Hamilton, at Detroit, had been so encouraged by the successes of his war parties that, in 1778, he began to plan an attack on Fort Pitt; but his plans were forestalled by Clark’s movements, and he, of course, abandoned them when the astounding news reached him that the rebels had themselves invaded the Illinois country, captured the British commandant, Rocheblave, and administered to the inhabitants the oath of allegiance to Congress. Shortly afterwards he learned that Vincennes likewise was in the hands of the Americans.

    Hamilton Prepares to Reconquer the Country.

He was a man of great energy, and he immediately began to prepare an expedition for the reconquest of the country.  French emissaries who were loyal to the British crown were sent to the Wabash to stir up the Indians against the Americans; and though the Piankeshaws remained friendly to the latter, the Kickapoos and Weas, who were more powerful, announced their readiness to espouse the British cause if they received support, while the neighboring Miamis were already on the war-path.  The commandants at the small posts of Mackinaw and St. Josephs were also notified to incite the Lake Indians to harass the Illinois country.

He led the main body in person, and throughout September every soul in Detroit was busy from morning till night in mending boats, baking biscuit, packing provisions in kegs and bags, preparing artillery stores, and in every way making ready for the expedition.  Fifteen large bateaux and pirogues were procured, each capable of carrying from 1,800 to 3,000 pounds; these were to carry the ammunition, food, clothing, tents, and especially the presents for the Indians.  Cattle and wheels were sent ahead to the most important portages on the route that would be traversed; a six-pounder gun was also forwarded.  Hamilton had been deeply exasperated by what he regarded as the treachery of most of the Illinois and Wabash créoles in joining the Americans; but he was in high spirits and very confident of success.  He wrote to his superior officer that the British were sure to succeed if they acted promptly, for the Indians were favorable to them, knowing they alone could give them supplies; and he added “the Spaniards are feeble and hated by the French, the French are fickle and have no man of capacity to advise or lead them, and the Rebels are enterprising and brave, but want resources.”  The bulk of the Detroit French, including all their leaders, remained staunch supporters of the crown, and the militia eagerly volunteered to go on the expedition.  Feasts were held with the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawatomies, at which oxen were roasted whole, while Hamilton and the chiefs of the French rangers sang the war-song in solemn council, and received pledges of armed assistance and support from the savages.

    He Starts against Vincennes.

On October 7th the expedition left Detroit; before starting the venerable Jesuit missionary gave the Catholic French who went along his solemn blessing and approval, conditionally upon their strictly keeping the oath they had taken to be loyal and obedient servants of the crown. It is worthy of note that, while the priest at Kaskaskia proved so potent an ally of the Americans, the priest at Detroit was one of the staunchest supporters of the British.  Hamilton started with thirty-six British regulars, under two lieutenants, forty-five Detroit volunteers (chiefly French), who had been carefully drilled for over a year, under Captain Lamothe; seventy-nine Detroit militia, under a major and two captains; and seventeen members of the Indian Department (including three captains and four lieutenants) who acted with the Indians.  There were thus in all one hundred and seventy-seven whites. Sixty Indians started with the troops from Detroit, but so many bands joined him on the route that when he reached Vincennes his entire force amounted to five hundred men.

    Difficulties of the Route.

Having embarked, the troops and Indians paddled down stream to Lake Erie, reaching it in a snowstorm, and when a lull came they struck boldly across the lake, making what bateau men still call a “traverse” of thirty-six miles to the mouth of the Maumee.  Darkness overtook them while still on the lake, and the head boats hung out lights for the guidance of those astern; but about midnight a gale came up, and the whole flotilla was nearly swamped, being beached with great difficulty on an oozy flat close to the mouth of the Maumee.  The waters of the Maumee were low, and the boats were poled slowly up against the current, reaching the portage point, where there was a large Indian village, on the 24th of the month.  Here a nine miles’ carry was made to one of the sources of the Wabash, called by the voyageurs “la petite rivière.”  This stream was so low that the boats could not have gone down it had it not been for a beaver dam four miles below the landing-place, which backed up the current.  An opening was made in the dam to let the boats pass.  The traders and Indians thoroughly appreciated the help given them at this difficult part of the course by the engineering skill of the beavers ­for Hamilton was following the regular route of the hunting, trading, and war parties, ­and none of the beavers of this particular dam were ever molested, being left to keep their dam in order, and repair it, which they always speedily did whenever it was damaged.

