USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 5
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456
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
the clearness of its statements and invincible cogency of its reasoning. The qualities of leadership were instinctively asserted, and conceded for lifetime.
At the session of 1810-11, the question of a re-charter of the Bank of the United States was brought before the Senate, and became the subject of a debate noted in our congressional history for its intemperate violence and splendid displays of eloquence. On this occasion, Mr. Clay was found op- posed to the re-charter of the bank, and maintained his views in a speech of great ingenuity and power. He afterward, in 1816, saw reason to change his opinions, and since that time was firm in the support he rendered to such institution. The explanation of this alteration of opinion is in the peculiar views held by American statesmen at that day in reference to the construction of the Constitution. The vital subject of difference in prin- ciple between the old Federal and Democratic parties related to the inter- pretation of that instrument.
In 1808, Mr. Madison succeeded Mr. Jefferson to the presidency. Gen- eral Charles Scott was elected governor of Kentucky, Gabriel Slaughter, lieutenant-governor, and Jesse Bledsoe appointed secretary of state.
From the governor's message to the General Assembly, we gather the following resume: 1 Reference is made to the existing crisis as likely to call out the energies of the country, alluding to the foreign relations of the United States. Then it is suggested that the way to avoid force is to be in a situation to repel it. Represents the militia on parade days as appearing frequently with guns without locks: and, worse than this, with a mere apology for weapons. He then recommends the manufacture of arms among ourselves ; and adverts to the requisition of fifty-five hundred, made by the president from this State, as her quota of one hundred thousand militia or- dered to be held in readiness. Home manufactures, the standing topic, is touched on and recommended.
He adds: " It will be with you, gentlemen, to say whether from the present posture of our affairs and the privations I have noticed, it will not be just and politic to give debtors some respite by prolonging the time for replevy. The revenue is recommended to attention. The Senate is told that it is expected to assist the governor in selecting proper persons to till public offices."
The foreign relations of the United States were becoming every year more strained and critical. The retaliatory laws of non-intercourse with Great Britain and France, in return for their continued blockade decrees, embargoes, and interruptions of American commerce, had kept alive a spirit of irritation, which was inflamed to the point almost of open rupture. by the attack of the English frigate Leopard on the United States war vessel Chesapeake. The intensity of feeling against Great Britain led all to become deeply engrossed in national politics. It was evident that it w.is . but a question of time when this state of feeling would bring the issue of war.
I Marshall, Vol. II., p. 458.
457
THE BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE.
An important act of this period was the charter of the Bank of Kentucky in 1807, with a capital of one million dollars. During the next year's ses- sion, the limitation in actions of ejectment was changed from twenty to seven years, where there was actual residence, and claim under adverse entry. This act mainly quieted litigation upon original conflicting claims. Humphrey Marshall was its author.
The census of 1810 showed Kentucky to be the seventh State in the Union in point of population, which aggregated four hundred and six thousand five hundred and eleven. Of these, there were three hundred and twenty-four thousand two hundred and thirty-seven whites, seventeen hundred and seventeen free colored, and eighty thousand five hundred and sixty-one slaves. This was an increase in ten years of eighty-four per cent. The slaves had increased over ninety-nine per cent.
On the 7th of November, 1811, the battle of Tippecanoe was fought in the northern part of the Territory of Indiana. General William H. Har- rison, one of the most experienced and successful Indian fighters with regular troops that the country had produced, was in command of this mili- tary district. Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, were the leading spirits to incite to Indian hostilities. under the instigations of the British officials and agents. Tecumseh, the Shawanee chief, was the great leader in the war policy of the tribes. For some time he had been strenuously engaged in forming a grand confederacy of all the tribes, both north and south, for a concerted war on the whites, to exterminate them, or drive them eastward of the mountains again. At the time of the battle, he was on this mission among the Southern tribes, and, after vis- iting the Cherokees, Creeks. Choctaws. and Chickasaws, he crossed the Mississippi and pursued his route northwardly to the Des Moines, and thence returned to the Wabash. THE PROPHET, ELS-KWAU-TA-WAW. only to witness and deplore the ruin of his brother, the Prophet, and his fol- lowers. In his absence, General Harrison had forced the fighting, and at the doors of the wigwams of the savages. The issue was a decisive victory for the whites, and a signal and sanguinary defeat for the Indians under the Prophet. The army of Harrison was made up mostly of regulars, and only such Kentuckians as had volunteered their services were present to partici- pate. Among the slain. who fell gallantly fighting in the front, were the distinguished Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daveiss. the prosecutor of Aaron Burr. and the dauntless Colonel Abraham Owen. of Shelby county, both worthy of honorable mention in Kentucky history.
