The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources, Part 17

Author: Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897. cn
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: Boston ; New York : Houghton, Mifflin and Co.
Number of Pages: 622


USA > Mississippi > The westward movement : the colonies and the republic west of the Alleghanies, 1763-1798 with full cartographical illustrations from contemporary sources > Part 17


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This action of Congress in October was hardly done when the ill success of Gates in the south and the sense of insecurity which Arnold's treason had caused produced one of those revulsions to which strenuous times are liable, and in Novem- ber, 1780, there were signs that Congress, on the urgency of South Carolina and Georgia, was weakening its position. It


185


VIRGINIA AND THE NORTHWEST.


was known that, on the one hand, England was endeavoring to disjoin Spain from the French alliance, and, on the other, it was an every-day occurrence that Luzerne, in Philadelphia, was bringing to bear all the pressure he could to effect the pur- pose of France and the interests of Spain. With this turn of affairs, Congress approached the end of 1780 with not a little unrest from sectional discord. Virginia was admonishing New England that if she weakened on the Mississippi question, she might rue it when the question of the fisheries was to be settled.


In respect to the other problem, the year (1780) had opened with an encouraging outlook. New York had stepped forward with a proposition to cede to the States the claim which she professed to have acquired (1701, 1726) from the Iroquois to the western lands. She argued that the grant to the Duke of York had barred the claims of the New England colonies, while that of Virginia was estopped by the rescinding of her charter and the grant to Penn, which preventions gave precedence to the Indian claim which she advanced. It was in fact the least valid of any of the claims, but was good enough to give away as a precedent. On February 19, the New York Assembly authorized her delegates to make either an unreserved or a limited cession. The act was read in Congress on March 7. Six weeks later, that State authorized Congress to restrict her western limits.


These actions had their effect in Virginia. Late in June, Joseph Jones wrote to Jefferson : "Could Virginia but think herself, as she certainly is, full large enough for vigorous gov- ernment, she, too, would moderate her desires, and cede to the United States, on certain conditions, her territory beyond the Ohio." George Mason, in July, formulated the Virginia propo- sitions. These were to give up the country between the west bounds of Pennsylvania and the Ohio, north of Mason and Dixon's line (being the region since known as the Panhandle ), if Congress guaranteed to Virginia her remaining territory, which he claimed to be bounded by the north bank of the Ohio on one side, and by the North Carolina line (36° 30') on the other. This cession of the territory north of the Ohio was contingent upon seven conditions : First, that the territory should eventu- ally be made into not less than two States. Second, that Vir-


186


A YEAR OF SUSPENSE.


ginia should be reimbursed for Clark's expedition and all other attending expenses. Third, that the French settlers should be protected in their titles, and defended against incursions from Detroit. Fourth, that one hundred and fifty thousand acres should be reserved as bounty lands for Clark's soldiers. Fifth, that the cession at the falls made to Clark by the Wabash In- dians should be confirmed to him. Sixth, in case Virginia did not have land enough south of the Ohio to make good her mili- tary bounties, that she should have it on the north. Seventh, that all the territory not thus reserved should be held in com- mon by all the States, and that all individual purchases of land should be void.


An impulse to hasten the completion of the confederation was palpably growing, and, on September 6, Congress urged the States claiming a western extension to " remove the only obstacle to a final ratification of the articles of confederation," and make a united cession of these disputed territories. Con- gress had been brought to this, not only by the New York aet of February 19, but by consideration of counter representa- tions made by Virginia and Maryland. A few days later (Sep- tember 12), Madison felt sure that the crisis had passed. In October, there were new hopes for a while. Connecticut offered to cede her charter elaims beyond the mountains, provided she could retain jurisdiction. Congress, with the otherwise eneour- aging prospect, was not disposed to hamper the transfer, and declined to meet the conditions. On the same day, Congress ordered that all ceded lands should be held for the common benefit of all the States, - the initial legislation for a public domain, - but at the same time recognized the rights of the States to be reimbursed for the cost of maintaining their claims. It was further agreed that these lands should be divided into republican States and become candidates for admission to the confederation.


