Clark's army the year before had carried glowing news of Illinois.

Already emigration had set in. On the way now he met forty families

actually starving because they could not kill buffaloes.

A gun?--it was a part of Clark. He used his rifle-barrelled firelock

as he used his hands, his feet, his eyes, instantly, surely,

involuntarily. He showed them how to strike the buffalo in a vital

part, killed fourteen, and hurried on, thirty miles a day, fording

stream and swamp and tangled forest to save Kentucky.

Kentucky was watching for her deliverer. Into his ear was poured the

startling tale. With Simon Girty, the renegade, and six hundred

Indians, down the high waters of the Miami and up the Licking, Bird

came to Ruddle's station and fired his cannon. Down went the wooden

palisades like a toy blockhouse before his six-pounders.

"Surrender!" came the summons from Colonel Bird.

"Yes, if we can be prisoners to the British and not to the Indians."

Bird assented. The gates were thrown open. Indians flew like dogs upon

the helpless people.

"You promised security," cried Captain Ruddle.

"I cannot stop them," said Bird. "I, too, am in their power."

Madly the Indians sacked the station and killed the cattle. Loading

the household goods upon the backs of the unfortunate owners, they

drove them forth and gave their cabins to the flames.

The same scenes were enacted at Martin's Station. The Indians were

wild for more. But Bird would not permit further devastation. He could

easily have taken every fort in Kentucky, not one could have withstood

his artillery; but to his honour be it said, he led his forces out.

Loaded with plunder, the wretched captives, four hundred and fifty

men, women, and children, were driven away to Detroit. Whoever

faltered was tomahawked.

Clark immediately called on the militia of Kentucky. Hastening to

Harrodsburg he found the newcomers wild over land entries.

"Land!" they cried, "you can have all you can hold against the

Indians."

It was a grewsome joke. The Indians would not even let them survey.

Like a military dictator, Clark closed the land office,--"Nor will it

be opened again until after this expedition."

Immediately a thousand men enlisted. Logan, Linn, Floyd, Harrod, all

followed the banner of Clark. Boone and Kenton set on ahead as guides,

into the land they knew so well.

"Is it not dangerous to invade the Shawnee country?" inquired one.

"I was not born in the woods to be scared by an owl," was Clark's

sententious reply.

All the provisions they had for twenty-five days was six quarts of

parched corn each, except what they got in the Indian country.

Canoeing down the Licking, on the first day of August they crossed the

Ohio. Scarce touching shore they heard the scalp halloo. Some fell.

Within fifteen minutes Clark had his axes in the forest building a

blockhouse for his wounded. On that spot now stands Cincinnati.

On pressed Clark in his retaliatory dash,--before the Shawnees even

suspected, the Kentuckians were at Old Chillicothe. They flew to arms,

but the Long Knives swooped down with such fury that Simon Girty drew

off.

"It is folly to fight such madmen."

Chillicothe went down in flames; Piqua followed; fields, gardens, more

than five hundred acres of corn were razed to the level of the sod.

Piqua was Tecumseh's village; again he learned to dread and hate the

white man.

"That will keep them at home hunting for a while," remarked Clark,

turning back to the future Cincinnati.

XVII

_"DETROIT MUST BE TAKEN"_

Again George Rogers Clark sped through Cumberland Gap, fair as a

Tyrolean vale, to Virginia. And dashing along the same highway, down

the valley of Virginia, came the minute men of the border, in green

hunting shirts, hard-riders and sharp-shooters of Fincastle.

"Hey and away, and what news?"

The restless mountaineers of the Appalachians, almost as fierce and

warlike as the Goths and Vandals of an earlier day, answered:

"We have broken the back of Tarleton's army at King's Mountain,

Cornwallis is facing this way, and cruisers are coming up into the

Chesapeake."

"Marse Gawge! Marse Gawge!"

This time it was little York, the negro, who, peeping from the slave

quarters of old York and Rose, detected the stride of George Rogers

Clark out under the mulberry trees.

The long, low, Virginia farmhouse was wrapped in slumber, an almost

funeral pall hung over the darkened porch, as John Clark stepped out

to grasp the hand of his son.

"Three of my boys in British prisons, we looked for nothing less for

you, George. William alone is left."

"Girls do not count, I suppose," laughed the saucy Lucy, peeping out

in her night-curls with a candle in her hand. "Over at Bowling Green

the other day, when all the gallants were smiling on me, one jealous

girl said, 'I do not see what there is so interesting about Lucy

Clark. She is not handsome, and she has red hair.' 'Ah,' I replied, 'I

can tell her. They know I have five brothers all officers in the

Revolutionary army!'"

"What, Edmund gone, too?" exclaimed George. "He is but a lad!"

"Big enough to don the buff and blue, and shoulder a gun," answered

the father. "He would go,--left school, led all his mates, and six

weeks later was taken prisoner along with Jonathan and the whole

army."

That was the fall of Charleston, in the very May when Clark was saving

St. Louis.

"We are all at war," spoke up Elizabeth, the elder sister, sadly.

"Even the boys drill on mimic battlefields; all the girls in Virginia

are spinning and weaving clothes for the soldiers; Mrs. Washington

keeps sixteen spinning-wheels busy at Mount Vernon; mother and all the

ladies have given their jewels to fit out the army. Mrs. Jefferson

herself led the call for contributions, and Mrs. Lewis of Albemarle

collected five thousand dollars in Continental currency. Father has

given up his best horses, and Jefferson impressed his own horses and

waggons at Monticello to carry supplies to General Gates. All the lads

in the country are moulding bullets and making gun-powder. We haven't

a pewter spoon left."

"An' we niggers air raisin' fodder," ventured the ten-year-old York.

York had his part, along with his young master, William. Daily they

rode together down the Rappahannock, carrying letters to Fielding

Lewis at Fredericksburg. It was there, at Kenmore House, that they met

Meriwether Lewis, visiting his uncle and aunt Betty, the sister of

Washington. "And when she puts on his _chapeau_ and great coat, she

looks exactly like the General," said William.

"What has become of my captured Governors?" George asked of his

father.

"I hear that Hamilton was offered a parole on condition that he would

not use his liberty in any way to speak or influence any one against

the colonies. He indignantly refused to promise that, and so was

returned to close captivity. But I think when Boone came up to the

legislature he used some influence; at any rate Hamilton was paroled

and went with Hay to England. Rocheblave broke his parole and fled to

New York."

The five fireplaces of the old Clark home roared a welcome that day

up the great central chimney, and candles gleamed at evening from

dormer window to basement when all the neighbours crowded in to hail

"the Washington of the West."

"Now, Rose, you and Nancy bake the seed cakes and have beat biscuit,"

said Mrs. Clark to the fat cook in the kitchen. "York has gone after

the turkeys."

"Events are in desperate straits," said George at bedtime; "I must

leave at daylight." But earlier yet young William was up to gallop a

mile beside his brother on the road to Richmond, whither the capital

had been removed for greater safety.

"Is this the young Virginian that is sending home all the western

Governors?" exclaimed the people. An ovation followed him all the way.

"What is your plan?" asked Governor Jefferson, after the fiery

cavalier had been received with distinction by the Virginia Assembly.

"My plan is to ascend the Wabash in early Spring and strike before

reinforcements can reach Detroit, or escape be made over the breaking

ice of the Lakes. The rivers open first."

George Rogers Clark, born within three miles of Monticello, had known

Jefferson all his life, and save Patrick Henry no one better grasped

his plans. In fact, Jefferson had initiative and was not afraid of

untried ventures.

"My dear Colonel, I have already written to Washington that we could

furnish the men, provisions, and every necessary except powder, had we

the money, for the reduction of Detroit. But there is no money,--not

even rich men have seen a shilling in a year. Washington to the north

is begging aid, Gates in the south is pleading for men and arms, and

not a shilling is in the treasury of Virginia."

"But Detroit must be taken," said Clark with a solemn emphasis.

"Through my aides I have this discovery: a combination is forming to

the westward,--a confederacy of British and Indians,--to spread dismay

to our frontier this coming Spring. We cannot hesitate. The fountain

head of these irruptions must be cut off, the grand focus of Indian

hostilities from the Mohawk to the Mississippi."

Even as he spoke, Jefferson, pen in hand, was noting points in another

letter to Washington.

"We have determined to undertake it," wrote Jefferson, "and commit it

to Clark's direction. Whether the expense of the enterprise shall be

defrayed by the Continent or State we leave to be decided hereafter by

Congress. In the meantime we only ask the loan of such necessaries as,

being already at Fort Pitt, will save time and expense of

transportation. I am, therefore, to solicit Your Excellency's order to

the commandant at Fort Pitt for the articles contained in the annexed

list."

Clark had the list in hand. "It is our only hope; there is not a

moment to be lost."

On fleet horses the chain of expresses bore daily news to the camp of

Washington, but before his answer could return, another express reined

up at Richmond.

"Benedict Arnold, the traitor, has entered the Capes of Virginia with

a force of two thousand men."

It was New Year's Eve and Richmond was in a tumult. On New Year's day

every legislator was moving his family to a place of safety. The very

winds were blowing Arnold's fleet to Richmond.

Virginia had laid herself bare of soldiers; every man that could be

spared had been sent south.

And Arnold? With what rage George Rogers Clark saw him destroy the

very stores that might have taken Detroit,--five brass field-pieces,

arms in the Capitol loft and in waggons on the road, five tons of

powder, tools, quartermaster's supplies. Then the very wind that had

blown Arnold up the river turned and blew him back, and the only blood

shed was by a handful of militia under George Rogers Clark, who killed

and wounded thirty of Arnold's men.

"I have an enterprise to propose," said the Governor to Clark on

return. "I have confidence in your men from the western side of the

mountains. I want to capture Arnold and hang him. You pick the proper

characters and engage them to seize this greatest of all traitors. I

will undertake, if they are successful, that they shall receive five

thousand guineas reward among them."

"I cannot, Arnold is gone, I must capture Detroit."

More determined than ever, Clark and Jefferson went on planning. "Yes,

you must capture Detroit and secure Lake Erie. You shall have two

thousand men, and ammunition and packhorses shall be at the Falls of

the Ohio, March 15, ready for the early break of the ice."

Washington's consent had come, and orders for artillery. With

Washington and Jefferson at his back, Clark made indefatigable efforts

to raise two thousand men to rendezvous March 15.

Up the Blue Ridge his agents went and over to the Holston; he wrote to

western Pennsylvania; he visited Redstone-Old-Fort, and hurried down

to Fort Pitt. Fort Pitt itself was in danger.

The Wabash broke and ran untrammelled, but Clark was not ready.

Cornwallis was destroying Gates at Camden; De Kalb fell, covered with

wounds; Sumter was cut to pieces by Tarleton. The darkest night had

come in a drama that has no counterpart, save in the Napoleonic wars

that shook Europe in the cause of human liberty.

War, war, raged from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The land was

covered with forts and blockhouses. Every hamlet had its place of

refuge. Mills were fortified, and private houses. Every outlying

settlement was stockaded. Every log house had its pickets and

portholes. Chains of posts followed the river fords and mountain gaps

from Ticonderoga to the Mohawk, from the Susquehanna to the Delaware,

to the Cumberland, to the Tennessee. Anxious sentinels peered from the

watchtowers of wooden castles. Guns stood on the ramparts. The people

slept in barracks. Moats and drawbridges, chained gates and palisades,

guarded the sacred citadels of America.

"And what if England wins?" said one to Washington.

"We can still retire to the Ohio and live in freedom," for, like the

last recesses of the Swiss Alps, it was thought no nation could

conquer the Alleghanies.

In desperation and unaware of the Virginian crisis behind him, George

Rogers Clark embarked four hundred men, all he could get of the

promised two thousand. Only a line he sent to Jefferson, "I have

relinquished all hope," but Jefferson at that hour was flying from

Tarleton, Cornwallis was coming up into Virginia, and Washington with

his ragged band of veteran Continentals was marching down to Yorktown.

There was no time to glance beyond the mountains.

All the northwest, in terror of Clark, was watching and fearing. If a

blow was struck anywhere, "Clark did it." Shawnees and Delawares,

Wyandots at the north, Choctaws and Chickasaws and Cherokees at the

south, British and Indians everywhere, were rising against devoted

Kentucky.

As Clark stepped on his boats at Pittsburg word flew to remotest

tribes,--

"The Long Knives are coming!"

The red man trembled in his wigwam, Detroit redoubled its

fortifications, and Clark's forlorn little garrisons in the prairies

of the west hung on to Illinois.

