USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 10
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
renewed the charge to suffer a new repulse, with redoubled carnage. Their principal column advancing against the center of our works was opposed by the strongest part of our lines, consisting of Tennessee and Kentucky marksmen, at least six men deep. These poured forth a sheet of fire, which cut down the ranks of the enemy like grass by the scythe of a mower. Yet their heavy columns pressed on with such force and desperation, that many of their men at last entered the ditch in front of our breastworks, where they were shot down in heaps at the very muzzles of our guns.
Slaughtered, shattered, and disordered, they were again forced to retire. Their leaders, however, apparently resolved on victory or total destruction. again rallied and brought them up a third time to the charge. But their principal officers being now slain and disabled, and their strength greatly broken and spent, this last effort was less successful than the former. They were soon forced to fall back in disorder on their column of reserve, with which they pursued a precipitate and disorderly retreat to their camp, under a galling fire from our batteries, leaving the field covered with the dying and the dead. General Packenham was killed, and Generals Keane and Gibbs were both severely wounded, the latter of whom died a few days afterward. Colonel Rannie was also killed, a brave and intrepid officer, who, in the second charge, entered the bastion on our right, at the head of his men, but was immediately slain and his followers repulsed by our brave regulars and Beale's company of city riflemen. The action lasted about an hour, and terminated in a decisive and total defeat of the enemy.
On the other side of the river our armies experienced a reverse. The battery erected by Commodore Patterson was constructed for annoying the enemy across the river, and raking the front of our works on the left side. During the attack this morning it was employed in that way with consider- able effect. But before the action ceased on the left, an attack was also made on the right bank. The eighty-fifth regiment, with some seamen and marines, having crossed the river opposite the British camp, and led by Col- onel Thornton, advanced under cover of some field pieces, and put to flight some troops commanded by Major Arno, who had been sent down to oppose their landing. Continuing their march up the river, they next attacked the two hundred Kentuckians under Colonel Davis, who had been sent half a mile in front of our works to oppose them. After a sharp skirmish. Colonel Davis retreated by order of General Morgan. with the loss of about thirty men, in killed, wounded, and missing. Having reached the entrenchment, he was ordered to post his men on the right of the Louisiana militia. The guns in the battle could not be employed against Colonel Thornton until they were turned in their embrasures, which was not undertaken until it was too late to accomplish it before the charge was made. General Morgan had five hundred Louisiana militia safely posted behind a finished breastwork, which extended two hundred yards from the battery, at right angles to the river, and was defended by three pieces of artillery. The one hundred
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KENTUCKIANS WRONGFULLY BLAMED.
and seventy remaining Kentuckians on his right were scattered along a ditch three hundred yards in extent, and still further on the right there were sev- eral hundred yards of open ground entirely undefended. In this situation of things, the enemy, with steady pace, continued advancing to the charge in two columns, under the cover of a shower of rockets. Their right column, advancing next the river, was thrown into disorder and driven back by Morgan's artillery ; the other, advancing against the Kentuckians, was re- sisted by their small arms till a party of the assailants had turned their right flank and commenced a fire on their rear. Overpowered by numbers in front, assailed in their rear, and unsupported by their companions in arms, they were at last compelled to retreat from their untenable position. The Louisiana militia then retreated also from their breastwork and artillery be- fore they had felt the pressure of the enemy. Commodore Patterson, per- ceiving how the contest would issue, spiked his cannon, and was ready to join in the retreat with his marines. The enemy pursued them some dis- tance up the river, and then returned to destroy the battery and other works.
Patterson and Morgan were conscious that they had acted badly, the former in not turning his guns in time, and the latter in leaving his right flank weak, uncovered, and unsupported, while his main force was uselessly concentrated behind the breastwork. They determined to throw the whole blame of the defeat on the handful of Kentuckians who had the misfortune to be present and to do all the fighting that was done, except a few dis- charges from the artillery. They induced General Jackson to report to the war department that "the Kentucky re-enforcement ingloriously fled, draw- ing after them, by their example, the remainder of the forces," and the commodore, in his report to the navy department, stigmatized them in terms still more offensive. A court of inquiry was demanded by Colonel Davis, before which the facts were proven as above detailed. The court, how- ever, merely pronounced the Kentuckians excusable. This being deemed unsatisfactory, General Adair again pressed the subject on the commander- in-chief, and at last obtained a dry. reluctant sentence of justification. The detachment did all, at least, that could be expected from brave men, if it was not entitled to the praise of uncommon gallantry.
