USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 16
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Shelby and Sevier. So furious is their assault, that those three columns are driven headlong down the hill. But at this very moment, the four columns on the left, having pushed up the hill and driven in the piekets, begin a close and heavy fire upon the regu- lars, who have here a slight breastwork of wagons, and are under the command of Ferguson himself. Capt. Dupoister, who had headed the charge on Shelby, is at once recalled, receiving as he comes a severe fire from Col. Williams' column, and is or- dered to charge again with all the regulars upon their new adversaries. Again the bayonets are levelled, and a desperate attack drives the riflemen to the foot of the hill, Major Chronicle being killed in the struggle.
It is of course, impossible for riflemen to withstand the shock of a bayonet charge. But the resolnte mountain men, though they retreat, do it only to re- new the fight; for the enemy dared not advance many rods from his vantage-ground above. As Dupoister returns from his charge on Shelby, to charge again on Cleveland and Chronicle, the columns of Shelby, Campbell and McDowell follow him up, rallying readily to the shout that the British are re- treating ; and pushing up almost to the British camp, they exchange a deadly fire with the tory riflemen at that end of the lieight. Again the bayonet is tried ; but already the fatal rifle-bullet has thinned the
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ranks of Ferguson's scanty band of regulars until the British colonel is forced to have his tories' butcher- knives stuck into the muzzles of their rifles, for bayonets, before he can muster a line strong enough for the charge. Down they come, however, and again the riflemen retreat before them ; but this time not so far, and after a comparatively feeble attack, Dupoister retired within his lines.
And now the American columns have surrounded the mountain, and closing in, a fatal ring of fire draws slowly and sternly up around the stubborn British colonel and his bold troops. While a fierce discharge is kept up at each end of the British posi- tion, Sevier's column now makes a powerful attack upon their centre. The British forces are partly concentrated to repel these obstinate assaults; and while a stubborn contest is maintained here, Shelby and Campbell, with one bold charge, reach the crest of the mountain at the end held by the tories, effect a lodgment, and slowly but surely drive their traitor- ous foes in toward the other extremity of the line.
Hotter and closer grows the ring of the fire; and still the levelled bayonets gleam on this side and on that, and the light-footed mountain men, vanish- ing before them, swarm back upon their footsteps the moment they halt, while the Americans on the opposite side seize the opportunity to advance again in their turn. But the charges of the wearied and
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fearfully diminished band of regulars grow less furious and shorter. And all the time Shelby and Campbell are creeping along the crest of the hill, driving the tories before them, crowding them in upon the regulars, the deadly mountain rifles pick- ing them off with fearful rapidity. Ferguson, cool and daring as ever, still rides up and down his line, encouraging his men, supporting the weakest places, exposing himself to every danger, and carrying in one hand, which has been wounded, a silver whistle, whose loud and piercing sound, heard over the whole battle-field, enables him to signal instantaneously to all his men. He sends Dupoister with the regulars to reinforce a weak position. It is but one hundred yards away; but before he reaches it, the fatal Deckhard rifles have left him so few men that their aid is not worth counting.
Ferguson now orders his cavalry to mount; in- tending to head them, and sweep down in a resistless attack upon the Americans. But they cannot mount, or if they do, they fall out of their saddles as fast as they reach them ; for lifted on the horses, they pre- sent a fairer mark for the rifles.
And still the ring of fire contracts ; and now, driven in disorder, far in from the British left, the tories, who always blenched first when they fought beside the regulars, dismayed and hopeless, raise the white flag of surrender. But Ferguson gallops up
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and tears it down. Then the regulars at the other end of the line raise another, and the heroic com mander, seemingly the only man left in the host rides back again through the fire and cuts it down with his sabre. This second time his brave subor- dinate Dupoister, who had admonished him before that further resistance was hopeless, and that he ought to surrender, admonishes him again. But he de- clares in the bitterness of his soul that he "will never surrender to such a damned set of banditti." And still riding desperately to and fro, he encourages and strengthens the wavering ranks, and alone restores the battle; for whenever his voice or his whistle is heard, the enemy rallies again, and fights bravely. But the riflemen, seeing that his resistance will end only with his life, after having seemingly spared him for his bravery for a long time, now forced to make an end of the contest, aim their fatal weapons at him. He falls, and dies at once.