The year closed with Tom Paine in his Public Good attack- ing (December 30) the Virginia pretensions to their charter rights. He dwelt on the vague definition of the charter of 1609, as admitting no such precision of bounds as Virginia claimed, and in the belief which at that time prevailed of the narrowness of the continent, no such imperial range of bounds could have been contemplated. Contemporary newspapers


187


RESULTS IN 1780.


allege that Paine's sense of justice was based on promise from the Indiana Company of twelve thousand acres of this same land, though Conway, his latest biographer, disputes the state- ment.


Paine outlined a plan of setting up a new State of nearly the same limits as the present Kentucky ; and by the sales of its territory he expected to replenish the national treasury. Ham- ilton was one of the few who did not expect much aid to the treasury in this way. " Back lands," he says, " are a very good resource in reserve ; but I suspect they will not have so much present financial efficacy as to be useful to procure credit."


So, upon the whole, the year 1780 closed in the west with good omens, if with checkered results in actual accomplish- ment.


CHAPTER XI.


EAST AND WEST.


1781.


THE year 1781 was practically the last year of the war on the Atlantic slope. Greene had shown the highest ability in the south in snatching the fruits of victory from defeat, and Cornwallis had been entrapped at Yorktown. The year had opened sadly in the revolt of the Pennsylvania line, and the depreciation of the continental paper had gone on, so that by midsummer the bills were in effect valueless. Scarce a sixth of the taxes could be collected ; and the confederation, after it was perfected, seemed but a mockery of " the firm and per- petual league of friendship " which it professed to be. No one felt its futility more than Washington, and he had complained to his personal friends, "I see one head gradually changing into thirteen. I see one army branching into thirteen." Yet with all this, there came the flash at Yorktown, and the year closed along the seaboard with hope.


Beyond the mountains there had been, during the year, the old iteration of cross movements, with no real gain to either combatant ; but in Congress a first step, as will be later shown, had been taken in giving a continental control to the " crown lands " reserved in the proclamation of 1763. While these cession movements bade fair to solve the problem of the con- federation's asserted extension to the Mississippi, and to estab- lish a ground for a boundary at the peace, the Spanish claim to that river was still a source of anxiety. On the same day on which Virginia had proposed an inadmissible cession (January 2), Congress, as we shall see, had instructed Jay to yield the Mississippi to Spain, rather than lose her alliance. Likewise on the same day (January 2), an expedition left St. Louis to plant the Spanish flag within the disputed territory. Under the lead of Captain Pourré (or Pierro), a force of sixty militia and


189


GALVEZ IN FLORIDA.


sixty Indians marched two hundred leagues across the Illinois region, and fell upon an English post at St. Joseph (near the modern Niles in Michigan), captured it, secured prisoners, and then quickly retreated, and were baek in St. Louis in March. Both Franklin and Jay, when they heard of it, were prepared to believe that Spain had attempted the incursion merely to establish a claim to be advanced at the peace when, under pos- sible diplomatic complications, a mere dash across the country might count against the steady hold which Clark had fixed upon the Illinois.


Before Pourré had returned to St. Louis, Galvez, on February 28, started with a fleet, conveying fourteen hundred men, to in- vade Florida. He appeared before Pensacola and, despite some defeetion in his naval auxiliaries, he pushed his transports, under fire, past the English fort into the inner bay. The ad- miral was chagrined, and followed in Galvez's wake. The fort beat off the fleet, and Galvez brought up his land forces and opened trenches. A breach was made in the walls by the ex- plosion of a magazine, and while storming parties were organiz- ing, the British, on May 9, hoisted the white flag. Thus all of west Florida fell into Spanish hands, and Spain had secured a coveted foothold on the flank of the Southern States. Eight hundred troops, with which Campbell, under Germain's orders, had expected to secure the lower Mississippi, were sent pris- oners to New York under parole, but to the discontent later of the Spanish government. During the absence of Galvez, and on the rumor of his defeat and of a British fleet being in the Gulf, the British settlers and the loyalists, including the Con- necticut colony, living about Natchez, rose (April 22) upon the Spaniards and by a ruse overawed them. Colonel Hutch- ins once more (April 29) spread the British flag upon Fort Panmure, while the Spanish garrison marched to Baton Rouge. Upon Galvez's triumphant return, the insurgents were in dan- ger of his resentment, and fled across the country to Savannah, making a painful march of one hundred and thirty-one days. Some of them fell into the hands of the hovering bands of patriots, and the rest reached that town in October. It is a story of prolonged misery which Pickett has told in his 1la- bama.


