it was done. The respective ambassadors of the two countries were withdi-awn, and when Stormont reached London on the 27th, he found bank stocks at 69, a drop to less than a moiety of the value of two and a half years before. This condition to a mercantile people was veiy alarming. Grenville Sharp and others were already outspoken for an accommodation with America on the basis of her independence. It would prevent, they claimed, a rupture with France and Spain. North had inclined to the same view ; but it was not a gratefid one to the king and the rest of the cabinet. They so far felt the pressure, however, as to introduce into Parlia- ment (February 17) acts of conciliation with America on the ground of continued allegiance. They were passed, and reached America by the middle of April. France, fearful of their effect, was soon reassui'ed by a prompt rejection of them by Congress. The movement of the English ministry encouraged Florida Blanca to offer mediation for the purpose of curbing the ambition both of the colonies and of England, and of assuring some territorial aggrandizement to Spain. It was Spain's proposition to confine the revolted colo- nies to the Alleghany slope, while she guaranteed to England the valley of the St. Lawrence and the region north of the Ohio, taking to herself all south of the Ohio between the mountains and the Mississi])pi. England was not so much in straits that she could come to such an agreement, and the arbitration was refused. Spain got nothing for her pains, and France was content, both with the failure of Lord North, and with the disapi)oint- ment of Florida Blanca. It all looked well in the mind of Ver- gennes for securing deeper revenge upon England. Vergennes ALLIANCE WITH FRANCE. 155 cared nothing" for America, if only her exhaustion was increased so that France could the better become the arbiter of her future. His simple purpose was to degrade England first, and America next. The defeat of Florida Blanca's plot with England was felt- by Vergennes to open the way to secure the alliance of Spain, and it was well known what Spain wanted. " The Court of Spain," wrote Lee to Congress, March 19, 1778, " will make some difficulties about settling the dividing line between their possessions and those of the United States. They wish to have the cession of Pensacola." Ten days later (March 29), Ver- gennes wrote to Gerard at Philadelphia that Spain would probably require a promise of Florida before she would accede to the alliance, and Gerard was instructed to prepare Congress for yielding that point. To insure the continuance of the alli- ance with France, Gerard was reminded that the United States should be made to understand that Canada must remain to England, France renouncing any purpose of regaining that province. AVhen Congress, on May 4, 1778, had ratified the treaty, at- tention had already been directed to the Spanish problem on the ^ , , ;v ^ Gulf. Patrick Henry, as governor of Virginia, had as eaxlji^ll as October, 1777, been urging upon the Spanish authorities at New Orleans the opening of trade with the States by the Missis- si]ipi, and now again in January, 1778, he was making a dis- tinct proposition to Galvez to accept produce sent down from Kentucky in return for munitions and cash. In the following June, Colonel David Rogers started from Fort Pitt, in two boats built by General Hand's orders, to make a beginning of the trade. Reaching New Orleans in October, he found that Galvez was so ignorant of the geogra])hy of the valley that he had sent the goods intended for Virginia to St. Louis. Thither Rogers was obliged to return for them. The passage of the Mississippi to and fro was made with little danger, as ever since A]n-il, the river above New Orleans had been freed of the Eng- lish flag ; but later, while ascending the Ohio, and near the mouth of the Liekino-, the little flotilla was wnvlaid, as we have" -, , seen, by Hamilton's Indians, and its commander killed. / ■^ Meanwhile, a more active career awaited Captain James r 156 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. Willing o£ Philadelphia. This officer had departed from Pitts- burg, bearing a commission from Congress. He had less than fifty men ; but as his business was mainly to plunder, he picked up recruits as he went. One of his aims was to placate or in- timidate the Tory settlement about Natchez, where a body of loyalists had bought of the Choctaws, in 1777, a stretch along the river from 31° to the mouth of the Yazoo, a distance of something over one hundred miles. During January, Willing had carried a rather ruthless hand among the upper settlements of the river. In February, he was at Natchez, devastating the estates of such as had fled across the river. He seized one of the Tory leaders. Colonel Anthony Hutchins, and took him to New Orleans, where he was put on parole. The plunder which Willing also took away was estimated by those who suffered at a million and a half dollars in value. The agents of France in New Orleans were not altogether pleased at this kind of domination for the American flag, inasmuch as too much suc- cess might give the Republic such territorial claims on the river as it was not French policy to encourage. Eochel)lave, who commanded the British post in the Illinois, when he heard of the fall of Philadelphia, and that it was reported that some of the chief rebels were " flying by way of Fort Pitt," imagined that Willing's exploits were simply preparing the lower Missis- sippi as a refuge for disheartened patriots. In April, 1778, Pollock complained to Congress that a Britisli sloop-of-war was still capturing vessels at the river's mouth, but he had at least ground for rejoicing in the new commission from Congress, which Willing had delivered to him, and in that offi- cer's destruction of the Tory nest at Natchez, which had been supplying provisions to Pensacola and Jamaica. Pollock now dispatched one Reuben Harrison to Natchez to preserve the neutrality which Willing had instituted ; but Hutchins, breaking his parole, reached that post ahead, and, oatherino- his old associates, Harrison's boat was lured to the banks and captured. This for a while ended the neutrality. To keep the river open for the passage of supplies to the Ohio looked now hopeless, for the '* Hound," a vessel sent from Pen- sacola, was likely before long to reach a station at Manchac, near Baton Rouge, where her boats could patrol the river. Pollock's plan was for American boats coming down from above to avoid capture by being put under the Spanish flag. POLLOCK AT NEW ORLEANS. 157 Willing was now raising men in New Orleans, and was in- tending to risk passing np the river with a flotilla in time to reach the falls of the Ohio in October, which, with liis lading of supplies for Fort Pitt, lie could best pass at that season. In April, 1778, Galvez issued a proclamation permitting trade with the United States. Pollock, at the same time, was fitting- out a captured letter of marque as an American cruiser. He was somewhat embarrassed for money, as he had not yet re- ceived from Philadelphia the 'f 36,000 due him for the supplies which he had sent up the river. Notwithstanding there had been no adhesion given as yet in Madrid to the American cause, it was apparent that the rep- resentatives of Spain and America were acting now in much harmony at New Orleans. The price of this informal connec- tion might put Spain, possessed ultimately of Florida, in a position to contest with the Republic the eastern bank of the Mississippi, as it turned out she did. As the summer (1778) came on, the British plans had worked out to their satisfaction. They controlled Natchez with a force of two hundred men. Another sloop-of-war, the "Sylph," with a crew of one hundred and fifty men, kept a body of sixty British rangers under cover at Manchac. Others were expected, for Clinton, in New York, had been aroused to the exigency. Pollock was accordingly obliged to bestir himself and send warnings up to the Arkansas to meet any boats descending the river. In July, two Scotch merchants in New Orleans, Eoss and Campbell, were found to be sending tidings to Natchez of intended attempts to send supplies up the river. They were seized and sent to Pensacola. The reestablished Tories at Natchez had indeed rendered the blockade of the river so effec- tual that Willing hesitated to start with his supplies. In August, however, under the escort of an armed force, led by Lieutenant George, he hoped to ascend the river for other exploits, — the expense of the undertaking being met in part by a loan of 86,000 from Galvez ; but nothing came of the plan. Pollock had been long anxious for some decisive stroke. In May, he had urged Congress to start an expedition from Fort Pitt to sweep the British from the river, and then to advance on Pensacola. He was confident there was not in that post, be- side Indians, more than eight hundred to a thousand men. He 158 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. thought a thousand Americans could clear the Mississippi, and that three thousand could capture Pensacola. He had himself, he adds, secured a prize ship, the '' Kebecca," and put a suitable armament on board with one hundred and fifty men, and in two months he hoped to cooperate in attacking the English ship at Manchac. But his plans miscarried. In the autumn, the British control of the river was so well maintained that he was obliged to send Willing and his men north by sea. In Decem- ber, he dispatched a vessel to Havana with merchandise to be exchanged for supplies, which were to be sent thence to the United States. He had gone on spending his own money and receiving no remittances from Congress, which was now over $40,000 in his debt. He was selling his own slaves to enable him to meet his outstanding obligations. As the summer and autumn (1778) wore on, the purpose of France was developed. Franklin, as sole commissioner, was treating with Vergennes in Paris, and Gerard and Gouverneur Morris were conferring in Philadelphia. The object of Ver- gennes was unmistakable. He would, in confining the new Republic to the Atlantic slope, propitiate Spain, and in giving the region north of the Ohio, with Canada, to England, he would establish a constant menace between the colonies and the mother country, and cripple the future of the nascent Republic. So he talked with Franklin with as much bland concealment of his intention as he could, while he instructed Gerard to prepare Congress for submission to Sj)ain's demand. France at this time had eighty ships of the line and sixty-seven thousand sailors, and for ten years she had been drilling ten thousand gunners for her navy. Nevertheless, she iirged that England with her one hundred and fifty ships of the line (and two hun- dred and twenty-eight in all) was an overmatch, unless the sixty great shijis of Spain could be added. D'Estaing, with his fleet, had not certainly, during the summer, justified in American waters the hopes which had been entertained. There- fore it was necessary for America, as Vergennes represented, to abate her territorial pretensions and secure the alliance of Spain for a common good. By October (1778), it seemed as if Vergennes had brought Florida Blanca to consent to join the alliance on certain conditions. These were that the war should GERARD IN PHILADELPHIA. 159 be continued till Gibraltar was gained for her, either by cap- ture, or by agreement at the peace ; and that America shoidil agree to her having Florida and the trans-Alleghauy region. Morris, in Philadelphia, was unfortunately showing how the Republic might yet give in to such demands. lie was con- fessing to Gerard that yielding the Mississippi to Spain and Canada to England might the better restrain the western com- munities in any arrogant hope they felt of future independence. There was no such hesitation about Canada in Lafayette. He and D'Estaing had planned for an invasion north of the St. Lawrence, and had sent from Boston a proclamation to arouse the native French of Canada. This done, D'Estaing had in November sailed for the West Indies, while Lafayette, two months later (January, 1779), went to France to work out this aggressive movement for the coming season. Washington saw the dangers of it for the Republic, as a Frenchman like Lafay- ette could not. The fear of the American leader that France, reestablished in Canada, would help the schemes of Spain on the Mississippi, led very soon to the abandonment of the project. Nor did a scheme of Vergennes and Charles III. of Sj^ain, planned at the same time, result in any action. Gerard was instructed to sound Congress cautiously in the matter, but Ave know little more of it than as a proposition to the United States to accept a long truce with England instead of a peace, during which France and Spain would have time for arranging idterior projects, England, however, was in no mood to come to terms of France's proposing after her own approaches to Congress had been repelled, and while France kept a fleet in the Ameri- can waters. It was apparent that both England and Spain preferred to gain time, rather than commit themselves to any definite arrangement. Early in 1779, Congress had decided (January 11) to make no peace without the concurrence 6f France, and it was api)ar- ent at what ]>rice Spain would render her aid in the war. and that the United States were mainly to pay the cost. CJcrard, instructed by Vergennes, was assiduously impressing upon Con- gress that the demands of Spain were proper and should be met ; that it was meet for Amonca to renounce territorial am- bition and be content with thirteen States along the Atlantic 160 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. slope, and tliat there was great danger of an Anglo-Spanish league, unless Pensacola and the free navigation of the Missis- sippi were assured to Spain. Spain, meanwhile, was toying with Grantham at Madrid, professing a desire for alliance with England, and suggesting the benefits of the proposed long truce with her colonies as best to calm the internecine passions. At the same time she was shuffling with France, and waiting the results of Gerard's in- trigues at Philadelphia, buoyed up the while by the hope of regaining something of that imperial dominion in the New World which the bull of demarcation had assigned to her at the end of the fifteenth century. While Vergennes (February 12 ) was submitting to Spain a proposition to fight England unceas- ingly till America's independence was secured, leaving Spain's aspirations to be satisfied by wresting something from America in the future, Florida Blanca set no less a price on the adlie- sion of Spain than the old demand of Gibraltar. When their demands were known. Congress, on March 19, with considerable spirit, announced that while Spain might possess Florida, the American States had no intention of releasing claim to all that England gained below the Great Lakes by the treaty of 1763, and to the full navigation of the Mississipjii. To make their intentions definite. Congress defined the bounds by a line from the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, along the height of land between the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence to the north- west head of the Connecticut, and thence direct to the south end of Lake Nipissing, and on to the sources of the Mississippi, — of course in ignorance of just where those sources were. It was provided as an alternative that, if it became necessary, the line beyond Lake Nipissing might be run farther south, but not below 45°. On the south they claimed the left bank of the Mississippi above 31°, — the old southern bounds of the Caro- lina charter of 1663, which had indeed never been acknowledged by Spain. There was also a distinct demand on Spain for a port of entry on the river within Spanish Louisiana. While this action was pending, and the British connnander in New York was strengthening Pensacola with General Camp- bell's force of fifteen hundred men, Spain, fearing England less now that she had lately augmented her fleets, entered into a secret treaty with France on April 12, 1779, and thus joined SPAIN AND ENGLAND. 