Dupoister, now left in command, seeing that his men, few in number, crowded in disorder together, and falling rapidly under the dreadful concentrated fire of the Americans, could no longer hope for sue- cess or safety, almost immediately raised the white flag again, and called out for quarter. The fire of the Americans ceased, except from a few young men, who either did not know what the flag meant, or sup- posed it would come down again as before. Shelby
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called out to the British to throw down their arms, which they did; when all firing ceased, and the Ame- ricans, after one hour's hard fighting, were com- pletely victorious.
Ferguson's force was annihilated ; for two hundred and twenty-five were killed, nearly two hundred more disabled, and all the rest, more than seven hundred, prisoners. Not one man escaped. The Americans had lost about thirty killed, and sixty wounded. En- camping on the battle-field that night, they rose early, and at dawn-a peaceful Sabbath dawn-went forth and buried their dead. Then they burned the wagons of the enemy, and prepared to return to the mountains, with their seven hundred prisoners, fifteen hundred stands of arms, many horses, and a great mass of supplies and booty. In the midst of a tory neighborhood, near Cornwallis, and with more pri- soners than they could sarely spare guards to watch, the mountaineers were seriously embarrassed with their success. Taking the flints out of the captured arms, however, they made the strongest of the pri- soners carry them ; marched all day at a "present," keeping close watch on the prisoners, and at sundown met the remainder of their own force, with whom they kept on westward until the fourteenth. Then, halting near the foot of the mountains, they held a court-martial upon sundry of the tory prisoners, atro- cions violators of the laws of their country and of hu-
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manity ; condemned thirty of them to the death which they had a thousand times richly deserved ; but hung only nine of the worst, respiting the re- mainder. Justice thus executed, Sevier and his force crossed the mountains, and put themselve in readi- ness to defend their homes, if necessary ; while Camp- bell, Shelby and Cleveland guarded their prisoners northward to secure captivity.
This bold and splendid achievement was the turn of the tide in the affairs of the war. Without it, it is difficult to see what limits could have been set to Cornwallis's victorious progress northward, unop- posed as he was by any embodied force, and daily reinforced in camp by tory levies, while other gangs of those ignoble banditti, starting up everywhere, were daily riveting the chains of the hateful British authority over all the South behind them.
But the destruction of Ferguson and his host ex- ploded in the midst of Earl Cornwallis's plans like a thunderbolt in a powder magazine. It scattered them to the four winds of heaven ; the few fragments left for reconstruction formed only a frustrated and strengthless plan ; and the pause of astonished terror that followed afforded time for the dispirited Ameri- cans to rally again, and enter upon that series of ope- rations so gloriously consummated at Yorktown.
When Cornwallis heard the news, magnified by its journey into the startling story that the victorious
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host of riflemen, three thousand strong, were in full march toward his camp, he instantly gave up, for the time, his northward march, struck his tents, marched back toward the south all night in the greatest confusion, crossed the Catawba, and never stopped until he reached Winnsboro', a hundred miles away, where he remained, quiet and frightened, for three months. During this respite, the North Carolina whigs rallied and gathered in considerable force. General Smallwood, with his veteran and celebrated Maryland corps, and Morgan's riflemen, strengthened them. Gates soon joined thiem, with the sad remains of the Southern army. From Hills- boro', a thousand Virginians came down. General Nathaniel Greene assumed the command of this new force in December, and America was again in a con- dition at least to face the foe, and maintain, with re- newed courage, the contest which seemed to have been decided upon the terrible field of Camden. To those hardy sons of the wilderness, the mountain men of eastern Tennessee and western Virginia, in all probability, is due the glory and the praise of having decided the question of the acquirement of our na- tional independence.
Lecture VII.