190


EAST AND WEST.


While Spain was thus successful at the south and had, by a dash at St. Joseph, attempted to give effect to her diplomatic pretensions in the northwest, the real struggle as to the future ownership of the great stretch of country between the Allegha- nies and the Mississippi was to drag on for another year along the Ohio and on its affluents.


It was still in the autumn of 1780, and at the close of the active campaigning of that year, the dream of Jefferson to make at last an effective demonstration against Detroit, by which Virginia would be relieved of maintaining five hundred or a thousand men in the western wilds to protect her frontiers and outlying settlements. Jefferson had appealed to Washington to give the movement continental sanction, and to furnish the munitions and supplies, while Virginia called on her militia.


To give and to take counsel in the initiatory steps, Clark had come over the mountains, and was representing in Richmond that the government must be prepared to confront the coming season something like two thousand British and Indians in the western country. The problem was how to anticipate the as- saults of such a body and carry the war into the enemy's coun- try. When Jefferson, in September, 1780, had been sending prisoners from Richmond to New York for exchange, he had not given up Hamilton, for fear of the active energies that officer might impart at Detroit if he should rejoin his old com- mand. Clark's futile attempts to reach Detroit had already cost Virginia something like half a million pounds of the cur- rent money, and it was computed that another three hundred thousand must be added to that, if the present expedition should succeed. Jefferson hoped, as we have said, that this pecuniary aid would come from the Continent, while Virginia supplied the men. He sent out orders for the frontier militia to gather at Pittsburg, on March 1, 1781, but he imparted to the county officers no definite plan for the campaign. There was, how- ever, no misunderstanding as to the purpose between Clark and the governor, and Clark was in his daily councils.


Steuben was during the winter trying to impede the raids of Benedict Arnold along the James River, and Clark, still at the east, entered into these defensive movements with alacrity, leaving Jefferson, meanwhile, to direct the preparations which were going on at Fort Pitt. Late in December, 1780, Jeffer-


191


CLARK'S NEW PLANS.


son drew up Clark's instructions, charging him not only with tlie capture of Detroit, but with securing control of Lake Eric. He promised him two thousand men, and assured him that ammunition and packhorses would be at the falls of the Ohio by March 15. If preparations were then completed, Clark would be able to take advantage of the early break of the ice in the Wabash, and reach Lake Erie before the enemy could move their forces across it. Washington, in reply to Jefferson's ap- peals, was at the same time dispatching orders (December 28, 1780) to Brodhead, commanding at Fort Pitt, to furnish all the troops he could, including an artillery company, and to avoid raising questions of rank with Clark. Jefferson had asked Washington to give Clark a continental commission, to prevent any question of rank, but Washington had declined because Clark was on strictly state service. In January, 1781, Clark, lingering still at Richmond, was made a brigadier-general of the Virginia forces, " to be embodied in an expedition westward of the Ohio." They were destined for a campaign which was to be rendered unusually active by a widespread uprising of the Indians in the British interests. At least, so felt Slaughter, who held the falls in Clark's absence, and who was disturbed by the rumors which reached him. Stories of this kind induced Jefferson, on January 13, to ask Steuben to release Clark from his engagements on the seaboard, in order that he might pro- ceed immediately to the western country. Thus withdrawn from further participation in the movements on the James, Clark, who proceeded to Pittsburg, found little to encourage him.


Weeks went on, and there seemed to be little chance of Clark's securing the two thousand men which Jefferson had promised, though, on February 13, the governor had informed him that Steuben had consented to Gibson's acting as his lieutenant and taking his regiment with him to the west. Continual alarms in Kentucky and the invasion of tide-water Virginia were keeping the fighting men at home, and Jefferson, finding the militia loath to march from their settlements, had called (February 16) upon some of the county lieutenants to urge volunteers to rally around Clark.


