The Revolution Begins
One of the grievances given prominence in the Declaration of
Independence was that the English Crown had "abolished the free system
of English laws in a neighbouring province, establishing therein an
arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at
once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same arbitrary
rule into these colonies." The measure which was in the minds of the
signers was the Quebec Act of 1774; and the feature to which they
especially objected was the extension of this peculiarly governed
Canadian province to include the whole of the territory north of the
Ohio and east of the Mississippi.
The Quebec Act was passed primarily to remedy a curious mistake made by
King George's ministers eleven years earlier. The Proclamation of 1763
had been intended to apply to the new French-speaking possessions in
only a general way, leaving matters of government and law to be
regulated at a later date. But through oversight it ordained the
establishment of English law, and even of a representative assembly,
precisely as in the other new provinces. The English governors were thus
put in an awkward position. They were required to introduce English
political forms and legal practices. Yet the inexperience and suspicion
of the people made it unwise, if not impossible, to do so. When, for
example, jury trial was broached, the peasants professed to be quite
unable to understand why the English should prefer to have matters of
law decided by tailors and shoemakers rather than by a judge; and as for
a legislature, they frankly confessed that assemblies "had drawn upon
other colonies so much distress, and had occasioned so much riot and
bloodshed, that they had hoped never to have one."
The Act of 1774 relieved the situation by restoring French law in civil
affairs, abolishing jury trial except in criminal cases, rescinding the
grant of representative government, and confirming the Catholic clergy
in the rights and privileges which they had enjoyed under the old
régime. This would have aroused no great amount of feeling among New
Englanders and Virginians if the new arrangements had been confined to
the bounds of the original province. But they were not so restricted. On
the contrary, the new province was made to include the great region
between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, southward to the Ohio; and
it was freely charged that a principal object of the English Government
was to sever the West from the shore colonies and permanently link it
with the St. Lawrence Valley rather than with the Atlantic slope.
At all events, the Quebec Act marked the beginning of civil government
in the great Northwest. On November 9, 1775, Henry Hamilton appeared as
Lieutenant-Governor at the new capital, Detroit. Already the "shot that
was heard around the world" had been fired on Lexington Green; and
Hamilton had been obliged to thread his way through General Montgomery's
lines about Montreal in the guise of a Canadian. Arrived at his new seat
of authority, he found a pleasant, freshly fortified town whose white
population had grown to fifteen hundred, including a considerable number
of English-speaking settlers. The country round was overrun with
traders, who cheated and cajoled the Indians without conscience; the
natives, in turn, were a nondescript lot, showing in pitiful manner the
bad effects of their contact with the whites.
As related by a contemporary chronicler--a Pennsylvanian who lived for
years among the western tribes--an Indian hunting party on arriving at
Detroit would trade perhaps a third of the peltries which they brought
in for fine clothes, ammunition, paint, tobacco, and like articles. Then
a keg of brandy would be purchased, and a council would be held to
decide who was to get drunk and who to keep sober. All arms and clubs
were taken away and hidden, and the orgy would begin. It was the task of
those who kept sober to prevent the drunken ones from killing one
another, a task always hazardous and frequently unsuccessful, sometimes
as many as five being killed in a night. When the keg was empty, brandy
was brought by the kettleful and ladled out with large wooden spoons;
and this was kept up until the last skin had been disposed of. Then,
dejected, wounded, lamed, with their fine new shirts torn, their
blankets burned, and with nothing but their ammunition and tobacco
saved, they would start off down the river to hunt in the Ohio country
and begin again the same round of alternating toil and debauchery. In
the history of the country there is hardly a more depressing chapter
than that which records the easy descent of the red man, once his taste
for "fire water" was developed, to bestiality and impotence.
The coming on of the Revolution produced no immediate effects in the
West. The meaning of the occurrences round Boston was but slowly grasped
by the frontier folk. There was little indeed that the Westerners could
do to help the cause of the eastern patriots, and most of them, if left
alone, would have been only distant spectators of the conflict. But
orders given to the British agents and commanders called for the
ravaging of the trans-Alleghany country; and as a consequence the West
became an important theater of hostilities.
The British agents had no troops with which to undertake military
operations on a considerable scale, but they had one great resource--the
Indians--and this they used with a reckless disregard of all
considerations of humanity. In the summer of 1776 the Cherokees were
furnished with fifty horse-loads of ammunition and were turned loose
upon the back country of Georgia and the Carolinas. Other tribes were
prompted to depredations farther north. White, half-breed, and Indian
agents went through the forests inciting the natives to deeds of horror;
prices were fixed on scalps--and it is significant of the temper of
these agents that a woman's scalp was paid for as readily as a man's.