It proved as difficult to go down the Wabash as to get up the Maumee.  The water was shallow, and once or twice in great swamps dykes had to be built that the boats might be floated across.  Frost set in heavily, and the ice cut the men as they worked in the water to haul the boats over shoals or rocks.  The bateaux often needed to be beached and caulked, while both whites and Indians had to help carry the loads round the shoal places.  At every Indian village it was necessary to stop, hold a conference, and give presents.  At last the Wea village ­or Ouiatanon, as Hamilton called it ­was reached.  Here the Wabash chiefs, who had made peace with the Americans, promptly came in and tendered their allegiance to the British, and a reconnoitering party seized a lieutenant and three men of the Vincennes militia, who were themselves on a scouting expedition, but who nevertheless were surprised and captured without difficulty. They had been sent out by Captain Leonard Helm, then acting as commandant at Vincennes.  He had but a couple of Americans with him, and was forced to trust to the créole militia, who had all embodied themselves with great eagerness, having taken the oath of allegiance to Congress.  Having heard rumors of the British advance, he had dispatched a little party to keep watch, and in consequence of their capture he was taken by surprise.

    Hamilton Captures Vincennes.

From Ouiatanon Hamilton dispatched Indian parties to surround Vincennes and intercept any messages sent either to the Falls or to the Illinois; they were completely successful, capturing a messenger who carried a hurried note written by Helm to Clark to announce what had happened.  An advance guard, under Major Hay, was sent forward to take possession, but Helm showed so good a front that nothing was attempted until the next day, the 17th of December, just seventy-one days after the expedition had left Detroit, when Hamilton came up at the head of his whole force and entered Vincennes.  Poor Helm was promptly deserted by all the créole militia.  The latter had been loud in their boasts until the enemy came in view, but as soon as they caught sight of the red-coats they began to slip away and run up to the British to surrender their arms. He was finally left with only one or two men, Americans.  Nevertheless he refused the first summons to surrender; but Hamilton, who knew that Helm’s troops had deserted him, marched up to the fort at the head of his soldiers, and the American was obliged to surrender, with no terms granted save that he and his associates should be treated with humanity. The instant the fort was surrendered the Indians broke in and plundered it; but they committed no act of cruelty, and only plundered a single private house.

    Measures to Secure his Conquest.

The French inhabitants had shown pretty clearly that they did not take a keen interest in the struggle, on either side.  They were now summoned to the church and offered the chance ­which they for the most part eagerly embraced ­of purging themselves of their past misconduct by taking a most humiliating oath of repentance, acknowledging that they had sinned against God and man by siding with the rebels, and promising to be loyal in the future.  Two hundred and fifty of the militia, being given back their arms, appeared with their officers, and took service again under the British king, swearing a solemn oath of allegiance.  They certainly showed throughout the most light-hearted indifference to chronic perjury and treachery; nor did they in other respects appear to very good advantage.  Clark was not in the least surprised at the news of their conduct; for he had all along realized that the attachment of the French would prove but a slender reed on which to lean in the moment of trial.

Hamilton had no fear of the inhabitants themselves, for the fort completely commanded the town.  To keep them in good order he confiscated all their spirituous liquors, and in a rather amusing burst of Puritan feeling destroyed two billiard tables, which he announced were “sources of immorality and dissipation in such a settlement.” He had no idea that he was in danger of attack from without, for his spies brought him word that Clark had only a hundred and ten men in the Illinois county; and the route between was in winter one of extraordinary difficulty.

    He Goes into Winter Quarters.