Washington had sent Clark little aid, and it may be doubted if the commander-in-chief felt much confidence in a hazardous


192


EAST AND WEST.


movement of militia, liable to scatter at any sudden rumor of an Indian raid upon their homes. We find Clark in March, 1781, complaining to Washington that Brodhead, who had de- clined to detach Gibson's regiment, kept men from his ranks, but the commanding general could well make allowance for the enviromnents of danger at Fort Pitt, where Brodhead hardly knew whom to trust. Hle had, however, more than once (Feb- ruary 25 : March 27) assured Washington that Clark should have his best support, while he accounted to the commanding general for the apathy of the militia by saying that "they are availing themselves of the unsettled jurisdiction." Brodhead's condition was indeed desperate. He could get no supplies, and there was every indication of his being very shortly enveloped by hostile savages.


Late in the winter (February, 1781) it was known that the Delawares outside the Moravian influence were moving west- ward along Lake Erie, professedly in search of game; but it soon became certain that they were putting themselves within the range of British influence. When the spring fairly opened and the Cherokees were making hostile demonstration in the southwest, it was only too apparent that the Americans had hardly a friend among the warring tribes of the Ohio valley. With this condition of things, Brodhead, on April 7, led, with something of desperation, one hundred and fifty regulars from Fort Pitt against the recusant Delawares. At Wheeling his little force was strengthened by about as many militia under Colonel David Shepherd. Brodhead crossed the Ohio, fell upon the Indian town at Coshocton, laid it waste, destroyed the cat- tle and stores, and returned with his plunder. He had by this movement pushed the Delawares back from the Muskingum and Tuscarawas, and forced them to the Scioto and Sandusky, and they never returned. Some Christian Delawares, whom he had encountered at the Moravian stations, followed him back to Fort Pitt. Brodhead's success was in part owing to the misap- prehension which Simon Girty, now by De Peyster's orders among the Wyandots, had of Brodhead's strength. While the American expedition was pursuing its devastating march, Girty supposed that it comprised at least a thousand men, and that Clark had already started down the Ohio with as many more. It was this false information that held the Wyandots back.


193


CLARK'S INSTRUCTIONS.


That Clark's enlistments suffered from these movements by Brodhead was clear; and the failure of Washington to send him recruits, as well as the uncertain jurisdiction of Pennsylva- nia and Virginia, rendered it very doubtful if he could move down the river by the middle of June, as he hoped to do. More than once in May (21st and 26th), Clark appealed to Wash- ington. "It has been the influence of our post on the Illinois and Wabash," he says, "that has saved the frontiers, and in a great measure baffled the designs of the enemy at Detroit. If they get possession of them, they will be able to command three times the number of valuable warriors they do at present."


The difficulty between Brodhead and Gibson was ripening. The latter officer, prevented by Brodhead from aiding Clark, was restless under the deprivation, and Clark intimated to Washington that positive orders from him would give Gibson the release he longed for.


The exact scope of Jefferson's instructions to Clark had not yet been divulged, and what Clark let fall favored the belief that his purpose was in reality to succor the exposed Kentucky settlements.


This pretense of Clark was evidently accepted by Haldimand, when he heard of it, as his true intent, for as early as May that general was sending word to Sinclair and De Peyster that the Americans would not enter Canada, and they must be attacked along their frontiers. He advised De Peyster to cease pamper- ing the Sandusky Indians, and to keep them busy in breaking up American settlements north of the Ohio.


It was thus while the British were thinking themselves safe from assault north of the lakes, and intent on making their Indians wage a vicarious warfare, that Clark, near the close of July, 1781, embarking a force of only four hundred, out of the two thousand promised to him, and carrying three fieldpieces, began to move down the river from Pittsburg. On reaching Wheeling, he wrote to the governor - no longer Jefferson, who had resigned on June 1 - that he had " relinquished all expec- tations. I have been at so much pains," he says, " that the dis- appointment is doubly mortifying." His only hope was that he should learn that Detroit had not been reinforced, which might yet encourage him to attempt its capture. As he went on, his force alternately diminished and grew by desertions and


194


EAST AND WEST.


additions, and it bore a rather heterogeneous aspect when, on September 1, he reached Fort Nelson at the falls. De Pey- ster, at Detroit, better informed at last than Girty, had rather tardily sent down to the Ohio a force of a hundred rangers under Captain Andrew Thompson, and three hundred Indians under MeKee, to watch for a favorable moment to waylay Clark. Joseph Brant and George Girty - the latter formerly one of Willing's marauders - were, fortunately for De Peyster, already astir. On August 24, at a point eleven miles below the Great Miami, they fell upon a flotilla of mounted Pennsylvania volun- teers, one hundred and seven in number, under Colonel Arehi- bald Lochry (Loughrey), following in the wake of Clark, and seeking to overtake him. A letter to Clark, sent forward by this lieutenant, had been intercepted and revealed the situation. Clark had not reached the falls when every man of this force was either killed or captured. They had landed to cook their breakfast and feed their horses, when they were suddenly at- tacked from both sides of the river. A third of them were killed, and the rest surrendered ; but the colonel and others, unable to march, were later murdered.