SKETCHES OF
CHARACTER AND ADVENTURE IN THE WEST,
TO THE FAILURE OF BURR'S EXPEDITION, 1806.
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SKETCHES OF
CHARACTER AND ADVENTURE
IN THE WEST,
TO THE FAILURE OF BURR'S EXPEDITION, 1806.
THE close of the Revolutionary struggle left our ancestors weak and well-nigh disabled by their long, unequal contest, and torn by internal dissensions and broils. Threatened by external force, the govern- ment impoverished to the last degree and as credit- less as a notorious spendthrift, the currency depre- ciated as far as depreciation was possible, all things seemed to portend dismemberment and anarchy ; a state far worse than that in which the commence- ment of the struggle found them. But the bound- less recuperative energies peculiar to our people, came to their rescue, and out of the wild chaos of inharmonious elements, there arose in course of time the magnificent fabric of civic order, symmetry, and splendor, beneath whose protection we and our children sit.
I have spoken of the depreciation of the cur- rency. In Virginia, at the close of the Revolu-
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tion, a bowl of rum punch cost five hundred dol- lars, in the ordinary currency of the time; in New England, a mug of cider was once bought for one hundred dollars. "Part of an old shirt " was valued, in an inventory of an estate, at three pounds. Gen. Green Clay, an eminent surveyor and citizen of the State-or rather, at that time, the District-of Ken- tucky, riding a spirited horse from the west side of the mountains to the east, disposed of him to one of the French officers attached to the army which aided Washington in the taking of Cornwallis, for the moderate sum of twenty-seven thousand dollars, which he invested in wild western lands; and these, forty years ago, were worth half a million of dollars.
The bond which held the colonies together was of the slightest imaginable description. The old Congress had limited powers, and was afraid to use what it had ; rarely daring to assume any responsibility.
What was to be done ? How should the treasury be replenished ? How should the credit of the country be established ? Virginia, always the readiest of the sisters of the confederacy to do what in her lay to speed any good work, assigned to the general govern- ment that magnificent domain which belonged to her in virtue of conquest ; which the perseverance and heroism of her sons, inspired and guided by the indo- mitable energy of George Rogers Clark, had wrested from the power of Britain and made her own property.
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All that vast and splendid country, afterward known as the Northwestern Territory, was thus given freely to the general government, in order that by the sale of its lands to emigrants and settlers at such a moderate price as their resources would justify, the coffers of the Republic might be filled. Massachusetts had a partial claim to what is now the State of Ohio; but always desiring to look before she leaped, always keeping a sharp eye on the main chance, she waited to see what should be the end of the matter; so that it was not until 1786, two years after Virginia had given to the United States what formed afterward the States of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and the greater portion of Ohio, that Massachusetts surren- dered her claim to the western country, by cession to the general government. Last of all, old Connecti- cut, who held with a still more unrelaxing grasp to her reserved territory in the northeastern corner of Ohio, at length became convinced of the propriety and justice of ceding her claim, and did so.
Thus, the whole of that wide domain passed into possession of the federal government. At first, how- ever, it was of comparatively slight use to the people. The Indians held most of it ; and although hostilities upon their part were suspended for a short time immediately after the close of the Revolution, yet, as their late ally, the government of Great Britain, made no terms for them in the treaty of 1783, but left them to
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care for themselves, and as the United States claimed that territory by right of conquest, without stipula- tion or provision for compensation to them, granting them only slight reserves for residence and hunting- grounds, their ire was again awakened, and their ven- geance was ready to descend upon the frontiers.
Further, Spain and France had aided our country in the struggle against our mother; but after that struggle was ended, and we had achieved our inde- pendence, they asked to be remembered and compen- sated for their expenditure in our behalf. Both were in quest of territory. Both were jealous of the predicted power and greatness of the new nation. Both desired, in common with Great Britain, to restriet our fathers within certain predetermined limits. France and England joining, desired to make the Ohio River our northern boundary. Spain, on another side, desired to keep them east of the Mississippi and north of the Yazoo, that she might remain in possession of all the district lying south and west of those rivers, for her own occupancy. One difficulty after another was thrown in the way of our national diplomacy. The old confederated Congress found itself incapable of the task it had shouldered ; unequal to the difficulties of the emer- gency. It is not my province to detail to you the history of the convention for the formation of the Constitution ; the theory or powers of the new gov.