161 liands ill the new triple-combination against Great Britain. The professed object of this clandestine alliance was to secure Gibraltar, and to distract England by an invasion of the British islands, and by attacks on Minorca, Pensacola, and Mobile. It is only of late years that the full text of this convention has become known, and Banci-oft, in his earlier editions, had allowed larger pretensions for Spain than were given to her. Six days after the treaty had been concluded, Spain made other perfidious propositions for alliance with England, and these being rejected, on jMay 3, 1779, she openly declared war. There was now no further doubt on England's part of what she was to encounter. In the early part of the summer the Euro- pean parties to the conflict were manoeuvring for an advan- tage, while Congress was at the same time facing a serious complication in the evident purpose of France and Spain to insist on recognizing England's territorial pretensions in the Quebec act. France saw that this gave Spain a better chance of wresting the country north of the Ohio from England, — as indeed was attempted by Spanish troo])s in 1781, — than from the grasp which Virginia was preparing to make u])on it, and did make in 1779. On June 17, 1779, Germain notified Ilaldimand of the Span- ish war, and instructed him to reduce the Spanish posts on the Mississippi and assault New Orleans. At the very beginning of the year (1779) Hamilton, at Vincennes, had reported that , the southern Indians, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Choctaws, and j Alibaiiions, had been banded in the British interests, and that j were he sure that Spain had declared war, he could, with the 1 aid of the savages, push the Spaniards from the Mississi})pi, since, as he, affirms, the Spanish authorities had but slender I influence with the tribes. The British commander at Pensacola 1 had also had his emissaries amono- the Cherokees, and within i a month from the time wlien Ilaldimand was prompted by Ger- i main to attack the Spanish, these savage marauders were harry- I ing the confines of Carolina. Arthur Lee had anticipated this, and while Germain was writing to Ilaldimand, Lee was warning i Spain that a British foothold in Carolina meant the use of it k as a base to dispatch the Indians against the Spaniards on the i ! Gulf. Already, by a pact with the tribes, the Chickasaws and i 1 Choctaws were scattered along the Ohio and Mississippi to 162 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. intercept supplies from New Orleans, in ease they had run the gauntlet at Natchez, where some English rangers under Captain Bloomer were now stationed. This was the condition in the Great Valley, and such were the English intentions, when Galvez, the young Spanish governor at New Orleans, threw himself into the war with admirable spirit. As early as March. 1779, Patrick Henry had urged upon \\'^ashington to dispatch an expedition against Natchez to preserve communications with New Orleans from the up- country, since Pollock's shipments of munitions and supplies by the river had become uncertain. Little heed, however, had been given to the advice, and at this time there was a small chance that Campbell at Pensacola and Hamilton at Vincennes might be able to work in conjunction and maintain the blockade of the river, if not drive the Spaniards out. On July 8, the Madrid authorities had sent instructions to Galvez for an active campaign. The proclamation of hostili- ties with England had been made at Havana on July 22, and Galvez was soon aware of the British purpose, which he learned from an intercepted dispatch. By August 18, he had fitted out a flotilla, when a hurricane, sweeping the river, sank his vessels. His energy soon replaced them. Accompanied by Pollock — to whom Galvez had im- successfully offered a Spanish commission — and a few other Americans, who ])referred to carry their own flag as a separate detachment, and with a following of six hundred and seventy men, Galvez began the ascent of the river. On September 7, with a force increased at this time to over fourteen hundred men, he approached the southernmost point held by the British, Bayou Manchac, where he carried Fort Bute by assault. He was now one hundred and fifteen miles above New Orleans, and from this point to Natchez the British were in possession. A week afterwards (September 13), he began regular approaches before the fort at Baton Eouge, and eight days later it surren- dered, and carried with it Fort Panmure at Natchez, the suc- cessor on the same site of the old Fort Eosalie of the Natchez wars. Colonel Hutchins, the pai\amount British authority in the region, and a traitoi-ous sneak by nature, left it to Colonel Dickson to make the surrender. Several hundred prisoners, large supplies, and various trans- JOHN ADAMS. 163 ports thus fell into Spanish hands, and Galvez returned to New Orleans to extend Louisiana over Florida, as far as the Pearl River, and to welcome in October some reinforcements from Havana. These successes encouraged Pollock, who was just now much in need of good cheer. With Continental money in circulation to about !|200,000,000, and reduced to an insignificant value. Congress had failed to keep with him its promises of remittances, and, to make matters worse, iu)t a single vessel of those he had sent north by sea with supplies had escaped the British block- aders. About the only produce which Congress could depend upon to keep Pollock in funds was flour, and it was practically under an embargo in the Atlantic ports, so much of it had been needed to feed the army and D'Estaing's fleet. Nor could relief be immediate. There had never before been so fine a crop of wheat in the States, but it would take time to grind and bolt it, and to send it to New Orleans amid the risks of capture. While affairs were thus prosperous at New Orleans for Spain, and American interests were with increasing- difficulty sustained by Pollock, Congress had been struggling with the (piestion of the ultimate bounds of the new Republic, and now in the instruction given (August 14) to John Adams, who was about going- abroad prepared to treat with Great Britain, it had substantially agreed upon the limits set by that body some months before. Adams was just at this time in a rampant state of mind, — a condition not unusual with him, — and in a letter from Brain- tree (August 4), while Congress was coming to its purpose, he had not only objected to the surrender to Great Britain of Nova Scotia and Canada, but he had pictured, in ignorance of her secret intentions, the great complacency of Spain, which he judged would make her an agreeable neighbor in the future. But Congress, before its president could have received Adams's letter, declared, on August 5, that if Great Britain persisted " in the prosecution of the present unjust war," advances should be made to enter into a defensive and offensive alliance with France and Spain jointly, to the end of gaining Canada, Florida, and the free navigation of the Mississippi. It only 164 THE SINISTER PURPOSES OF FRANCE. shows how little the true character of Spanish and French pur- jjoses was understood in Congress, that it could have hoped to bring at that time those powers to assure the States any one of those three conditions. The same propositions were again brought under discussion on September 9, when the terms of a treaty with Spain were considered, and two days later it was determined to agree to join Spain in an invasion of Florida and the conquest of Pensa- cola, but only on condition of her granting the free navigation of the Mississippi, with a port of entry below 31°. Matters between them woidd run smoother, it was interjected, if Spain would advance the States the sum of five million dollars. In this frame of mind Congress committed the Spanish mission to Jay on September 27, and two days later passed his instruc- tions in accordance. Neither France nor Spain was prepared to accept such terms, and the French minister at Philadelphia renewed his protests and pictured the future misery of a republic too large to hold together, — a future of disintegration that was much to the mind of Yergennes. Virginia, the most intei'ested of the colonies in this territorial integrity, was nrgently instructing her delegates never to think of yielding to the Spanish claim. Meanwhile, on August 2, a successor to Gerard in Luzerne had landed at Boston. Thence he made his way to West Point, to confer with Washington. The new envoy inqnired of the commander-in-chief how far his army could be depended upon in an attack on Florida. Washington was waiy, and we have the notes of the talk, made by Hamilton, who acted as inter- preter. By these it appears that Washington thought it might be possible to assist in that enterprise, if Congress thought well of it, and the British were driven from Georgia and South Car- olina. There was liere a confirmation of Arthur Lee's opinion of the difficulty of holding Florida, with the enemy in those States. This attempt to engage Washington independent of Con- gress was quite in accordance with the purpose of Vergennes to make the several States agree on their own parts to the treaties. Vergennes's object was thereby to ])erpetuate better the influence of France among them, — a condition which that minister never lost sio'ht of in view of an ultimate arrreement with Great Brit- THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 165 ain. In September, lie plainly intimated to his confidants that while it was to be hoped that the United States would hold compact till their independence was secured, the interest of France required after such an event that the union should be broken, in order that it should not become a power dangerous to France and her aspirations. That there was among the French people and in the French military and naval contingent a wide sympathy for the cause of American inde]iendence is true ; but it was emasculated by the perfidy of their ministry. America's obligation to what stood at that time politically for France was much like the dependence of an unfortunate spendthrift upon a calculating pawnbroker. It is a misuse of words to call this obligation by the name of gratitude. What Hamilton divined in that day has been abundantly proved by the publication of evidence in our day : " The dis- memberment of this countrj^ from Great Britain was both a determinary motive and an adequate compensation to France for the assistance afforded." Again he says : "If a service is rendered for . . . the immediate interests of the party who performs it, and is productive of reciprocal advantages, there seems scarcely an adequate basis for a sentiment like that of gratitude. . . . To suppose that France was actuated bj'" friend- ship . . . is to be ignorant of the springs of action which inva- riably regulate the cabinets of princes." In following the course of France in our Revolutionary War, there is every reason to emancipate ourselves from predilec- tions, prejudice, and tradition, the three great ensnarers of seekers for historical truth. CHAPTER X. A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. 1780. Virginia had persistently nurtured her territorial claims to the northwest ever since the treaty of 1763 had brought this over-mountain region under British control, and the royal proc- lamation had formulated an issue. She had resented the pre- tensions of that proclamation in constituting this ten'itory " crown lands '' for Indian occupancy. She had rehearsed her claims till the other colonies were tired of them. She had never once questioned, as others had, that the English king, in 1609, had any right to assume jurisdiction beyond the springs of her rivers. She made no account of the annulment of her charter in 1624, and claimed that the recognition of her " ancient bound " by the English Commonwealth in 1651 dis- posed of that objection. She recalled how, in 1749, the royal instructions to Governor Gooch had recognized both banks of the Ohio as being " within our colony of Vii-ginia." When England got her real title to the trans-Alleghany regions in 1763, she called it merely a confirmation of her imnmtable charter. She pronounced solemnly, by legislative enactment, that the Indiana deed of 1768 was void. She saw no reason why Trent and the traders should be recompensed for losses in the Pontiac war any more than others who suffered damage from the same cause, and if the traders were to be favored, she held that Pennsylvania and not Virginia should recoup them, since they belonged to that colony. George Mason, in her behalf, charged Sir William Johnson " with mysterious and clandestine conduct " in furthering that grant, for Virginia had already preempted the very land from tlie Indians at the treaty of Lancaster. She saw nothing in the Walpole grant of 1772 as sustaining the rights of the crown against her claims. She saw no way for the Republic to maintain its rights at the future THE CONFEDERATION. 167 peace against the limits of the Quehec Bill, hut in standing squarely upon Virginia's chartered rights. We have seen how soon the frontiersmen began to make inroads on this royal reservation of 17G3, and how the rights of the Iroquois and Cherokees, as affiliated with the northern and southern colonies respectively, were played off against each other. If the New York claim, as derived from the Iroquois, was illusor^^, Franklin could, on the other hand, charge Vir- li'inia with inventinu' the claims of the Cherokees to the Ken- tucky region in order to bolster up her charter right. In a draft of an act of confederation for the colonies, when war had become inevitable, Fraiddin had, in 1775, aimed to bring- the claims of Virginia to a tribunal. In this draft he made all disputes as to bounds between colonies referable to Congress. In it he also gave to that body the same right which he had recoguized earlier to be in Parliament, to plant new colonies in this western wilderness. The next year, June 29, 1776, Vir- ginia, in adopting her new State Constitution, which the war had forced upon her, stood squarely by her old i)retensions of jurisdiction in this region, with the right of establishing one or more States within her charter limits. A few weeks later, in Congress, John Dickinson presented (July 12, 1776) the articles for confederation in a new shape, destined in the main to be those under which the States finally achieved their independence. The draft provided that no lands could be purchased of the natives, either by any colony or by an individual, before the limits of the colonies westward were adjudicated upon, and that, when these limits were determined, the confederacy was to guarantee such bounds to the colonies, and no purchases were to be made beyond them except by the United States for the general benefit of all the States. It dis- tinctly provided that Congress should have the power to settle intercolonial boundary disputes ; to *•' limit those bounds which by charter, or proclamation, or under any pretense, are said to extend to the South Sea:" and to "assign territories for new colonies and ascertain their boundaries," which may l)e admitted to the confederacy by the assent of nine States. Canada, at the same time, could join the confederacy at her own pleasure. These articles, if ado})ted and assented to, practically made Congress the arena in which Virginia must contend for her pretensions. 108 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. While this matter was still in abeyance, Congress made a dis- tinct assertion of its control over these western regions by resolving on September 16, 1776, to grant lands over the moun- tains as bounties to the Continental troops. This meant recom- pensing Virginia for yielding for this purpose such lands as should be selected. Maryland at once (October 9) announced her objection to making such payments a charge upon all the States and a benefit to one, and on November 13, 1776, Mary- land's protest to this effect was laid before Congress. The position of this dissentient State is best expressed in instructions to her delegates at a later stage of the controversy : " Policy and justice require that a country unsettled at the commence- ment of this war, claimed by the British crown, and ceded to it by the Treaty of Paris, if wrested from the common enemy by the blood and treasure of the thirteen States, should be con- sidered as a common property, subject to be parceled out with free governments." It was now clear that the smaller States, and those which had no such western claims, were prepared to insist upon making these trans- Alleghany lands a common source of financial sup- ply in the struggle with the mother country. Congress moved slowly in a matter which produced such variances of opinion, and it was not till October 14, 1777, that it dared even ap- proach the question. It then directed that the colonies slioidd have a common treasury, and that there should be a system of proportionate taxation among the States to supply this treasury. The next day, October 15, 1777, Maryland tried to force the issue by proposing that Congress should have the power to set a western limit to the States claiming to the Mississippi, so as to create a i)ublic domain beyond. Maryland stood alone in the vote. Within a fortnight, the larger States combined (October 27) to make it a provision of the impending act of confederation that no State without its consent should be stripped of its territory for the benefit of the United States. Within three weeks, the Dickinson draft, with all the land amendments which Virginia had insisted upon, was adoi)ted (November 15, 1777), subject to the ratification of the States. It was soon apparent that the confederation would not have the support of Maryland without some acknowledgment of the rights of all the States in these western lands. By early summer VIRGINIA LAND OFFICE. 