thirty brave fellows met at his house that night, with their rifles in
their hands. They knew there would be a strong force of British and
Tories at Rocky Mount the next day, but, in spite of the odds against
them, they made up their minds to attack the place, and when the time
came they did so. Creeping through the woods, they suddenly came upon
the crowd, and after a sharp fight sent the British flying
helter-skelter in every direction. This stopped the work of enrolling
the people as British subjects, and it did more than that. It showed the
patriots through the whole country that they could still give the
British a great deal of trouble, and after this affair many of the men
who had thought of giving up rubbed up their rifles instead, and formed
little bands of fighting men to keep the war going.
Another man who did much to stir up partisan warfare was the Rev.
William Martin, an old and pious preacher in the Scotch-Irish
settlements. These Scotch-Irish were very religious people, and their
preacher was their leader in all things. One Sunday, after the news had
come to the settlement that Buford's men had been killed by the British
in cold blood, the eloquent old man went into his pulpit and preached
about the duty of fighting. In the afternoon he preached again, and even
when the service was over he went on in the open air, still preaching to
the people how they should fight for their country, until all the men
in the settlement were full of fighting spirit. The women told the men
to go and do their duty, and that they would take care of the crops.
These little bands of patriots were too small to fight regular battles,
or even to hold strong posts. They had to hide in the woods and swamps,
and only came out when they saw a chance to strike a blow. Then the blow
fell like lightning, and the men who dealt it quickly hid themselves
again.
They had signs by which they told each other what they were going to do.
A twig bent down, a few stones strung along a path, or any other of a
hundred small signs, served to tell every patriot when and where to meet
his friends. A man riding about, breaking a twig here and there, or
making some other sign of the kind, could call together a large force at
a chosen spot within a few hours. The men brought out in this way would
fall suddenly upon some stray British force that was off its guard, and
utterly destroy it. The British would at once send a strong body of
troops to punish the daring patriots, but the redcoat leader would look
in vain for anybody to punish. The patriots could scatter and hide as
quickly as they could come together.
[Illustration: MARTIN PREACHING TO THE PEOPLE ON THE DUTY OF FIGHTING.]
Finding that they could not destroy these patriot companies, the British
and Tories took their revenge on women and children. They burned the
houses of the patriots, carried off their crops, and killed their
cattle, so as to starve their families; but the women were as brave us
the men, and from first to last not one of them ever wished her husband
or son to give up the fight.
If the patriots could not conquer the British, they at least kept them
in a hornets' nest. If they could not drive them out of South Carolina,
they could keep them there, which was nearly as good a thing to do,
because every soldier that Cornwallis had to keep in the South would
have been sent to some other part of the country to fight the Americans
if the Carolinians had let the British alone.
In this way small bands of resolute men kept Cornwallis busy, and held
the state for the American cause, until General Greene went south and
took command. Greene was one of the greatest of the American generals,
and after a long campaign he drove the British out of the state. But if
it had not been for the partisans the South would have been lost long
before he could be spared to go there; and if the partisans had not kept
a British army busy there, it might have gone very hard with the
Americans in the rest of the country.
When we rejoice in the freedom of our country we ought not to forget how
much we owe the partisans, and especially such men as Justice Gaston and
the Rev. William Martin, who first set the partisans at their work. It
would have been much easier and pleasanter for them to remain quiet
under British rule; and they had nothing to gain for themselves, but
everything to lose, by the course they took. Gaston knew that his home
would be burned for what he did, and the eloquent old Scotch preacher
knew that he would be put into a prison-pen for preaching war sermons
to his people; but they were not men to flinch. They cared more for
their country than for themselves, and it was precisely that kind of men
throughout the land, from New England to Georgia, who won liberty for us
by seven years of hard fighting and terrible suffering.
THE CHARGE OF THE HOUNDS.
AN INCIDENT OF THE CREEK WAR.