Three days afterward, the victors, moving up the Great Miami, met McKee coming laggardly down from Detroit. The com- bined bodies were not deemed to be sufficient to assail Clark, now in his stoekade at the falls, as they had learned on Septem- ber 9, when within thirty miles of that point.


The enemy soon broke up, and a part, some two hundred in number, bent on mischief, were led by McKee and Brant to- wards the Kentucky settlements. Meanwhile Clark, fearing attack, lay inactive at the falls. About the same time, a Chero- kee chief, aided by some of these raiders, threatened the Cumberland settlements ; but Robertson effectually repulsed the assailants, and gained prestige enough to hold, for a time at least, his neighbors, the Choctaws and Chiekasaws, in the interests of his people.


As the summer advanced, the northern Indians gathered for an attack on Wheeling. Zeisberger, the Moravian, who had learned of the savage purpose, sent (August 18) warning messages, so that the attack when it came was expected, and the garrison of Fort Henry was prepared. The enemy were baffled, and with-


195


BRODHEAD AND GIBSON.


drew, but not till they had taken some prisoners, and from one of them they had learned that the Moravians had forewarned the garrison. The result was hardly to be avoided. The Mo- ravians had proved spies and tale-bearers, while claiming immu- nity as neutrals, and, if the evidence is to be believed, they had been tortuous in their replies when accused of it. Gnadenhütten, their settlement on the Tuscarawas, was therefore broken up by a party of Indians, Tories, and French partisans, under Mat- thew Elliot, who drove the missionaries and their Delaware neophytes to Sandusky first, and later to Detroit (October 25), where they could do less mischief.


Brodhead, who had been complaining (August 29) to Wash- ington of the dissensions in his camp, owing to a divided head- ship between himself and Gibson, could have had little regret when, on September 17, he withdrew from Fort Pitt, leaving Gibson in command. Neither this new commander, nor Clark at the falls, had any longer a hope of reaching Detroit. Brod- head had been withdrawn by order of Washington, who at the moment of the change was closing about Cornwallis and York- town. The brilliant outcome in October of this movement in the Virginia peninsula gave Washington for a time little oppor- tunity to think of the situation on the Ohio, and of the barren issues there of the year's campaign.


But neither Clark's abortive aims at Detroit, nor Greene's defeats in Carolina, were without results that told in the end. Greene could say of Eutaw (September 8) that it was "the most obstinate fight he ever saw," and that " victory was his." Notwithstanding the distresses of the campaign, Greene had rendered Yorktown possible. Clark had still a stronger hold, feeble as it was, on the northwest than De Peyster had. He had some seven hundred and fifty men at the falls, fed on rot- ten buffalo meat, and the savages surrounded him, and far and near the settlers were forted, but, as Haldimand acknowledged, Clark had still kept the British on the defensive between the Ohio and the lakes, a condition which occasional raids of the savages did not relieve. Haldimand charges it upon the capri- cious conduct of the Indian allies of the British that Clark's fate had not been decided, and the terror of Clark's name had done much to create that capriciousness. That Clark had


196


EAST AND WEST.


escaped the expected fate determined, as it turned out, the future territorial allegiance of the great northwest.


Cold weather settled down in November with Haldimand still ignorant of the fate of Cornwallis, and looking forward to another season of hostilities on the Ohio. Now that Yorktown had determined so much on the seaboard, Congress, which re- ceived an official notice of that victory on October 24, was within a month, as Livingston informed Franklin (November 26), preparing for an active campaign for the next season. When Franklin heard the great news from the Virginia penin- sula, he wrote from Paris to John Adams : " The infant Hercules in his cradle has now strangled his second serpent," referring to the news from Saratoga which sealed the French alliance four years before.




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