1G9 ill the following- year (June, 1778), Maryland, with Delaware, New Jersey, and Khode Island acting- mainly in accord with her, tried to induce Congress to remove difficulties by voting that commissioners should determine the limits of the States claiming- to the Mississippi, and that the fee of the old " crown lands," under the proclamation of 1763, should belong- to the United States, while the original claimant States should retain jurisdiction. Congress declined to accede to the proposition, and on July 10, 1778, appealed to the hesitating- States to accept the articles, and leave the settlement of their demands to the future. It soon became known that Virginia had substantiated her claim north of the Ohio by the success of Clark, and in October she set up, as we have seen, a civil government at Kaskaskia. Two months later, Maryland set forth the grounds of her position in refusing- to accept the Act of Confederation, and the new year opened with Congress further temporizing- by post- l)oning- on January 6, 1779, the consideration of Maryland's declaration. In May, 1779, Virginia aggressively determined to open a land office in the territory, offering- the land at forty pounds the hun- dred acres, and declaring valid all her existing military grants. This again aroused Maryland, and she instructed her delegates to lay before Congress her protest against this project. This forced Virginia to a new rehearsal of her claims. There was with some an attemi)t to throw disre]Hite upon Maryland's will- ingness to exempt from her general contention such tracts as had been " granted to, surveyed for, or purchased by individuals before the commencement of the present war," by tracing it to a purpose to save a grant between the Wabash and the Illinois, which, in 1773, had been made to Governor Johnston of Mary- land in conjunction with Dunmore and Tryon. Some of these earlier grantees did unite in September. 1779, in presenting a memorial to Congress, in which the representa- tives of the Indiana and Vandalia companies were included. In this paper they asked to have Virginia's purpose of disposing of these lands in October prevented. This led to a vote asking the States to make no grants of such lands while the war lasted. Virginia defended her right to open a land office, but the mo- tion prevailed (October 30) despite the opposition of herself and North Carolina. 170 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. The manifestly increasing' antagonism to Virginia's extreme claim did not prevent her still making grants (October) of these same lands to her soldiers, and taking steps to open new routes over the Cumberland Mountains. As confidence in- creased in the ultimate solution of the question against the Virginia pretensions, Delaware had already accepted the Act of Confederation in February, 1779, and in November New Jersey did the same, but both States had done it under protest. Near the end of the year (December 14, 1779), Virginia's remon- strances grew milder. She was willing to listen to " just and reasonable propositions for removing ostensible causes of delay to the complete ratification of the Confederation," and to grant lands within her charter bounds to the continental line of any or all the States. In obtaining this concession, Maryland had scored a triumph. Such was the condition of the controversy in Congress, when, in the opening of 1780, it had become generally recognized that the future trans-Alleghany extension, both of the claimant States and of the new Republic, depended on the success of the military and pioneer movements on each side of the Ohio. Ilaldimand had begun a system of canals round the rapids of the St. Lawrence, which did much to facilitate pushing of sup- plies to his western posts, but British attempts to enforce the pretension of the Quebec Bill on the north of the Ohio, in efforts directed from Detroit and Mackinac, had so far failed, notwithstanding the sympathy of the Indian tribes. South of the Ohio the adventurous pioneers had strengthened their hold upon the regions of Kentucky and Tennessee in spite of British and savage raids from north of the Ohio, and threats of the British agents, Stuart and Cameron, from the side of Florida. The frontiersmen's success had also so far put an obstacle in the way of the Spanish pretensions, which France was anxious to advance. The Americans had little more than a hope of holding their western positions north of the Ohio. The expectation of ad- vancing on Detroit was for the present, at least, kept in abey- ance. On the British side the plans of the ministry, committed in the north to Haldimand, were thus in the hands of one who had no hesitation in espousing all that the Quebec Bill intended. ST. LOUIS THREATENED. 171 The plan of Germain to maintain a line of communication be- tween Canada and Florida had indeed been checked by the precipitate action of Galvez at New Orleans, bnt it did not, in their ignorance of the Spanish successes, seem altogether imprac- ticable to Sinclair, or to his superior officer at Quebec. The commandant at Mackinac was not informed of the fall of Natchez till midsummer (July 30), when the tidings came from Haldimaud, who had learned of the misfortune but six weeks before. Thus in the dark, and supposing that Brigadier Campbell, leaving Pensacola, would enter the Mississippi some time in JSIay, Sinclair, when in February the days were palpably length- ening, sent messages to the Sioux and other tribes to unite in the early spring of 1780 at the Wisconsin portage, and to bring with them supplies of corn for a campaign. At the same time he urged Wabasha, his Sioux ally, " a man of uncommon abili- ties," to move with his " people undebauched and addicted to war " down the Mississippi towards Natchez, there to act as circumstances might require. To divert the rebel attention from this main part of the cam- paign, Ilaldimand had instructed (February 12) De Peyster, at Detroit, to arouse the Wabash Indians, and "' anmse " Clark, or drive him from the Ohio rapids, " otherwise the Indian country will be open to the continual incursions of the rebels, and safe communication will be formed between Fort Pitt and the Mississippi." The British authorities were soon to learn, if they had not already been informed, by an intercejited letter, of Clark's purpose to build a new fort on the Mississippi. It was March (1780) when the Spaniards at St. Louis learned of Sinclair's plans, and a few weeks later, in April, some boats, with supplies which Gratiot had carried up to Prairie du (^hien, were captured by the approaching band. St. Louis was now a town of a hundred and twenty houses, principally of stone, with a population of perhaps eight hun- dred, mainly French, and a hundred and fifty negroes. On May 2G, 1780, a force, thought to have comi)rised about nine hundred Indians, fell upon some farmers, who incautiously — for the enemy's approach was known — had gone beyond the protection of the stockade. Sinclair had hardly feared that the savaires woidd fail in an assault ; but he was not so confi- 172 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. J FORTIFICATIONS The cut, sliowing their relations to the town as it was in 1822, is from L. E. Beck's Gazetteer of (J. round tower, h. blockhouse. (. Catholic Chapel. A-. Baptist Church. I. jail. m. Presby- deiit in holding the place, if once taken. But no assault fol- lowed, partly because of the usual savage unwillingness to attack a post which had been forewarned, and partly because of the lukewai'mness, if not insincerity, of Calve and the other French leaders of the Indians. The break came when the Sacs and Foxes, alleged to be under Calve's influence, swerved from the task. It is thought that the whole force, which Sinclair had organ- ized, consisted of perhaps fifteen hundred warriors with Euro- pean leaders, while a body of other savages with a number of SIN CLA Hi 'S EXPEDI TION. 173 STRKET f^^ 1^:^ FiSf5 a 1^:^ pi»f^ irw 1 Pr i 'd i i J n i \ A P F I OF ST. LOUIS, 17S0. Illinois and Missouri, KXbany, 1823. terian meeting-house, n. market. Key: n. line of works. 6. tower, c. ileiui-luuar. J. Missouri bank. p. ferrj-. (/. old wiiulniill. ;•. /. g.ates. ox-mill. French traders, inspired by Sinclair's promise to reserve to tliem the traffic of the Missouri valley, had been led by Langlade by way of the Chicago portage. This contingent was expected to fall upon Kaskaskia in case of success at St. Louis, and to place the Illinois villages under contribution, and to send sup- plies from them to Green J^ay and ^Mackinac, — the sui)port of w^hich post was at this time creating inueh complaint in the communications of Germain. Langlade had for a guide a certain Monsieur Durrand, who had been found with a (piantity of continental money in his possession, and to secure his fidelity Sinclair had taken possession of all his ]-)roperty. 174 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. When the commander at St. Louis had learned of his danger, he had sent word to Clark. Early in the year, Jefferson, the better to secure the Virginia title to the Kentucky region, had directed Colonel Thomas Walker and Colonel Smythe to extend the line which separated Virginia from Carolina to the Missis- sippi, and at a point where it reached that river (36° 30') Clark had been instructed to build a fort. The site of this pro- posed stockade, known as Iron Banks, was about five miles below the mouth of the Ohio, in the country of the Chickasaws and Choctaws, who soon manifested their enmity. The spot had attracted Governor Henry's attention as early as January, 1778, and Clark in September, 1779, had issued orders to induce settlers to occupy it. Todd had at the same time made sundry grants, not far distant. Leaving that post to protect the Ken- tucky settlements from other raids, when the news reached him from St. Louis Clark immediately responded, and twenty-four hours before Wabasha and his horde apj)roached St. Louis, he was on the opposite side of the river at Cahokia, watching for his opportunity. He had no occasion either to cross the Mis- sissippi or to defend Kaskaskia, and found nothing to do but to dispatch Lieutenant Montgomery to pursue the retreating enemy. By June 4 (1780), the first of the fugitive savages reached Mackinac, those under Calve coming by Green Bay, while others returned by Chicago. They reported that they had killed about seventy persons, had taken thirty-four prisoners, and they showed forty-three scalps. Sinclair at once sent two vessels to the Chicago Eiver to bring off the main body of Langlade's men. This was done in time for them to escape the attack of a mounted American force, which a few days later appeared at that point. So ended ignominiously the attempt to control the INIissis- sippi from the north. Sinclair brooded on his disai)pointment for seven or eight weeks before he got some relief by learning, as we have seen, that he had not been alone disappointed, for there had been a similar disaster inflicted nine months before by Galvez in the lower parts of the Mississippi. The British force, with which Haldimand had intended to " amuse " Clark while Sinclair's expedition followed the Missis- i BIRD'S EXPEDITION. 175 sippi, left Detroit near the middle of April, 1780, under the eonnuand of Captain Henry Bird. It consisted of about six hundred men, led by Elliot and the Girtys. It had been fitted out at a charge of about #300,000. Logan, with a band of savages, accompanied it, while a force of Huron warriors had at the same time started in the direction of Fort Pitt, to rivet the rebels' attention in tliat direction and intercept any foray of Virginians on the upper Ohio. It was supposed by the tribes that retaliation for the continual attacks on emigrant boats might incite such inroads, and for the fear of such reprisals the Mingoes and Delawares had l>een much alarmed. Bird had passed by the Maumee portage to the Great Miami, and on the way Alexander McKee had joined him with some five Imndred Shawnees. The varying reports of his entire force would seem to indicate that the fickle savages came and went on the march as they liked. The information which Bird got at Lorimer's Station showed that Clark was at the falls with two hundred men, poorly supplied. Bird's purpose, as Haldimand had directed, was to attack that post, and he had with him two small cannon, the first guns that h:id been taken into Indian warfare. His Indians, however, proved unruly. Haldimand liad warned him tliat savages cared more to have raids projected for which they could get advanced gifts, than to participate in unrequited forays, and Bird's experience did not belie the warn- ing. His red brutes killed his cattle, grew insubordinate, and finally refused to advance towards the falls. Not wholly to fail of results. Bird turned towards the month of the Licking and, ascending that stream, captured several Kentucky stations, and took a large number of prisoners. Having accomplished no strategic purpose, he suddenly turned back, his captives bearing the plunder, and reached Detroit on August 4. He might have inflicted serious mischief on the river by stopping to waylay the emigrant boats, for something like three hundred of them, averaging perhaps fifty feet in length, and carrying ten persons each, it is supjjosed, reached the falls during the season. His precipitate retreat, however, saved him from Clark, who was now afield with a force he had raised in Ken- tucky. Clark carried a rather high hand in gathering his men, for he shut the land offices to throw the speculators out of em- 176 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. ployment, and stationed guards on the outward trails to take the arms from fugitives. In this way he gathered at the site of Cincinnati — opposite the Licking — about a thousand riflemen, mounted or afoot, and built there a blockhouse on the site of the future city. It was August 2 — the reports of the date are somewhat uncertain — when he went forward, carrying a single cannon in his train. Having moved some fifty or sixty miles, in dismal weather, he found, on August 6, the Indian vil- lage at Chillicothe in flames. He hurried on to Piqua on the Little Miami, in the region of the modern Springfield. After a conflict, in which he got no assistance from Benjamin Logan, who had gone astray with one division of his force, he scattered the Indians, who under two of the Girtys somewhat stubbornly confronted him, though Clark brought his three-pounder into action. He then burned the town and destroyed the neighbor- ing cornfields. He had succeeded in inflicting such a retaliatory stroke as to save Kentucky from savage raids for the rest of the season. Clark returned to the falls, his force scattering, on the way, to their homes. All this, however, was too late to alarm Detroit seriously-. If Jefferson could have compassed it, he would have kept Clark to the larger project of seizing the straits. Early in the year (February 10), while uninformed of Sinclair's intentions, Jef- ferson had written to Washington to inquire if there was truth in the rumor that Colonel Brodhead was to be sent against Detroit from Fort Pitt. He added that " these officers [Clark and Brodhead] cannot act together," and if Brodhead was to lead an attack on the straits, he would see that Clai'k was sent in some other direction. Ten days later (Februar}' 21), Brod- head had learned from prisoners that there were four hundred and fifty men at Detroit and eighteen hundred at Niagara, beside large hordes of Indians. The numbers troubled him, and he begged Washington to make a diversion on the Susquehanna to check any hostile incursion by the Alleghany. On March 18, Brodhead informed Washington that he had heard fi*om Clark, who was willing to cooperate with him, " either for the reduction of one of the enemy's })osts or against the Indian towns," and that Clark expected to be reinforced in the spring. At the same time (March) Jefferson, who had DETROIT. 