In those boats Clark bore provisions, ammunition, artillery,

quartermaster's stores, collected as if from the very earth by his

undying energy,--everything but men, men! Major William Croghan stood

with him on the wharf at Pittsburg, burning, longing to go, but honour

forbade,--he was out on parole from Charleston.

Peeping, spying, gliding, Indians down the Ohio would have attacked

but for fear of Clark's cannon. The "rear guard of the Continental

army" little knew the young Virginian, the terror of his name. For

him, Canada staid at home to guard Detroit when she might have wrested

Yorktown.

With shouts of thanksgiving Louisville greeted Clark and his four

hundred; the war had come up to their very doors. Never had the

Indians so hammered away at the border. Across the entire continent

the late intermittent cannon shots became a constant volley.

Every family had its lost ones,--"My father, my mother, my wife, my

child, they slaughtered, burned, tortured,--_I will hunt the Indian

till I die!_"

Detroit, Niagara, Michilimackinac--the very names meant horror, for

there let loose, the red bloodhounds of war, the most savage, the most

awful, with glittering knives, pressed close along the Ohio. The

buffalo meat for the expedition rotted while Clark struggled,

anguished in spirit, a lion chained, "Stationed here to repel a few

predatory savages when I would carry war to the Lakes."

But troops yet behind, "almost naked for want of linen and entirely

without shoes," were trying to join Clark down the wild Ohio. Joseph

Brandt cut them off,--Lochry and Shannon and one hundred

Pennsylvanians,--not one escaped to tell the tale.

Clark never recovered, never forgot the fate of Lochry. "Had I tarried

but one day I might have saved them!" In the night-time he seemed to

hear those struggling captives dragged away to Detroit,--"Detroit!

lost for the want of a few men!" For the first time the over-wrought

hero gave way to intoxication to drown his grief,--and so had Clark

then died, "Detroit" might have been found written on his heart.

Despair swept over Westmoreland where Lochry's men were the flower of

the frontier. Only fourteen or fifteen rifles remained in

Hannastown,--the Indians swooped and destroyed it utterly.

XVIII

_ON THE RAMPARTS_

In all his anguish about Detroit, with the energy of desperation Clark

now set to work making Louisville stronger than ever.

"Boys, we must have defences absolutely impregnable; we know not at

what moment cannon may be booming at our gates."

A new stronghold was founded, and around it a moat eight feet deep and

ten feet wide; surrounding the moat itself, was built a breastwork of

log pens, filled with earth and picketed ten feet high on top of the

breastwork. An acre was thus enclosed, and in that acre was a spring

that bubbles still in the streets of Louisville. Within were mounted a

double six-pounder captured at Vincennes, four cannon, and eight

swivels, and heaped around were shells, balls, and grapeshot brought

for the Detroit campaign. With bakehouse and blockhouse, bastion and

barrack, no enemy ever dared attack Fort Nelson.

"General Clark is too hard on the militia," the soldier boys

complained, but the hammering and pounding and digging went on until

Louisville was the strongest point beyond the Alleghanies.

Back and back came the Indians, in battles and forays, and still in

this troublous time settlers were venturing by flatboat and over the

Wilderness Road into the Blue Grass country. They seemed to fancy that

Clark had stilled the West, that here the cannon had ceased to rattle.

Emigrants on packhorses bound for the land of cane and turkeys saw

bodies of scalped white men every day. Logan and his forest rangers,

like knights of old, guarded the Wilderness Road. Kenton and his

scouts patrolled the Ohio, crossing and recrossing on the track of

marauding savages. Boone watched the Licking; Floyd held the Bear

Grass.

Fort Nelson was done,--its walls were cannon-proof. Clark's gunboat

lay on the water-front when a messenger passed the sentinel with a

letter.

In the little square room that Clark called his headquarters, the

envoy waited. The young commandant read and bowed his head,--was it a

moment of irresolution? "Who could have brought this letter?"

"Any Indian would bring it for a pint of rum," answered a well-known

voice. Pulling off a mask, Connolly stood before him.

It was as if Lord Dunmore had risen from the floor,--Connolly had been

Lord Dunmore's captain commandant of all the land west of the Blue

Ridge. What was he saying?

"As much boundary of land on the west bank of the Ohio as you may

wish, and any title under that of a duke, if you will abandon

Louisville. I am sent to you by Hamilton."

"What!" gasped Clark. "Shall I become an Arnold and give up my

country? Never! Go, sir, before my people discover your identity."

Resolved to lock the secret in his own heart, Clark spoke to no one.

But that same night a similar offer was made to John Floyd on the Bear

Grass. He mentioned it to Clark.

"We must never tell the men," they agreed; "starving and discouraged

they might grasp the offer to escape the Indian tomahawk." But years

after Clark told his sister Lucy, and Floyd told his wife, Jane

Buchanan,--and from them the tale came down to us.

As if enraged at this refusal, British and Indians rallied for a final

onslaught.

"The white men are taking the fair Kain-tuck-ee, the land of deer and

buffalo. If you beat Clark this time you will certainly recover your

hunting-grounds," said De Peyster at the council fire.

In unprecedented numbers the redmen crossed the Ohio,--station after

station was invested; then followed the frightful battle of Blue Licks

where sixty white men fell in ten minutes. Kentucky was shrouded in

mourning.

Again Clark followed swift with a thousand mounted riflemen.

Among the Indians dividing their spoils and their captives there

sounded a sharp alarm, "The Long Knives! The Long Knives!"

"A mighty army on its march!"

Barely had the Shawnees time to fly when Clark's famished Kentuckians

entered Old Chillicothe. Fires were yet burning, corn was on the

roasting sticks, but the foe was gone.

"The property destroyed was of great amount, and the quantity of

provisions burned surpassed all idea we had of the Indian stores,"

Clark said in after years.

This second destruction of their villages and cornfields chilled the

heart of the Indians. Their power was broken. Never again did a great

army cross the Ohio.

But standing again on the ruins of Old Chillicothe, "I swear

vengeance!" cried the young Tecumseh.

And Clark, the Long Knife, mourned in his heart.

"This might have been avoided! this might have been avoided! Never

shall we have peace on this frontier until Detroit is taken!"

XIX

_EXIT CORNWALLIS_

"The boy cannot escape me!"

Lafayette was all that lay between Cornwallis and the subjugation of

Virginia. The lithe little Frenchman, only twenty-three years old,

danced ever on and on before him, fatiguing the redcoats far into the

heats of June.

The Virginia Legislature adjourned to Charlottesville. In vain

Cornwallis chased the boy and sent Tarleton on his raid over the

mountains, "to capture the Governor."

Like a flash he came, the handsome, daring, dashing Colonel Tarleton,

whose name has been execrated for a hundred years.

Virginia was swept as by a tornado. Never a noise in the night, never

a wind could whistle by, but "Tarleton's troop is coming!"

"Tarleton's troop!" Little John Randolph, a boy of eight, his mother

then lying in childbed, was gathered up and hurried away ninety miles

up the Appomattox.

"Tarleton's troop!" Beside the dead body of her husband sat the mother

of four-year-old Henry Clay, with her seven small children shuddering

around her. Standing on a rock in the South Anna River, the great

preacher had addressed his congregation in impassioned oratory for the

last time, and now on a bier he lay lifeless, while the gay trooper

raided the lands of his children.

Even Tarleton was moved by the widow's pallor as he tossed a handful

of coins on her table. She arose and swept them into the

fireplace,--"Never will I touch the invaders' gold."

"Tarleton's troop!" Back at Waxhaw, South Carolina, a lad by the name

of Andrew Jackson bore through life the scars of wounds inflicted by

Tarleton's men. At that very hour, alone on foot his mother was

returning from deeds of mercy to the patriots caged in prison pens by

Tarleton. But the streams were cold, the forests dark; losing her way,

overworn and weary, sank and died the mother of Andrew Jackson.

"Tarleton's troop!" Jack Jouett at the Cuckoo Tavern at Louisa saw

white uniforms faced with green, and fluttering plumes, and shining

helmets riding by.

The fiery Huguenot blood rose in him. Before daylight Jack's

hard-ridden steed reined up at Monticello.

"Tarleton's troop, three hours behind me! Fly!"

There was panic and scramble,--some of the legislators were at

Monticello. There was hasty adjournment and flight to Staunton, across

the Blue Ridge.

Assisting his wife, the slender, graceful Mrs. Jefferson, into a

carriage, the Governor sent her and the children under the care of

Jupiter, the coachman, to a neighbouring farmhouse, while he gathered

up his State papers.

"What next, massa?" Martin, the faithful body-servant, watching his

master's glance and anticipating every want, followed from room to

room.

"The plate, Martin," with a wave of the hand Jefferson strode out from

his beloved Monticello.

With Cæsar's help Martin pulled up the planks of the portico, and the

last piece of silver went under the floor as a gleaming helmet hove in

sight. Dropping the plank, imprisoning poor Cæsar, Martin faced the

intruder.

"Where is your master? Name the spot or I'll fire!"

"Fire away, then," answered the slave. The trooper desisted.

Tarleton and his men took food and drink, but destroyed nothing. The

fame of Jefferson's kindness to Burgoyne's captured army had reached

even Tarleton, for in that mansion books and music had been free to

the imprisoned British officers.

"An' now who be ye, an' whar are ye from?"

An old woman peered from the door of a hut in a gorge of the hills,

late in the afternoon.

"We are members of the Virginia Legislature fleeing from Tarleton's

raid."

"Ride on, then, ye cowardly knaves! Here my husband and sons have just

gone to Charlottesville to fight for ye, an' ye a runnin' awa' wi' all

yer might. Clar out; ye get naething here."

"But, my good woman, it would never do to let the British capture the

Legislature."

"If Patterick Hennery had been in Albemarle, the British dragoons

would naever ha' passed the Rivanna."

"But, my good woman, here is Patrick Henry."

"Patterick Hennery? Patterick Hennery? Well, well, if Patterick

Hennery is here it must be all right. Coom in, coom in to the best I

have."

But Daniel Boone and three or four others were captured, and carried

away to Cornwallis to be released soon after on parole.

"Tarleton's troop!" cried little Meriwether Lewis, seven years old.

Sweeping down the Rivanna came the desperado to the home of Colonel

Nicholas Lewis, away in the Continental army.

"What a paradise!" exclaimed Tarleton, raising his hands.

"Why, then, do you interrupt it?" inquired Mrs. Lewis, alone at home

with her small children and slaves.

The trooper slept that night in his horseman's cloak on the kitchen

floor. At daylight Mrs. Lewis was awakened by a clatter in her

henyard. Ducks, chickens, turkeys, the troopers were wringing their

necks. One decrepit old drake only escaped by skurrying under the

barn.

Bowing low till his plume swept the horse's mane, Tarleton galloped

away.

The wrath of Aunt Molly! "Here, Pompey, you just catch that drake.

Ride as fast as you can, and present it to Colonel Tarleton with my

compliments."

On flying steed, drake squawking and flouncing on his back, the darkey

flew after the troopers.

"Well, Pompey, did you overtake Colonel Tarleton?" was Aunt Molly's

wrathful inquiry.

"Yes'm."

"What did he say?"

"He put de drake in his wallet, and say he much obleeged!"

Little Meriwether, sitting on the gate-post, laughed at his aunt's

discomfiture.

The roll of a drum broke the stillness of Sabbath in the Blue Ridge.

"Tarleton's troop!" By the bed of her sick husband sat a Spartan

mother at Staunton. Her sons were in the army at the north, but three

young lads, thirteen, fifteen, and seventeen were there.

Placing their father's old firelock in their hands, "Go forth, my

children," she said, "repel the foot of the invader or see my face no

more."

But Tarleton did not force the mountain pass,--the boys went on down

to join Lafayette.

From farm and forest, children and grandsires hurried to Lafayette.

The proud earl retired to the sea and stopped to rest at the little

peninsula of Yorktown, waiting for reinforcements.

Down suddenly from the north came Washington with his tattered

Continentals and Rochambeau's gay Frenchmen, and the French fleet

sailed into the Chesapeake. Cornwallis was bottled up at Yorktown.

The boy, Lafayette, had simply put the stopper in the bottle and

waited.

Seventy cannon rolled in on Yorktown. George Rogers Clark, all the

West, was appealing to Washington, but the great chief unmoved kept

his eye on Lord Cornwallis.

On the 19th of October, 1781, the aristocratic marquis, who had

commenced his career as aide-de-camp to a king, surrendered to the

rebels of America.

"'Wallis has surrendered! surrendered! surrendered!"

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark flung up their caps with other boys

and shouted with the best of them, "'Wallis has surrendered!"

