The principles of their society forbidding all compulsion, they are to
be led to duty and to enterprise by personal influence and persuasion.
Hence eloquence in council, bravery and success in war become the
foundations of all consequence with them. To these acquirements all
their faculties are directed. Of their bravery and address in war we
have multiplied proofs, because we have been the subjects on which
they were exercised. Of their eminence in oratory we have fewer
examples, because it is displayed chiefly in their own councils. Some,
however, we have of very superior luster. I may challenge the whole
orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of any more eminent orator, if
Europe has furnished any more eminent, to produce a single passage
superior to the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore, when
governor of this State. And, as a testimony of their talents in this
line, I beg leave to introduce it, first stating the incidents
necessary for understanding it.
[Footnote 36: From Query VI of the "Notes on Virginia."]
In the spring of the year 1774 a robbery was committed by some Indians
on certain land adventurers on the river Ohio. The whites in that
quarter, according to their custom, undertook to punish this outrage
in a summary way. Captain Michael Cresap, and a certain Daniel
Greathouse leading on these parties, surprized, at different times,
traveling and hunting parties of the Indians, having their women and
children with them, and murdered many. Among these were unfortunately
the family of Logan, a chief celebrated in peace and war, and long
distinguished as the friend of the whites. This unworthy return
provoked his vengeance. He accordingly signalized himself in the war
which ensued. In the autumn of the same year a decisive battle was
fought at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, between the collected forces
of the Shawanese, Mingoes and Delawares, and a detachment of the
Virginia militia. The Indians were defeated and sued for peace. Logan,
however, disdained to be seen among the suppliants. But lest the
sincerity of a treaty should be disturbed, from which so distinguished
a chief absented himself, he sent, by a messenger, the speech, to be
delivered to Lord Dunmore.[37]...
[Footnote 37: For the text of Logan's speech see Volume VIII of "The
World's Famous Orations," William J. Bryan, editor-in-chief; Francis
W. Halsey, associate editor; Funk and Wagnalls Company, publishers.]
The story of Logan is repeated precisely as it had been current for
more than a dozen years before it was published. When Lord Dunmore
returned from the expedition against the Indians, in 1774, he and his
officers brought the speech of Logan, and related the circumstances
connected with it. These were so affecting, and the speech itself so
fine a morsel of eloquence, that it became the theme of every
conversation, in Williamsburg particularly, and generally, indeed,
wheresoever any of the officers resided or resorted. I learned it in
Williamsburgh; I believe at Lord Dunmore's; and I find in my
pocket-book of that year (1774) an entry of the narrative, as taken
from the mouth of some person, whose name, however, is not noted, nor
recollected, precisely in the words stated in the "Notes on Virginia."
The speech was published in the _Virginia Gazette_ of that time (I
have it myself in the volume of gazettes of that year), and tho in a
style by no means elegant, yet it was so admired that it flew through
all the public papers of the continent, and through the magazines and
other periodical publications of Great Britain; and those who were
boys at that day will now attest that the speech of Logan used to be
given them as a school exercise for repetition. It was not till about
thirteen or fourteen years after the newspaper publications that the
"Notes on Virginia" were published in America. Combating in these the
contumelious theory of certain European writers, whose celebrity have
currency and weight to their opinions, that our country, from the
combined effects of soil and climate, degenerated animal nature, in
the general, and particularly the moral faculties of man, I considered
the speech of Logan as an apt proof of the contrary, and used it as
such; and I copied, verbatim, the narrative I had taken down in 1774
and the speech as it had been given us in a better translation by Lord
Dunmore.[38]
[Footnote 38: The above final paragraph is from the appendix to the
second edition of the "Notes on Virginia," and was called forth by
public criticism of the statements made in the text.]