177 perhaps inisjiidged Clark, wrote to this officer that he must abandon all lioi)e of advancing- on Detroit. This letter was intercepted, and probably banished the anxiety which De Pev- ster had before that felt. By April, reinforcements and supplies not reaching him, Brodhead informed Washington (24th) that unless Clark could join him, Detroit could not be threatened. He complained that the boundary dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the necessity of i)rotecting the local frontiers, had prevented his summoning any militia. Clark, as we have seen, was too much needed at this time at St. Louis to think even of making a diversion up the Ohio. Brodhead did not willingly abandon all hope, and tried to get other and perhaps better tidings of the British force. A scouting party which he sent towards Sandusky had returned (June 30) without success. Ten days later (July 10), Brodhead outlined to his lieutenants a march so far as Sandusky at least, but his pur2)ose was discovered, and the plan was abandoned. Just as this proved futile, an onset from the side of Cahokia was attempted and likewise failed. Colonel La Balme, a man bred to the cavahy service, with a few score (perhaps a hundred) French and Indians, had started to surprise Detroit, thinking to arouse the French of the straits to welcome him. His foi'ce, however, was entrapped one night on the iNIiami, their leader killed, and his papers taken. This must have relieved Haldimand of some anxiety. So the season (1780) ended with much the same equal dis- tribution of loss and gain which had characterized the last two years, north of the Ohio. The English had pretty well kei)t their hold on the tribes. The death of White Eyes, the friend of Zeisberger and the chief of the peace party of the Delawares, liad left that faction without a head, and it had gone over to the royal side. At the west, however, the Sacs and Foxes had pronounced for the Americans. Practically, neither side could claim to have made good their territorial pretensions ; and there was continued ai)prehension on both sides well on to snow-fly- ing. Guy Johnson, commanding- at Niagara, and Governor Todd in Kentucky, were growing more and more anxious ; Clark, at the falls, was in greater trepidation than De Peyster, at the straits. Brodhead, at Pittsburg, was complaining- of the want 178 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. of money, credit, and provisions, and was alarmed at rumors of a British advance from Detroit. But on the whole the year (1780) had given better promise south of the Ohio. Clark had established Fort Jefferson, but it had only been maintained by lighting the Indians about it. The situation was insalubrious ; it was difficult to keep it supplied ; settlers did not like the neighborhood, and finally, its garrison being needed elsewhere, it was the next year abandoned. The fight at King's Mountain (October 7) had drawn off a large part of the fighting militia of Virginia and North Caro- lina, and the Cherokees had seized the opportunity to rise upon the exposed settlements. Retribution came to them suddenly. The heroes who had gained the brilliant victory — which is later to be described — rendezvoused, under Sevier, Martin, and Campbell, on the French Broad, and rushed upon the Cher- okee towns. These attacks laid twenty-nine of the savages low ; seventeen were taken prisoners, and fifty thousand bushels of corn were destroyed. But one American was killed. The campaign over, Coloiiel Campbell (January 16, 1781) reported to Congress the desirability of erecting a fort at the junction of the Tennessee and Holston river^, the better to hold the country. But notliing, meanwhile, seemed to daunt the eager settlers. For some years to come, they came into this wilderness at the rate of four or five thousand ainiually. They came both by flo- tilla on the Ohio, and by the Wilderness road. Two years later, there were twelve thousand souls in Kentucky, and in 1784, it is comj^uted there were as many as thirty thousand. The dis- covery of numerous salt-springs had conduced to this stirprising influx, for the price of that condiment had for some time been almost prohibitory. Virginia had divided the country into three counties, each with its lieutenant, and all three subordi- nate to Clark as general commanding. The old system of gain- ing a fixed extent of soil by squatter right had given place to treasury warrants, carrying acreages, which were variable, but defined. The new system was hardly in consonance with the habits of the squatter population earlier on the soil. In some CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS. 179 respects, the ways of life in Kentucky were becoming irksome. The laws of Virginia were in some aspects burdensome under their remote conditions. To carry appeals from local justices to Williamsburg was costly. There was a constant tendency in the older communities to underrate their forbearance with the Indians. As the result of such discontent, some six hundred and forty residents on both sides of the Ohio, in Kentucky and Illinois, united in May, 1780, in a petition to Congress to be set up as a separate State, and left to manage their own internal affairs. The movement proved premature, and was doubtless immature, and there was no evidence that it was countenanced by many of the stabler and more experienced pioneers. The east had its complaints at the same time, and it was not unusual to hear in Congress more or less apprehension that the " freedom from taxes, militia duties, and other burdens," as well as the allure- ments of the land offices, in Kentucky, were enticing deserters from the Continental armies. Robertson of Watauga, accompanied by some Holston adven- turers, seeking new trails and fairer lands, had, as we have seen, during the previous autumn (1779), seized ui)on the bend of the Cumberland, known as the French Lick, and was now compacting the new settlement. Late in the winter of 1779- 80, Colonel Donelson, a sharer with Robertson in the move- ment, with thirty boats, carrying some two or three hundred souls, including the less hardy of the men, but largely composed of the women and children, — and among them the future wife of Andrew Jackson, — had started on a perilous voyage down the Tennessee, and up tlie Ohio and Cumberland, to the ap- pointed spot. It was not the first nor the last of such river expeditions ; but it has become better known than the others, owing to the preservation of the leader's diary. This record shows the hazards of the wintry stream, and how the flotilla, beset by small-pox, was whirled in the rifts, and ran the fusil- lades of the cunning Chickamaugas. After all their trials, the new-comers poled their bateaux up to the Cumberland bluffs on April 24, 1780, and were welcomed by Robertson. They found that a stockaded village had been laid out. It was named Nashborough, after the governor of North Carolina, 180 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. when it had been found to be within the charter limits o£ that State. The popuhition now scattered along the banks of the Cumberland was thought to number not far from five hundred. Some among them had been renegades from the Atlantic slope, to escape the marauding forces of Cornwallis. Robertson, before the decision of the settlement's allegiance was settled, had been in conference with Clark about a title to the lands ; but the same survey, as conducted by Henderson for North Carolina and Walker for Virginia, which had fixed for Clark the site of Fort Jefferson, had also determined the new settle- ment to be beyond the jurisdiction of Virginia. Three hundred miles of forest separated it from all neigh- borly succor. Its people were adventurers, but they had known the value of orderly government on the Holston, and accordingly, at a meeting convened at Nashborough on May 1, 1780, Robertson presented some articles of association, and they were readily adopted. They are supposed to reflect the form of the constitution of Watauga, which has not been saved for us, but of this imitation we fortunately have nearly the whole, with the amendments shortly after adopted. The two hundred and fifty-six males who signed it declared their purpose to " restrain the licentious and supply the blessings flowing from a just and equitable government.'' It is a token of the bloody conditions of their life, that of these two hundred and fifty-six subscribers, mainly in vigorous early manhood, scarce a score were alive a dozen years later, and it is said that only one man among the departed had been known to die a natural death. Nothing better than this shows what living was in these isolated settlements. If food and powder gave out, it meant a stealtliy march, amid lurking savages, to the nearest and better supplied settlements. Nothing but the dauntless- ness of a military leader like Robertson could hold such com- munities to the task of subduing the wilderness. He was now, under their new articles, the chairman of their board of " judges, triers, and general arbitrators," and with universal suffrage to support him, he was to administer the executive business of the little community till North Carolina set up a county govern- ment in the region in 1783. The whole region of Tennessee and Kentucky had been threatened by the success of the British at Charleston in May GALVEZ AND POLLOCK. 181 (1780), and by the imbecility of Gates at Camden in August. But the over-mountain men from Holston, under Shelby and Sevier, aided by a regiment of Virginians under Colonel Wil- liam Campbell, had rallied to a self-imposed task and retrieved those defeats. Mounted almost to a man, with evergreen sprigs in their coon-skin caps, they had followed their leaders through the passes, a thousand in number, and perhaps many more, for the reports are at variance. At King's IMountain, in October, 1780, they encompassed Fergusson and the loyalist militia from the Carolina coast. The backwoodsmen wonderfully proved their wily courage, man tu man alike in numbers, but it is to be regretted that their victory was darkened by some dastardly acts. Their success had caused a lull, which prepared the way for- tunately for Greene to assume the command of the southern department before the year closed. Further south, the success of Galvez in the autumn of 1779, on the Mississippi, had been followed by the Spanish attack on Mobile in the following March. Reinforcements joining him from Havana, Galvez left New Orleans with about two thousand men, and on the 15th took Fort Charlotte on the Mobile River in season to defy Campbell, who came to succor it. The Spanish rule was thereby extended from the Pearl to the Perdido River. Meanwhile, Oliver Pollock, in New Orleans, was doing his best to send powder and supplies to Todd and Clark. He foiuid difficulty, however, in negotiating the paper sent liim by Clark because of the scarcity of specie. He obtained temporary relief from the private fortune of a Spanish official, and from the generous acceptance of Virginian bills by one Daniel Clark, an American whose claim on that State long remained unsettled. All the while trying to keep up the credit of continental bills. Pollock was daily diminishing his available cash to the extent of nearly nine thousand dollars in the aggregate. The depre- ciation of these bills was, on the whole, much less in the Great Valley than on the Atlantic coast. There had Ijeen throughout the year two problems deeply affecting this trans-Alleghany region, which had closely engaged the attention of Congress. 182 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. With a population in tlie States rising three million, and likely to increase abnormally, there was no disposition among the representatives of the people either to accept the dictates of France and Spain south of the Ohio, or those of England towards the lakes. The question practically turned on the free navigation of the Mississippi as bounding the empire acquired by the treaty of 1763, and on the control of this western coun- try as a public domain supposed to be caj)able of meeting the cost of the war. Jay, who had been chosen minister to Spain (October 4), to enforce its claim to the Mississippi just at the time that Galvez was grasping the lower parts of that river, had found in Madrid great difficulties in his suits. Congress di'ew money-bills on him, hoping for his success with the Spanish ministry, but that government broadly intimated to him that their assistance woidd depend on obtaining exclusive control of the Mississippi. Ever since the Continental Congress had sought the recognition and aid of Spain, the Mississippi question, in one form or another, had been a perj)lexing problem. It was made all the more difficult through the combined Bourbon interests of Spain and France, and by the embarrassing disposition of a strong faction in Congress to sacrifice the future of the West by sur- rendering to Spain this control of the Mississippi. The purjiose of this faction was, as Richard Henry Lee said, nothing but a studied " depreciation of our back country." The Madrid cabinet insisted that the proclamation of 1763 had divested the colonies of all territorial rights beyond the Alleghanies. To meet such pretensions, Jay, on his arrival in Spain, had instructed his secretary, who preceded him on the way to Madrid, " to remember to do justice " to the rights of Virginia to the western country. Jay soon discovered, upon confronting the minister himself, that it was the object of Spain to entrap the Americans into an alliance which woxdd have compelled them to continue the war "for objects which did not include ours." This sinister pur- pose dawning upon Jay's mind, he had resolved, so far as he had the power, to yield nothing. " France is determined," he wrote home, " to manage between Sjsain and America so as to make us debtors to French influence with Spain, and to make Spain obligated to their influence with us." GARDOQUI. 