He had five hundred men and Clark but little over one hundred.  He was not only far nearer his base of supplies and reinforcements at Detroit, than Clark was to his at Fort Pitt, but he was also actually across Clark’s line of communications.  Had he pushed forward at once to attack the Americans, and had he been able to overcome the difficulties of the march, he would almost certainly have conquered.  But he was daunted by the immense risk and danger of the movement.  The way was long and the country flooded, and he feared the journey might occupy so much time that his stock of provisions would be exhausted before he got half-way.  In such a case the party might starve to death or perish from exposure.  Besides he did not know what he should do for carriages; and he dreaded the rigor of the winter weather. There were undoubtedly appalling difficulties in the way of a mid-winter march and attack; and the fact that Clark attempted and performed the feat which Hamilton dared not try, marks just the difference between a man of genius and a good, brave, ordinary commander.

    He Plans a Great Campaign in the Spring.

Having decided to suspend active operations during the cold weather, he allowed the Indians to scatter back to their villages for the winter, and sent most of the Detroit militia home, retaining in garrison only thirty-four British regulars, forty French volunteers, and a dozen white leaders of the Indians; in all eighty or ninety whites, and a probably larger number of red auxiliaries.  The latter were continually kept out on scouting expeditions; Miamis and Shawnees were sent down to watch the Ohio, and take scalps in the settlements, while bands of Kickapoos, the most warlike of the Wabash Indians, and of Ottawas, often accompanied by French partisans, went towards the Illinois country. Hamilton intended to undertake a formidable campaign in the spring.  He had sent messages to Stuart, the British Indian agent in the south, directing him to give war-belts to the Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Creeks, that a combined attack on the frontier might take place as soon as the weather opened.  He himself was to be joined by reinforcements from Detroit, while the Indians were to gather round him as soon as the winter broke.  He would then have had probably over a thousand men, and light cannon with which to batter down the stockades.  He rightly judged that with this force he could not only reconquer the Illinois, but also sweep Kentucky, where the outnumbered riflemen could not have met him in the field, nor the wooden forts have withstood his artillery.  Undoubtedly he would have carried out his plan, and have destroyed all the settlements west of the Alleghanies, had he been allowed to wait until the mild weather brought him his hosts of Indian allies and his reinforcements of regulars and militia from Detroit.

    Panic among the Illinois French.

But in Clark he had an antagonist whose far-sighted daring and indomitable energy raised him head and shoulders above every other frontier leader.  This backwoods colonel was perhaps the one man able in such a crisis to keep the land his people had gained.  When the news of the loss of Vincennes reached the Illinois towns, and especially when there followed a rumor that Hamilton himself was on his march thither to attack them, the panic became tremendous among the French.  They frankly announced that though they much preferred the Americans, yet it would be folly to oppose armed resistance to the British; and one or two of their number were found to be in communication with Hamilton and the Detroit authorities.  Clark promptly made ready for resistance, tearing down the buildings near the fort at Kaskaskia ­his head-quarters ­and sending out scouts and runners; but he knew that it was hopeless to try to withstand such a force as Hamilton could gather.  He narrowly escaped being taken prisoner by a party of Ottawas and Canadians, who had come from Vincennes early in January, when the weather was severe and the travelling fairly good. He was at the time on his way to Cahokia, to arrange for the defence; several of the wealthier Frenchmen were with him in “chairs” ­presumably creaking wooden carts, ­and one of them “swampt,” or mired down, only a hundred yards from the ambush.  Clark and his guards were so on the alert that no attack was made.

    Clark Receives News concerning Vincennes.

In the midst of his doubt and uncertainty he received some news that enabled him immediately to decide on the proper course to follow.  He had secured great influence over the bolder, and therefore the leading, spirits among the French.  One of these was a certain Francis Vigo, a trader in St. Louis.  He was by birth an Italian, who had come to New Orleans in a Spanish regiment, and having procured his discharge, had drifted to the créole villages of the frontier, being fascinated by the profitable adventures of the Indian trade.  Journeying to Vincennes, he was thrown into prison by Hamilton; on being released, he returned to St. Louis.  Thence he instantly crossed over to Kaskaskia, on January 27, 1779, and told Clark that Hamilton had at the time only eighty men in garrison, with three pieces of cannon and some swivels mounted, but that as soon as the winter broke, he intended to gather a very large force and take the offensive.