After the surrender of Cornwallis, Washington and Lafayette and the

officers of the French and American armies went to Fredericksburg to

pay their respects to Mary, the mother of Washington. The entire

surrounding country was watching in gala attire, and among them the

old cavalier, John Clark of Caroline.

On his white horse Washington passed the mulberry trees. Quick as a

flash little William turned,--"Why, father, he does look like my

brother George! Is that why people call our George the 'Washington of

the West'?"

A provisional treaty was signed at Paris, November 30, 1782, a few

days after the return of George Rogers Clark from that last

Chillicothe raid. Slowly, by pack-horse and flatboat, the news reached

Kentucky.

The last of the British army sailed away. Washington made his immortal

farewell, and went back to his farm, arriving on Christmas Eve.

Bonfires and rockets, speeches, thanksgiving and turkey, ended the

year 1782.

But with his return from the last scene at Yorktown, the father of

Meriwether Lewis lay down and died, a martyr of the Revolution.

XX

_THE OLD VIRGINIA HOME_

Back over Boone's trace, the Wilderness Road he had travelled so many

times, went General George Rogers Clark sometime in the early Spring

of 1783, past the thrifty fields of Fincastle and the Shenandoah

Germans, with their fat cattle and huge red barns. Every year the

stout Pennsylvanians were building farther and farther up. Year by

year the fields increased, and rosy girls stacked the hay in defiance

of all Virginian customs across the Ridge.

But the man who a thousand miles to the west held Illinois by the

prowess of his arm and the terror of his name, sprang not with the

buoyant step of six years before when he had gone to Virginia after

the gunpowder. His thoughts were at Kaskaskia, Vincennes, Louisville,

where his unsustained garrisons were suffering for food and clothing.

"Peace, peace, peace!" he muttered. "'Tis but a mockery. Must Kentucky

lie still and be scalped?"

Still the savages raided the border, not in numbers, but in squads,

persistent and elusive. Isham Floyd, the boy drummer of Vincennes, had

been captured by the savages and three days tortured in the woods, and

burnt at the stake.

"My boy-brother in the hands of those monsters?" exclaimed the

great-hearted John Floyd of the Bear Grass. A word roused the country,

the savages were dispersed, but poor Isham was dead. And beside him

lay his last tormentor, the son of an Indian chief, shot by the

avenging rifle of John Floyd.

Riding home with a heavy heart on the 12th of April, a ball struck

Colonel Floyd, passed through his arm, and entered his breast. Behind

the trees they caught a glimpse of the smoking rifle of Big Foot, that

chief whose son was slain. Leaping from his own horse to that of his

brother, Charles Floyd sustained the drooping form until they reached

the Bear Grass.

"Charles," whispered the dying man, "had I been riding Pompey this

would not have happened. Pompey pricks his ears and almost speaks if a

foe is near."

At the feet of Jane Buchanan her brave young husband was laid, his

black locks already damp with the dew of death.

"Papa! Papa!" Little two-year-old George Rogers Clark Floyd screamed

with terror. Ten days later the stricken wife, Jane Buchanan, gave

birth to another son, whom they named in honour of his heroic father.

With such a grief upon him, General George Rogers Clark wended his

lonesome way through the Cumberland Gap to Virginia. Now in the

night-time he heard young Isham cry. Not a heart in Kentucky but

bewailed the fate of the drummer boy. And John Floyd, his loss was a

public calamity.

"John Floyd, John Floyd," murmured Clark on his lonely way, "the

encourager of my earliest adventures, truest heart of the West!"

Lochry's men haunted him while he slept. "Had I not written they would

not have come!"

His debts, dishonoured, weighed like a pall, and deep, deep, down in

his heart he knew at last how much he loved that girl in the convent

at New Orleans. At times an almost ungovernable yearning came over him

to go down and force the gates of her voluntary prison-house.

In May he was at Richmond. A new Governor sat in the chair of

Jefferson and Patrick Henry. To him Clark addressed an appeal for the

money that was his due.

But Virginia, bankrupt, impoverished, prostrate, answered only,--"We

have given you land warrants, what more can you ask?"

With heavy heart Clark travelled again the road to Caroline.

There was joy in the old Virginia home, and sorrow. Once more the

family were reunited. First came Colonel Jonathan, with his courtly

and elegant army comrade Major William Croghan, an Irish gentleman,

nephew of Sir William Johnson, late Governor of New York, and of the

famous George Croghan, Sir William's Indian Deputy in the West.

In fact young Croghan crossed the ocean with Sir William as his

private secretary, on the high road to preferment in the British army.

But he looked on the struggling colonists, and mused,--

"Their cause is just! I will raise a regiment for Washington."

While all his relatives fought for the King, he alone froze and

starved at Valley Forge, and in that frightful winter of 1780 marched

with Jonathan Clark's regiment to the relief of Charleston. And

Charleston fell.

"Restore your loyalty to Great Britain and I will set you free," said

Major General Prevost, another one of Croghan's uncles.

"I cannot," replied the young rebel. "I have linked my fate with the

colonies."

Nevertheless General Prevost released him and his Colonel, Jonathan

Clark, on parole. Lieutenant Edmund was held a year longer.

Directly to the home in Caroline, Colonel Jonathan brought his Irish

Major. And there he met--Lucy.

Then, with the exchange of prisoners, Edmund came, damaged it is true,

but whole, and John, John from the prison ships, ruined.

At sight of the emaciated face of her once handsome boy, the mother

turned away and wept. Five long years in the prison ship had done its

work. Five years, where every day at dawn the dead were brought out in

cartloads. Stifled in crowded holds and poisoned with loathsome food,

in one prison ship alone in eighteen months eleven thousand died and

were buried on the Brooklyn shore. And then came the General, George

Rogers, and Captain Richard, from the garrison of Kaskaskia where he

had helped to hold the Illinois.

In tattered regimentals and worn old shirts they came,--the army of

the Revolution was disbanded without a dollar.

"And I, worse than without a dollar," said General George Rogers. "My

private property has been sacrificed to pay public debts."

But from what old treasure stores did those girls bring garments,

homespun and new and woolly and warm, prepared against this day of

reunion? The soldiers were children again around their father's

hearth, with mother's socks upon their feet and sister's arms around

their necks.

Jonathan, famous for his songs, broke forth in a favourite refrain

from Robin Hood:--

"And mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass,

And mony ane sings o' corn,

And mony ane sings o' Robin Hood

Kens little where he was born.

"It wasna in the ha', the ha',

Nor in the painted bower,

But it was in the gude greenwood

Amang the lily flower."

"And you call us lily flowers?" cried Fanny, the beauty and the pet.

"The lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin; and

here have we been spinning for weeks and weeks to dress you boys

again."

"And what has William been doing?"

"Learning to follow in the footsteps of my brothers," answered the lad

of thirteen. "Another year and I, too, could have gone as a drummer

boy."

"Thank God, you'll never have to," ejaculated the General solemnly.

The old house rang with merriment as it had not in years. The negroes,

York and old York and Rose his wife, Jane and Julia and Cupid and

Harry, and Nancy the cook, were jubilantly preparing a feast for

welcome.

Other guests were there,--Colonel Anderson, aide-de-camp of Lafayette,

who was to wed Elizabeth, the sister next older than William; and

Charles Mynn Thruston, son of the "Fighting Parson," and Dennis

Fitzhugh, daft lovers of the romping Fanny.

Since before the Revolution Jonathan had been engaged to Sarah Hite,

the daughter of Joist Hite, first settler of the Shenandoah.

Thousands of acres had her father and hundreds of indentured white

servants. Joist Hite's claim overlay that of Lord Fairfax; they fought

each other in the courts for fifty years. Should Hite win, Sarah would

be the greatest heiress in Virginia.

From the sight of happy courtship George Rogers turned and ever and

anon talked with his parents, "solemn as the judgment," said Fanny.

A few blissful days and the time for scattering came. Again the old

broad-porticoed farmhouse was filled with farewells,--negro slaves

held horses saddled.

"But we shall meet in Kentucky," said old John Clark the Cavalier.

George Rogers bade them good-bye, waved a last kiss back, whipped up

his horse, and entered the forest.

In October John died. A vast concourse gathered under the mulberry

trees where the young Lieutenant lay wrapped in the flag of his

country, a victim of the prison ship. Great was the indignation of

friends as they laid him away.

And now preparations were rapidly carried forward for removal to

Kentucky.

XXI

_DOWN THE OHIO_

There was truce on the border. The wondering redmen heard that the

great King had withdrawn across the Big Water and that the Long Knives

were victors in the country.

With wondering minds Shawnee and Delaware, Wyandot and Miami,

discussed around their council fires the changed situation. Very great

had the redcoats appeared in the eyes of the savages, with their

dazzling uniforms, and long, bright, flashing swords. But how terrible

were the Virginians of the Big Knives!

The continental armies had been dispersed, but now from their old

war-ravaged homes of the Atlantic shore they looked to the new lands

beyond the Alleghanies. Congress would pay them in these lands, and so

the scarred veterans of a hundred battles launched on the emigrant

trail.

In the Clark home there was busy preparation. Out of attic and cellar

old cedar chests were brought and packed with the precious linen,

fruit of many a day at the loom. Silver and pewter and mahogany

bureaus, high-post bedsteads and carved mirrors, were carefully piled

in the waggons as John Clark, cavalier, turned his face from tidewater

Virginia.

Neighbours called in to bid them farewell. Mrs. Clark made a last

prayer at the grave of her son, the victim of the prison ship.

"William, have you brought the mulberry cuttings?" called the motherly

Lucy.

"William, have you the catalpa seeds?" cried Fanny.

Leaving the old home with Jonathan to be sold, the train started

out,--horses, cattle, slaves, York riding proudly at the side of his

young master William, old York and Rose, Nancy, Jane, Julia, Cupid and

Harry and their children, a patriarchal caravan like that of Abraham

facing an earlier west two thousand years before.

Before and behind were other caravans. All Virginia seemed on the move,

some by Rockfish Gap and Staunton, up the great valley of Virginia to

the Wilderness Road, on packhorses; others in waggons, like the

Clarks, following the Braddock route down to Redstone-Old-Fort on the

Monongahela, where boats must be built.

And here at Redstone was George Rogers Clark, come up to meet them

from the Falls. In short order, under his direction, boatbuilders were

busy. York and old York took a hand, and William, in a first

experience that was yet to find play in the far Idaho.

The teasing Fanny looked out from her piquant sun-bonnet. Lucy, more

sedate, was accompanied by her betrothed, Major Croghan.

"My uncle, George Croghan, has lately died in New York and left me his

heir. I shall locate in Louisville," was the Major's explanation to

his friend's inquiry.

"And what is the news from Virginia?"

"Your old friend Patrick Henry is Governor again. Jonathan visited him

last week," was William's reply.

"And Jonathan's wife, Sarah Hite, bids fair to secure her fortune,"

added Fanny. "You see, when old Lord Fairfax heard of Cornwallis's

surrender he gave up. 'Put me to bed, Jo,' he said, 'it is time for me

to die,' and die he did. Now his lands are in the courts."

"Mrs. Jefferson, who was ill, died as a result of the excitement of

the flight from Tarleton," said Lucy. "To get away from his sorrow,

Mr. Jefferson has accepted the appointment of minister to France to

succeed Dr. Franklin, and has taken Martha and Maria with him. They

will go to school in Paris."

George Rogers Clark was a silent man. He spoke no word of his recent

trip to Philadelphia, in which Dr. Franklin had grasped his hand and

said, "Young man, you have given an empire to the Republic."

"General Washington has just returned from a horseback journey down

into this country," added Major Croghan. "He has lands on the Ohio."

"And have _you_ no word of yourself or of Kentucky?"

General Clark handed his father a notification from the Assembly of

Virginia. He read it aloud.

"The conclusion of the war, and the distressed situation of the State

with respect to its finances, call on us to adopt the most prudent

economy. You will, therefore, consider yourself out of command."

"And you are no longer in the army?"

"No, nor even on a footing with the Continentals. I was simply a

soldier of the Virginia militia, and, as such, have no claim even for

the half pay allotted to all Continental officers."

"But Virginia has ceded her western territories to Congress with the

distinct stipulation that expenses incurred in subduing any British

posts therein, or in acquiring any part of the territory, shall be

reimbursed by the United States."

"Is there any hope there? What has Congress? An empty treasury. And

who is to pay the bills incurred in the Illinois conquest? Shall I, a

private individual?"

"That would be impossible," commented the father.