183 As the negotiations with Gardoqui went on, it was suggested to Jay that matters between S})ain and the United States would go more smoothly if Jay would only offer the surrender of the Mississippi. Jay replied " that the Americans, almost to a man, believed that God Almighty had made that river a highway for the peoj^le of the upper country to go to the sea by ; that this country was extensive and feeble ; that the general, many offi- cers, and others of distinction and influence in America were deeply interested in it ; that it would rapidly settle ; and that the inhabitants would not be readily convinced of the justice of being obliged either to live without foreign commodities or lose the surplus of their productions ; or be obliged to transport both over rugged mountains and through an immense wilder- ness to and from the sea, when they daily saw a fine river flow- ing before their doors and offering to save them all that trouble and expense, and that without injury to Spain." Gardoqui replied that the present generation would not need the river, and that it might be left to future ones to manage their own affairs. When these complexities were reported to Franklin in Paris, he replied to Jay (October 2, 1780 ) : " Poor as we are, yet as I know we shall be rich, I would rather agree with them to buy at a great price the whole of their rights in the Mississippi than sell a drop of the waters. A neighbor might as well ask me to sell my street door." Congress gave Jay all the sujjport he needed. " If," they wrote to him, " an express acknowledgment of our rights cannot be obtained from Spain, it is not by any stipulation on the part of America to be relinquished." The French minister at Pliiladelphia was meanwhile eagerly abetting the Bourbon interest in the same spirit. He repre- sented to Congress that the United States had no rights to territory westward from the settlements as they existed at the date of the proclamation of 17G3, and that the east bank of the Mississippi was British territory, open to Spanish inroads. The understanding between France and Spain was :i])parently complete, and, as the season wore on, Carmichael, Jay's secre- tary, became convinced that Spain was manoeuvring for delaj^s, trusting rather to prompt interposition at the general peace to attain her ends. Meanwhile, »Tohn Adams, Avho, in February, 1780, luid 184 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. reached Paris, clothed with authority to treat for peace, was flattering Vergennes in May that " an alliance with France was an honor and a security which had been near his heart.' It was not many weeks, however, before this importunate Yankee was offending Vergennes by his self-aggression and want of tact. Fortunately, he saw behind the diplomacy of the wily Frenchman what Jay, released from his Spanish toils, later discerned, and what Franklin, in his belief that gratitude to France was both a duty and good policy, was loath to see. At Madrid, Jay's impulses and his instructions allowed him to go no farther than to promise the aid of America in estab- lishing Spanish hold on Florida, and before this, Mirales, the Spanish minister in Philadelphia, had been instructed to engage with Congress for a body of American troops to enter the Spanish service for that purpose. On October 4, 1780, Congress had further upheld Jay by new instructions, and Madison drew uj) the case of the United States. It was rej^orted to Congress on October 17, and was at once sent to Franklin and Jay. It represented that the Illinois and Wabash regions were nnder American jurisdiction, and that the mouth of the Ohio and the course of the Missis- sippi down to 31° were controlled at Fort Jefferson. It was put to the credit of the United States, and not to that of Virginia, that this condition prevailed ; and Virginia, at the same time, proposed that the Mississippi below 31° should be guaranteed to Spain, if Spain would guarantee " to the United States " all above that parallel. The Americans were making rather than confirming principles in international law. Claims to the free navigation of a river whose mouth was held by an alien were not then to be settled by any well-established conclusions in which all nations agreed. The freedom of the Ehine had been determined by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1G48 ; but that of the Scheldt was yet to be left imsettled by the Peace of Fontainebleau in 1785. This action of Congress in October was hardly done when the ill success of Gates in the south and the sense of insecurity which Arnold's treason had caused produced one of those revulsions to which strenuous times are liable, and in Novem- ber, 1780, there were signs that Congress, on the urgency of South Carolina and Georgia, was weakening its position. It VIRGINIA AND THE NORTHWEST. 185 was known that, on the one hand, England was endeavoring to disjoin Spain from the French alliance, and, on the other, it was an every-day occurrence that Luzerne, in Philadelphia, was bringing to bear all the pressure he could to effect the pur- pose of France and the interests of Spain. With this turn of affairs, Congress approached the end of 1780 with not a little unrest from sectional discord. Virginia was admonishing New England that if she weakened on the Mississippi question, she might rue it when the question of the fisheries was to be settled. In respect to the other problem, the year (1780) had opened with an encouraging outlook. New York had stepped forward with a proposition to cede to the States the claim which she professed to have acquired (1701, 1726) from the Iroquois to the western lands. She argued that the grant to the Duke of York had barred the claims of the New England colonies, while that of Virginia was estopped by the rescinding of her charter and the grant to Penn, wdiich preventions gave precedence to the Indian claim which she advanced. It was in fact the least valid of any of the claims, but was good enough to give away as a precedent. On February 19, the New York Assembly authorized her delegates to make either an unreserved or a limited cession. The act was read in Congress on March 7. Six weeks later, that State authorized Congress to restrict her western limits. These actions had their effect in Virginia. Late in June, Joseph Jones wrote to Jefferson : " Coukl Virginia but think herself, as she certainly is, full large enough for vigorous gov- ernment, she, too, would moderate her desires, and cede to the United States, on certain conditions, her territory beyond the Ohio." George Mason, in July, fornudated the Virginia propo- sitions. These were to give up the country between the west bounds of Pennsylvania and the Ohio, north of Mason and Dixon's line (being the region since known as the Panhandle), if Congress guaranteed to Virginia her remaining territory, which he claimed to be bounded by the north bank of the Ohio on one side, and by the North Carolina line (3G° 30') on the other. This cession of the territory north of the Ohio was contingent upon seven conditions : First, that the territory should eventu- ally be made into not less than two States. Second, that Vir- 186 A YEAR OF SUSPENSE. ginia should be reimbursed for Clark's expedition and all other attending expenses. Third, that the French settlers should be protected in their titles, and defended against incursions from Detroit. Fourth, that one hundred and fifty thousand acres should be reserved as bounty lands for Clark's soldiers. Fifth, that the cession at the falls made to Clark by the Wabash In- dians should be confirmed to him. Sixth, in case Virginia did not have land enough south of the Ohio to make good her mili- tary bounties, that she should have it on the north. Seventh, that all the territory not thus reserved should be held in com- mon by all the States, and that all individual purchases of land should be void. An impulse to hasten the completion of the confederation was palpably growing, and, on September 6, Congress urged the States claiming a western extension to " remove the only obstacle to a final ratification of the articles of confederation," and make a united cession of these disputed territories. Con- gress had been brought to this, not only by the New York act of February 19, but by consideration of counter representa- tions made by Virginia and Maryland. A few days later (Sep- tember 12), Madison felt sure that the crisis had i)assed. In October, there were new hopes for a while. Connecticut offered to cede her charter claims beyond the mountains, provided she could retain jurisdiction. Congress, with the otherwise encour- aging prospect, was not disposed to hamper the transfer, and declined to meet the conditions. On the same day. Congress ordered that all ceded lands should be held for the comnu)n benefit of all the States, — the initial legislation for a public domain, — but at the same time recognized the rights of the States to be reimbursed for the cost of maintaining their claims. It was further agreed that these lands should be divided into repul)liean States and become candidates for admission to the confederation. The year closed with Tom Paine in his Public Good attack- ing (December 30) the Virginia pretensions to their charter rights. He dwelt on the vague definition of the charter of , 1609, as admitting no such precision of bounds as Virginia claimed, and in the belief which at that time prevailed of the narrowness of the continent, no such imperial range of l)Ounds could have been contemplated. Contemporary newspapers i RESULTS IN 1780. 187 allege that Paine's sense of justice was based on promise from the Indiana Company of twelve thousand acres of this same land, though Conway, his latest biographer, disputes the state- ment. Paine outlined a plan of setting up a new State of nearly the same limits as the present Kentucky ; and by the sales of its territory he expected to replenish the national treasury. Ham- ilton was one of the few who did not expect much aid to the treasury in this way. " Back lands," he says, " are a very good resource in reserve ; but I suspect they will not have so much present financial efficacy as to be useful to procure credit."' So, upon the whole, the year 1780 closed in the west with good omens, if with checkered results in actual accomplish- ment. CHAPTER XI. EAST AND WEST. 1781. The year 1781 was practically the last year of the war on the Atlantic slope. Greene had shown the highest ability in the sonth in snatching the fruits of victory from defeat, and Cornwallis had been entrapped at Yorktown. The year had opened sadly in the revolt of the Pennsylvania line, and the depreciation of the continental ])aper had gone on, so that by midsunnner the bills were in effect valueless. Scarce a sixth of the taxes could be collected ; and the confederation, after it was perfected, seemed but a mockery of " the firm and per- petual league of friendship " which it professed to be. No one felt its futility more than Washington, and he had complained to his personal friends, " I see one head gradually changing into thirteen. I see one army branching into thirteen." Yet with all this, there came the flash at Yorktown, and the year closed along the seaboard with hope. Beyond the mountains there had been, during the year, the old iteration of cross movements, with no real gain to either combatant ; but in Congress a first step, as will be later shown, had been taken in oiviuo- a continental control to the " crown lands " reserved in the proclamation of 1763. While these cession movements ])ade fair to solve the problem of the con- federation's asserted extension to the Mississippi, and to estab- lish a ground for a boundary at the peace, the Spanish claim to that river was still a source of anxiety. On the same day on which Virginia had proposed an inadmissible cession (January 2), Congress, as we shall see, had instructed Jay to yield the Mississippi to Spain, rather than lose her alliance. Likewise on the same day (January 2), an expedition left St. Louis to plant the Spanish flag within the disputed territory. Under the lead of Captain Pourre (or Pierro), a force of sixty militia and GALVEZ IN FLORIDA. 189 sixty Indians marched two hundred leagues across the Illinois region, and fell upon an English post at St. Joseph (near the modern Niles in Michigan), captured it, secured prisoners, and then quickly retreated, and were back in St. Louis in March. Both Franklin and Jay, when they heard of it, were prepared to believe that Spain had attempted the incursion merely to establish a claim to be advanced at the peace when, under pos- sible diplomatic complications, a mere dash across the country might count against the steady hold which Clark had fixed upon the Illinois. Before Pourre had returned to St. Louis, Galvez, on February 28, started with a fleet, conveying fourteen hundred men, to in- vade Florida. He appeared before Pensacola and, despite some defection in his naval auxiliaries, he pushed his transports, under fire, past the English fort into the inner bay. The ad- miral was chagrined, and followed in Galvez's w^ake. The fort beat off the fleet, and Galvez brought up his land forces and opened trenches. A breach was made in the walls by the ex- plosion of a magazine, and while storming parties were oi-ganiz- ing, the British, on May 9, hoisted the white flag. Thus all of west Florida fell into Spanish hands, and Spain had secured a coveted foothold on the flank of the Southern States. Eight hundred troops, with which Campbell, under Germain's orders, had expected to secure the lower Mississippi, were sent pris- oners to New York under parole, but to the discontent later of the Spanish government. During the absence of Galvez, and on the rumor of his defeat and of a British fleet being in the Gulf, the British settlers and the loyalists, including the Con- necticut colony, living about Natchez, rose (April 22) upon the Spaniards and by a ruse overawed them. Colonel Hutch- ins once more (April 29) spread the British flag upon Fort Panmure, while the Spanish garrison marched to Baton Rouge. Upon Galvez's triumphant return, the insurgents were in dan- ger of his resentment, and fled across the country to Savannah, making a painful march of one hundred and thirty-one days. Some of them fell into the hands of the hovering bands of patriots, and the rest reached that town in October. It is a story of prolonged misery which Pickett has told in liis Ala- haina. 1 190 EAST AND WEST. While Spain was thus successful at the south and had, by a dash at St. Joseph, attempted to give effect to her diplomatic pretensions in the northwest, the real struggle as to the future ownership of the great stretch of country between the Allegha- nies and the Mississippi was to drag on for another year along the Ohio and on its affluents. It was still in the autumn of 1780, and at the close of the active campaigning of that year, the dream of Jefferson to make at last an effective demonstration against Detroit, by which Virginia would be relieved of maintaining five hundred or a thousand men in the western wilds to protect her frontiers and outlying settlements. Jefferson had api^ealed to Washington to give the movement continental sanction, and to furnish the munitions and supplies, while Virginia called on her militia. To give and to take counsel in the initiatory steps, Clark had come over the mountains, and was representing in Richmond that the government must be prepared to confront the coming season something like two thousand British and Indians in the western country. The problem was how to anticipate the as- saults of such a body and carry the war into the enemy's coun- try. When Jefferson, in September, 1780, had been sending prisoners from Kichmond to New York for exchange, he had not given up Hamilton, for fear of the active energies that officer might impart at Detroit if he should rejoin his old com- mand. Clark's futile attempts to reach Detroit had already cost Virginia something like half a million pounds of the cur- rent money, and it was com]iuted that another three hundred thousand must be added to that, if the present expedition should succeed. Jefferson hoped, as we have said, that this pecuniaiy aid would come from the Continent, while Virginia supplied the men. He sent ovit orders for the frontier militia to gather at Pittsburg, on March 1, 1781, but he imparted to the count- officers no definite plan for the campaign. There was, how- ever, no misunderstanding as to the purpose between Clark and the governor, and Clark was in his daily councils. Steuben was during the winter trying to impede the raids of Benedict Arnold along the James River, and Clark, still at the east, entered into these defensive movements with alacrity,, leaving Jefferson, meanwhile, to direct the preparations which were going on at Fort Pitt. Late in December, 1780, Jeffer- CLARK'S NEW PLANS. 