In every corner of the wilderness the bloody scenes of Pontiac's war
were now reënacted. Bands of savages lurked about the settlements, ready
to attack at any unguarded moment; and wherever the thin blue smoke of a
settler's cabin rose, prowlers lay in wait. A woman might not safely go
a hundred yards to milk a cow, or a man lead a horse to water. The
farmer carried a gun strapped to his side as he ploughed, and he
scarcely dared venture into the woods for the winter's supply of fuel
and game. Hardly a day passed on which a riderless horse did not come
galloping into some lonely clearing, telling of a fresh tragedy on the
trail.
The rousing of the Indians against the frontiersmen was an odious act.
The people of the back country were in not the slightest degree
responsible for the revolt against British authority in the East. They
were non-combatants, and no amount of success in sweeping them from
their homes could affect the larger outcome. The crowning villainy of
this shameful policy was the turning of the redskins loose to prey upon
helpless women and children.
The responsibility for this inhumanity must be borne in some degree by
the government of George III. "God and nature," wrote the Earl of
Suffolk piously, "hath put into our hands the scalping-knife and
tomahawk, to torture them into unconditional submission." But the fault
lay chiefly with the British officers at the western posts--most of all,
with Lieutenant-Governor Hamilton at Detroit. Probably no British
representative in America was on better terms with the natives. He drank
with them, sang war-songs with them, and received them with open arms
when they came in from the forests with the scalps of white men dangling
at their belts. A great council on the banks of the Detroit in June,
1778, was duly opened with prayer, after which Hamilton harangued the
assembled Chippewas, Hurons, Mohawks, and Potawatomi on their "duties"
in the war and congratulated them on the increasing numbers of their
prisoners and scalps, and then urged them to redoubled activity by
holding out the prospect of the complete expulsion of white men from the
great interior hunting-grounds.
Scarcely were the deputations attending this council well on their way
homewards when a courier arrived from the Illinois country bringing
startling news. The story was that a band of three hundred rebels led by
one George Rogers Clark had fallen upon the Kaskaskia settlements, had
thrown the commandant into irons, and had exacted from the populace an
oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress. It was reported, too,
that Cahokia had been taken, and that, even as the messenger was leaving
Kaskaskia, "Gibault, a French priest, had his horse ready saddled to go
to Vincennes to receive the submission of the inhabitants in the name of
the rebels."
George Rogers Clark was a Virginian, born in the foothills of Albemarle
County three years before Braddock's defeat. His family was not of the
landed gentry, but he received some education, and then, like Washington
and many other adventuresome young men of the day, became a surveyor. At
the age of twenty-two he was a member of Governor Dunmore's staff.
During a surveying expedition he visited Kentucky, which so pleased him
that in 1774 he decided to make that part of the back country his home.
He was even then a man of powerful frame, with broad brow, keen blue
eyes, and a dash of red in his hair from a Scottish ancestress--a man,
too, of ardent patriotism, strong common sense, and exceptional powers
of initiative and leadership. Small wonder that in the rapidly
developing commonwealth beyond the mountains he quickly became a
dominating spirit.
With a view to organizing a civil government and impressing upon the
Virginia authorities the need of defending the western settlements, the
men of Kentucky held a convention at Harrodsburg in the spring of 1775
and elected two delegates to present their petition to the Virginia
Assembly. Clark was one of them. The journey to Williamsburg was long
and arduous, and the delegates arrived only to find that the Legislature
had adjourned. The visit, none the less, gave Clark an opportunity to
explain to the new Governor--"a certain Patrick Henry, of Hanover
County," as the royalist Dunmore contemptuously styled his
successor--the situation in the back country and to obtain five hundred
pounds of powder. He also induced the authorities to take steps which
led to the definite organization of Kentucky as a county of Virginia.
In the bloody days that followed, most of the pioneers saw nothing to be
done except to keep close guard and beat off the Indians when they came.
A year or two of that sort of desperate uncertainty gave Clark an idea.
Why not meet the trouble at its source by capturing the British posts
and suppressing the commandants whose orders were mainly responsible for
the atrocities? There was just one obstacle: Kentucky could spare
neither men nor money for the undertaking.
In the spring of 1777 two young hunters, disguised as traders, were
dispatched to the Illinois country and to the neighborhood of Vincennes,
to spy out the land. They brought back word that the posts were not
heavily manned, and that the French-speaking population took little
interest in the war and was far from reconciled to British rule. The
prospect seemed favorable. Without making his purpose known to anyone,
Clark forthwith joined a band of disheartened settlers and made his way
with them over the Wilderness Trail to Virginia. By this time a plan on
the part of the rebels for the defense of the Kentucky settlements had
grown into a scheme for the conquest of the whole Northwest.
Clark's proposal came opportunely. Burgoyne's surrender had given the
colonial cause a rosy hue, and already the question of the occupation of
the Northwest had come up for discussion in Congress. Governor Henry
thought well of the plan. He called Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and
George Wythe into conference, and on January 2, 1778, Clark was given
two sets of orders--one, for publication, commissioning him to raise
seven companies of fifty men each "in any county of the Commonwealth"
for militia duty in Kentucky, the other, secret, authorizing him to use
this force in an expedition for the capture of the "British post at
Kaskasky." To meet the costs, only twelve hundred pounds in depreciated
continental currency could be raised. But the Governor and his friends
promised to try to secure three hundred acres of land for each soldier,
in case the project should succeed. The strictest secrecy was preserved,
and, even if the Legislature had been in session, the project would
probably not have been divulged to it.