458
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
1Colonel Abraham Owen immigrated from Virginia in 1785, and settled in Shelby county, where his father established a fort near Shelbyville. His first military service of which we have mention was with General Wilkinson, in his campaign on the White and Wabash rivers, in 1791. He was lieuten- ant in Captain Lemon's company in St. Clair's defeat, in which engagement he was twice wounded. He was also with Colonel Hardin in the campaign and action with the Indians on White river, in which the latter were routed. He commanded the first company raised in Shelby county, and was soon promoted to be a major, and then a colonel, taking an active part in defense at home and in campaigns abroad. He served with distinction as a spy in Wayne's campaign. No citizen rendered more willing and valued services as a neighbor and friend. and none was more respected and beloved among the people with whom he dwelt. He filled several local offices creditably, and soon after Wayne's victory was overwhelmingly elected to the Legislature.
In 1799, he was elected from his county a member of the convention to frame the second Constitution of the State, and shortly before his death, he was a senator in the General Assembly of Kentucky. No man in the county had a stronger hold on the affections of the people.
In 1811, he was the first to join General Harrison at Vincennes to resist the threatened hostilities by Tecumseh and the Prophet. He was chosen to be an aid-de-camp to Harrison, and fell at the side of his chief in the rage and midst of battle, bravely contributing to the victory he was destined not to witness. His death caused profound grief throughout the army and in Kentucky, where he was so well known. As a soldier, he was fearlessly brave, self-possessed. and firm; as a citizen, he was amiable and gentle- manly. He died thus. at the age of forty-two years, in the very prime of manhood, leaving a family of sons and daughters, who settled at Newcastle, where a number of the descendants yet live. Two of his sons, Colonel Clark and James Owen, were pioneer settlers in Texas, and participants in the Texas war for independence. Colonel Clark Owen. an officer in a Texas regiment, was slain in the famous battle of Shiloh. in the late civil war. It is a notable fact that father and son, with chivalric spirit. voluntarily left endeared homes and families and fortunes. and became martyrs to a sense of duty they felt that they owed to their country and cause. Posterity can not forget such deeds of devotion, nor to venerate the memory of men deserving to be ranked among the heroes of our history.
COLONEL JOSEPH WA'AILTON JAVE SS. 1 Collins, Vol. II., p 6 ;?
459
COLONEL DAVEISS' LIFE.
1Of Colonel Joseph Hamilton Daveiss, much has already been said, in connection with his prosecution of Burr. . He, too, was brought out from Virginia at the age of five by his parents, who settled near Danville in 1779. An incident is related of the mother on- the trip through the wilderness, which may somewhat forecast the character of the son: In crossing the Cumberland river, Mrs. Daveiss was thrown from a spirited horse which she was riding and her arm broken. The party only halted long enough to bind up the limb with what rude skill they had, then pursued their route, Mrs. Daveiss again riding a horse and carrying her child in her lap before her. Young Daveiss passed through the usual privations of pioneer life, and received such educational advantages as the country afforded, and which he improved to his credit, evincing unusual talent. When but eighteen years of age, he volunteered to join Major Adair's command, to guard the transportation of provisions to the forts in Northern Ohio, in 1792. After his return from this service. he entered upon the study of law in the office of Judge George Nicholas, then considered the first lawyer in Kentucky. He entered a class of students composed of Isham Talbott, Jesse Bledsoe, William Garrard, Felix Grundy. William B. Blackburn. John Pope, William Stewart, and Thomas Dye Owings, all of whom became distinguished at the bar and in the public history of the country.