"But I am not disheartened," continued George Rogers. "When the

Indians are quiet, my men hope to build a city on the land granted us

opposite the Falls. And here is something from Jefferson, written

before he left for Europe."

William stood attentive while the letter was read.

"ANNAPOLIS, December 4, 1783.

DEAR SIR,--I find they have subscribed a very large sum of

money in England for exploring the country from the

Mississippi to California. They pretend it is only to

promote knowledge. I am afraid they have thought of

colonising into that quarter. Some of us have been talking

here in a feeble way of making an attempt to search that

country, but I doubt whether we have enough of that kind of

spirit to raise the money. How would you like to lead such

a party? Though I am afraid our prospect is not worth the

question.

Your friend and humble servant,

THOMAS JEFFERSON."

"Does he want you to lead an exploring party to the Pacific Ocean?"

inquired William with intense interest.

"That is the substance of it. And I should want you to accompany me."

Little did either then dream that William Clark would lead that party,

with another.

The boats were ready. Surmounted by the Stars and Stripes of the "old

thirteen" they started on their journey. Suddenly the Monongahela

closed with ice and locked them at Pittsburg, where flurries of snow

set the sleigh-bells ringing.

Through deep drifts, under the guns of Fort Pitt, files of

Philadelphia traders were buying up skins and tallow, to carry back

over the mountains in their packsaddles that had come out loaded with

salt and gunpowder. Squaws were exchanging peltries for the white

man's tea and sugar. A great concourse of emigrants was blocked for

the winter. Every cabin was crowded.

After great exertions George had secured quarters quite unlike the

roomy old Virginian home.

"I must be gone to make peace with those Indians who have been acting

with the British, and take steps toward securing titles beyond the

Ohio."

Accompanied by two other commissioners, General Clark set out for Fort

McIntosh. It was January before the Indians gathered with Pierre

Drouillard, interpreter now for the United States.

"By the treaty of peace with England this land belongs to the Thirteen

Fires," was the basis of argument. "You have been allies of England,

and now by the law of nations the land is ours."

"No! No!" fiercely cried Buckongahelas.

"But we will divide with you. You are to release your white captives,

and give up a part of your Ohio lands. The rest you can keep. Detroit

and Michilimackinac belong to the Thirteen Fires." Then boundaries

were drawn.

"No! No!" cried Buckongahelas. Clark heeded not.

After deliberation the chiefs signed,--Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa,--all

but Buckongahelas. "I am a friend of Great Britain!" roared the

Delaware King. Then to the surprise of all, suddenly striding past the

other commissioners, the swarthy chief took the hand of General Clark.

"I thank the Great Spirit for having this day brought together two

such warriors as Buckongahelas and the Long Knife." Clark smiled and

returned the compliment.

"Will the gorge break?" every frontiersman was asking when George

returned to Pittsburg.

Piled back for seventy miles the Alleghany was a range of ice, heaped

floe on floe. Where the muddy Monongahela blends with the crystal

Alleghany the boats lay locked with a hundred others, awaiting the

deluge.

Suddenly the melting snows of the Alleghanies burst; the ice

loosened, tearing and cutting the branches of trees overhanging the

river; and slowly, with the ice, moved the great fleet of flatboats.

Ever narrower and deeper and swifter, the Ohio leaped with tremendous

rush down its confined channel. The trees on the uninhabited shores,

never yet cut away, held the embankment firm, and racing down on the

perilous flood came the Clarks to the Falls of the Ohio, in March of

1785.

Fascinated by the rush of waves, fourteen-year-old William poled like

a man. Could he dream what destruction lay in their course? "_L'année

des grandes eaux_," 1785, is famous in the annals of the West as the

year of great waters. The floods came down and drowned out old Ste.

Genevieve and drove the inhabitants back to the higher terrace on

which that village stands to-day. Above, the whole American Bottom was

a swift running sea, Kaskaskia and Cahokia were submerged by the

simultaneous melting of the snows, and nothing but its high bold shore

of limestone rock saved St. Louis itself. Paddling around in his boat,

Auguste Chouteau ate breakfast on the roofs of Ste. Genevieve.

At Louisville barely could boats be pulled in to the Bear Grass.

Below, waves foamed and whirled among the rocks, that to-day have been

smoothed by the hand of man into a shallow channel.

Guided by skilful hands, many a trader's boat that year took the chute

of the Falls like an arrow; over the ledges that dammed the water

back, down, down they slid out of sight into that unknown West, where

William knew not that his brother had paved the way to Louisiana.

"Have you found us a tract?" inquired the anxious mother.

"Land, mother? I own a dukedom, my soldiers and I, one hundred and

fifty thousand acres, on the Indian side of the river. We have

incorporated a town there, Clarksville they call it. It will be a

great city,--but Louisville is safer at present."

That Spring they lived at Fort Nelson, with watchmen on the ramparts.

"But we saw no Indians in coming down!"

"True enough, the flood was a surprise so early in the year. Wait a

little, and you will hear more of this terrifying river-route, where

in low water it takes seven weeks to run from Redstone to the Bear

Grass. Then the murderous clutches of the Indians have free play among

the helpless emigrants. Let us be thankful for what you escaped."

Almost while they were speaking a band of Indians glided out of the

woods not far away, snatched a boy from a fence, and shot his father

in the field.

"Don't kill me, just take me prisoner," said little Tommy, looking up

into the warrior's face.

At that instant an elder brother's rifle felled the Indian, and the

boy was saved to become the father of Abraham Lincoln.

XXII

_MULBERRY HILL_

On a beautiful eminence three miles south of Louisville, John Clark

built his pioneer Kentucky home. Louisville itself consisted of but a

few log cabins around a fortification built by George Rogers Clark.

This family home, so far from the centre, was stockaded by itself, a

double log house, two and a half stories high, with hall through the

middle.

Every night a negro stood sentinel, there were portholes in the

pickets, and Indians hid in the canebrakes. Once while the young

ladies were out walking an Indian shot a little negro girl and they

carried her back wounded, behind the pickets at Mulberry Hill.

The floor of the long dining-room was of wood, hard as a bone, and

over the seven-foot mantel stag-horns and swords of the Revolution

were lit by the light of the cavernous fireplace.

Rigid economy and untiring industry had been the rule at the old Clark

home in Caroline, and not less was it here. There were no pianos, but

until midnight the hum of the wheel made music.

Enchanted the young people listened to tale and song and hum of wheel,

while down the great chimney top calmly smiled the pensive stars.

Little thought they of bare walls, low rafters, or small windows.

After the boys hauled in the logs on a hand-sled, and built up a great

flame, the whole world seemed illuminated. The pewter basins shone

like mirrors, and while their fingers flew in the light of the fire,

stories were told of Kaskaskia, Vincennes, St. Louis. But the Donna?

Clark never spoke of her. It was a hidden grief that made him ever

lonely. When he saw the lovelight all around him and sometimes left

the room, the mother wondered why sudden silence came upon the group.

At Mulberry Hill Lucy was married to Major Croghan, who, on a farm

five miles out, built Locust Grove, an English mansion of the olden

style, in its day the handsomest in Louisville. And Fanny? She was the

belle of Kentucky. In powdered wig and ruffles many a grave Virginian

tripped with her the minuet and contra dances of the Revolution.

More and more young William became enamoured of the Indian dress, and

went about gaily singing the songs of Robin Hood and hacking the meat

with his hunting knife.

Out over the game-trails of Kentucky, like the beaten streets of

Fredericksburg, the only city he ever knew, young William went with

the Boones, Kenton, and his own famous brother, George Rogers Clark,

in peltry cap and buckskin hunting-shirt girded with a leathern belt.

Led by them, with what eagerness he shot his first buffalo, deep in

the woods of Kentucky. Not much longer could bears, deer, and buffalo

retreat to the cane. With the coming of the Clarks an emigration set

in that was to last for a hundred years.

Even amusements partook of sportive adventure. Now it was the hunter's

horn summoning the neighbours to a bear chase in the adjoining hills.

William surpassed the Indian himself in imitating the bark of the

wolf, the hoot of the owl, the whistle of the whippoorwill.

Daniel Boone came often to Mulberry Hill in leggings and moccasins,

ever hunting, hunting, hunting beaver, bear and coon, wolves and

wild-cats, deer and foxes, and going back to trade their skins in

Maryland for frontier furniture, knives and buttons, scissors, nails,

and tea.

Upon his shot-pouch strap Boone fastened his moccasin awl with a

buckhorn handle made out of an old clasp-knife, and carried along with

him a roll of buckskin to mend his mocassins. While the grizzled

hunter stitched deftly at his moccasins, William and York sat by,

engaged in the same pastime, for wherever William went, York was his

shadow.

"Since poor Richard's uncertain fate I can never trust the boy alone,"

said his mother. "York, it is your business to guard your young

master." And he did, to the ends of the earth.

When "Uncle Daniel," rolled in a blanket, threw himself down on a bed

of leaves and slept with his feet to the fire to prevent rheumatism,

York and William lay down too, sleeping by turns and listening for

Indians.

At daylight, loosely belting their fringed hunting shirts into wallets

for carrying bread, a chunk of jerked beef, or tow for the gun, with

tomahawk on the right side and scalping knife on the left, each in a

leathern case, again they set off under the reddening forest.

Skilled in the lore of woodcraft, watchful of clouds and stars and

sun, an intimate student of insect life and own brother to the wily

beaver, bear, and buffalo, William Clark was becoming a scientist.

Returning from the chase with the same sort of game that graced the

Saxon board before the Norman conquest, he sat down to hear the talk

of statesmen. For when Clark's commission was revoked, Kentucky,

unprotected, called a convention to form a State.

Affairs that in European lands are left to kings and their ministers,

were discussed in the firelight of every cabin. Public safety demanded

action. Exposed on three sides to savage inroads, with their Virginia

capital hundreds of miles beyond forest, mountains, and rivers, no

wonder Kentucky pleaded for statehood.

In a despotic country the people sleep. Here every nerve was awake.

Discussion, discussion, discussion, made every fireside a school of

politics; even boys in buckskin considered the nation's welfare.

Before he was seventeen William Clark was made an ensign and proudly

donned the eagle and blue ribbon of the Cincinnati, a society of the

soldiers of the Revolution of which Washington himself was president.

Educated in the backwoods and by the cabin firelight, young William

was already developing the striking bearing and bold unwavering

character of his brother.

"What can have become of Richard?" Every day the mother heart glanced

down the long avenue of catalpas that were growing in front of

Mulberry Hill.

Of the whole family, the gentle affectionate Richard was an especial

favourite. He was coming from Kaskaskia to see his mother, but never

arrived. One day his horse and saddlebags were found on the banks of

the Wabash. Was he killed by the Indians, or was he drowned? No one

ever knew.

Again George Rogers Clark was out making treaties with the Indians to

close up the Revolution, but British emissaries had been whispering in

their ears, "Make the Ohio the boundary."

At last, after long delays, a few of the tribes came in to the council

at the mouth of the Great Miami, some in friendship, some like the

Shawnees, rudely suggestive of treachery.

"The war is over," explained General Clark as chairman; "we desire to

live in peace with our red brethren. If such be the will of the

Shawnees, let some of their wise men speak."

There was silence as they whiffed at the council pipes. Then a tall

chief arose and glanced at the handful of whites and at his own three

hundred along the walls of the council house.

"We come here to offer you two pieces of wampum. You know what they

mean. Choose." Dropping the beaded emblems upon the table the savage

turned to his seat by the wall.

Pale, calm as a statue, but with flashing eye, Clark tangled his

slender cane into the belts and--flung them at the chiefs.

"Ugh!"

Every Indian was up with knife unsheathed, every white stood with hand

on his sword. Into their very teeth the Long Knife had flung back the

challenge, "Peace, or War."

Like hounds in leash they strained, ready to leap, when the lordly

Long Knife raised his arm and grinding the wampum beneath his heel

thundered,--

"_Dogs, you may go!_"

One moment they wavered, then broke and fled tumultuously from the

council house.

All night they debated in the woods near the fort. In the morning,

"Let me sign," said Buckongahelas.

Smiling, Clark guided the hand of the boastful Delaware, and all the

rest signed with him.

XXIII

_MISSISSIPPI TROUBLES_

For the first time in their stormy history, the front and rear gates

of the Kentucky forts lay back on their enormous wooden hinges, and

all day long men and teams passed in and out with waggon loads of

grain from the harvest fields. So hushed and still was the air, it

seemed the old Indian days were gone for ever. At night the animals

came wandering in from the woods, making their customary way to the

night pens. Fields of corn waved undisturbed around the forts.