Men and supplies were gathered at Fort Pitt and Wheeling and were
carried down the Ohio to "the Falls," opposite the site of Louisville.
The real object of the expedition was concealed until this point was
reached. On learning of the project, the men were surprised, and some
refused to go farther. But in a few weeks one hundred and seventy-five
men, organized in four companies, were in readiness. The start was made
on the 24th of June. Just as the little flotilla of clumsy flatboats was
caught by the rapid current, the landscape was darkened by an eclipse of
the sun. The superstitious said that this was surely an evil omen. But
Clark was no believer in omens, and he ordered the bateaux to proceed.
He had lately received news of the French alliance, and was surer than
ever that the habitants would make common cause with his forces and give
him complete success.
To appear on the Mississippi was to run the risk of betraying the object
of the expedition to the defenders of the posts. Hence the wily
commander decided to make the last stages of his advance by an overland
route. At the deserted site of Fort Massac, nine miles below the mouth
of the Tennessee, the little army left the Ohio and struck off northwest
on a march of one hundred and twenty miles, as the crow flies, across
the tangled forests and rich prairies of southern Illinois.
Six days brought the invaders to the Kaskaskia River, three miles above
the principal settlement. Stealing silently along the bank of the stream
on the night of the 4th of July, they crossed in boats which they seized
at a farmhouse and arrived at the palisades wholly unobserved. Half of
the force was stationed in the form of a cordon, so that no one might
escape. The remainder followed Clark through an unguarded gateway into
the village.
According to a story long current, the officials of the post were that
night giving a ball, and all of the élite, not of Kaskaskia alone but of
the neighboring settlements as well, were joyously dancing in one of the
larger rooms of the fort. Leaving his men some paces distant, Clark
stepped to the entrance of the hall, and for some time leaned unobserved
against the door-post, grimly watching the gayety. Suddenly the air was
rent by a war-whoop which brought the dancers to a stop. An Indian
brave, lounging in the firelight, had caught a glimpse of the tall,
gaunt, buff and blue figure in the doorway and had recognized it. Women
shrieked; men cursed; the musicians left their posts; all was disorder.
Advancing, Clark struck a theatrical pose and in a voice of command told
the merrymakers to go on with their dancing, but to take note that they
now danced, not as subjects of King George but as Virginians. Finding
that they were in no mood for further diversion, he sent them to their
homes; and all night they shivered with fear, daring not so much as to
light a candle lest they should be set upon and murdered in their beds.
This account is wholly unsupported by contemporary testimony, and it
probably sprang from the imagination of some good frontier story-teller.
It contains at least this much truth, that the settlement, after being
thrown into panic, was quickly and easily taken. Curiously enough, the
commandant was a Frenchman, Rocheblave, who had thriftily entered the
British service. True to the trust reposed in him, he protested and
threatened, but to no avail. The garrison, now much diminished, was
helpless, and the populace--British, French, and Indian alike--was not
disposed to court disaster by offering armed resistance. Hence, on the
morning after the capture the oath of fidelity was administered, and the
American flag was hoisted for the first time within view of the Father
of Waters. After dispatching word to General Carleton that he had been
compelled to surrender the post to "the self-styled Colonel, Mr. Clark,"
Rocheblave was sent as a captive to Williamsburg, where he soon broke
parole and escaped. His slaves were sold for five hundred pounds, and
the money was distributed among the troops. Cahokia was occupied without
resistance, and the French priest, Father Pierre Gibault, whose parish
extended from Lake Superior to the Ohio, volunteered to go to Vincennes
and win its inhabitants to the American cause.
Like Kaskaskia and Cahokia, the Wabash settlement had been put in charge
of a commandant of French descent. The village, however, was at the
moment without a garrison, and its chief stronghold, Fort Sackville, was
untenanted. Gibault argued forcefully for acceptance of American
sovereignty, and within two days the entire population filed into the
little church and took the oath of allegiance. The astonished Indians
were given to understand that their former "Great Father," the King of
France, had returned to life, and that they must comply promptly with
his wishes or incur his everlasting wrath for having given aid to the
despised British.
Thus without the firing of a shot or the shedding of a drop of blood,
the vast Illinois and Wabash country was won for the future United
States. Clark's plan was such that its success was assured by its very
audacity. It never occurred to the British authorities that their far
western forts were in danger, and they were wholly unprepared to fly to
the defense of such distant posts. British sovereignty on the
Mississippi was never recovered; and in the autumn of 1778 Virginia took
steps to organize her new conquest by setting up the county of Illinois,
which included all her territories lying "on the western side of the
Ohio."