    Clark Determines to Strike the First Blow.

Clark instantly decided to forestall his foe, and to make the attack himself, heedless of the almost impassable nature of the ground and of the icy severity of the weather.  Not only had he received no reinforcements from Virginia but he had not had so much as “a scrip of a pen” from Governor Henry since he had left him, nearly twelve months before. So he was forced to trust entirely to his own energy and power.  He first equipped a row-galley with two four-pounders and four swivels, and sent her off with a crew of forty men, having named her the Willing. She was to patrol the Ohio, and then to station herself in the Wabash so as to stop all boats from descending it.  She was the first gun-boat ever afloat on the western waters.

    His March against Vincennes.

Then he hastily drew together his little garrisons of backwoodsmen from the French towns, and prepared for the march overland against Vincennes.  His bold front and confident bearing, and the prompt decision of his measures, had once more restored confidence among the French, whose spirits rose as readily as they were cast down; and he was especially helped by the créole girls, whose enthusiasm for the expedition roused many of the more daring young men to volunteer under Clark’s banner.  By these means he gathered together a band of one hundred and seventy men, at whose head he marched out of Kaskaskia on the 7th of February. All the inhabitants escorted them out of the village, and the Jesuit priest, Gibault, gave them absolution at parting.

The route by which they had to go was two hundred and forty miles in length.  It lay through a beautiful and well watered country, of groves and prairies; but at that season the march was necessarily attended with the utmost degree of hardship and fatigue.  The weather had grown mild, so that there was no suffering from cold; but in the thaw the ice on the rivers melted, great freshets followed, and all the lowlands and meadows were flooded.  Clark’s great object was to keep his troops in good spirits.  Of course he and the other officers shared every hardship and led in every labor.  He encouraged the men to hunt game; and to “feast on it like Indian war-dancers,” each company in turn inviting the others to the smoking and plentiful banquets.  One day they saw great herds of buffaloes and killed many of them.  They had no tents.  This journal has been known for a long time.  The original is supposed to have been lost; but either this is it or else it is a contemporary MS. copy.  In the “Campaign in the Illinois” (Cincinnati, Robert Clarke and Co., 1869), , there is a printed copy of the original.  The Washington MS. differs from it in one or two particulars.  Thus, the printed diary in the “Campaign,” on , line 3, says “fifty volunteers”; the MS. copy says “50 French volunteers.”  Line 5 in the printed copy says “and such other Americans”; in the MS. it says “and several other Americans.”  Lines 6 and 7 of the printed copy read as follows in the MS. (but only make doubtful sense):  “These with a number of horses designed for the settlement of Kantuck &c.  Jath, on which Col.  Clark,” etc.  Lines 10 and 11 of the printed copy read in the MS.:  “was let alone till spring that he with his Indians would undoubtedly cut us all off.”  Lines 13 and 14, of the printed copy read in the MS.  “Jast, sent an express to Cahokia for volunteers.  Nothing extraordinary this day."]; but at nightfall they kindled huge camp-fires, and spent the evenings merrily round the piles of blazing logs, in hunter fashion, feasting on bear’s ham and buffalo hump, elk saddle, venison haunch, and the breast of the wild turkey, some singing of love and the chase and war, and others dancing after the manner of the French trappers and wood-runners.

Thus they kept on, marching hard but gleefully and in good spirits until after a week they came to the drowned lauds of the Wabash.  They first struck the two branches of the Little Wabash.  Their channels were a league apart, but the flood was so high that they now made one great river five miles in width, the overflow of water being three feet deep in the shallowest part of the plains between and alongside them.