Our victory on the left bank of the river was very complete and decisive. The inequality of loss in the opposing armies was probably unparalleled in the annals of warfare; ours being only six killed and seven wounded in the main battle, while that of the enemy was estimated at two thousand six hun- dred in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Immediately after the action an, armistice for a few hours was craved and obtained by the enemy. for the purpose of burying their dead and taking care of the wounded. A line was then designated across the field of battle, to which they were allowed to come; and between that line and the breastwork, four hundred and eighty- two dead bodies were counted and carried out, while it was estimated that upward of two hundred lay upon the outside of it. The killed was, there.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
fore, set down at seven hundred; and supposing, as usual, that twice that number were wounded. the whole killed and wounded would be twenty-one hundred; five hundred prisoners were captured, making a total of twenty- six hundred.
Lieutenant-General Packenham, who was killed, was an officer of great distinction. He was brother-in-law to the celebrated Lord Wellington, un- der whom he had been trained. Most of the troops he commanded had also fought and signalized themselves under that commander in Spain. Our effective force engaged at the works, according to the official returns, was a little upward of four thousand, of which two thousand were Tennesse mili- tia, one thousand Kentucky militia, and more than one thousand regulars and Louisiana militia. The force engaged on the part of the enemy was not known, but his whole number present was believed to be between eight and ten thousand, the original force of the expedition having been much above those figures.
Though the enemy succeeded in their enterprise upon the right bank of the river, they met with considerable loss there also. Their killed and wounded in that affair being near one hundred; among the latter, Colonel Thornton, severely. Our loss was comparatively small, perhaps not half that number.
After setting fire, not only to the platform and carriages of the battery, but to all the private dwelling-houses for several miles along the river, the detachment retreated over to the main camp, carrying with them two field pieces and a brass howitzer. The object of the enterprise was to wrest the battery from Patterson before the main attack was made, with a view to employ it in raking Jackson's line, instead of flanking their own columns. From some cause, the detachment did not get over the river as soon as they intended, and in time to prevent the battery from answering the purpose for which it had been erected. Morgan and Patterson immediately reoccupied their old position, when the enemy retreated. They began to drill the can- non and repair the works, and in a few days were again ready for efficient service.
On the day after the great battle, an attack was made by the enemy on Fort St. Philip, commanded by Major Overton, with a view to bring their armed vessels up the river, to co-operate with the land forces in the capture of the city. Major Overton received intelligence of their intention as early as the tst of January, and was well prepared. They doubtless had intended to carry the fort, and get up the river in time for the main contest, but were prevented by the difficulty of ascending.
On the 9th, two bomb-vessels, a brig, a sloop, and a schooner came to anchor about two miles below the fort, and commenced an attack with set- mortars of ten and thirty inches caliber. They continued the bombardment nine days without intermission, and without molestation, for their position was beyond the range of the guns in the fort. In this period they threw
501
THE ENEMY'S RETREAT.
upward of one thousand large shells, besides a great many small ones, with round and grapeshot, from boats, under cover of the night. A large mor- tar, in the meantime, was sent down to the fort, and in the evening of the 17th was brought to bear upon their vessels, which induced them to with- draw at daylight next morning. The loss in the fort was two killed and seven wounded, so judicious had been the preparations and policy of Major Overton to meet the attack.
As soon as intelligence of the attack had been brought to headquarters, a battery, mounting four twenty-four pounders, with furnace to heat shot, had been erected to burn the shipping of the enemy should they succeed in capturing the fort, or in passing it with their armed vessels.