Daveiss pursued a course that rarely fails to develop the man of intellect- ual power and character. He was a laborious and indefatigable student, accustomed himself to repose on a hard bed, and at regular and prompt times, exercised by walking two or three hours a day, and sought seclusion in the hours of devoted study. In connection with his studies, he found time to read standard works of history and literature, so that when he came to the bar, his mind was richly stored with knowledge varied and profound. imparting a fertility and affluence to his resources, from which his fertile and well-trained mind drew supplies inexhaustible. On entering upon the practice of his profession at Danville, he rapidly accumulated business in all the courts on which he attended. In a few years, he removed to Frankfort, where he could more conveniently practice in both State and Federal courts, and in 1801, he argued the celebrated case of Wilson vs. Mason in the Su- preme Court of the United States. He was the first Western lawyer who appeared as counsel in that court, and his rare learning and elocution are said to have made a profound impression.
In 1803, he was married to Anne Marshall, sister of the chief-justice of the United States. In 1809, he removed to Lexington, where he lived un- til his death In the courts there and at the capital, for the two intervening years, there were but few very important cases in which he was not counsel for one side. In I811, he volunteered to join the army of Harrison in the Wabash campaign, and on the 7th of November, in the battle of Tippecanoe, he fell in a charge against the Indians, made at his own solicitation.
: Collins, Vol II., p 154.
460
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
Colonel Daveiss was a man of commanding appearance, being near six feet high, with an athletic physique. His bearing was grave and dignified, and unusually impressive. He had few equals in oratory, and as a conver- sationalist he was unsurpassed. Such competent judges as Judge Boyle, John Pope, and Samuel McKee, frequent associates at the bar, said of him that he was the most impressive speaker they had ever heard, and these had listened to Henry Clay.
On the accession of General Harrison to the command of the North-west, General William Russell, of Kentucky, succeeded him in the Western ter- ritory. He was born in Culpeper county, Virginia, in 1758. His father was General William Russell, a distinguished officer of the Revolution. He was reared from early boyhood on the south-western frontier of Virginia, and at a very early age entered the service of the State as a volunteer. In 1774, he served on an expedition in Powell's Valley under Daniel Boone. and was constantly in service thereafter, acting as adjutant to Colonel Will- iam Campbell, at King's Mountain, Whitsell's Mill, and Guilford Court- house. In 1783, he removed to Kentucky and settled in Fayette county at a place known for nearly a century as " Russell's Cave." He was soon found in the service of his adopted State, serving under Generals Scott. Wilkinson, and Wayne in their several campaigns against the Indians, in which he evinced great military talent. He was appointed by President Madison, in 1808. colonel of a regiment in the regular army. He partici- pated in the battle of Tippecanoe, and when General Harrison was trans- ferred to the command of the army in the North-west, Colonel Russell succeeded him in the command of the frontiers of Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. He, with Governor Ninian Edwards, of Illinois, planned the ex- pedition against the Peoria Indians, which proved an entire success. He rendered much service in civil life, representing Fayette county in the Vir- ginia Legislature in 1789, and in the Kentucky Legislature thirteen sessions. His patriotism was life-long, and in private life his character was of the purest and most elevated type. He died at his home July 3, 1825, where his ashes still repose.
1 At two o'clock in the morning of December 16, 1811. was felt the first destructive shock of the great earthquake on the Mississippi river and its shores, in the vicinity of Fulton county, Kentucky, and New Madrid, Mis- souri; the most disruptive and extensive in its effects ever known to occur in the United States. It spent its greatest force in South-west Kentucky. North-west Tennessee, and in Missouri, opposite.
After shaking the valley of the Mississippi to its center, and extending its vibrations all over the valley of the Ohio, to Pittsburgh and beyond. it passed the Alleghanies and their connecting mountain barriers, and died away along the shores of the Atlantic ocean. 2 During the continuance of
1 Collins, Vol. II . p 282 Letter of Dr. Lewis F. Linn
2 Letter, dated February r. 1836, from Dr Lewis F. Linn, United States senator from Missouri.
461
THE EARTHQUAKE OF 18II.
this appalling phenomenon-which commenced by distant rumbling sounds, succeeded by discharges as if a thousand pieces of artillery were suddenly exploded-the earth rocked to and fro ; vast chasms opened, whence issued columns of water, sand, and coal, accompanied by hissing sounds, caused, perhaps, by the escape of pent-up steam; while ever and anon flashes of electricity gleamed through the troubled clouds of night, rendering the dark- ness doubly horrible. The current of the Mississippi was driven back upon its source with the greatest velocity for several hours, in consequence of an elevation of its bed. But this noble river was not thus to be' stayed. Its accumulated waters came booming on, and, overtopping the barrier thus suddenly raised, carried everything before them with resistless power. Boats, then floating on the surface, shot down the declivity like an arrow from a bow, amid roaring billows, and the wildest commotion.