Clark instantly started to build a pirogue; then crossing over the first channel he put up a scaffold on the edge of the flooded plain.  He ferried his men over, and brought the baggage across and placed it on the scaffold; then he swam the pack-horses over, loaded them as they stood belly-deep in the water beside the scaffold, and marched his men on through the water until they came to the second channel, which was crossed as the first had been.  The building of the pirogue and the ferrying took three days in all.

They had by this time come so near Vincennes that they dared not fire a gun for fear of being discovered; besides, the floods had driven the game all away; so that they soon began to feel hunger, while their progress was very slow, and they suffered much from the fatigue of travelling all day long through deep mud or breast-high water.  On the 17th they reached the Embarras River, but could not cross, nor could they find a dry spot on which to camp; at last they found the water falling off a small, almost submerged hillock, and on this they huddled through the night.  At daybreak they heard Hamilton’s morning gun from the fort, that was but three leagues distant; and as they could not find a ford across the Embarras, they followed it down and camped by the Wabash.  There Clark set his drenched, hungry, and dispirited followers to building some pirogues; while two or three unsuccessful attempts were made to get men across the river that they might steal boats.  He determined to leave his horses at this camp; for it was almost impossible to get them further.

    Hardship and Suffering.

On the morning of the 20th the men had been without food for nearly two days.  Many of the Creole volunteers began to despair, and talked of returning.  Clark knew that his Americans, veterans who had been with him for over a year, had no idea of abandoning the enterprise, nor yet of suffering the last extremities of hunger while they had horses along.  He paid no heed to the request of the Créoles, nor did he even forbid their going back; he only laughed at them, and told them to go out and try to kill a deer.  He knew that without any violence he could yet easily detain the volunteers for a few days longer; and he kept up the spirits of the whole command by his undaunted and confident mien.  The canoes were nearly finished; and about noon a small boat with five Frenchmen from Vincennes was captured.  From these Clark gleaned the welcome intelligence that the condition of affairs was unchanged at the fort, and that there was no suspicion of any impending danger.  In the evening the men were put in still better heart by one of the hunters killing a deer.

It rained all the next day.  By dawn Clark began to ferry the troops over the Wabash in the canoes he had built, and they were soon on the eastern bank of the river, the side on which Vincennes stood.  They now hoped to get to town by nightfall; but there was no dry land for leagues round about, save where a few hillocks rose island-like above the flood.  The Frenchmen whom they had captured said they could not possibly get along; but Clark led the men in person, and they waded with infinite toil for about three miles, the water often up to their chins; and they then camped on a hillock for the night.  Clark kept the troops cheered up by every possible means, and records that he was much assisted by “a little antic drummer,” a young boy who did good service by making the men laugh with his pranks and jokes.

Next morning they resumed their march, the strongest wading painfully through the water, while the weak and famished were carried in the canoes, which were so hampered by the bushes that they could hardly go even as fast as the toiling footmen.  The evening and morning guns of the fort were heard plainly by the men as they plodded onward, numbed and weary.  Clark, as usual, led them in person.  Once they came to a place so deep that there seemed no crossing, for the canoes could find no ford.  It was hopeless to go back or stay still, and the men huddled together, apparently about to despair.  But Clark suddenly blackened his face with gunpowder, gave the war-whoop, and sprang forwards boldly into the ice-cold water, wading out straight towards the point at which they were aiming; and the men followed him, one after another, without a word.  Then he ordered those nearest him to begin one of their favorite songs; and soon the whole line took it up, and marched cheerfully onward.  He intended to have the canoes ferry them over the deepest part, but before they came to it one of the men felt that his feet were in a path, and by carefully following it they got to a sugar camp, a hillock covered with maples, which once had been tapped for sugar.  Here they camped for the night, still six miles from the town, without food, and drenched through.  The prisoners from Vincennes, sullen and weary, insisted that they could not possibly get to the town through the deep water; the prospect seemed almost hopeless even to the iron-willed, steel-sinewed backwoodsmen; but their leader never lost courage for a moment.