Preparations were now making by General Lambert and Admiral Coch- rane for a retreat. An exchange of prisoners took place on the 18th, by which all our men who had been captured and not sent to the shipping were recovered and restored to their country. In the night of that day, the enemy made good their retreat from the banks of the Mississippi to their boats and small vessels, and commenced embarking their troops and bag- gage for their large vessels, still lying off Ship island, in the Gulf of Mexico. In their camp, they left fourteen pieces of heavy artillery, a quantity of shot, and eighty of their wounded, with a surgeon to attend them, all of whom had been so disabled in their limbs that recovery would not render them fit for service. The retreat was not accomplished without molestation. Such was the situation of the ground which they abandoned, and through which they passed, protected by canals, redoubts, entrenchments, and swamps, that General Jackson did not think proper to press upon them in the rear with his whole force. But an enterprise was successfully conducted against their light vessels on the lake by Mr. Shields, the purser of the navy. After the battle of the gunboats, Mr. Shields had been sent down under a flag of truce, to ascertain the fate of our officers and men, with power to negotiate an exchange, especially for the wounded. But the enemy would make no terms. They treated the flag with contempt, and himself and the surgeon who was with him as prisoners. Before they retreated, however, they lowered their tone, and begged the exchange that we had offered. Defeat had thus humbled the arrogance of an enemy who had promised his soldiers " forty-eight hours of pillage and rapine in the city of New Orleans."
When the intention of the enemy to retreat was discovered, Mr. Shields was sent out through Pass Chef Mentiere, in five armed boats and a gig, manned with fifty sailors and militia, to annoy their transports on Lake Borgue. This service he undertook with great alacrity, as he was anxious to avenge the personal insults and injuries he had experienced. He suc- ceeded, without loss on his part, in capturing and destroying a transport brig and two boats, and bringing in eighty prisoners, besides capturing sev- eral other boats and a number of prisoners whom he was obliged to parole.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
CHAPTER XXV.
( 1816-46. )
Belligerent period, 1775-1815. Of peace, 1815-46.
Inventors-John Fitch, Rumsey, West, Barlow, and Kelly, the inventor of the Bessemer steel process.
Madison made governor, 1816.
His messages.
Chickasaw purchase.
Virginia's claims to lands.
The Kentucky and Tennessee boundary settled.
Financial distress.
Forty banks chartered.
Rapid failures of same.
Bank of the Commonwealth chartered in 1821.
Depreciation of its bills.
Relief and anti-relief measures.
Old Court and New Court contest.
Final issues.
Census of 1820.
Manufacturing in Kentucky.
Oddities of legislation.
Desba governor, 1824.
Protects against assumptions of United States banks and Federal courts.
Metcalfe defeats Barry for governor, in J828.
Jackson defeats Adams for president.
Exciting issues.
Clay involved for Adams.
President Jackson destroys the United States bank.
New State banks.
Inflation, followed by collapse, 1837 to 1840.
Internal improvement system of Ken- tucky.
Turnpikes. River navigation. State aid. Canal at Falls of Ohio.
State and Federal aid.
Now owned by United States.
First railroad built in United States.
Experiments at Lexington, in 1831 Ludicrous mistakes.
First train to Frankfort. in 1835.
Religion and its progress since 1800.
Small schisms in the Baptist Church, in 1803 and 18c9. Elder Vaughn.
Baptist statistics.
Georgetown College.
Presidents, D. R. Campbell, B. Manly, and R. M. Dudley.
Other Baptist colleges.
Theological seminary.
Thomas P. Dudley.
Christian Church.
Alexander Campbell.
Preaching and doctrines.
B. W. Stone.
Union, in 1832.
Campbell's great debates.
Statement of views.
John T. Johnson.
John Smith.
Kentucky University.
Other colleges.
Presbyterian Church.
Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
Membership in Western Kentucky and Tennessee.
Doctrines and organization.
Parent Presbyterian Church.
New School schism in 1838.
Conciliation and union in 1857.
Political feeling causes another division. sectional.
" Declaration and testimony" of 1865.
Separation and union with the Southern Assembly at Mobile, in 1860.
Leaders of North and South divisions
5º3
THE INVENTORS OF KENTUCKY.
Southern Church founds Central Uni- versity at Richmond.
History of this institution.
R. L. Breck, first chancellor.
L. H. Blanton, his successor.
Its endowers and promoters. Statistics of this church.
Centre College.
Its age and work. Presidents John C. Young and Ormond Beatty.
Faculty.
Finances.
Statistics of the Northern Presbyterian Church.
Catholic Church.
History and work.
Archbishop Spalding.
Methodist Church.
Growth and work.
Bishops Henry B. Bascom and Hubbard H. Kavanaugh.
North and South divisions of the Meth- odist Church.
Statistics. Augusta College. Millersburg College.
State College.
Agricultural, Mechanical, and Normal
departments.
Breathitt governor. 1832.
Jackson defeats Clay for the nomina- tion for president.