A few days' action of its powerful current sufficed to wear away every vestige of the barrier thus strangely interposed, and its waters moved on to the ocean. The day that succeeded this night of terror brought no solace in its dawn. Shock followed shock; a dense black cloud of vapor over- shadowed the land, through which no struggling sunbeam found its way to cheer the desponding heart of man-who, in silent communion with him- self, was compelled to acknowledge his weakness and dependence upon the everlasting God. Hills disappeared, and lakes were found in their stead; numerous lakes became elevated ground, over the surface of which vast heaps of sand were scattered in every direction; in many places the earth for miles was sunk below the general level of the surrounding country, without being covered with water-leaving an impression in miniature of a catastrophe much more important in its effects, which had preceded it ages before. One of the lakes formed is sixty or seventy miles in length, and from three to twenty in breadth; in some places very shallow, in others from fifty to one hundred feet deep, which is much more than the depth of the Mississippi river in that quarter. In sailing over its surface in a light canoe, the voyager is struck with astonishment at beholding the giant trees of the forest standing partially exposed amid a waste of waters, branchless and leafless.
In a keel-boat moored to a small island in the Mississippi river, about eighteen miles below the boundary line of Kentucky and Tennessee, the crew was frightened almost to helplessness by the first terrible convulsion. This was before two o'clock in the morning of December 16, 1811. At half-past two o'clock A. M., another, only less terrible, shock came on-a shock which made a chasm in the island four feet wide and over three hun- dred feet long. Twenty-seven shocks, all distinct and violent, were felt and counted before daylight. They continued every day until the 21st of De- cember, with decreasing violence-indeed, they were repeated at intervals until in February, 1812. The center of the violence was ascertained to be about Island No. 14, twenty-two miles below New Madrid, Missouri, which
462
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
is opposite Fulton county, Kentucky, in the wide vicinity of which the traces of the frightful convulsion are yet frequent and marked.
A scientific English gentleman, 1 who happened to be upon the above keel-boat, became cool enough to record his observations. He noticed that the sound which was heard at the time of every shock always preceded the shock at least a second, originated in one point and went off in an opposite direction. And so he found that the shocks came from a little northward of east, and proceeded to the westward.
In the legislation of 1811-12, among others, bills were passed granting lands, at ten cents per acre, to aid in building iron and salt-works in Wayne and Pulaski counties; assenting on the part of Kentucky to the proposed amendment of the United States Constitution, depriving of citzenship any one accepting title of nobility or honor. or receiving presents or office from foreign emperor, king, or prince; requiring all State and judicial officers and attorneys at law to take an oath against duelling, or participating in a duel, or negotiating a challenge; granting lotteries-one to improve the Kentucky river, one to repair the road from Maysville to Washington, and another to build a church on the public square at Frankfort, for the free use of all sects or denominations.
The messages of Governor Shelby during the term following 1812 bear grateful testimony to the general internal prosperity of the State ; severely animadvert on the insincerity and vacillation of Great Britain in effecting overtures for peaceful negotiations, while taking advantage of the delays to prosecute the war with more relentlessness, advising such measures as will render the militia forces most available for the demands upon Kentucky in the prosecution of the war; advise amendment and reform of the revenue laws; in 1814, recommend the appointment of a judge specially for the General Court; note the losses and delays sustained by the treasury by the failure of the judges to hold court at the regular terms: urge the repair of the penitentiary, and provision for the greater safety of the prisoners; that rooms be rented for the accommodation of some of the public officials, until the new state-house is finished, to replace the old one burned; and assure that the secret-service fund placed at the disposal of the governor remains unexpended, no occasion demanding its use.
I John Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, pp. 199-207.
8
463
SUMMARY OF THE EVENTS OF 1812-15.
CHAPTER XXIV.
(WAR OF 1812-15.)
Governor Shelby elected for a second term.
Congressional act to relieve Boone.
Loses all again.
Dies poor.
War with England again.
Causes.
Orders in council and decrees.
Once more allied with France.
One hundred thousand soldiers called for by the president.