But the truce was brief. Already the Cherokees were slaughtering on

the Wilderness Road, and beyond the Ohio, Shawnee and Delaware, wild

at the sight of the white man's cabin, rekindled the fires around the

stake.

Thousands of emigrants were coming over the mountains from Carolina,

and down the Ohio from Pittsburg social boats lashed together rode in

company, bark canoes, pirogues, flatboats, keelboats, scows, barges,

bateaux and brigades of bateaux, sweeping down with resistless

English, Scotch, Irish, Germans, Huguenots, armed for the battle of

the races.

Still the powerful fur traders of Quebec and Montreal hung on to

Detroit and Mackinac, still De Peyster opposed giving up the

peninsulas of Michigan.

"Pen the young republic east of the Alleghanies," said France, Spain,

England, when the Peace Treaty was under consideration. But Clark's

conquest compelled them to grant the Illinois.

Before the ink was dry on the documents, Kentucky was trading down the

great river of De Soto.

"The West must trade over the mountains," said the merchants of

Philadelphia and Baltimore.

"The West will follow its rivers," answered Kentucky.

"Spain is Mistress of the Mississippi," said the Spanish King to John

Jay, the American minister at Madrid.

In vain flatboatmen with wheat and corn said, "We are from Kentucky."

"What Kaintucke?" brayed the commandant at Natchez. "I know no

Kaintucke. Spain own both side de river. I am ordered to seize all

foreign vessel on de way to New Orleong."

Without the Spaniard the trip was sufficiently hazardous. Indians

watched the shores. Pirates infested the bayous. Head winds made the

frail craft unmanageable,--snags leered up like monsters to pierce and

swallow. But every new settler enlarged the fields, and out of the

virgin soil the log granaries were bursting.

"Carry away our grain, bring us merchandise," was the cry of expanding

Kentucky.

But to escape the Indian was to fall into the hands of the Spaniard,

and the Spaniard was little more than a legalised pirate.

Even the goods of the Frenchmen were seized with the warning, "Try it

again and we'll send you to Brazil."

The Frenchmen resented this infringement on their immemorial right.

Since the days of the daring and courageous Bienville who founded New

Orleans, no man had said them nay. A tremendous hatred of the Spaniard

grew up in the hearts of the Frenchmen.

In the midst of these confiscations there was distress and anarchy in

the Illinois. The infant republic had not had time to stretch out

there the strong arm of law. Floods and continental money had ruined

the confiding Frenchmen; the garrisons were in destitution; they were

writing to Clark:--

"Our credit is become so weak among the French that one dollar's worth

of provisions cannot be had without prompt payment, were it to save

the whole country."

"And why has our British Father made no provision for us," bewailed

the Indians, "who at his beck and call have made such deadly enemies

of the Long Knives? Our lands have been ravaged by fire and sword, and

now we are left at their mercy."

"Let us drive the red rascals out," cried the infuriated settlers.

"No," said Washington, who understood and pitied the red men. "Forgive

the past. Dispossess them gradually by purchase as the extension of

settlement demands the occupation of their lands."

But five thousand impoverished Indians in the Ohio country kept thirty

thousand settlers in hot water all the time. No lock on a barn door

could save the horses, no precaution save the outlying emigrant from

scalping or capture. Red banditti haunted the streams and forests,

dragging away their screaming victims like ogres of mediæval tragedy.

Clark grew sick and aged over it. "No commission, no money, no right

to do anything for my suffering country!"

"Your brother, the General, is very ill," said old John Clark, coming

out of the sick chamber at Mulberry Hill. In days to come there were

generals and generals in the Clark family, but George Rogers was

always "the General."

Into ten years the youthful commander had compressed the exposure of a

lifetime. Mental anguish and days in the icy Wabash told now on his

robust frame, and inflammatory rheumatism set in from which he never

recovered.

"The Americans are your enemies," emissaries from Detroit were

whispering at Vincennes. "The Government has forsaken you. They take

your property, they pay nothing."

"We have nothing to do with the United States," said the French

citizens, weary of a Congress that heeded them not. "We consider

ourselves British subjects and shall obey no other power."

Even Clark's old friend, The Tobacco's Son, had gone back to his

British father, and as always with Indians, dug up the red tomahawk.

A committee of American citizens at Vincennes sent a flying express to

Clark.

"This place that once trembled at your victorious arms, and these

savages overawed by your superior power, is now entirely anarchical

and we shudder at the daily expectation of horrid murder. We beg you

will write us by the earliest opportunity. Knowing you to be a friend

of the distressed we look to you for assistance."

Such a call could not be ignored. Kentucky was aroused and summoned

her favourite General to the head of her army. From a sick bed he

arose to lead a thousand undisciplined men, and with him went his

brother William.

The sultry sun scorched, the waters were low, provisions did not

arrive until nine days after the soldiers, and then were spoiled.

Fatigued, hungry, three hundred revolted and left; nevertheless, the

Indians had fled and Vincennes was recovered.

Just then up the Wabash came a Spaniard with a boatload of valuable

goods. Clark promptly confiscated the cargo, and out of them paid his

destitute troops.

"It is not alone retaliation," said Clark, "It is a warning. If Spain

will not let us trade down the river, she shall not trade up."

Kentucky applauded. They even talked of sending Clark against the

Spaniards and of breaking away from a government that refused to aid

them.

"General Clark seized Spanish goods?" Virginia was alarmed and

promptly repudiated the seizure. "We are not ready to fight Spain."

Clark's friends were disturbed. "You will be hung."

Clark laughed. "I will flee to the Indians first."

"We have as much to fear from the turbulence of our backwoodsmen,"

said Washington, "as from the hostility of the Spaniards."

But at this very time, unknown to Washington, the Spaniards were

arming the savages of the south, to exterminate these reckless

ambitious frontiersmen.

Louisiana feared these unruly neighbours. Intriguers from New Orleans

were whispering, "Break with the Atlantic States and league yourself

with Spain."

Then came the rumour, "Jay proposes to shut up the Mississippi for

twenty-five years!"

Never country was in such a tumult.

"We are sold! We are vassals of Spain!" cried the men of the West.

"What? Close the Mississippi for twenty-five years as a price of

commercial advantage on the Atlantic coast? Twenty-five years when our

grain is rotting? Twenty-five years must we be cut off when the

Wilderness Road is thronged with packtrains, when the Ohio is black

with flatboats? Where do they think we are going to pen our people?

Where do they think we are going to ship our produce? Better put

twenty thousand men in the field at once and protect our own

interests."

The bond was brittle; how easily might it be broken!

Even Spain laughed at the weakness of a Union that could not command

Kentucky to give up its river. And Kentucky looked to Clark. "We must

conquer Spain or unite with her. We must have the Mississippi. Will

you march with us on New Orleans?"

Then, happily, Virginia spoke out for the West. "We must aid them.

The free navigation of the Mississippi is the gift of nature to the

United States."

The very next day Madison announced in the Virginia Assembly, "I shall

move the election of delegates to a Constitutional Convention." The

stability of the Union seemed pivoted upon an open river to the Gulf.

Veterans of the Revolution and of the Continental Congress met to

frame a constitution in 1787. After weeks of deliberation with closed

doors, the immortal Congress adjourned. The Constitution was second

only to the Declaration of Independence. Without kings or princes a

free people had erected a Continental Republic.

The Constitution was adopted, and all the way into Kentucky wilds were

heard the roaring of cannon and ringing of bells that proclaimed the

Father of his Country the first President of the United States.

"We must cement the East and the West," said Washington. But that West

was drifting away--with its Mississippi.

About this time young Daniel Boone said, "Father, I am going west."

Just eighteen, one year older than William Clark, in the summer of

1787, he concluded to strike out for the Mississippi.

"Well, Dannie boy, thee take the compass," said his father.

It was the old guide, as large as a saucer, that Lord Dunmore gave

Boone when he sent him out to call in the surveyors from the Falls of

the Ohio thirteen years before.

Mounted on his pony, with a wallet of corn and a rifle on his back,

Boone rode straight on westward thirty days without meeting a single

human being. Pausing on the river bank opposite St. Louis he hallooed

for an hour before any one heard him.

"Dat some person on de oder shore," presently said old René

Kiercereaux, the chorister at the village church.

A canoe was sent over and brought back Boone. As if a man had dropped

from the moon, French, Spanish, and Indian traders gathered. He spoke

not a word of French, but Auguste Chouteau's slave Petrie could talk

English.

"Son of Boone, de great hunter? Come to my house!"

"Come to _my_ house!"

The hospitable Creoles strove with one another for the honour of

entertaining the son of Daniel Boone. For twelve years he spent his

summers in St. Louis and his winters in western Missouri, hunting and

trapping.

"The best beaver country on earth," he wrote to his father. "You had

better come out."

"Eef your father, ze great Colonel Boone, will remove to Louisiana,"

said Señor Zenon Trudeau, the Lieutenant-Governor, "eef he will become

a citizen of Spain, de King will appreciate de act and reward him

handsomely."

XXIV

_ST. CLAIR_

"Kentucky! Kentucky! I hear nothing else," exclaimed the Fighting

Parson of the Revolution, who had thrown aside his prayer-book and

gown to follow the armies of Washington. "If this western exodus

continues Virginia bids fair to be depopulated." Even Jack Jouett, who

had ridden to warn Jefferson of Tarleton's raid, had gone to become an

honoured member of Kentucky's first legislature.

"Father, let me go."

Charles Mynn Thruston, the son of the Fighting Parson, had long

desired to follow Fanny Clark, but his father held him back. Smiling

now at the ardour of his son, he said, "You may go, my boy. I am

thinking of the western country myself."

Preparations were immediately made, business affairs settled, and a

farewell dinner brought friends to historic Mount Zion, the famous

Shenandoah seat of the Fighting Parson.

"A strangah desiahs to know, sah, if he can get dinnah, sah,"

announced black Sambo.

"Certainly, certainly." Parson Thruston was the soul of hospitality.

"Bring him at once to the table, Sambo."

The stranger seated himself and ate in silence.

"I perceive," remarked the Parson after the courses had been removed,

"I perceive that you are a traveller. May I inquire whence you come?"

Every ear was intent. "From Kentucky, sir," answered the stranger.

"Ah, that is fortunate. I am about to leave for that country myself,"

exclaimed young Thruston, "and shall be glad to hear such news as you

may have to communicate."

The stranger smiled and pondered. "The only interesting incident that

I recall before my departure from Louisville, was the marriage of the

Kentucky belle, Miss Fanny Clark, to Dr. O'Fallon."

As if struck by a bolt from heaven, Charles Mynn Thruston fell

unconscious to the floor.

Dr. O'Fallon was a young Irish gentleman of talent and learning. An

intimate friend of the Governor of South Carolina, just before the

Revolution he had come to visit America, but espousing the cause of

the colonists, the Governor promptly clapped him into prison.

"Imprisoned O'Fallon!" The people of Charleston arose, liberated him,

and drove the Governor to the British fleet in the harbour.

Dr. O'Fallon enlisted as a private soldier. But surgeons were

needed,--he soon proved himself one of skill unexcelled in America.

General Washington himself ordered him north, and made him

Surgeon-General in his own army. Here he remained until the close of

the war, and was thanked by Congress for his services.

And now he had visited Kentucky to assist in securing the navigation

of the Mississippi, and met--Fanny. With the charming Fanny as his

wife, Dr. O'Fallon rode many a mile in the woods, the first great

doctor of Louisville.

Other emigrants were bringing other romances, and other tragedies.

"Ohio! Ohio! We hear nothing but Ohio!" said the people of New

England.

One rainy April morning the "Mayflower," a flatboat with a second

Plymouth colony, turned into the Muskingum and founded a settlement.

"Marie, Marie Antoinette,--did she not use her influence in behalf of

Franklin's mission to secure the acknowledgment of American

independence? Let us name our settlement Marietta."

So were founded the cities of the French king and queen, Louisville

and Marietta. A few months later, Kentuckians went over and started

Cincinnati on the site of George Rogers Clark's old block-house.

Into the Ohio, people came suddenly and in swarms, "institutional

Englishmen," bearing their household gods and shaping a state.

"These men come wearing hats," said the Indians. Frenchmen wore

handkerchiefs and never tarried.

Surveyors came.

Squatting around their fires, with astonishment and fear the Indians

watched "the white man's devil," squinting over his compass and making

marks in his books. Wherever the magical instrument turned all the

best lands were bound with chains fast to the white man.

The Indians foresaw their approaching destruction and hung nightly

along the river shore, in the thick brush under the sycamores,

stealing horses and sinking boats. With tomahawk in hand, a leader

among them was young Tecumseh.