Clark governor in 1836; Letcher in 1840.
Van Buren president in 1836; Harri- son in 1840.
Financial disorders, 1837-42.
Banking experiments.
Issues of Clay campaign.
Relative increase of white and black population. Causes.
Abolition agitations.
"Underground railroad." Cassius M. Clay. His printing-office destroyed by a mob in 1845.
With the termination of the second war with England, in 1815, ended what may be termed the belligerent period of forty years of domestic and foreign strife in Kentucky history. The present chapter introduces us to an entirely opposite period of peace, which embraces the succeeding thirty years. In this era of more fortunate repose, we are called upon to give the greater emphasis and attention in the pages of our history to questions of statesmanship, of social and industrial development, and of science and art. which engrossed the public mind in the absence of military procedures and achievements.
Already, the inventive genius of Kentucky citizens had achieved results which have spread their fame throughout the enlightened world. We have mentioned before the adventurous visit to Kentucky of John Fitch, the first practical inventor of steamboats, and his capture by the Indians, in very early pioneer days. He was a surveyor, and pre empted one thousand acres of land on Simpson's creek, in Nelson county, for himself, and located also for others. He was possessed of an original and inventive mind. While on the banks of the Ohio, beholding with admiration the broad and beau- tiful river, the thought came to him, like an inspiration, that the divine hand had not fashioned such a magnificent stream of water without designing it for some nobler purposes of navigation than had hitherto been applied. Already, under the inventions of Watts, steam was being used as a motive
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
power in the mills of England; and the genius of invention on both shores of the Atlantic for years had been busy with experiments to multiply and extend this revolutionizing motor to the uses of navigation. Fitch com- pleted his first steamboat, and announced it ready for a trial trip on the Delaware river, in 1786. The propelling instruments were paddles sus- pended by the upper ends of their shafts, and moved by a series of cranks. The boat was sixty feet in length. The trial trip was a success. Other steamers were built by Fitch in 1787-88-89, and run between Philadel- phia and Burlington, making a speed from four to seven and a half miles an hour. As early as 1785, he had vainly petitioned Congress, and the Legislatures of several States, to grant him aid to perfect and practically apply his inventions. In manuscripts opened after his death. he touchingly says : "The day will come when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from my invention ; but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention." He resumed his experiments in 1796, in New York, using a screen. James Rumsey, a Virginian, who emigrated to Kentucky, was engaged in experiments in the United States of the same character as early as 1784, and in 1786 drove a boat on the Potomac, near Shepherdstown, at the rate of four miles an hour, by means of a water jet forced out at the stern. Rumsey subsequently went to Eng- land, and continued his experiments on the Thames.
As early as 1783, an authority states that Fitch and Rumsey, without con- nection or acquaintance, executed plans for steam vessels on the great rivers and lakes, and along the indented seacoast. A spirited and heated contro- versy between the two was carried on, as to who first successfully applied the new motor to the propulsion of boats. Mr. Fitch assured a friend that on his way from Kentucky to Philadelphia. in passing through Winchester. Va., he met Mr. Rumsey, and in conversation disclosed to him his inven- tion, and his purpose in going East with it. In 1813, Robert Fulton was defeated in a suit in New York to enforce his claim to the original invention of steam navigation, by the opposing counsel producing in court a pamphlet of Fitch's, which proved certainly that both Fitch and Rumsey had prior claims.1 After full investigation, there remains no reason to doubt that Fitch was the first practical inventor of the steamboat. Disappointed and despondent, about 1796, he returned to his home near Bardstown, Ken- tucky, and gave himself up to ruinous intemperance, and died a few years after. His remains lie buried in the town graveyard.
Edward West, of Lexington, constructed a steamboat on a small scale, in 1794; and in the presence of hundreds of citizens he had the gratification to see it move with rapidity through the water, in an experimental trial on the Lower Fork of Elkhorn, previously dammed up near the center of the city of Lexington. In 1802, he had patented, on the same day, his steam- boat invention, a gun-lock, and a nail-cutting and heading machine. The
I American Cyclopedia. Collins, Vol. II , p. 649.
5º5
THE "BESSEMER STEEL PROCESS."
latter was the first ever invented, and in twelve hours cut over five thousand pounds of nails. It enabled Lexington at that day to export nails to Louis- ville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. 1 Thus Kentucky was the home and burial place of the first inventors of steam as a motor for the purposes of naviga- tion.