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ernment; nor the policy of the cabinet of George Washington, with its two poles of dissimilar eharac- ter and creed, by way of equipoise - Thomas Jefferson representing the Republican or Democratic, and Alexander Hamilton the Federal principle. The great diplomatist of this administration was Jolin Jay-for intellect, patriotism, clear-sighted subtlety, nobility of purpose and force of character, and lofty purity of morals, one of the proudest names which our annals can boast. Jay, at this time, charged with the duty of negotiating treaties with England and Spain, found himself in a most perplexing situa- tion. Spain claimed the right of ownership to the Mississippi River; denied the right of the western people to navigate that river, and was about to close all the ports upon the Gulf against our commerce, and thus cut off the people west of the mountains from all opportunity for foreign exchanges. Enor- mous crops of all kinds grew up in their fertile and exuberant fields, but there was no market in which they could sell. They had pressing needs, but there was no market where they could buy. Their only opportunities for obtaining the most necessary mer- chandise were by mule tracks and pathways across the Alleghany Mountains, from Baltimore and Fre- derick. Long trains of these animals, with pack- saddles laden with salt, iron, and lead, and whatever else was in demand among the emigrants and settlers
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of the West, were daily travelling the mountain roads, at all seasons of the year.
But this meagre system of exchange offered no prospect either of speedy wealth to those engaged in it, or of present or future adequacy to the wants of the western settlements, now beginning to increase so vigorously.
Already the feeling had become definite and uni- versal among the western settlers, that the free navigation of the Mississippi must be secured ; when, in 1784, an assembly of the people of Kentucky was summoned at Danville, by Col. Logan, one of their oldest and ablest pioneers, to consult upon measures for opposing an invasion by the southern Indians, which he had learned was in contemplation. This rumor proved to be incorrect; but the assembly, which contained a large number of influential and intelligent citizens, who had come together under tlie impression that it was intended to wage an energetic warfare upon the northwestern Indians, took occasion to examine the existing laws applicable to the raising of a military force; when, to the common surprise and chagrin, it plainly appeared that since the end of the war, there was no existing authority to call out men for any expedition against Indians or any other enemy, nor even to assemble volunteers or militia for the defence of their own homes and hearths. Open on three sides to the incursions of a
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ferocious and active enemy, their hands were effectu- ally tied, and no defence left them except sueli purely voluntary aid as might be given without the counte- nance of laws. Such a state of things was unendura- ble ; and even in time of safety, the growing and high-spirited District of Kentucky, now composed of three large counties, could not but be restive under the tardy and difficult administration of a government acting at Richmond, and separated from the western settlements by so many hundred miles of mountain and forest. The assembly was unani. mously and earnestly of opinion that Kentucky should have a government independent of Virginia; but having no legal authority, recommended a conven- tion of delegates, one to be chosen from each militia company, to assemble in December of the same year, to consider the question of separation from Virginia.
This convention assembled, and was the first of a series of nine, successively called by the Kentuck- ians-unused to the management of representative machinery-or required by the Assembly of Virginia or by Congress, in the course of the long series of legislation and negotiation that lasted for seven tedious and wearisome years, before the final act of 1791 constituted Kentucky a State. During all this long period, the feeble and disorganized com- munity beyond the mountains was vexed by a seem-
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ingly interminable series of conventions ; by uncer- tainty and fear respecting its fate ; by incessant and cruel hostilities from Indians and English ; by party spirit of the violent and reckless type which so com- monly curses newly-settled States ; and by the artful and secret intrigues of agents and partisans of the court of Spain.