A terrible bit of news was carried from mouth to mouth through the
region that is now Alabama at the beginning of September, 1813. The
country was at that time in the midst of the second war with Great
Britain, and for a long time British agents had been trying to persuade
the Creeks--a powerful nation of half-civilized but very warlike Indians
who lived in Alabama--to join in the war and destroy the white
settlements in the Southwest.
For some time the Creeks hesitated, and it was uncertain what they would
do. But during the summer of 1813 they broke out in hostility, and on
the 30th of August their great leader, Weatherford, or the Red Eagle, as
they called him, stormed Fort Mims, the strongest fort in the Southwest.
He took the fort by surprise, with a thousand warriors behind him, and,
after five hours of terrible fighting, destroyed it, killing about five
hundred men, women, and children.
This was the news that startled the settlers in the region where the
Alabama and Tombigbee rivers come together. It was certain, after such a
massacre as that, that the Indians meant to destroy the settlements, and
kill all the white people without mercy.
In order to protect themselves and their families the settlers built
rude forts by setting pieces of timber endwise in the ground, and the
people hurried to these places for safety. Leaving their homes to be
burned, their crops to be destroyed, and their cattle to be killed or
carried off by the Indians, the settlers hastily got together what food
they could, and took their families into the nearest forts.
One of the smallest of these stockade forts was called Sinquefield. It
stood in what is now Clarke County, Alabama, and, as that region was
very thinly settled, there were not enough men to make a strong force
for the defence of the fort. But the brave farmers and hunters thought
they could hold the place, and so they took their families thither as
quickly as they could.
Two families, numbering seventeen persons, found it was not easy to go
to Sinquefield on the 2d of September, and so, as they were pretty sure
that there were no Indians in their neighborhood as yet, they made up
their minds to stay one more night at a house a few miles from the fort.
That night they were attacked, and all but five of them were killed.
Those who got away carried the news of what had happened to the fort,
and a party was sent out to bring in the bodies.
The next day all the people in Fort Sinquefield went out to bury their
dead friends in a valley at some little distance from the fort, and,
strange as it seems, they took no arms with them. Believing that there
were no Indians near the place, they left the gates of the fortress
open, and went out in a body without their guns.
As a matter of fact there was a large body of Indians not only very
near them, but actually looking at them all the time. The celebrated
Prophet Francis was in command, and in his sly way he had crept as near
the fort as possible to look for a good chance to attack it. Making his
men lie down and crawl like snakes, he had reached a point only a few
hundred yards from the stockade without alarming the people, and now,
while they stood around the graves of their friends without arms to
defend themselves with, a host of their savage enemies lay looking at
them from the grass and bushes on the hill.
As soon as he saw that the right moment had come, Francis sprang up with
a savage war-cry, and at the head of his warriors made a dash at the
gates. He had seen that the men outside were unarmed, and his plan was
to get to the gates before they could reach them, and thus get all the
people of the place at his mercy in an open field and without arms to
fight with.
The fort people were quick to see what his purpose was, and the men
hurried forward with all their might, hoping to reach the fort before
the savages could get there. By running at the top of their speed they
did this, and closed the gates in time to keep the Indians out. But, to
their horror, they then saw that their wives and children were shut out
too. Unable to run so fast as the men had done, the women and children
had fallen behind, and now the Indians were between them and the gates!
Seeing that he had missed his chance of getting possession of the fort,
Francis turned upon the women and children with savage delight in the
thought of butchering these helpless creatures in the sight of their
husbands, fathers, and brothers.
It was a moment of terror. There were not half enough white men in the
fort to master so large a force of Indians, and if there had been it was
easy to see that by the time they could get their rifles and go to the
rescue it would be too late.
At that moment the hero of this bit of history came upon the scene. This
was a young man named Isaac Haden. He was a notable huntsman, who kept
a famous pack of hounds--fierce brutes, thoroughly trained to run down
and seize any live thing that their master chose to chase. This young
man had been out in search of stray cattle, and just at the moment when
matters were at their worst he rode up to the fort, followed by his
sixty dogs.