But the most fertile genius of invention that Lexington produced was Thomas H. Barlow. In 1827, he built a model locomotive for a railroad, with car attached for two passengers, with power to ascend an elevation of eighty feet to the mile. His most complex and wonderful production was Barlow's Planetarium, showing the planets and their most minute fractional relative revolutions. This was the only instrument in the world that perfectly imitated the motions of the solar system. In 1840. Mr. Barlow invented a rifled cannon, which is believed to have originated or suggested most of the rifled guns patented in this country and Europe. Another of his inventions was a nail and tack machine, which was promptly purchased and utilized by capitalists.
Kentucky must be credited within her borders and by one of her citizens with another of the most important inventions of the age, the discovery of the pneumatic process of converting pig-iron into steel, now known world- wide as the " Bessemer Process." In 1846, William Kelly, formerly of Pitts- burgh, located near Eddyville, on the Cumberland river, and engaged in the manufacture of iron, operating two furnaces, the Suwanee and Union. These became well known for the large sugar kettles manufactured at the former furnace for the planters of Louisiana, and for the superior charcoal bloom of the latter. He was a man of remarkable originality and fertility of mind. Becoming dissatisfied with the results of slave or negro labor, which he was compelled mainly to rely on in Kentucky, he conceived and ventured the experiment of substituting it with Chinese labor, then an entire novelty in the country. Through a New York tea house he succeeded in importing a first installment of ten. The arrival created much curious ex- citement; and especially to the negroes the appearance of the pig-tailed Celestials was the occasion of irrepressible merriment and sport. Fifty more were soon to follow, but a rupture with the Chinese Government put an end to importation for the time. Mr. Kelly's knowledge of chemistry and metallurgy led to investigation and experiments looking to the improve- ment of old methods of iron manufacture : and to conceive the idea that the crude metal could be at once converted into malleable iron or steel, without the use of fuel. by simply taking the fluid metal from the ordinary furnace and placing it in a suitably-constructed furnace or convertor, then by apply- ing powerful blasts of air from beneath and through the molten mass, effect a combination of the oxygen of the air with the carbon of the metal. thus producing combustion, and decarbonizing and refining the iron; or, if found desirable, to discontinue the process at a point where sufficient carbon would
I Collins, Vol. II., p. 174.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
be left in the iron to make it steel. When he announced his theory to his forgemen-who had always known the iron chilled by air blown only over its surface-that he would boil metal by simply blowing air through it, they were incredulous, and naturally believed it would be chilled.
These veteran forgemen did not know of the affinity of oxygen with carbon to produce combustion and heat, a common principle of chemistry. They had consumed enormous quantities of charcoal fuel to produce this result of greater heat, and at great cost to production. They were not less sur- prised than convinced, therefore, when the experiment of forcing currents of air through the molten iron intensified the mass to incandescent heat, and that the effect was to decarbonize and refine the metal without the use of a pound more of fuel. Thus again the knowledge of the scientist triumphed over the experience of the artisan. Mr. Kelly made his demonstration in 1851, some four years after his first conceptions, and used it to advantage in his business for years. Situated in what was then almost a wilderness, and the nearest country press even thirty miles away, he was too isolated to take advantage of the invention, and to advertise it to the world. But such an important discovery could not long be hid away, even in this soli- tude. There were some English iron-workers present who took much interest in the experiment, and predicted that the "new process" would "soon make itself felt, and supersede all others." In 1856, Henry Bessemer, an iron manufacturer of England, got out in that country the first patent for the pneumatic process, to which his name has been given. He secured patents the same year in this country. More than a year before Bessemer was heard of, many steamboats on the Ohio river, chiefly built at Cincin- nati, were using boiler-plates similar to the " Bessemer boiler-plates," made from iron prepared by " Kelly's air-boiling process." Mr. Kelly attempted to anticipate Bessemer in getting out a patent in the United States, but was delayed by the bad faith of an attorney to whom the matter was entrusted. and for whom Bessemer had out-bid. A caveat was granted by the Patent Office, the claim heard by the commissioner, who decided that Kelly was the inventor and entitled to the patent, which was issued. These expired in 1871, when all applications for renewal were rejected, except to Mr. Kelly, whose patent was revived for seven years, as he was adjudged the first inventor.
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