191 son drew up Clark's instructions, charging him not only with the capture of Detroit, but with securing control of Lake Erie. lie promised him two thousand men, and assured him that ammunition and packhorses would be at the falls of the Ohio by March 15. If preparations were then completed, Clark would be able to take advantage of the early break of the ice in the Wabash, and reach Lake Erie before the enemy could move their forces across it. Washington, in reply to Jefferson's a])- peals, was at the same time dispatching orders (December 28, 1780) to Brodhead, commanding at Fort Pitt, to furnish all the troops he could, including an artillery company, and to avoid raisiug questions of rank with Clark. Jefferson had asked Washington to give Clark a continental commission, to prevent any question of rank, but Washington had declined because Clark was on strictly state service. In January, 1781, Clark, lingering still at Richmond, was made a brigadier-general of the Virginia forces, " to be embodied in an expedition westward of the Ohio." They Avere destined for a canq^aign which was to be rendered unusually active by a widespread uprising of the Indians in the British interests. At least, so felt Slaughter, who held the falls in Clark's absence, and who was disturbed by the rumors which reached him. Stories of this kind induced Jefferson, On flamiary 13, to ask Steuben to release Clark from his engagements on the seaboard, in order that he might pro- ceed immediately to the western country. Thus withdrawn from further participation in the movements on the James, Clark, who proceeded to Pittsburg, found little to encourage him. Weeks went on, and there seemed to be little chance of Clark's securing the two thousand men which Jefferson had promised, though, on February 13, the governor had informed him that Steuben had consented to Gibson's acting as his lieutenant and taking his regiment with him to the west. Continual alarms in Kentucky and the invasion of tide-water Virginia were keeping the fighting men at home, and Jefferson, finding the militia loath to march from their settlements, had called (February 16) upon some of the county lieutenants to urge volunteers to rally around Clai'k. Washington had sent Clark little aid, and it may be doubted if the conunander-in-chief felt nmch confidence in a hazardous 192 EAST AND WEST. movement of militia, liable to scatter at any sudden rumor of an Indian raid upon their homes. We find Clark in March, 1781, complaining to Washington that Brodhead, who had de- clined to detach Gibson's regiment, kept men from his ranks, but the commanding general could well make allowance for the environments of danger at Fort Pitt, where Brodhead hardly knew whom to trust. He had, however, more than once (Feb- ruary 25 ; March 27) assured Washington that Clark should have his best support, while he accounted to the commanding- general for the apathy of the militia by saying that " they are availing themselves of the unsettled jurisdiction." Brodhead's condition was indeed 'desperate. He could get no supplies, and there was every indication of his being very shortly enveloped by hostile savages. Late in the winter (February, 1781) it was known that the Delawares outside the Moravian influence were moving west- ward along Lake Erie, professedly in search of game ; but it soon became certain that they were putting themselves within the range of British influence. When the spring fairly opened and the Cherokees were making hostile demonstration in the southwest, it was only too apparent that the Americans had hardly a friend among the warring tribes of the Ohio valley. With this condition of things, Brodhead, on April 7, led, with something of desperation, one hundred and fifty regulars from Fort Pitt against the recusant Delawares. At Wheeling his little force was strengthened by about as many militia under Colonel David Shepherd. Brodhead crossed the Ohio, fell upon the Lidian town at Coshocton, laid it waste, destroyed the cat- tle and stores, and returned with his plunder. He had by this movement pushed the Delawares back from the Muskingum and Tuscarawas, and forced them to the Scioto and Sandusky, and the}^ never returned. Some Christian Delawares, whom he had encountered at the Moravian stations, followed him back to Fort Pitt. Brodhead's success was in part owing to the misap- prehension which Simon Girty, now by De Peyster's orders among the Wyandots, had of Brodhead's strength. While the American expedition was pursuing its devastating march, Girty supposed that it comprised at least a thousand men, and that Clark had already started down the Ohio with as many more. It was this false information that held the Wyandots back. CLARK'S INSTRUCTIONS. . 193 That Clark's enlistments suffered from these movements by Brodhead was clear ; and the failure of Washington to send him recruits, as well as the uncertain jurisdiction of Pennsylva- nia and Virginia, rendered it very doubtful if he could move down the river by the middle of June, as he hoped to do. More than once in May (21st and 26th), Clark appealed to Wash- ington, "It has been the influence of our post on the Illinois and Wabash," he says, " that has saved the frontiers, and in a great measure baffled the designs of the enemy at Detroit. If they get possession of them, they will be able to command three times the number of valuable warriors they" do at present." The difficulty between Brodhead and Gibson was ripening. The latter officer, prevented by Brodhead from aiding Clark, was restless under the deprivation, and Clark intimated to Washington that positive orders from him would give Gibson the release he longed for. The exact scope of Jefferson's instructions to Clark had not yet been divulged, and wliat Clark let fall favored the belief that his purpose was in reality to succor the exposed Kentucky settlements. This pretense of Clark was evidently accepted by Haldimand, when he heard of it, as his true intent, for as early as May that general was sending word to Sinclair and De Peyster that the Americans would not enter Canada, and they must be attacked along their frontiers. He advised De Peyster to cease pamper- ing the Sandusky Indians, and to keep them busy in breaking u}) American settlements north of the Ohio. It was thus while the British were thinking themselves safe from assault north of the lakes, and intent on making their Indians wage a vicarious warfare, that Clark, near the close of July, 1781, embarking a force of only four hundred, out of the two thousand promised to him, and carrying three fieldpieces, began to move down the river from Pittsburg. On reaching Wheeling, he wrote to the governor — no longer Jefferson, who had resigned on June 1 — that he had " relinqiiished all expec- tations. I have been at so much pains," he says, " that the dis- appointment is doul)ly mortifying." His only hope was that he should learn that Detroit liad not been reinforced, which might yet encourage him to attempt its capture. As he went on, his force alternately diminished and grew by desertions and 194 EAST AND WEST. additions, and it bore a rather heterogeneous aspect when, on September 1, he reached Fort Nelson at the falls. De Pey- ster, at Detroit, better informed at last than Girty, had rather tardily sent down to the Ohio a force of a hundred rangers under Captain Andrew Thompson, and three hundred Indians under McKee, to watch for a favorable moment to waylay Clark. Joseph Brant and George Girty — the latter formerly one of Willing's marauders — were, fortunately for De Peyster, already astir. On August 24, at a jjoint eleven miles below the Great Miami, they fell upon a flotilla of mounted Pennsylvania volun- teers, one hundred and seven in number, under Colonel Archi- bald Lochry (Loughrey), following in the wake of Clark, and seeking to overtake him. A letter to Clark, sent forward by this lieutenant, had been intercepted and revealed the situation. Clark had not reached the falls when every man of this force was either killed or captured. They had landed to cook their breakfast and feed their horses, when they were suddenly at- tacked from both sides of the river. A third of them were killed, and the rest surrendered ; but the colonel and others, unable to march, were later murdered. Three days afterward, the victors, moving up the Great Miami, met McKee coming laggardly down from Detroit. The com- bined bodies were not deemed to be sufficient to assail Clark, now in his stockade at the falls, as they had learned on Septem- ber 9, when within thii^ty miles of that point. The enemy soon broke up, and a part, some two hundred in number, bent on mischief, were led by McKee and Brant to- wards the Kentucky settlements. Meanwhile Clark, fearing attack, lay inactive at the falls. About the same time, a Chero- kee chief, aided by some of these raiders, threatened the Cumberland settlements ; but Robertson effectually repulsed the assailants, and gained prestige enough to hold, for a time at least, his neighbors, the Choctaws and Chickasaws, in the interests of his people. As the summer advanced, the northern Indians gathered for an attack on Wheeling. Zeisberger, the Moravian, who had learned of the savage purpose, sent (August 18) warning messages, so that the attack when it came was expected, and the garrison of Fort Henry was prepared. The enemy were baffled, and with- BRODHEAD AND GIBSON: 195 drew, but not till they had taken some prisoners, and from one of them they had learned that the Moravians had forewarned the garrison. The result was hardly to be avoided. The Mo- ravians had proved spies and tale-bearers, while claiming immu- nity as neutrals, and, if the evidence is to be believed, they had been tortuous in their replies when accused of it. Gnadenhiitten, their settlement on the Tuscarawas, was therefore broken up by a party of Indians, Tories, and French partisans, under Mat- thew Elliot, who drove the missionaries and their Delaware neophytes to Sandusky first, and later to Detroit (October 25), where they could do less mischief. Brodhead, who had been complaining (August 29) to Wash- ington of the dissensions in his camp, owing to a divided head- ship between himself and Gibson, could have had little regret when, on September 17, he withdrew from Fort Pitt, leaving Gibson in command. Neither this new commander, nor Clark at the falls, had any longer a hope of reaching Detroit. Brod- head had been withdrawn by order of Washington, who at the moment of the change was closing about Cornwallis and York- town. The brilliant outcome in October of this movement in the Virginia peninsula gave Washington for a time little oppor- tunity to think of the situation on the Ohio, and of the barren issues there of the year's campaign. But neither Clark's abortive aims at Detroit, nor Greene's defeats in Carolina, were without results that told in the end. Greene could say of Eutaw (September 8) that it was " the most obstinate fight he ever saw," and that " victory was his." Notwithstanding the distresses of the campaign, Greene had rendered Yorktown possible. Clark had still a stronger hold, feeble as it was, on the northwest than De Peyster had. He had some seven hundred and fifty men at the falls, fed on rot- ten buffalo meat, and the savages surrounded him, and far and near the settlers were forted, but, as Haldimand acknowledged, Clark had still kept the British on the defensive between the Ohio and tlie lakes, a condition which occasional raids of the savages did not relieve. Haldimand charges it upon the capri- cious conduct of the Indian allies of the British that Clark's fate had not been decided, and the terror of Clark's name had done much to create that capriciousness. That Clark had 196 EAST AND WEST. escaped the expected fate determined, as it turned out, the future territorial allegiance of the great northwest. Cold weather settled down in November with Haldimand still ignorant of the fate of Cornwallis, and looking forward to another sea-son of hostilities on the Ohio. Now that Yorktowu had determined so much on the seaboard, Congress, which re- ceived an official notice of that victory on October 24, was within a month, as Livingston informed Franklin (November 26), preparing for an active campaign for the next season. When Franklin heard the great news from the Virginia penin- sula, he wrote from Paris to John Adams : " The infant Hercules in his cradle has now strangled his second serpent," referring to the news from Saratoga which sealed the French alliance four years before. Washington, scanning the future, saw the necessity of forc- ing decisive results beyond the mountains in the next cam- paign, and for this object General William Irvine was sent to take command at Fort Pitt. One of the earliest reports which Irvine made to Washington was that Lochry's neighbors of Westmoreland County, in Virginia, were disheartened at the havoc which that officer's defeat had made among the flower of their young men. They were accordingly seriovisly thinking of abandoning their county in the spring. On the other hand, the fact that the indecisive campaign of the last season in that region had not deprived the Americans of any territory had already, as Irvine reported (December 3), instigated " people of different places to concoct plans to emigrate into the Indian country, there to establish a government for themselves." This impvdse was in large measure owing to the continued uncer- tainty of the limits of the jurisdiction of Pennsylvania and Virginia. An agreement had been reached in the preceding April by which the five degrees from the Delaware should be determined on the southern boundary line of Pennsylvania. There had, however, been delays in running the bounds, so that the weary settlers were threatening to migrate beyond the dis- puted territory, and Irvine was reporting to Washington, in De- cember, that until the lines were drawn the militia were useless. There was also, doubtless, an adventurous spirit and some am- bitious projects interwoven with these restless motives. It was PENNS YL VA NIA B UNDS. 197 owing, perhaps, to the stringent acts which Pennsylvania passed against such an exodus that the Virginians in greater numbers than the Pennsylvanians were joining in the removals. The line which was expected to set at rest these disturbances was not in fact actually run in a provisional way till November of the next year (1782), and it was not confirmed till three years later (1785). Irvine felt that while the present time demanded, first of all, militar}^ success, it was not wise to inaugurate such remote PENNSYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA BOUNDARY DISPUTE. Note. —This cut is from N. B. Craig's Olden Time, Pittsburg, 1S4C, vol. i. p. 449. Key : is the finally established Pennsylvania line (curved and straight) is tlie line claimed by Pennsylvania. is tlie line proposed by Dunmore. — o — o — o is tlie line proposed by Virginia to be continued nortli by the curved line. autonomies. He was doubtful if even the established Kentucky settlements, or such posts as Fort Mcintosh, could be sustained till more peaceful times came. His purpose was to prepare the immediate frontiers against savage raids, and then to devote all available resources to following up the Indians to their destruc- tion, and to waste no time in merely burning their towns. He planned in the end to make, if he could, a sudden attack upon 198 EAST AND WEST. Detroit. He liad uo purpose to hold the straits, if he got pos- session of them, for the distance to Detroit was too great to transport supplies, and the British would still command the lakes. He expected only to make a dash and do as much damage as he could, and then retire, hoping in this way to imj^ress the Indians and acquire a temporary respite till the final influence of Yorktown towards a peace was made .clear. Washington, in his correspondence with Irvine, recognized the necessity and expediency of the movement, but nothing could well come of the i3rojeet during the winter. The tenacity with which, under all his disappointments, Clark had maintained his grasp on the northwest during 1781, made that year such a turning-point in the struggle with the mother country beyond the mountains as Yorktown had proved to be on the Atlantic slope. Not less important was the firm step forward which the States had made in the same interval in determining their political relations to this western country. Just one year from the time when New York had indicated a scheme of compromise, Virginia had retreated from her first pretensions so far as to offer (January 2, 1781) a cession of jurisdiction over the country north of the Ohio, if Congress would agree to certain conditions. To one of these, that the region should ultimately be partitioned into States, there could be no objection. Nor was it unreasonable to require Congress to reimburse her for defending this same region from the as- saults from Detroit, for there was then imsettled on her hands the just claim of Oliver Pollock for a very large sum which he had advanced to Clark in his necessities. Congress knew well enough its own indebtedness to the same ardent patriot, who had beggared himself in the cause, and had parted with all his property in New Oi'leans at a sacrifice, in his efforts to repay the money which he had borrowed from the chest of the Spanish king. Congress, as well as Virginia, had caused Pollock's embarrassment, and it might well meet the obligations of both. It was furthermore no unexpected stipulation that the French Canadians inhabiting this region, and who had so readily changed their allegiance, should be protected in their landed rights ; that all bounty lands which had been promised to the soldiers should be respected. It was no hardship for THE CONFEDERATION FORMED. 