Isaac Haden had a cool head and a very daring spirit. He was in the
habit of taking in a situation at a glance, deciding quickly what was to
be done, and then doing it at any risk that might be necessary. As soon
as he saw how the women and children were placed, he cried out to his
dogs, and, at the head of the bellowing pack, charged upon the flank of
the Indians. The dogs did their work with a spirit equal to their
master's. For each to seize a red warrior and drag him to earth was the
work of a moment, and the whole body of savages was soon in confusion.
For a time they had all they could do to defend themselves against the
unlooked-for assault of the fierce animals, and before they could beat
off the dogs the men of the fort came out and joined in the attack, so
that the women and children had time to make their way inside the gates,
only one of them, a Mrs. Phillips, having been killed.
The men, of course, had to follow the women closely, as they were much
too weak in numbers to risk a battle outside. If they had done so the
Indians would have overcome them quickly, and then the fort and
everybody in it would have been at their mercy, so the settlers hurried
into the fort as soon as the women were safe.
But the hero who had saved the people by his quickness and courage was
left outside, and not only so, but the savages were between him and the
fort. He had charged entirely through the war party, and was now beyond
their line, alone, and with no chance of help from any quarter.
His hope of saving himself was very small indeed; but he had saved all
those helpless women and little children, and he was a brave enough
fellow to die willingly for such a purpose as that if he must. But brave
men do not give up easily, and young Haden did not mean to die without a
last effort to save himself.
[Illustration: "JUST AT THE MOMENT WHEN MATTERS WERE AT THEIR WORST, HE
RODE UP."]
Blowing a loud blast upon his hunting-horn to call his remaining dogs
around him, he drew his pistols--one in each hand--and plunged spurs
into his horse's flanks. In spite of the numbers against him he broke
through the mass of savages, but the gallant horse that bore him fell
dead as he cleared the Indian ranks. Haden had fired both his pistols,
and had no time to load them again. He was practically unarmed now, and
the distance he still had to go before reaching the gates was
considerable. His chance of escape seemed smaller than ever, but he
quickly sprang from the saddle, and ran with all his might, hotly
pursued, and under a terrific fire from the rifles of the savages. The
gate was held a little way open for him to pass, and when he entered the
fort his nearest pursuers were so close at his heels that there was
barely time for the men to shut the gate in their faces.
Strangely enough, the brave young fellow was not hurt in any way. Five
bullets had passed through his clothes, but his skin was not broken.
THE STORY OF A WINTER CAMPAIGN.
Nearly all the countries in Europe were making war upon France in 1795.
The French people had set up a republic, and all the kingdoms round
about were trying to make them submit to a king again. This had been
going on for several years, and sometimes it looked as though the French
would be beaten, in spite of their brave struggles to keep their enemies
back and manage their own affairs in their own way.
At one time everything went against the French. Their armies were worn
out with fighting, their supply of guns had run short, they had no
powder, and their money matters were in so bad a state that it seemed
hardly possible for France to hold out any longer. In the meantime
England, Austria, Spain, Holland, Piedmont, and Prussia, besides many of
the small German states, had joined together to fight France, and their
armies were on every side of her.
A country in such a state as that, with so many powerful enemies on
every side, might well have given up; but the French are a brave people,
and they were fighting for their liberties. Instead of giving up in
despair, they set to work with all their might to carry on the war.
The first thing to be done was to raise new armies, and so they called
for men, and the men came forward in great numbers from every part of
the country. In a little while they had more men to make soldiers of
than had ever before been brought together in France. But this was only
a beginning. The men were not yet trained soldiers, and even if they had
been, they had no guns and no powder; no clothing was to be had, and
there was very little food for them to eat. Still the French did not
despair.
Knowing that there would not be time enough to train the new men, they
put some of their old soldiers in each regiment of new ones, so that
the new men might learn from the veterans how to march and how to
fight.