In 1784, while all these disturbing influences were actively at work, there crossed the mountains, from Maryland, a distinguished citizen and soldier of that State, who had played a conspicuous part in the Revolution, General James Wilkinson; a man long afterward intimately connected with all the princi- pal political movements in the West. He had been aid-de-camp to General Gates; had figured, with considerable credit, in many of the struggles of the Revolution; and, at the conclusion, finding his for- tunes impaired and his finances in so complicated a condition that, with his present means, there were no hopes of remedy, he directed a sagacious eye to the growing West; and deciding promptly upon a removal, came with a stock of goods to what is now Lexington, in Kentucky, for the purpose of establish- ing himself in trade. His fine personal appearance, winning manners, agreeable and dignified address- his tact and ingenuity, knowledge of and adaptation to human nature, and subtlety of speech-his powers of insinuation, and plausibility-his eloquence, whether
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spoken or written, equally adapted to the popular level-all these endowments placed him at once in the highest position in the country. He was elected a member of several of the organizing conventions ; became a prominent political character at once; and when the question of the navigation of the Missis- sippi absorbed a large portion of the attention of the Kentuckians, this bold man embarked upon a haz- ardous adventure. He procured a flat-boat, loaded it with tobacco, descended the Ohio, and then the Mississippi, and depositing his cargo in New Orleans, opened negotiations with the Spanish government. The secret portion of his correspondence with Baron de Carondelet, the Spanish governor at New Orleans, has never been made public ; but General Wilkinson returned to Kentucky and informed the inhabitants that he had made certain overtures to Carondelet ; that he had acquired for himself, by judicious nego- tiation, the right of deposit for all his merchandise, be it of what sort soever, in the government ware- houses of the capital of Louisiana ; and that he had secured a permission to trade there for a given num- ber of years. He began at once to purchase all the products of Kentucky for the purpose of prosecuting this trade. He hinted furthermore that Carondelet had informed him, under proper instructions from the Spanish government, that if the people of Kentucky, would sever their relations with the older States and
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erect themselves into an independent. territory o1 State, Spain would treat or negotiate with them making such treaties as should be most desirable and agreeable to them, relative to outlets for trade or otherwise.
This was the first hint the people of Kentucky received in regard to this matter. Wilkinson for some time continued his trade with New Orleans, and began to lay the foundation of an immense for- tune. Carondelet, not satisfied with his negotiations with Wilkinson, sent one Power to approach some of the other distinguished citizens of the District-for a district it still remained. This man came to Benjamin Sebastian, a prominent lawyer, and afterward a dis- tinguished judge, and laid before him certain schemes for the furtherance of the plan which had been already submitted to Wilkinson ; and which insured to the people of Kentucky the free navigation of the Mississippi, and the right of deposit at New Orleans for any number of years that they might desire. At the same time, Mr. Guardoqui, the Spanish minister accredited to our government, then in New York, entered into treaty stipulations, with a similar object, and in a secret manner, with Mr. Brown, territorial delegate to Congress from Kentucky and subse quently its representative when admitted as a State.
And while the uneasy excitement about the sceret plans of Spain is spreading in Kentucky, and the
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more open propositions of Guardoqui are almost pub- lished by Brown-while the people are also vexed and harassed with their interminable series of con- ventions to no purpose-the object of the Spanish court is nearly gained by Mr. Jay. This negotiator lays before the confederate Congress a proposal, not to give up the principle of the right to navigate the Mississippi, but to cede the exercise of it for twenty years, in consideration of certain advantages offered in return. The seven northeastern States carnestly favor the scheme; but nine States being required to adopt it, it fails. While it is in agitation, however, the wrath of the Kentuckians becomes so hot against the New Englanders, for this selfish dis- regard of the interests of the West, that they become almost ready to sever all connection with the Union, and to set up an independent sovereignty within the great valley.
Had this project prevailed in Congress, it is ex- ceedingly probable that the after-progress of this country would have been much hampered and entan- gled by the indefinite complications which, would have sprung from the establishment of a rival commonwealth beyond the mountains. As it was, the bitter feelings which the scheme engendered toward New England remained strong for many years, and the name of Jay was for a long time almost infamous in the popular mind of Kentucky,
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