Hero Stories from American History. Albert F. Blaisdell
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One of the dugouts captured an Indian canoe paddled by some squaws. It proved a rich prize, for in it were buffalo meat and some kettles. Broth was soon made and served to the weakest. The strong gave up their share. Then amid much joking and merry songs, the column marched in single file through a bit of timber. Not two miles away was Vincennes, the goal of all their hopes.
A Creole who was out shooting ducks was captured. From him it was learned that nobody suspected the coming of the Americans, and that two hundred Indians had just come into town.
With the hope that the Creoles would not dare to fight, and that the Indians would escape, Clark boldly sent the duck hunter back to town with the news of his arrival. He sent warning to the Creoles to remain in their houses, for he came only to fight the British.
So great was the terror of Clark's name that the French shut themselves up in their houses, while most of the Indians took to the woods. Nobody dared give a word of warning to the British.
Just after dark the riflemen marched into the streets of the village before the redcoats knew what was going on.
Crack! crack! sharply sounded half a dozen rifles outside the fort.
"That is Clark, and your time is short!" cried Captain Helm, who was Hamilton's prisoner at this time; "he will have this fort tumbling on your heads before to-morrow morning."
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| Defending a Frontier Fort against the British and Indians |
During the night the Americans threw up an intrenchment within rifle shot of the fort, and at daybreak opened a hot fire into the portholes. The men begged their leader to let them storm the fort, but he dared not risk their lives. A party of Indians that had been pillaging the Kentucky settlements came marching into the village, and were caught red-handed with scalps hanging at their belts.
Clark was not slow to show his power.
"Think, men," he said sternly, "of the cries of the widows and the fatherless on our frontier. Do your duty."
Six of the savages were tomahawked before the fort, where the garrison could see them, and their dead bodies were thrown into the river.
The British defended their fort for a few days, but could not stand against the fire of the long rifles. It was sure death for a gunner to try to fire a cannon. Not a man dared show himself at a porthole, through which the rifle bullets were humming like mad hornets.
Hamilton the "hair buyer" gave up the defense as a bad job, and surrendered the fort, defended by cannon and occupied by regular troops, as he says in his journal, "to a set of uncivilized Virginia backwoodsmen armed with rifles."
Tap! tap! sounded the drums, as Clark gave the signal, and down came the British colors.
Thirteen cannon boomed the salute over the flooded plains of the Wabash, and a hundred frontier soldiers shouted themselves hoarse when the stars and stripes went up at Vincennes, never to come down again.
The British authority over this region was forever at an end. It only remained for Clark to defend what he had so gallantly won.
Of all the deeds done west of the Alleghanies during the war of the Revolution, Clark's campaign, in the region which seemed so remote and so strange to our forefathers, is the most remarkable. The vast region north of the Ohio River was wrested from the British crown. When peace came, a few years later, the boundary lines of the United States were the Great Lakes on the north, and on the west the Mississippi River.
CHAPTER II
A MIDWINTER CAMPAIGN
A splendid monument overlooks the battlefield of Saratoga. Heroic bronze statues of Schuyler, Gates, and Morgan, three of the four great leaders in this battle, stand each in a niche on three faces of the obelisk. On the south side the space is empty. The man who led the patriots to victory forfeited his place on this monument. What a sermon in stone is the empty niche on that massive granite shaft! We need no chiseled words to tell us of the great name so gallantly won by Arnold the hero, and so wretchedly lost by Arnold the traitor.
Only a few months after Benedict Arnold had turned traitor, and was fighting against his native land, he was sent by Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander, to sack and plunder in Virginia. In one of these raids a captain of the colonial army was taken prisoner.
"What will your people do with me if they catch me?" Arnold is said to have asked his prisoner.
"They will cut off your leg that was shot at Quebec and Saratoga," said the plucky and witty officer, "and bury it with the honors of war, and hang the rest of your body on a gibbet."
This bold reply of the patriot soldier showed the hatred and the contempt in which Arnold was held by all true Americans; it also hints at an earlier fame which this strange and remarkable man had won in fighting the battles of his country.
Now that war with the mother country had begun, an attack upon Canada seemed to be an act of self-defense; for through the valley of the St. Lawrence the colonies to the south could be invaded. The "back door," as Canada was called, which was now open for such invasion, must be tightly shut. In fact it was believed that Sir Guy Carleton, the governor of Canada, was even now trying to get the Indians to sweep down the valley of the Hudson, to harry the New England frontier.
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| The Washington Elm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under which Washington took Command |
Meanwhile, under the old elm in Cambridge, Washington had taken command of the Continental army. Shortly afterwards he met Benedict Arnold for the first time. The great Virginian found the young officer a man after his own heart. Arnold was at this time captain of the best-drilled and best-equipped company that the patriot army could boast. He had already proved himself a man of energy and of rare personal bravery.
Before his meeting with Washington, Arnold had hurried spies into Canada to find out the enemy's strength; and he had also sent Indians with wampum, to make friends with the redskins along the St. Lawrence. Some years before, he had been to Canada to buy horses; and through his friends in Quebec and in Montreal he was now able to get a great deal of information, which he promptly sent to Congress.
Congress voted to send out an expedition. An army was to enter Canada by the way of the Kennebec and Chaudière rivers; there to unite forces with Montgomery, who had started from Ticonderoga; and then, if possible, to surprise Quebec.
The patriot army of some eighteen thousand men was at this time engaged in the siege of Boston. During the first week in September, orders came to draft men for Quebec. For the purpose of carrying the troops up the Kennebec River, a force of carpenters was sent ahead to build two hundred bateaux, or flat-bottomed boats. To Arnold, as colonel, was given the command of the expedition. For the sake of avoiding any ill feeling, the officers were allowed to draw lots. So eager were the troops to share in the possible glories of the campaign that several thousand at once volunteered.
About eleven hundred men were chosen, the very flower of the Continental army. More than one half of these came from New England; three hundred were riflemen from Pennsylvania and from Virginia, among whom were Daniel Morgan and his famous riflemen from the west bank of the Potomac.