In the meantime they had set up armories, and were making guns as fast
as they could. Their greatest trouble was about powder. They had
chemists who knew how to make it, but they had no nitre to make it of,
and did not know at first how to get any. At last one of their chemists
said that there was some nitre--from a few ounces to a pound or two--in
the earth of every cellar floor; and that if all the nitre in all the
cellar floors of France could be collected, it would be enough to make
plenty of powder.
But how to get this nitre was a question. The cellar floors must be dug
up, the earth must be washed, and the water must be carefully passed
through a course of chemical treatment in order to get the nitre, free
from earth and from all other things with which it was mixed. It would
take many days for a chemist to extract the nitre from the earth of a
singly cellar, and then he would get only a pound or two of it at most.
It did not seem likely that much could be done in this way, but all the
people were anxious to help, and so the cry went up from every part of
the country, "Send us chemists to teach us how, and we will do the work
and get the nitre ourselves." This was quickly done. All the chemists
were set at work teaching the people how to get a little nitre out of a
great deal of earth, and then every family went to work. In a little
while the nitre began to come in to the powder-factories. Each family
sent its little parcel of the precious salt as a free gift to the
country. Some of them were so proud and glad of the chance to help that
they dressed their little packages of nitre in ribbons of the national
colors, and wrote patriotic words upon them. Each little parcel held
only a few ounces, or at most a pound or two, of the white salt; but the
parcels came in by tens of thousands, and in a few weeks there were
hundreds of tons of nitre at the powder-mills.
As soon as there was powder enough the new armies began to press their
enemies, and, during the summer and fall of 1794, they steadily drove
them back. When they met their foes in battle they nearly always forced
them to give way. They charged upon forts and took them at the point of
the bayonet; cities and towns everywhere fell into their hands, and by
the time that winter set in they were so used to winning battles that
nothing seemed too hard for them to undertake.
But the French soldiers were in a very bad condition to stand the cold
of winter. One great army, under General Pichegru, which had driven the
English and Dutch far into the Netherlands, was really almost naked. The
shoes of the soldiers were worn out, and so they had to wrap their feet
in wisps of straw to keep them from freezing. Many of the men had not
clothing enough to cover their nakedness, and, for decency's sake, had
to plait straw into mats which they wore around their shoulders like
blankets. They had no tents to sleep in, but, nearly naked as they were,
had to lie down in the snow or on the hard frozen ground, and sleep as
well as they could in the bitter winter weather.
There never was an army more in need of a good rest in winter-quarters,
and as two great rivers lay in front of them, it seemed impossible to do
anything more until spring. The English and Dutch were already safely
housed for the winter, feeling perfectly sure that the French could not
cross the rivers or march in any direction until the beginning of the
next summer.
The French generals, therefore, put their men into the best quarters
they could get for them, and the poor, half-naked, barefooted soldiers
were glad to think that their work for that year was done.
Day by day the weather grew colder. The ground was frozen hard, and ice
began running in the rivers. After a little while the floating ice
became so thick that the rivers were choked with it. When Christmas came
the stream nearest the French was frozen over, and three days later the
ice was so hard that the surface of the river was as firm as the solid
ground.
Then came an order from General Pichegru to shoulder arms and march. In
the bitterest weather of that terrible winter the barefooted, half-clad
French soldiers left their huts, and marched against their foes.
Crossing the first river on the ice, they fell upon the surprised Dutch
and utterly routed them. About the same time they made a dash at the
strong fortified posts along the river, and captured them.
The French were now masters of the large island that lay between the two
rivers, for they are really only two branches of one river, and the land
between them is an island. But the ice in the farther stream was not yet
hard enough to bear the weight of cannon, so Pichegru had to stay where
he was for a time. Both sides now watched the weather, the French hoping
for still harder frosts, while their enemies prayed for a thaw.
The cold weather continued, and day by day the ice became firmer. On the
8th of January, 1795, Pichegru began to cross, and on the 10th his whole
army had passed the stream, while his enemies were rapidly retreating.