Kentucky allotted five thousand five hundred.
Ten regiments volunteer.
Rendezvous at Cincinnati.
News of Hull's surrender.
The disaster.
General James Taylor and wife.
Hull court-martialed, and sentenced to be shot.
Wasted efforts.
All troops put under General Harri- son.
Fort Wayne relieved.
Fort Harrison attacked.
Battle of Mississiniway.
The country and weather impede opera- tions.
Navy for Lake Erie.
Battle of Frenchtown.
Battle and massacre of River Raisin.
British cruelties and bad faith.
They pay the Indians for American scalps.
Ransom of prisoners forbidden.
Three thousand Kentuckians called for. Governor Shelby commands.
Siege of Fort Meigs. General Green Clay, with twelve hun- dred men, to relieve.
Colonel Dudley's unfortunate move and disaster.
Massacres in cold blood-
Tecumseh stops it.
More British cruelties.
Siege raised.
Colonel Johnson's mounted regiment.
Second siege of Fort Meigs.
Major Croghan's gallant defense of Fort
Stephenson.
Great naval victory on Lake Erie.
How received.
General Harrison prepares to invade Canada.
Malden evacuated and burned.
Pursues the retreating British.
The victory of Thames river.
Charges of Colonel Johnson's mounted regiment.
Tecumseh slain.
Proctor's flight.
The battle-cry, "Remember Raisin !"
Tecumseh slain by Colonel Dick John- son.
Tribute to Governor Shelby.
Power of the British shattered in the North-west. Indian tribes desire peace.
General McArthur's expedition into Canada.
British invasion of the South-west.
Immense preparations.
Twenty-five hundred Kentuckians en- listed for New Orleans.
State of affairs in Louisiana.
Friends and traitors.
Sharp naval fight.
General Jackson proclaims martial law.
Address to the citizens.
First battle with General Kean.
Active work on the defenses.
First attack of Packenham on the 28th.
Second, on the Ist of January.
The great battle and victory of the 8th.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
Defeat on the right bank.
Two hundred Kentuckians, unsupport- ed, driven back.
Prejudice that misleads Jackson.
A court of inquiry.
Fort St. Philip bombarded.
Unjust aspersions of Patterson and Mor- gan.
The British retreat, and abandon Louis- iana.
In August, the favorite son of Kentucky, Isaac Shelby, was elected governor for the second time. Martin D. Hardin, son of Colonel John Hardin, treacherously murdered while on a peace mission to the Indians, was made the secretary of state.
During the session of the Legislature this year, a petition was presented by Daniel Boone. setting forth that all his lands which he had entered in Kentucky had been swallowed up and lost in the intricacies of the law and rival claims, and that, under the circumstances. he had migrated, in 1795, to the Spanish province of upper Louisiana, under promise by the governor of a grant of ten thousand acres of land in the district of St. Charles, on the Missouri river, the title to which was not completed, because it had to be done at New Orleans. On the cession of Louisiana to the United States. the commissioners appointed by the latter had been compelled to declare his claim null and void, and now "your memorialist was left once more, at about the age of eighty. to be a wanderer in the world, having no spot he can call his own whereon to lay his bones." An account of Boone's last years of life we have already given.
*
His last landed estate, donated by Congress, passed from his possession to pay a debt of reimbursement to a person in Kentucky to whom he had sold a tract of land there with a defective title, warranted by Boone. The purchaser lost his land at law, and the loss fell on Boone, taking from him a last time all the ground he had, "whereon to lay his bones."
Boone asserted that his lands in Kentucky had proved an injury to him. according to the rules of law. This led him to abandon the country he had called his "Paradise," in despair, and to declare, on the west side of the Mississippi, that he would never recross it again.
The interesting episode of the war of 1812-15 with England. though a topic for the history of the United States, involves also an important part of the history of Kentucky, whose soldiers played no inconsiderable part in its stirring events. The causes which led to this were long continued and various. Chagrin and resentment over her loss of the American colonies by the war for independence seemed to rankle in the bosom of the British since the enforced treaty of 1783, manifested mainly for years by the stub- born retention of the North-west posts, and the instigation by secret in trigues and bribes of the Indians to increasing hostilities against the front- iersmen, until the treaty at Greenville, by General Wayne, in 1795.
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