USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 16
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RUB
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 seeure 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 month 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 approached St. Louis, he was on the opposite side of the river at Cahokia, watching for his opportunity. He had no occasion either to eross 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 Mackinae, 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 sealps. Sinclair at once sent two vessels to the Chicago River 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 Missis- sippi from the north. Sinclair brooded on his disappointment 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-
175
BIRD'S EXPEDITION.
sippi, left Detroit near the middle of April, 1780, under the command 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 that 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 been 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 hundred Shawnees. The varying reports of his entire foree 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 attaek that post, and he had with him two small cannon, the first guns that had been taken into Indian warfare.
His Indians, however, proved unruly. Haldimand had warned him that 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 eattle, grew insubordinate, and finally refused to advance towards the falls. Not wholly to fail of results, Bird turned towards the mouth of the Lieking and, aseending that stream, captured several Kentucky stations, and took a large number of prisoners. Having accomplished no strategie 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 supposed, 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 Keu- 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. Ile 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 Clark was sent in some other direction. Ten days later (February 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 cheek any hostile incursion by the Alleghany.
On March 18, Brodhead informed Washington that he had heard from Clark, who was willing to cooperate with him, "either for the reduction of one of the enemy's posts or against the Indian towns," and that Clark expected to be reinforced in the spring. At the same time (March) Jefferson, who had
177
DETROIT.
perhaps misjudged Clark, wrote to this officer that he must abandon all hope of advaneing on Detroit. This letter was intercepted, and probably banished the anxiety which De Pey- 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 protecting 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 foree. 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 purpose 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 cavalry 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 force, however, was entrapped one night on the Miami, 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 kept their hold on the tribes. The death of White Eyes, the friend of Zeisberger and the chief of the peace party of the Delawares, had left that faetion without a head, and it had gone over to the royal side. At the west, however, the Saes and Foxes had pronounced for the Americans. Practically, neither side could claim to have made good their territorial pretensions ; and there was continued apprehension 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 fighting 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 eame to them suddenly. The heroes who had gained the brilliant vietory - which is later to be deseribed - 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 eorn were destroyed. But one American was killed. The campaign over, Colonel Campbell (January 16, 1781) reported to Congress the desirability of erecting a fort at the junction of the Tennessee and Holston rivers, the better to hold the country.
, But nothing, meanwhile, seemed to daunt the cager settlers. For some years to come, they came into this wilderness at the rate of four or five thousand annually. 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 computed there were as many as thirty thousand. The dis- covery of numerous salt-springs had condneed to this surprising 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
179
CUMBERLAND SETTLEMENTS.
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 upon 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 the 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 of that State. The population now seattered 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 stealthy 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
181
GALVEZ AND POLLOCK.
(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 Mountain, in October, 1780, they encompassed Fergusson and the loyalist militia from the Carolina coast. The backwoodsmen wonderfully proved their wily courage, man to 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 found difficulty, however, in negotiating the paper sent him 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 been 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 the 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 capable 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 drew money-bills on him, hoping for his success with the Spanish ministry, but that government broadly intimated to him that their assistance would 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 perplexing 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 purpose 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 would 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 Spain and America so as to make us debtors to French influence with Spain, and to make Spain obligated to their influence with us."
183
GARDOQUI.
As the negotiations with Gardoqui went on, it was suggested to Jay that matters between Spain 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 people 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 support 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 Philadelphia 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 1763, and that the east bank of the Mississippi was British territory, open to Spanish inroads. The understanding between France and Spain was apparently complete, and, as the season wore on, Carmichael, Jay's seere- tary, became convinced that Spain was manœuvring for delays, trusting rather to prompt interposition at the general peace to attain her ends.
Meanwhile, John Adams, who, in February, 1780, had
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A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.
reached Paris, elothed 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 up the case of the United States. It was reported to Congress on October 17, and was at once sent to Franklin and Jay. It represented that the Illinois and Wabash regions were under 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 Rhine had been determined by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648: but that of the Scheldt was yet to be left unsettled by the Peace of Fontaineblean in 1785.
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