He pushed forward into the country, sending his columns in different
directions to press the enemy at every point. The barefooted, half-naked
French soldiers were full of spirit, and in spite of frost and snow and
rough frozen roads they marched steadily and rapidly. City after city
fell before them, and on the 20th of January they marched into Amsterdam
itself, and were complete conquerors.
Hungry and half-frozen as they were, it would not have been strange if
these poor soldiers had rushed into the warm houses of the city and
helped themselves to food and clothing. But they did nothing of the
kind. They stacked their arms in the streets and public squares, and
quietly waited in the snow, patiently bearing the bitter cold of the
wind for several hours, while the magistrates were getting houses and
food and clothing ready for them.
This whole campaign was wonderful, and on almost every day some strange
thing happened; but, perhaps, the strangest of all the events in this
winter war was that which is shown in the picture. Pichegru, learning
that there was a fleet of the enemy's vessels lying at anchor near the
island of Texel, sent a column of cavalry, with some cannon, in that
direction, to see if anything could be done. The cavalry found the
Zuyder Zee hard frozen, and the ships firmly locked in the ice. So they
put spurs to their horses, galloped over the frozen surface of the sea,
marched up to the ships, and called on them to surrender. It was a new
thing in war for ships to be charged by men on horseback; but there the
horsemen were, with strong ice under them, and the ships could not sail
away from them. The sailors could make a fight, of course, but the
cavalry, with their cannon, were too strong for them, and so they
surrendered without a battle, and for the first time in history a body
of hussars captured a squadron of ships at anchor.
[Illustration: CAPTURE OF THE DUTCH FLEET BY THE SOLDIERS OF THE FRENCH
REPUBLIC.]
YOUNG WASHINGTON IN THE WOODS.
THE STORY OF A PERILOUS JOURNEY.
No man ever lived whose name is more honored than that of George
Washington, and no man ever deserved his fame more. All the success that
ever came to him was won by hard work. He succeeded because he was the
kind of man that he was, and not in the least because he had "a good
chance" to distinguish himself. He never owed anything to "good luck,"
nor even to a special education in the business of a soldier. Some men
are called great because they have succeeded in doing great things; but
he succeeded in doing great things because he was great in himself.
Everybody who knew him, even as a boy, seems to have respected as well
as liked him. There was something in his character which made men think
well of him. When he was only sixteen years of age Lord Fairfax admired
him to such a degree that he appointed him to a post which not many men
would have been trusted to fill. He put the boy at the head of a
surveying party, and sent him across the mountains to survey the valley
of Virginia--a vast region which was then unsettled. So well did
Washington perform this difficult and dangerous task that a few years
later, when he was only twenty-one years old, the Governor of Virginia
picked him out for a more delicate and dangerous piece of work.
The English colonies lay along the Atlantic coast, while the French held
Canada. The country west of the Alleghany Mountains, which we now know
as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc., was claimed by both the French and the
English, though only the Indians lived there. The French made friends of
the savages, and began building forts at different points in that
region, and putting soldiers there to keep the English away. The
Governor of Virginia wanted to put a stop to this, and so he resolved to
send a messenger into "the Great Woods," as the western country was
called, to warn the French off, and to win the friendship of the Indians
if possible.
For such a service he needed a man with a cool head, good sense, great
courage, and, above all, what boys call "grit;" for whoever should go
would have to make his way for many hundreds of miles through a
trackless wilderness, over mountains and rivers, and among hostile
Indians. Young Washington had already shown what stuff he was made of,
and, young as he was, he was regarded as a remarkable man. The governor
therefore picked him out as the very best person for the work that was
to be done.
It was November when Washington set out, and the weather was very cold
and wet. He took four white men and two Indians with him, the white men
being hunters who knew how to live in the woods. As the country they had
to pass through was a wilderness, they had to carry all their supplies
with them on pack-horses. They rode all day through the woods, and when
night came slept in little tents by some spring or watercourse. Day
after day they marched forward, until at last they reached an Indian
village, near the spot where Pittsburgh now stands, and there they
halted to make friends with the Indians.