"The Ohio shall be the boundary. No white man shall plant corn in

Ohio!" cried the Indian.

"Keep the Ohio for a fur preserve," whispered Detroit at his back.

While wedding bells were ringing at Mulberry Hill, Marietta was

suffering. The gardens were destroyed by Indian marauders, the game

was driven off, and great was the privation within the walled town.

That was the winter when Governor St. Clair came with his beautiful

daughter Louisa, the fleetest rider in the chase, the swiftest skater

on the ice, and, like all pioneer girls, so skilled with the rifle

that she could bring down the bird on the wing, the squirrel from the

tree.

Creeping out over the crusty February snow, every family in the

settlement had its kettle in the sugar orchard boiling down the maple

sap. Corn-meal and sap boiled down together formed for many the daily

food.

But with all the bravado of their hearts, men and women passed

sleepless vigils while the sentinel stood all night long in the lonely

watchtower of the middle blockhouse. At any moment might arise the

cry, "The Indians! The Indians are at the gates!" and with the long

roll of the drum beating alarm every gun was ready at a porthole and

every white face straining through the dark.

When screaming wild geese steering their northern flight gave token of

returning spring, when the partridge drummed in the wood and the

turkey gobbled, when the red bird made vocal the forest and the

hawthorn and dogwood flung out their perfume, then too came the Indian

from his winter lair.

"Ah," sighed many a mother, "I prefer the days of gloom and tempest,

for then the red man hugs his winter fire."

Always among the first in pursuit of marauding Indians, William Clark

as a cadet had already crossed the Ohio with General Scott, "a youth

of solid and promising parts and as brave as Cæsar," said Dr.

O'Fallon.

Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea, presented a memorial to Congress

insisting upon the Ohio as the Indian boundary. His son came down to

Marietta.

"Ah, yes," was the whispered rumour at Marietta, "young Brant, the

educated son of the famous Mohawk leader, aspires to the hand of

Louisa St. Clair." But the Revolutionary General spurned his

daughter's dusky suitor.

The next day after New Year's, 1791, the Indians swept down on

Marietta with the fiendish threat, "Before the trees put forth their

leaves again no white man's cabin shall smoke beyond the Ohio."

"Capture St. Clair alive," bade the irate Mohawk chieftain. "Shoot his

horse under him but do not kill him." Did he hope yet to win consent

to his marriage with Louisa?

The next heard of St. Clair was when the last shattered remnant of his

prostrate army fell back on Cincinnati, a defeat darker, more

annihilating, more ominous than Braddock's.

"My God," exclaimed Washington, "it's all over! St. Clair's

defeated--routed; the officers are nearly all killed, the men by

wholesale; the rout is complete--too shocking to think of--and a

surprise into the bargain."

No wonder Secretary Lear stood appalled as the great man poured forth

his wrath in the house at Philadelphia.

Fifteen hundred went out from Cincinnati,--five hundred came back. A

thousand scalps had Thayendanegea.

The news came to Mulberry Hill like a thunderbolt. Kentucky, even

Pittsburg, looked for an immediate savage inundation,--for was not all

that misty West full of warriors? The old fear leaped anew. Like an

irresistible billow they might roll over the unprotected frontier.

From his bed of sickness General Clark started up. "Ah, Detroit!

Detroit! Hadst thou been taken my countrymen need not have been so

slaughtered."

At Marietta, up in the woods and on the side hills, glittered

multitudes of fires, the camps of savages. Hunger added its pangs to

fear. The beleaguered citizens sent all the money they could raise by

two young men to buy salt, meat, and flour at Redstone-Old-Fort on the

Monongahela. Suddenly the river closed with ice; in destitution

Marietta waited.

"They have run off with the money," said some.

"They have been killed by Indians," said others. But again, as

suddenly, the ice broke, and early in March the young men joyfully

moored their precious Kentucky ark at the upper gate of the garrison

at Marietta.

XXV

_THE SWORD OF "MAD ANTHONY" WAYNE_

"Another defeat will ruin the reputation of the government," said

Washington, as he sent out "Mad Anthony" Wayne, the uproarious Quaker

general, with ruffles, queue, and cocked hat, the stormer of Stony

Point in the Revolution.

In vain Wayne sent commissioners to treat with the Indians. Elated

with recent victories, "The Ohio shall be the boundary," was the

defiant answer.

An Indian captured and brought to Wayne said of the British: "All

their speeches to us are red, red as blood. All the wampum and

feathers are painted red. Our war-pipes and hatchets are red. Even the

tobacco is red for war."

"My mind and heart are upon that river," said Cornplanter, an Indian

chief, pointing to the Ohio. "May that water ever continue to be the

boundary between the Americans and the Indians."

Commissioned by Washington First Lieutenant of the Fourth Sub-Legion,

on the first of September, 1792, William Clark crossed the Ohio and

spent the winter at Legionville where Wayne was collecting and

drilling his army.

"I will have no six months men," said Wayne. "Two years will it take

to organise, drill, and harden them before we think of taking the

field."

"We are certain to be scalped," whispered timorous ones, remembering

St. Clair's slaughter. Hundreds deserted. The very word Indian

inspired terror.

But horse, foot, and artillery, he drilled them, the tremblers took

courage, and the government, at last awakened, stood firmly behind

with money and supplies.

"Remember, Stony Point was stormed with unloaded muskets. See! You

must know the use of the broadsword and of the bayonet, a weapon

before which the savages cannot stand."

At work went "Mad Anthony" teaching his men to load and fire upon the

run, to leap to the charge with loud halloos, anticipating all

possible conditions.

"Charge in open order. Each man rely on himself, and expect a personal

encounter with the enemy." The men caught his spirit. Wayne's Legion

became a great military school.

Now he was drilling superb Kentucky cavalry, as perfectly matched as

the armies of Europe, sorrel and bay, chestnut and gray, bush-whacking

and charging, leaping ravines and broken timber, outdoing the Indians

themselves in their desperate riding.

And with all this drill, Wayne was erecting and garrisoning forts. In

the fall of 1793, Lieutenant Clark was dispatched to Vincennes.

"It appears that all active and laborious commands fall on me," he

wrote to his brother Jonathan, in Virginia. "Not only labour, but I

like to have starved,--was frozen up in the Wabash twenty days without

provisions. In this agreeable situation had once more to depend on my

rifle."

After several skirmishes with Indians, Lieutenant Clark returned to

Fort Washington (Cincinnati) in May, to be immediately dispatched with

twenty-one dragoons and sixty cavalry to escort seven hundred

packhorses laden with provisions and clothing to Greenville, a log

fort eighty miles north of Cincinnati.

The Shawnees were watching. Upon this rich prize fell an ambuscade of

sixty Indians. Eight men were killed, the train began to retreat, when

Clark came dashing up from the rear, put the assailants to flight, and

saved the day. For this he was thanked by General Wayne.

Washington, Jefferson, the whole country impatiently watched for news

of Wayne on the Ohio.

Drill, drill, drill,--keeping out a cloud of scouts that no peering

Indian might discover his preparations, Wayne exercised daily now with

rifle, sabre, and bayonet until no grizzly frontiersman surpassed his

men at the target, no fox-hunter could leap more wildly, no swordsman

more surely swing the sharp steel home. At the sight young

Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, Virginians of the border and

Pennsylvanians of lifetime battle, were eager for the fray.

About midsummer, 1794, Wayne moved out with his Legion, twenty-six

hundred strong, and halted at Fort Greenville for sixteen hundred

Kentucky cavalry. Brigades of choppers were opening roads here and

there to deceive.

"This General that never sleeps is cutting in every direction,"

whispered the watchful Shawnees. "He is the Black Snake."

For a last time Wayne offered peace. His messengers were wantonly

murdered.

The issue at Fallen Timbers lasted forty minutes,--the greatest Indian

battle in forty years of battle. Two thousand Indians crouching in the

brush looked to see the Americans dismount and tie their horses as

they did in St. Clair's battle,--but no, bending low on their horses

with gleaming sabres and fixed bayonets, on like a whirlwind came

thundering the American cavalry.

"What was it that defeated us? It was the Big Wind, the Tornado," said

the Indians.

Matchekewis was there from Sheboygan with his warriors, the Black

Partridge from Illinois, and Buckongahelas. The Shawnees had their

fill of fighting that day; Tecumseh fell back at the wild onset,

retreating inch by inch.

William Clark led to the charge a column of Kentuckians and drove the

enemy two miles. But why enumerate in this irresistible legion, where

all were heroes on that 20th of August, 1794.

Wayne's victory ended the Revolution. Ninety days after, Lord St.

Helens gave up Ohio in his treaty with Jay, and England bound herself

to deliver the northwestern posts that her fur traders had hung on to

so vainly.

Niagara, Michilimackinac, Detroit, keys to the Lakes, _entrepôts_ to

all the fur trade of the Northwest, were lost to Britain for ever. It

was hardest to give up Detroit,--it broke up their route and added

many a weight to the weary packer's back when the fur trade had to

take a more northern outlet along the Ottawa.

It was ten o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1796, when the

Detroiters peering through their glasses espied two vessels. "The

Yankees are coming!"

A thrill went through the garrison, and even through the flag that

fluttered above. The last act in the war of independence was at hand.

The four gates of Detroit opened to be closed no more, as the

drawbridge fell over the moat and the Americans marched into the

northern stronghold. It was Lernoult's old fort built so strenuously

in that icy winter of 1779-80, when "Clark is coming" was the

watchword of the north. Scarce a picket in the stockade had been

changed since that trying time. Blockhouse, bastion, and battery could

so easily have been taken, that even at this day we cannot suppress a

regret that Clark had not a chance at Detroit!

Barefooted Frenchmen, dark-eyed French girls, and Indians, Indians

everywhere, came in to witness the transfer of Detroit. At noon, July

11, 1796, the English flag was lowered and the Stars and Stripes went

up where Clark would fain have hung them seventeen years before.

And the old cellar of the council house! Like a tomb was its

revelation, for there, mouldered with the must of years, lay two

thousand scalps, long tresses of women, children's golden curls, and

the wiry locks of men, thrown into that official cellar in those awful

days that now were ended.

The merry Frenchmen on their pipestem farms,--for every inhabitant

owned his pathway down to the river,--the merry Frenchmen went on

grinding their corn by their old Dutch windmills, went on pressing

their cider in their gnarled old apple orchards. They could not change

the situation if they would, and they would not if they could. The

lazy windmills of Detroit swung round and round as if it had been ever

thus. Still the Indians slid in and out and still the British traders

lingered, loath to give up the fur trade of the Lakes.

The next year after Wayne's victory the last buffalo in Ohio was

killed, and in 1796 the first American cabins were built at Cleveland

and Chillicothe. For the first time the Ohio, the great highway, was

safe. Passenger boats no longer had bullet-proof cabins, no longer

trailed cannon on their gunwales. In that year twenty thousand

emigrants passed down the Ohio. Astonished and helpless the red men

saw the tide. By 1800 there were more whites in the Mississippi valley

than there were Indians in all North America.

XXVI

_THE SPANIARD_

Early in April of 1793 a company of French merchants sat at a dinner

in New Orleans. Before them magnolias bloomed in the plaza. Out in the

harbour their vessels were flying the Spanish flag.

"Spain has declared war against France. A French frigate is sailing

for the Gulf."

Like a bomb the announcement burst in their midst.

The fine and handsome face of Charles De Pauw was lit with

determination. He had come over with Lafayette, and had invested a

fortune in the new world.

"My ships are in danger. I will haul down the Spanish colours and

float the American flag. Long enough have the Frenchmen of Missouri

and Illinois endured the Spanish yoke. Long enough have our cargoes

been confiscated and our trade ruined by unnecessary and tyrannical

restrictions."

"But America will not help us."

"The Kentuckians will," answered De Pauw. "Already they are begging

George Rogers Clark to march on New Orleans."

A huzza rang round the table. "We shall be here to help him."

"Every settlement that borders the Mississippi will join with us.

Spain rules to Pittsburg, dictates prices, opens and closes markets.

Will Americans endure that? From New Orleans to British America, Spain

stretches an invisible cordon, 'thus far and no farther.' All beyond

is the private park of Don Carlos IV."

"What will Congress do?"

"Congress?" echoed another. "What does it matter to those people

beyond the Alleghanies? They are very far away. Europe is not so

remote. Our interests lie with Mississippi and the sea."

"But that would dismember the Union."