That night was bitterly cold, for there was a heavy frost, and the ice formed half an inch thick round the edges and in the smooth water.  But the sun rose bright and glorious, and Clark, in burning words, told his stiffened, famished, half-frozen followers that the evening would surely see them at the goal of their hopes.  Without waiting for an answer, he plunged into the water, and they followed him with a cheer, in Indian file.  Before the third man had entered the water he halted and told one of his officers to close the rear with twenty-five men, and to put to death any man who refused to march; and the whole line cheered him again.

Then came the most trying time of the whole march.  Before them lay a broad sheet of water, covering what was known as the Horse Shoe Plain; the floods had made it a shallow lake four miles across, unbroken by so much as a handsbreadth of dry land.  On its farther side was a dense wood.  Clark led breast high in the water with fifteen or twenty of the strongest men next him.  About the middle of the plain the cold and exhaustion told so on the weaker men that the canoes had to take them aboard and carry them on to the land; and from that time on the little dug-outs plied frantically to and fro to save the more helpless from drowning.  Those, who, though weak, could still move onwards, clung to the stronger, and struggled ahead, Clark animating them in every possible way.  When they at last reached the woods the water became so deep that it was to the shoulders of the tallest, but the weak and those of low stature could now cling to the bushes and old logs, until the canoes were able to ferry them to a spot of dry land, some ten acres in extent, that lay near-by.  The strong and tall got ashore and built fires.  Many on reaching the shore fell flat on their faces, half in the water, and could not move farther.  It was found that the fires did not help the very weak, so every such a one was put between two strong men who ran him up and down by the arms, and thus soon made him recover.

Fortunately at this time an Indian canoe, paddled by some squaws, was discovered and overtaken by one of the dug-outs.  In it was half a quarter of a buffalo, with some corn, tallow and kettles.  This was an invaluable prize.  Broth was immediately made, and was served out to the most weakly with great care; almost all of the men got some, but very many gave their shares to the weakly, rallying and joking them to put them in good heart.  The little refreshment, together with the fires and the bright weather, gave new life to all.  They set out again in the afternoon, crossed a deep, narrow lake in their canoes, and after marching a short distance came to a copse of timber from which they saw the fort and town not two miles away.  Here they halted, and looked to their rifles and ammunition, making ready for the fight.  Every man now feasted his eyes with the sight of what he had so long labored to reach, and forthwith forgot that he had suffered any thing; making light of what had been gone through, and passing from dogged despair to the most exultant self-confidence.

Between the party and the town lay a plain, the hollows being filled with little pools, on which were many water-fowl, and some of the townspeople were in sight, on horseback, shooting ducks.  Clark sent out a few active young créoles, who succeeded in taking prisoner one of these fowling horsemen.  From him it was learned that neither Hamilton nor any one else had the least suspicion that any attack could possibly be made at that season, but that a couple of hundred Indian warriors had just come to town.

Clark was rather annoyed at the last bit of information.  The number of armed men in town, including British, French, and Indians about quadrupled his own force.  This made heavy odds to face, even with the advantage of a surprise, and in spite of the fact that his own men were sure to fight to the last, since failure meant death by torture.  Moreover, if he made the attack without warning, some of the Indians and Vincennes people would certainly be slain, and the rest would be thereby made his bitter enemies, even if he succeeded.  On the other hand, he found out from the prisoner that the French were very lukewarm to the British, and would certainly not fight if they could avoid it; and that half of the Indians were ready to side with the Americans.  Finally, there was a good chance that before dark some one would discover the approach of the troops and would warn the British, thereby doing away with all chance of a surprise.

After thinking it over Clark decided, as the less of two evils, to follow the hazardous course of himself announcing his approach.  He trusted that the boldness of such a course, together with the shock of his utterly unexpected appearance, would paralyze his opponents and incline the wavering to favor him.  So he released the prisoner and sent him in ahead, with a letter to the people of Vincennes.  By this letter he proclaimed to the French that he was that moment about to attack the town; that those townspeople who were friends to the Americans were to remain in their houses, where they would not be molested; that the friends of the king should repair to the fort, join the “hair-buyer general,” and fight like men; and that those who did neither of these two things, but remained armed and in the streets, must expect to be treated as enemies.