199 Congress to agree that all royal grants in that country should be held to be void. But when, by implication, Virginia asked that the claims of New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and that all claimants under native grants, both those of indi- viduals and of the Indiana Company, should be disregarded, and that the Kentucky country should be guaranteed to her, she arrogantly asked more than Congress could possibly concede. To take these and all other propositions, from whatever source, into consideration. Congress on January 31, 1781, instituted a committee, who proceeded to call upon all the claimant States and grantees to make a showino- of their riohts. New York moved promptly, and directed her delegates to execute a deed to Congress of the territory west of a self-im- posed boundary following the meridian of the western end of Lake Ontario, but requiring a guarantee of her territory east of that line if Virginia secured such a pledge. This deed was executed on March 1, and Maryland, having authorized her delegates in anticipation, on the same day signed the articles of confederation, in the belief that the crisis was ]3assed. The next day Congress began to head its bills, " The United States in Congress assembled." Matters rested till October, when, just as the toils were tight- ened about Cornwallis, and a committee of Congress stood ready to hear Virginia and her rivals formulate their respective claims, that State stood aloof (October 16) and contended that any presentation of her position was not consistent with her dignity, and ten days later she vainly tried to embarrass the committee and limit its powers. On November 3, the committee made its report. They rep- resented that they had not obtained from Virginia the same assistance which had been furnished them by the rival claim- ants. The committee, as was expected, made the most of tKe opportunity to aggrandize the Iroquois claim of New York, both north and south of the Ohio, and to belittle that of Vir- ginia. They attempted to show this depreciation by setting the rights of the Iroquois, the grants which the traders of the Indi- ana Company had received, and the limits fixed by the procla- mation of 1763, against the charter rights of 1609. It was farther claimed that the crown lands as George the Third had defined them had fallen natui-ally to the revolting colonies as 200 EAST AND WEST. a whole. The grant to the VanJalia Company, though legally instituted, was held to be too large for public policy, while it might be expedient to make some compensation to the propri- etors in the final settlement ; but that the assumed holding of the Illinois and Wabash Company had no warrant in law what- ever. The committee closed with urging Virginia to make an unrestricted cession. Madison, who was fearful that Virginia would take deep umbrage at the report, still hoped that the seven States necessary to act on the committee's report would save Virginia from such huuiiliation, and indeed the report as a whole was never acted upon, since it was seen that the cession movement could get on better without such friction. And here the matter rested at the close of 1781. We have seen that, beneath the lowering skies of the open- ing of the year (1781), Congress had taken the initiative and Virginia, notwithstanding her recent reproach to New Eng- land, had abandoned her demand for the free navigation of the Mississippi in order better to gain the adherence of Spain. Jefferson sent instructions to that effect to the Virginia dele- gates on January 18. Some weeks later, Virginia moved in Congress that the river below 31° be yielded to Spain, if she would guarantee the free navigation to the United States above that point. On February 15, Congress, supine and in despair, instructed Jay to yield, if it was found necessary to the securing of a Spanish alliance. As the weeks went on, there was a prac- tical abandonment of all beyond the mountains, except so far as France might dictate the retention. Congress was even ready, pending an acknowledgment of independence, to agree to a truce with England, if France and Spain would deny that gov- ernment the occupation of all it had claimed. The degradation was complete when, on June 11, to Luzerne's delight, nine States, which were mainly those occupied by the enemy, forced through Congress a vote, leaving absolutely to France the definitions of the American bounds. Luzerne felt so sure of his victory that he informed his government that Congress would be content with the Ohio, if not with the Alleghanies, as a frontier. The surrender to France once made, all sorts of notions prevailed as to what could be saved of the western country. It was hoped, by yielding the Fort Stanwix grant of 1769 beyond the Kana- JAY IN MADRID. 201 wha, — requiring at the same time the destruction of all neigh- boring fortified posts, — to satisfy France ; but if more was demanded, they hoped to appease the Franco-Spanish avidity by yielding, " for the use of the Indians," Niagara and western New York, and all the western slope of the Alleghanies, except so far as the charter of Pennsylvania covered the territory about the forks of the Ohio. These altei*native schemes are outlined in a paper by Gouverneur Morris, preserved in the Sparks man- uscripts. Virginia at one time (June 8) tried in vain to get a vote in which the western bounds were defined as leaving the St. Lawrence where the 45th parallel struck that river, and then proceeding by the lake to the Miami (Maumee), and so to the soui'ces of the Illinois, and down that river to the Mississii)pi, but not another State had the courage to insist upon it and save the conquest of Clark. While everything was fluttering to the death in Philadelphia, the soul of Jay in Madrid was rasped almost beyond endur- ance. He knew the ministry to be " insincere and mysterious," and it is pretty well proved, as he then feared, that his letters were opened in the Sjianish ])ost-office. He was conscious that those to whom he was granting diplomatic courtesies knew more of what Congress had done than was permitted him to know. He got intimations from Gouverneur Morris that led him to conjecture the truth. Finally, however, he obtained his luckless instructions, and on July 13 delivered them formally to Florida Blanca. He could now, at least, talk with him for the future upon terms more equal. By August, Congress had received Jay's response. Joseph Jones gives us his version of Jay's chagrin : " The Dons are l)laying a game wholly for themselves." When Congress awoke to this, with a spurt of valor, it voted August 10, unanimously, to yield nothing to Si)ain. l^efore this determination could have reached Jay, he sought to force a decision out of the laggard and tortuous S})anish ministers. On September 22, he made a formal proi)osition to relinipiish the navigation of the Mississippi below 31°, intimating the great- ness of the concession, inasmuch as it must retard the settle- ment of the country. He told tlie minister that the concession nuist be accepted immediately, for it could not be held to if 202 EAST AND WEST. defeiTGcl to the general peace. He assumed this bold front with the same spirit with which he had tried to impress on Congress that their wavering was a mistake, and that any spirit was better than one " of humility and compliance." The bluster failed, and Jay was obliged to confess to Congress, when he next wrote (October 3), that Spain insisted on the entire con- trol of the Gulf of Mexico, and the exclusive navigation of the Mississippi. " The cession of the navigation of the Mississippi will, in my opinion," he added, "render a future war with Spain unavoidable." Before the president of Congress had received this, Oliver Pollock at New Orleans, with ample knowledge, was writing to the same official that the United States must insist on a port of deposit near the Houmas village, twenty-two leagues above New Orleans, where there was high land, and that they must claim a pilot stand at the Balize. Four days after Pollock wrote this, Cornwallis surrendered, and there was clearing; weather. CHAPTER XII. PEACE, 1782. The suiTender o£ Cornwallis ; the disjaosition of Parliament to peace ; Conway's successful motion (February 22) to dis- continue the war, which led North to exclaim, " We are beat completely ; " Burke's triumphant hopes, — all were recogniza- ble signs of the coming end of the dragging conflict. The British held a few ports on the seaboard, but by July they had evacuated Savannah. Such Atlantic footholds were not likely to interfere with America's securing an unbroken coast from Maine to Florida, though there was to be an attempt to make the country east of the Penobscot the price of the final surren- der of such ports. AVhile there was little opportunity for French machinations along the eastern slope of the Appalachians, it was otherwise beyond the mountains, and the progress of events in the great western valleys might in the coming months (1782) be of cardinal importance in settling the ultimate bounds of the Eepublic. Possessions in the northwest, as they stood, favored the per- manence of the American occupation, if there should be no great disaster during the coming season (1782). Ilaldimand, as commanding along the northern frontier, showed no disposi- tion to be active. Guy Johnson was eager to make a dash on Fort Pitt, and Roeheblave, now restored to the Canadian ser- vice, thought that a show of force on the Ohio might swerve the Kentuckians from their alleaiance to the confederated States ; but Ilaldimand gave little encouragement to any move- ments beyond a projected one of De Peyster to dislodge the American settlers about Chicago. Clarke still held his post at the falls, and was anxious to make it the rallying-place of patrol boats on the Ohio, but with a treasury of four shillings and " no means of getting more," 204 PEACE, 1782. he could do little. The place, however, was already beginning to bustle with a transit trade. One Jacob Yoder, an adventur- ous trafficker, had brought in the spring some merchandise from the seaboard to the Monongahela, and from Old Redstone on that stream he had floated it down the river to the falls, in search of an ultimate market in New Orleans. There was a belief that by faithless acts, some Moravian Indians, who had returned to the Muskingum, had threatened the quiet of the river. So, with little hesitation, a party of Pennsylvanians, under David Williamson, had ruthlessly fallen upon them. It was a natural retribution when, in June, Colonel Crawford, under Irvine's orders, led a party against the Dela- wares on the Sandusky, and this unfortunate leader was captured and burnt at the stake. In August, a still harder blow was dealt by Captain Caldwell, with a party of British rangers and Indians, dispatched by De Peyster, when an attack was made on Bryant's Station, resulting, a day or two later, in a counter struaale of some mounted Kentuckians at the Blue Licks. This conflict proved to be one of the severest defeats which the frontiersmen ever sustained. A few weeks later, a force of British and Indians made an assault on Fort Henry (Wheeling). Colonel Zane and a feeble garrison happily sustained themselves till succor arrived. Before the season closed. Major Craig, sent from Fort Pitt, made a useless reconnoissance (November) towards Sandusky, while at the same time Clark, animated by revenge for the season's disasters, starting from the falls, led a thousand men against the Miamis, and devastated their towns. It was the last brilliant dash of a man who, amid the whirls of disappointment, was soon to surrender himself to evil habits, and drop out of memorable history. He had now made the final rude onset against British power in the northwest, as he had made the first four years before. Though Haldimand, on the British side, had, in the main, throushout the season counseled defensive measures, it had not been easy for him to prevent retaliatory strokes. Brant had hoped, while the year was closing, to give a finishing blow. Before the progress of the negotiations in Paris were known to presage peace, this savage chieftain had planned an attack on Foi^t Pitt, but learning of the excellent condition in which Irvine had put that post, he desisted. NEW YORK AND VERMONT. 205 Thus it happened that negotiations for peace were going on in Paris while the fortunes of a desultory conflict were swaying hither and thither beyond the mountains. There was in the west, as in the east, no marked change in the position of the combatants as the season closed. It was, consequently, as we shall see, mainly the attitude of France and Spain touching this very western country, rather than the demands of England, which caused perplexity in the settlement of the boundaries of the new nation. Indeed, the good results of the final treaty we mainly owe to England, for by playing into the hands of our more bitter enemies, France and Spain, she could have seriously hampered the young lie- public at its birth. While the surgings of the war had not affected the relative possessions of the belligerents in the west, the relations of the States to that territory had, pending the negotiations for peace, been carried to an effective stage. Congress was brought in January (1782) squarely to affirm that the confederated States had succeeded to all the charter rights of the sea-to-sea colonies, as abridged by the Treaty of 17G3. Thus the ground was con- veniently cleared when, on May 1, 1782, Congress set itself to consider the committee's report of the preceding November 3. The main thing to be dealt with was the acceptance or refusal of the deed which had been offered by New York. Thei-e were reasons why Virginia kept a jealous and watchful eye upon her Northern rival. The Southern State saw danger in the press- ing Vermont question, for if that district was admitted to the Union, it meant, as New York claimed, that Congress could , decide between a State and a portion of the same State seeking autonomy. Such a result might prove a precedent, as Virginia saw, for Congress to partition that State's domain in accepting i Kentucky. The success of Vermont would bode furtlier ill to Virginia, in that the admission of that Northern State to the confederation would swell the vote of the non-claimant States, in considering the proposition of the committee to despoil Vir- ginia of her rights, by accepting the conflicting claims of her rival, New York. It was clear to Virginia that if Congress decided for New York, it threw the whole force of the confed- eration aa'ainst her. 206 PEACE, 1782. The country was in something like a death struggle, and was impressed with a belief (however futile it proved to be) that a public domain at the west was going to fui"nish means to pay the expenses of the war. Under these circumstances, there was little chance that the rival claims of Virginia and New York would be dispassionately weighed, since measures in legislative bodies are not always, under the stress of war, pushed to just conclusions. The question of the relative value of these rival claims has not indeed proved easy of solution in later times. Bancroft holds all claims but Vii-ginia's to be invalid. The Supreme Court of the United States, in Johnson v. Mcintosh, while j^ro- nouncing against Indian titles as opposed to European pre- emption, may seem so far to have sustained the position of Virginia. But the historical question is complicated by the royal annulment of her charter in 1624, though the Virginia publicists have contended that further action in 1625 showed that the consequent possession by the crown of the original territorial limits did not deprive the colony of its rights of juris- diction ; nor was this again affected, as they further claimed, by the proclamation of 1763. In Congress, at least, at this time and later, the native grant was sustained, and pointedly, for the Indiana title, being a native one, was upheld, and the Vandalia title, being a royal preemption, was voided. We have seen that Thomas Paine had raised a new issue in giving a construction to the terms of the charter of 1609 which was opposed to that maintained by Virginia. The charter, it will be remembered, makes one of the lines running back from the coast proceed due west, while the other turns northwest, and both by a vague implication were supposed to strike the western ocean. Virginia's due west line was the North Caro- lina boundary, and the northwest one that which cut off the westei-n parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania and extended indefinitely towards Alaska, abridging thereby also the west- ern extension of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Paine's due west line struck back from the coast at the Maryland line, while his northwest line struck inland at the south till it joined the west line or entered the western sea. This water was held at that time (1609), as Paine contends, to be so near the Alleghanies and beyond their western slope that the two lines, NEW YORK CESSION. 