"Will it dismember the Union for the Louisianians to break their

fetter from Spain and thereby give us a market clear of duty? The

Kentuckians, equally with us, are irritated at the Spanish Government.

We have a right to strike Spain."

Charles De Pauw renamed his schooner the "Maria" and sailed out of the

Gulf under the Stars and Stripes. On the way to New York he met the

frigate returning that brought the French minister, Charles Genet, to

Charleston.

Acres of flatboats lay freighted on the dimpling Ohio. Corn, wheat,

oats, rye,--the worn-out tobacco lands of Virginia knew nothing like

it. But the Spaniard stood at the gate and locked up the river.

"A King?" Americans laughed at the fancy. "A King to check or hinder

us in our rights? Who shall refuse us? Are we not Americans?"

"The Mississippi is ours," cried Kentucky. "By the law of nature, by

the authority of numbers, by the right of necessity. If Congress will

not give it to us, we must take it ourselves."

And now France--

George Rogers Clark was profoundly moved by the French crusade for

liberty. "We owe it to France to help her. Was not France our friend

in the time of trouble?"

Then he wrote to the French minister, tendering his services to France

in her arduous struggle:

"I would begin with St. Louis, a rich, large, and populous

town, and by placing two or three frigates within the

Mississippi's mouth (to guard against Spanish succours) I

would engage to subdue New Orleans, and the rest of

Louisiana. If farther aided I would capture Pensacola; and

if Santa Fé and the rest of New Mexico were objects--I know

their strength and every avenue leading to them, for

conquest.--All the routes as well as the defenceless

situation of those places are perfectly known to me and I

possess draughts of all their defences, and estimates of

the greatest force which could oppose me. If France will be

hearty and secret in this business my success borders on

certainty.--The route from St. Louis to Santa Fé is easy,

and the places not very distant.... To save Congress from a

rupture with Spain on our account, we must first expatriate

ourselves and become French citizens. This is our

intention."

On its errand of good or ill the letter sped to the French minister to

the United States, and lo! that minister was Genet, just landed at

Charleston.

Genet had come from Revolutionary France, at this moment fighting all

Europe, so frightfully had upblazed the tiny spark of liberty borne

back by the soldiers of Rochambeau.

André Michaux was instructed to hasten to the Falls of the Ohio with

this message to George Rogers Clark:

"The French minister has filled out this blank commission from his

Government making you a Marshal of France, Major General and

Commander-in-Chief of the French Legion on the Mississippi."

Thus had Genet answered the letter.

New Orleans was watching. "The Americans are threatening us with an

army assembling on the Ohio," wrote Carondelet in alarm to Spain.

"Ill-disposed and fanatical citizens in this Capital," he added,

"restless and turbulent men infatuated with Liberty and Equality, are

increased with every vessel that comes from the ports of France."

He begged Spain to send him troops from Cuba. He begged the Captain

General of Cuba to send him troops from Havana.

Gayoso put his fort at Vicksburg in defence and Carondelet sent up a

division of galleys to New Madrid and St. Louis.

But Carondelet, the Governor of Louisiana, had his hands full.

Frenchmen of his own city were signing papers to strike a blow for

France. He would build defences,--they opposed and complained of his

measures. Merchants and others whose business suffered by the

uncertainties of commerce took no responsibility as the domineering

little Baron endeavoured to fortify New Orleans with palisaded wall,

towers, and a moat seven feet deep and forty feet wide.

"It may happen that the enemy will try to surprise the plaza on a dark

night," said the Baron.

All the artillery was mounted. Haughty Spanish cavaliers with swords

and helmets paced the parapets of the grim pentagonal bastions.

Watchmen with spears and lanterns guarded the gates below. The city

was in terror of assault. At every rise of the river Carondelet looked

for a filibustering army out of the north. By every ship runners were

sent to Spain.

News of the intended raid penetrated even the Ursuline Convent. Sister

Infelice paled when she heard it, gave a little gasp, and fainted.

"Clearly she fears, the gentle sister fears these northern

barbarians," remarked the Mother Superior. "Take her to her chamber."

And St. Louis,--not since 1780 had she been so alarmed. The Governor

constructed a square redoubt flanked by bastions, dug a shallow moat,

and raised a fort on the hill. Seventeen grenadiers with drawn sabres

stood at the drawbridge.

"Immediately on the approach of the enemy, retreat to New Madrid," was

the order of this puissant Governor.

George Rogers Clark, who had planned and executed the conquest of

Illinois, burned now for the conquest of Louisiana. And the West

looked to him; she despised and defied the Spaniard as she despised

and defied the Indian. They blocked the way, they must depart.

Clark's old veteran officers Christy, Logan, Montgomery, sent word

they would serve under his command. The French squadron at

Philadelphia was to set sail for the Gulf.

Major Fulton and Michaux, Clark's right-hand men, travelled all over

the West enlisting men, provisions, and money. De Pauw engaged to

furnish four hundred barrels of flour and a thousand-weight of bacon,

and to send brass cannon over the mountains. In December Clark's men

were already cutting timber to build boats on the Bear Grass. Five

thousand men were to start in the Spring, provided Congress did not

oppose and Genet could raise a million dollars.

In despair Carondelet wrote home, saying that if the project planned

was carried into effect, he would have no other alternative but to

surrender.

"Having no reinforcements to hope for from Havana, I have no further

hope than in the faults the enemy may commit and in accidents which

may perhaps favour us."

Carondelet gave up. In March he wrote again, "The commandant at Post

Vincennes has offered cannon for the use of the expedition."

Early in January Clark was writing to De Pauw, "Have your stores at

the Falls by the 20th of February, as in all probability we shall

descend the river at that time."

Montgomery reported, "arms and ammunition, five hundred bushels of

corn and ten thousand pounds of pork, also twenty thousand weight of

buffalo beef, eleven hundred weight of bear meat, seventy-four pair

venison hams, and some beef tongues."

With two hundred men Montgomery lay at the mouth of the Ohio ready to

cross over. Not ninety Spaniards of regular troops were there to

defend St. Louis, and two hundred militia, and the Governor had only

too much reason to fear that St. Louis would open her gates and join

the invader. All that was lacking was money. Hundreds of Kentuckians

waited the signal to take down their guns and march on New Orleans.

But the ministers of Spain and of Great Britain had not been quiet.

They both warned Washington. Could he hold the lawless West? It was a

problem for statesmen.

Jefferson wrote to Governor Shelby of Kentucky to restrain the

expedition.

"I have grave doubts," Governor Shelby answered, "whether there is any

legal authority to restrain or to punish them. For, if it is lawful

for any one citizen of the state to leave it, it is equally so for any

number of them to do it. It is also lawful for them to carry any

quantity of provisions, arms, and ammunition.--I shall also feel but

little inclination to take an active part in punishing or retaining

any of my fellow citizens for a supposed intention only, to gratify

the fears of the ministers of a prince who openly withholds from us an

invaluable right, and who secretly instigates against us a most savage

and cruel enemy."

Washington promptly issued a proclamation of neutrality and requested

the recall of Genet. From the new Minister of France Clark received

formal notice that the conquest of Louisiana was abandoned. But Spain

had had her fright. She at once opened the river, and the mass of

collected produce found its way unimpeded to the sea.

In June Congress passed a law for ever forbidding such expeditions.

"I have learned that the Spaniards have built a fort at Chickasaw

Bluff, on this side of the river," said General Wayne, one night in

September, 1795, summoning William Clark to his headquarters. "I

desire you to go down to the commanding officer on the west side and

inquire his intentions."

Why, of all that army, had Wayne chosen the young lieutenant of the

Fourth Sub-Legion for this errand? Was it because he bore the name of

Clark? Very well; both knew why Spain had advanced to the Chickasaw

Bluff.

As Washington went forty years before to inquire of the French, "Why

are you building forts on the Ohio?" so now William Clark, on board

the galiot, "La Vigilante," dropped down to New Madrid and asked the

Spaniard, "Why are you building forts on the Mississippi?"

Down came Charles De Hault De Lassus, the Commandant himself. "I

assure you we have been very far from attempting to usurp the

territory of a nation with whom we desire to remain in friendship,"

protested the courtly Commandant with a wave of his sword and a

flutter of his plume. "But the threats of the French republicans

living in the United States,"--he paused for a reply.

"Calm yourself," replied Lieutenant Clark. "Read here the pacific

intentions of my country."

None better than William Clark understood the virtues of conciliation

and persuasion. "I assure you that the United States is disposed to

preserve peace with all the powers of Europe, and with Spain

especially."

With mutual expressions of esteem and cordial parting salvos,

Lieutenant Clark left his Spanish friends with a mollified feeling

toward "those turbulent Americans."

Nevertheless George Rogers Clark had opened the river, to be closed

again at peril.

Among the soldiers at Wayne's camp that winter was Lieutenant

Meriwether Lewis, "just from the Whiskey Rebellion," he said. Between

him and William Clark, now Captain Clark, there sprang up the most

intimate friendship.

"The nature of the Insurrection?" remarked Lewis in his camp talks with

Clark. "Why, the Pennsylvania mountaineers about Redstone-Old-Fort

refused to pay the whiskey tax, stripped, tarred, and feathered the

collectors! 'The people must be taught obedience,' said General

Washington, and, after all peaceable means failed, he marched fifteen

thousand militia into the district. The thought that Washington was

coming at the head of troops made them reconsider. They sent

deputations to make terms about the time of Wayne's battle. We built

log huts and forted for the winter on the Monongahela about fifteen

miles above Pittsburg."

"And so the Spaniards have come to terms?" queried Lewis as Clark

still remained silent.

"Yes, they have opened the river."

"I came near being in the midst of that," continued Lewis. "Michaux

came to Charlottesville. I was eighteen, just out of school and eager

for adventure. Michaux was to explore the West. Mr. Jefferson had a

plan for sending two people across the Rocky Mountains. I begged to

go, and probably should, had not Michaux been recalled when the new

French minister came in."

"Rest assured," replied Clark solemnly, "no exploration of the West

can ever be made while Spain holds Louisiana."

XXVII

_THE BROTHERS_

"My claim is as just as the book we swear by."

The hero of the heroic age of the Middle West was discussing his debts

for the conquest of Illinois. "I have given the United States half the

territory they possess, and for them to suffer me to remain in poverty

in consequence of it will not redound to their honour. I engaged in

the Revolution with all the ardour that youth could possess. My zeal

and ambition rose with my success, determined to save those countries

which had been the seat of my toil, at the hazard of my life and

fortune.

"At the most gloomy period of the war when a ration could not be

purchased on public credit, I risked my own credit, gave my bonds,

mortgaged my lands for supplies, paid strict attention to every

department, flattered the friendly and confused the hostile tribes of

Indians, by my emissaries baffled my internal enemies (the most

dangerous of all to public interest), and carried my point.

"Thus at the end of the war I had the pleasure of seeing my country

secure, but with the loss of my manual activity. Demands of very great

amount were not paid, others with depreciated paper. Now suits are

commenced against me, for those sums in specie. My military and other

lands, earned by my services, are appropriated for the payment of

these debts, and demands yet are remaining, to a considerable amount

more than the remains of a shattered fortune will pay.

"This is truly my situation. I see no other recourse remaining but to

make application to my country for redress."

Brooding over his troubles, George Rogers Clark had built himself a

little cabin at the Point of Rock, overlooking the Falls of the Ohio,

and gone into a self-chosen St. Helena. The waves dashed and roared

below and the mist arose, as he looked out on Corn Island, scene of

his earliest exploit.

A library of handsome books was the principal ornament the house

contained. Reading, hunting, fishing, he passed his days, while the

old negro servants attended to the kitchen and the garden.

"I have come," answered his brother William, "I have retired from the

army, to devote myself to you. Now what can be done?"

"Done? Look at these bills. Gratiot's is paid, thank God, or he would

have been a ruined man. Monroe helped him through with that. And

Menard's? That is shelved at Richmond for fifty years." General Clark

turned the leaves of his note-book.

"And Vigo? But for him I could never have surprised Vincennes. He was

the best friend I had, and the best still, except you, William."

A singular affection bound these two brothers. It seemed almost as if

William took up the life of George Rogers where it was broken off, and

carried it on to a glorious conclusion.

"Virginia acknowledges Vigo's debt, certifies that it has never been

paid but she has ceded those lands to the Government. Who then shall

pay it but Congress? The debt was necessary and lawful in contracting

for supplies for the conquest of Illinois. Could I have done with

less? God knows we went with parched corn only in our wallets and

depended on our rifles for the rest. Tell him to keep the draft,

Virginia will pay it, or Congress, some time or other, with interest."

Again, at William's persuasion, the General came home to Mulberry

Hill. An expert horseman, everybody in Louisville knew Captain Clark,

who, wrapped in his cloak, came spurring home night after night on his

blooded bay, with York at his side, darkness nor swollen fords nor

wildly beating storms stopping his journey as he came bearing news to

his brother.

"I have ridden for brother George in the course of this year upwards

of three thousand miles," wrote the Captain to his brother Edmund, in

December, 1797, "continually in the saddle, attempting to save him,

and have been serviceable to him in several instances. I have but a

few days returned from Vincennes attending a suit for twenty-four

thousand dollars against him."

These long journeys included tours to St. Louis, Vincennes, Kaskaskia,

among the General's old debtors, proving that the articles for which

he was sued were for his troops, powder and military stores.

"The General is very ill again," said father Clark, walking up and

down the entry before the chamber door. The old man's severe

countenance always relaxed when he spoke of "the General." Of all his

children, George Rogers was the one least expected to fall into

dissipation, but now in rheumatic distress, old before his time,

George Rogers sometimes drank.

"Cover him, shield him, let not the world witness my brother's

weakness," William would say at such times, affectionately detaining

him at Mulberry Hill.

Glancing into the dining-room, the white-haired cavalier noticed Fanny

and her children and others sitting around the table. Preoccupied, the

old man approached, and leaning over a chair delivered an impressive

grace.

"Now, my children, you can eat your dinner. Do not wait for me," and

again he took up his walk in the entry outside the chamber door. A

smile wreathed the faces of all; there was no dinner; they were simply

visiting near the table.

With children and grandchildren around him, the house at Mulberry Hill

was always full. At Christmas or Thanksgiving, when Lucy came with her

boys from Locust Grove, "Well, my children," father Clark would say,

"if I thought we would live, mother and I, five years longer, I would

build a new house."

But the day before Christmas, 1798, the silky white hair of Ann Rogers

Clark was brushed back for the last time, in the home that her taste

had beautified with the groves and flowers of Mulberry Hill.

More and more frequently the old cavalier retired to his rustic arbour

in the garden.

"I must hunt up father, he will take cold," William would say; and

there on a moonlight night, on his knees in prayer, the old man would

be found, among the cedars and honeysuckles of Mulberry Hill.

"Why do you dislike old John Clark," some one asked of a neighbour

when the venerable man lay on his death-bed.

"What? I dislike old John Clark? I revere and venerate him. His piety

and virtues may have been a reproach, but I reverence and honour old

John Clark."

By will the property was divided, and the home at Mulberry Hill went

to William.

"In case Jonathan comes to Kentucky he may be willing to buy the

place," said William. "If he does I shall take the cash to pay off

these creditors of yours."

"Will you do that?" exclaimed George Rogers Clark gratefully. "I can

make it good to you when these lands of mine come into value."

"Never mind that, brother, never mind that. The honour of the family

demands it. And those poor Frenchmen are ruined."

"Indians are at the Falls!"

Startled, even now the citizens of Louisville were ready to fly out

with shotguns in memory of old animosities.

Nothing chills the kindlier impulses like an Indian war. Children

age, young men frost and wrinkle, women turn into maniacs. Every log

hut had its bedridden invalid victim of successive frights and nervous

prostration. Only the stout and sturdy few survived in after days to

tell of those fierce times when George Rogers Clark was the hope and

safety of the border. To these, the Indian was a serpent in the path,

a panther to be hunted.

"Hist! go slow. 'Tis the Delaware chiefs come down to visit George

Rogers Clark," said Simon Kenton.

In these days of peace, remembering still their old terror of the Long

Knife, a deputation of chiefs had come to visit Clark. In paint and

blankets, with lank locks flapping in the breeze, they strode up the

catalpa avenue, sniffing the odours of Mulberry Hill. General Clark

looked from the window. Buckongahelas led the train, with Pierre

Drouillard, the interpreter.

Drouillard had become, for a time, a resident of Kentucky. Simon

Kenton, hearing that the preserver of his life had fallen into

misfortune since the surrender of Detroit, sent for him, gave him a

piece of his farm, and built him a cabin. George Drouillard, a son,

named for George III., was becoming a famous hunter on the

Mississippi.

"We have come," said Buckongahelas, "to touch the Long Knife."

Before Clark realised what they were doing, the Indians had snipped

off the tail of his blue military coat with their hunting knives.

"This talisman will make us great warriors," said Buckongahelas,

carefully depositing a fragment in his bosom.

Clark laughed, but from that time the Delaware King and his braves

were frequent visitors to the Long Knife, who longed to live in the

past, forgetting misfortune.

But George Rogers Clark was not alone in financial disaster. St. Clair

had expended a fortune in the cause of his country and at last,

accompanied by his devoted daughter, retired to an old age of penury.

Boone, too, had his troubles. Never having satisfied the requirements

of law concerning his claim, he was left landless in the Kentucky he

had pioneered for civilisation. Late one November day in 1798 he was

seen wending his way through the streets of Cincinnati, with Rebecca

and all his worldly possessions mounted on packhorses.

"Where are you going?" queried an old-time acquaintance.

"Too much crowded, too many people. I am going west where there is

more elbow room."

"Ze celebrated Colonel Boone ees come to live een Louisiana," said the

Spanish officers of St. Louis. The Stars and Stripes and the yellow

flag of Spain were hung out side by side, and the garrison came down

out of the stone fort on the hill to parade in honour of Daniel Boone.

No such attentions had ever been paid to Daniel Boone at home. He

dined with the Governor at Government House and was presented with a

thousand arpents of land, to be located wherever he pleased, "in the

district of the Femme Osage."

Beside a spring on a creek flowing into the Missouri Boone built his

pioneer cabin, beyond the farthest border settlement.

"Bring a hundred more American families and we will give you ten

thousand arpents of land," said the Governor.

Back to his old Kentucky stamping ground went Boone, and successfully

piloted out a settlement of neighbours and comrades. Directly, Colonel

Daniel Boone was made Commandant of the Femme Osage District. His word

became law in the settlement, and here he held his court under a

spreading elm that stands to-day, the Judgment Tree of Daniel Boone.

XXVIII

_THE MAID OF FINCASTLE_

In the autumn days as the century was closing, William Clark set out

for Virginia, as his brother had done in other years. Kentucky was

filled with old forts, neglected bastions, moats, and blockhouses,

their origin forgotten. Already the builders had passed on westward.

The Boone trace was lined now with settlements, a beaten bridle-path

thronged with emigrant trains kicking up the dust. Through the

frowning portals of Cumberland Gap, Captain Clark and his man York

galloped into Virginia.

From the southern border of Virginia to the Potomac passes the old

highway, between the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge. Cantering

thoughtfully along under the broad-leaved locusts and laurels, a

melody like the laugh of wood-nymphs rippled from the forest.

"Why don't he go?" cried a musical feminine voice. "Oh, Harriet,

Harriet!" With more laughter came a rustling of green leaves. Parting

the forest curtain to discover the source of this unusual commotion,

Captain Clark descried two girls seated on a small pony, switching

with all their slender energy.

"His feet are set. He will not move, Judy."

Leaping at once from his saddle, the Captain bowed low to the maidens

in distress. "Can I be of any assistance?"

The sudden apparition of a handsome soldier in tri-cornered hat and

long silk hose quite took their breath away.

"Thank you, sir knight," answered the blonde with a flush of

bewitching colour. "Firefly, my pony, seems to object to carrying two,

but we cannot walk across that ford. My cousin and I have on our satin

slippers."

The Captain laughed, and taking the horse's bridle easily led them

beyond the mountain rill that dashed across their pathway.

"And will you not come to my father's house?" inquired the maiden. "It

is here among the trees."

Clark looked,--the roof and gables of a comfortable Virginian mansion

shone amid the greenery. "I fear not. I must reach Colonel Hancock's

to-night."

"This is Colonel Hancock's," the girls replied with a smothered laugh.

At a signal, York lifted the five-barred gate and all passed in to the

long green avenue.

"The brother of my old friend, General George Rogers Clark!" exclaimed

Colonel Hancock. "Glad to see you, glad to see you. Many a time has he

stopped on this road."

The Hancocks were among the founders of Virginia. With John Smith the

first one came over "in search of Forrest for his building of Ships,"

and was "massacred by ye salvages at Thorp's House, Berkeley Hundred."

General Hancock, the father of the present Colonel, equipped a

regiment for his son at the breaking out of the Revolution. On

Pulaski's staff, the young Colonel received the body of the

illustrious Pole as he fell at the siege of Savannah.

From his Sea Island plantations and the sound of war in South

Carolina, General Hancock, old and in gout, set out for Virginia. But

Pulaski had fallen and his son was a prisoner under Cornwallis.

Attended only by his daughter Mary and a faithful slave, the General

died on the way and was buried by Uncle Primus on the top of King's

Mountain some weeks before the famous battle.

Released on parole and finding his fortune depleted, Colonel George

Hancock read Blackstone and the Virginia laws, took out a license,

married, and settled at Fincastle. Here his children were born, of

whom Judy was the youngest daughter. Later, by the death of that

heroic sister Mary, a niece had come into the family, Harriet

Kennerly. These were the girls that Captain Clark had encountered in

his morning ride among the mountains of Fincastle.

"Your brother, the General, and I journeyed together to Philadelphia,

when he was Commissioner of Indian affairs. Is he well and enjoying

the fruits of his valour?" continued the Colonel.

"My brother is disabled, the result of exposure in his campaigns. He

will never recover. I am now visiting Virginia in behalf of his

accounts with the Assembly,--they have never been adjusted. He even

thought you, his old friend, might be able to lend assistance, either

in Virginia or in Congress."

"I am honoured by the request. You may depend upon me."

Colonel George Hancock had been a member of the Fourth Congress in

Washington's administration, and with a four-horse family coach

travelled to and from Philadelphia attending the sessions.

Here the little Judy's earliest recollections had been of the

beautiful Dolly Todd who was about to wed Mr. Madison. Jefferson was

Secretary of State then, and his daughters, Maria and Martha, came

often to visit Judy's older sisters, Mary and Caroline.

Judy's hair was a fluff of gold then; shading to brown, it was a fluff

of gold still, that Granny Molly found hard to keep within bounds.

Harriet, her cousin, of dark and splendid beauty, a year or two older,

was ever the inseparable companion of Judy Hancock.

"Just fixing up the place again," explained Colonel Hancock. "It has

suffered from my absence at Philadelphia. A tedious journey, a tedious

journey from Fincastle."

But to the children that journey had been a liberal education. The

long bell-trains of packhorses, the rumbling Conestogas, the bateaux

and barges, the great rivers and dense forests, the lofty mountains

and wide farmlands, the towns and villages, Philadelphia itself, were

indelibly fixed in their memory and their fancy.

Several times in the course of the next few years, William Clark had

occasion to visit Virginia in behalf of his brother, and each time

more and more he noted the budding graces of the maids of Fincastle.

XXIX

_THE PRESIDENT'S SECRETARY_

The funeral bells of Washington tolled in 1800. President Washington

was dead. Napoleon was first Consul of France. The old social systems

of Europe were tottering. The new social system of America was

building. The experiment of self-government had triumphed, and out of

the storm-tossed seas still grandly rode the Constitution. Out of the

birth of parties and political excitement, Thomas Jefferson came to

the Presidency.

The stately mansion of Monticello was ablaze with light. Candles lit

up every window. Not only Monticello, but all Charlottesville was

illuminated, with torches, bonfires, tar-barrels. Friends gathered

with congratulations and greeting.

As Washington had turned with regret from the banks of the Potomac to

fill the first presidency, and as Patrick Henry, the gifted, chafed in

Congressional halls, so now Jefferson with equal regret left the

shades of Monticello.

"No pageant shall give the lie to my democratic principles," he said,

as in plain citizen clothes with a few of his friends he repaired to

the Capital and took the oath of office. And by his side, with

luminous eyes and powdered hair, sat Aaron Burr, the Vice-President.

Jefferson, in the simplicity of his past, had penned everything for

himself. Now he began to feel the need of a secretary. There were many

applicants, but the President's eye turned toward the lad who nine

years before had begged to go with Michaux to the West.

"The appointment to the Presidency of the United States has rendered

it necessary for me to have a private secretary," he wrote to

Meriwether Lewis. "Your knowledge of the western country, of the army

and of all its interests, has rendered it desirable that you should

be engaged in that office. In point of profit it has little to offer,

the salary being only five hundred dollars, but it would make you know

and be known to characters of influence in the affairs of our

country."