207 as he understood them, would probably touch the sea before they collided, and so warrant the expression of the charter, that they extended to that sea. Paine contended that this construction gave a more reasonable limit to the colony than the extent claimed by Virginia, which was large enough to embrace fifty colonies. It will be seen that this view disposed at once of the controversy so long and bitterly waged by Vir- ginia with Maryland and Pennsylvania, and affected the juris- diction of the upper Shenandoah. Congress, however, was clearly determined not to decide be- tween disputed interpretations, if a settlement could be reached by the voluntary cpiitclaims of the rival States. The mani- festations of the hour were easily colored by predilections. Madison fancied the Middle States, which had been opposed to Virginia by reason of the numbers of their citizens who were interested in land companies, were now drawing to the Virginia side. The Northern people said that Virginia was, on the contrary, losing ground, and even Madison, rather than con- tinue the contest, at last felt disposed to yield everything that would not benefit the arrogant land companies. The purpose of these he thought might be thwarted by setting Kentucky up as a new government. Indeed, if Irvine's observations were correct, there had grown during the summer, beyond the movm- tains, a strong disposition for more than one such separate government. The question of the acceptance of the New York deed came up in Congress a month before the peace commissioners in Paris had closed their labors, and Virginia stood alone in casting her vote against it. After a struggle of six years, the policy to which the constancy of Maryland had contributed, but which Congress had more wisely shaped, was now established. The New York deed, based on the various treaties with the Iroquois in 1684, 1701, 1726, 1744, and 1754, as the committee's reixu-t of August 16, 1782, enumerated them, conceded to Congress the fee in the territory between the lakes and the Cumberland Mountains, with a stretch westward, and all under a title which Madison styled " flimsy." He charged New York with urging her jurisdiction, not so much to maintain it, as to secure some credit for her cession of it. The true Virginian plea was that tlie Iroquois, while they could confer the right of occupancy, 208 PEACE, 1783. could give no title against the prior discovery of other Chris- tian people. If the New York title had validity, it really left to Virginia but a renniant of her supposed jurisdiction to be surrendered as indisputably hers. Congress had decided that to accept this New York claim was sufficient for the occasion, as setting an example to be followed by the other claimant States, and its action practically banded the confederation in that ob- ject. Unless Virginia was bound to stand for her rights, — and the event proved she was not, — and unless Connecticut and Massachusetts and the States south of Virginia were to assume a position equally perverse, — and the event proved they were not, — the question of a great public domain was thus oppor- tunely settled, a month before the provisional treaty of peace was signed at Paris, when Congress, on October 29, voted to accept in due form the deed offered by New York, While thus in two important ways the relation of the West to the new Republic had been settled on its own soil, we need now to turn to a consideration of the di})lomatic foil and fence at Paris, which were ended on November 30, 1782, in a provi- sional treaty of peace. This diplomatic struggle had resulted in a distinct American triumph, owing in large measure to the prevision and daunt- less convictions of Jay, and to a natural revulsion in the minds of the other American commissioners against both open and sinister efforts of Vergennes, — a revulsion reluctantly reached, however, by Franklin. John Adams was confident that the western population could not be appeased if their expectations were abridged, and he had proved himself a courageous ally of Jay, and had insisted that with firmness and delicacy — the latter not precisely his own trait — the commissioners could get all for which they contended. Franklin was never any- thing if not politic. Shelburne's opinion of him was that " he wanted to do everything by cunning, which was the bottom of his character," and most Englishmen have taken that view of him ever since. He was certainl}' never more astute — which may be a more pleasing word — than in now yielding to Adams and Jay : and he was never more successfully judicious than in disarming the resentment of Vergennes, when that minister dis- covered how he had been foiled. So peace and independence PEACE SECURED. 209 were triumphantly won, and what the AVest most needed for its future development was gained. The new boundaries had been settled on lines that ultimately startled even those who had conceded them, and constituted one of the grounds for the later assaults by Fox and his adherents. Of the eight hundred thousand square miles of territory with which the young Republic entered upon her career, one half of it, of which France and Si)ain would have deprived her, lay west of the Alleghanies. This broad extension was but the begin- ning of an ultimate domain, which is measured to-day by three and a half millions of square miles. The courts in the United States have always held that the territory secured through this treaty was not a concession of conquered lands. It was rather the result of a rightful partition of the British empire upon lines which had bounded the American colonies. Livingston, in letters to Franklin in January, 1782, had enforced this view : "The States," he says, "have considered their authority to grant lands to the westward coextensive with the right of Great Britain." This extension to the Mississippi, he again says, " is founded on justice ; and our claims are at least such as the events of the war [referring to Clark's successes] give us a right to insist upon," while the settlements in the West "render a relinquishment of the claim highly unpolitic and unjust." To secure these bounds, the American commissioners had acted almost defiantly towards France. Lee understood their spirit when he asked in Congress : " Shall America submit the destiny of the west to France, while Spain, her ally, stands ready to grasp it ? " Hamilton read Congress a lesson, when he said that it was not France who could have extorted froni us " humiliating or injurious concessions as the price of her assist- ance," but Congress, who placed France in a condition to do it, by imposing on the commissioners the obligation of deferring to Vergennes. This degradation had been felt in Congress, and to a demand to recede from it, the friends of those instructions had apologized for the injunctions by declaring them only for- mal ; but no one then knew that France had intrigued to secure their enactment as a means to save the western country to Sjiain. It was fortunate that under Ja^^'s lead the commission- ers disregarded those instructions, and Adams certainl}^ did not construe them as imposing the necessity of following the advice of Verofennes. 210 PEACE, 1782. When Liviugston, after the treaty was signed, called the conduct of the commissioners in question for making the treaty without the privity of Vergennes, Jay fittingly replied that France could have no complaint, since the treaty had nothing in contravention of the treaty of 1778 ; that it coidd not be bind- ing till France had concluded a general treaty ; and that the instructions presupposed France would act in the interest of America, while it was proved she was planning for Spain's and her own advantage. Thi explanation of Jay gave the tone to the advocates of the commissioners in Congress. Richard Henry Lee said that France deprived herself of the right of privity when she began to plot against her American ally. Kutledge and Arthur Lee contended that the public good re- quired the action of the commissioners. "The English," said Vergennes, when it was all over, "had bought rather than made a peace." While all Europe was wondering at the British concessions, it is not difficult to under- stand the British motive. The party of peace, which Grenville Sharp represented, had got the upper hand. The stubbornness of King George and his advisers had given way to those indu- bitable principles which often wreck the present to settle the future. It had become necessary to decide whether Canada should be environed with a kindred people, or with the race of Bourbon aliens. As early as January, 1782, Livingston, in the uncertainty of the future, had intimated to Franklin that a neutral Indian territory beyond the mountains would be preferable to a direct British contact in that direction. In this the American foreign secretary was not probably fully aware of the purposes of France and Spain. In June, DAranda gave to Jay a copy of JMitch- ell's map, on which he had marked what he proposed to make, if he could, the western limits of the American States. It showed a line I'unning north on the back of Georgia to the mouth of the Kanawha, and so to Lake Erie. It afPoixled a recognition of the oi-ants which had been later made in the ter- Note. — The opposite section of a Carle generale des Treize Etals Unix et Independants de VAmerique Seplentrionale d^apres M. Bonne, Ingenieur Hydrographe de la Marine de France, 1782, shows tlie French view of the limits of the United States, to be allowed by the treaty, — the line running soutli from " SandosktS fort " on Lake Erie. The dotted line at the top of the map extends to Sandusky on Lake Erie. 212 PEACE, 1782. ritoiy restricted by the proclamation of 1763. All this was as far as the Bourbon cabinets were inclined to go. To this was opposed the American argument that the very prohibitions under that proclamation were an acknowledgment of the States' inherent charter rights, which that instrument had only tempo- rarily assailed, as Livingston had rehearsed to Franklin. This line drawn on Mitchell's map was the first clear indica- tion of what Spain was striving for. D'Aranda coupled his graphic argument with claiming that the Spanish capture of the Illinois fort had pushed their rights eastward till they reached the territory belonging to the Indians. Jay hardly needed the promj^tings of recent instructions from Livingston to deny the Spanish conquest and to maintain the American rights. Rayneval now put into Jay's hands a paper in which he tried to show that after 1763 England had never considered the western country a part of her " established " colonies, and that Spain never acquired the territory above the Natchez. The country between the Spanish possessions and the Alleghanies was, as he claimed, the inheritance of the natives, and to secure them in their rights he proposed a tortuous line, running north from the Gulf to the mouth of the Cumberland, on the east of which the Indians should be under the protection of the Americans, and on the west the Spanish should have a similar supervision, with an exclusive right to the navigation of the Mississippi. In September, Jay acquainted Vergennes that it was his determination to abate nothing of the Mississippi claim. It was a sign to the French minister that he had both alertness and firmness to deal with in the American commissioners. De Grasse, after being captured by the British fleet in the West Indies, had been taken to England, and, passing on parole from London to Paris, he is thought to have carried an intimation from the English cabinet which induced Vergennes to send Rayneval to the English capital. Oswald believed that Rayneval's object was to bring Shelburne to allow that both banks of the Mississippi should go to Spain. If he could have accomplished this, Vergennes, as Rayneval intimated in a paper which he gave to Jay, was prepared to sup])ort England at the final settlement in a demand for the limits of the Quebec Act. Rayneval had never agreed with Jay's views, and had thought VERGENNES AND SHELBURNE. 213 any concession made by the American commissioner too small. In pressing upon Slielburne the necessity of hemming the Americans in on the west, he revealed for the first time to the English cabinet what was really the purpose of France and Spain, and opened the English mind to what North had warmly contended for, — the integrity of the bounds of 1774 in the Ohio valley, both as a justice to their Indian allies, and as preserving the forts which they had erected north of the Ohio. It brought back the old proposition of Vergennes, made two or three years before, of closing the war by dividing the western countr}^ between England and France. Vergennes's present purpose was patent. He wished to weaken the United States, and he desired to have England acknowledge that the bounds of Canada ran to the Ohio, so that if ever a turn in fortune rendered it possible, France could recover by treaty her possessions in the St. Lawrence valley. Just what Rayneval's purpose was in this English mission has been a subject of controversy. Diplomatic denials in the mouth of such a man count for little. If we take his ostensible instructions as evidenc^e, they contravene the charac- ter of both Vergennes and his creature. It is necessary always to remember that Vergennes never had any purpose but to aggrandize France. Slielburne was clearly suspicious. He saw that to release the Americans from the French toils, and from any evil to Britain resulting therefrom, was to give the new nation an extent of territory which would conduce to its dignity and buttress its independence against Bourbon intrigue. Oswald, the English agent, in talking with Franklin, signifi- cantly hinted at the recent Eussian discoveries " on the back of North America" as affording a possible base for a friendly power to move against Spain, if that country drove both Eng- land and the United States to extremities. "• This appeared a little visionary at present," said Franklin, " but I did not dis- pute it." So the Spanish and French Bourbons were thwarted in reality by the adhesion of England to her old colonial charters, and by her purpose to make them an inheritance for her emancipated colonics. The conquest of the northwest by Clark told in the final result rather more against the pretensions of Spain than 214 PEACE, 1782. against those of England. Clark himself, in Mai'ch, 1780, had suspected that Spain would gladly have had the British capture all posts east of the Mississippi, so that they might be retaken by her troops, to establish there a claim which would serve to help her to their possession at the peace. Confess had indeed formulated its right to the trans-Alle- >oels SOURCE OF THE MISSISSIPPI. [A reference to so well known a map as this of " North America " by Samuel Dunn, dated in 1774 (nearly twenty years later than Mitchell's), and making part of the American Military Pocket Atlas, issued for the use of British officers, by Sayer and Bennett, London, 177G, only six years before the negotiations of 17S2, might have thrown doubt on the geography of the earlier map, if much attention had been paid to the point.] ghany country on these ancient charters, and it had not recog- nized that there was in the proclamation of 17G3 any abatement of those rights. Neither in the negotiations at Paris, nor in the planning for a public domain, had this profession been lost sisrht of. Of the territory which the treaty had saved to the Ameri- cans, Jefferson said at the time in his jVotci< on Virf/iina : " The country watered by the -Mississippi and its eastern branches Note. — The opposite map is from " A Plan of Captain Carver's Travels in 176C and 17C7," in his Travels, London, 1781. It shows the relation of White Bear Lake (touching 47''), the supposed source of the Mississippi, to the Lake of the Woods. Z. Jl KE D U li OIS ^AXTD o^VE SSI f^^ PLAI2