    Surprise of the Town.

Having sent the messenger in advance, he waited until his men were rested and their rifles and powder dry, and then at sundown marched straight against the town.  He divided his force into two divisions, leading in person the first, which consisted of two companies of Americans and of the Kaskaskia créoles; while the second, led by Bowman, contained Bowman’s own company and the Cahokians.  His final orders to the men were to march with the greatest regularity, to obey the orders of their officers, and, above all, to keep perfect silence. [Footnote:  In the Haldimand MSS., Series B., Vo, , there is a long extract from what is called “Col.  Clark’s Journal.”  This is the official report which he speaks of as being carried by William Moires, his express, who was taken by the Indians (see his letter to Henry of April 29th; there seems, by the way, to be some doubt whether this letter was not written to Jefferson; there is a copy in the Jefferson MSS.  Series I., Vol.  I.).  This is not only the official report, but also the earliest letter Clark wrote on the subject and therefore the most authoritative.  The paragraph relating to the final march against Vincennes is as follows: 

“I order’d the march in the first division Capt.  Williams, Capt.  Worthingtons Company & the Kaskaskia Volunteers, in the 2d commanded by Capt.  Bowman his own Company & the Cohos Volunteers.  At sun down I put the divisions in motion to march in the greatest order & regularity & observe the orders of their officers.  Above all to be silent ­the 5 men we took in the canoes were our guides.  We entered the town on the upper part leaving detached Lt.  Bayley & 15 rifle men to attack the Fort & keep up a fire to harrass them untill we took possession of the town & they were to remain on that duty till relieved by another party, the two divisions marched into the town & took possession of the main street, put guards &c without the least molestation.”

This effectually disposes of the account, which was accepted by Clark himself in his old age, that he ostentatiously paraded his men and marched them to and fro with many flags flying, so as to impress the British with his numbers.  Instead of indulging in any such childishness (which would merely have warned the British, and put them on their guard), he in reality made as silent an approach as possible, under cover of the darkness.

Hamilton, in his narrative, speaks of the attack as being made on the 22d of February, not the 23d as Clark says.] The rapidly gathering dusk prevented any discovery of his real numbers.

In sending in the messenger he had builded even better than he knew; luck which had long been against him now at last favored him.  Hamilton’s runners had seen Clark’s camp-fires the night before; and a small scouting party of British regulars, Detroit volunteers, and Indians had in consequence been sent to find out what had caused them. These men were not made of such stern stuff as Clark’s followers, nor had they such a commander; and after going some miles they were stopped by the floods, and started to return.  Before they got back, Vincennes was assailed.  Hamilton trusted so completely to the scouting party, and to the seemingly impassable state of the country, that his watch was very lax.  The créoles in the town, when Clark’s proclamation was read to them, gathered eagerly to discuss it; but so great was the terror of his name, and so impressed and appalled were they by the mysterious approach of an unknown army, and the confident and menacing language with which its coming was heralded, that none of them dared show themselves partisans of the British by giving warning to the garrison.  The Indians likewise heard vague rumors of what had occurred and left the town; a number of the inhabitants who were favorable to the British, followed the same course. Hamilton, attracted by the commotion, sent down his soldiers to find out what had occurred; but before they succeeded, the Americans were upon them.

About seven o’clock Clark entered the town, and at once pushed his men on to attack the fort.  Had he charged he could probably have taken it at once; for so unprepared were the garrison that the first rifle shots were deemed by them to come from drunken Indians.  But of course he had not counted on such a state of things.  He had so few men that he dared not run the risk of suffering a heavy loss.  Moreover, the backwoodsmen had neither swords nor bayonets.

Most of the créole townspeople received Clark joyfully, and rendered him much assistance, especially by supplying him with powder and ball, his own stock of ammunition being scanty.  One of the Indian chiefsoffered to bring his tribe to the support of the Americans, but Clark answered that all he asked of the red men was that they should for the moment remain neutral.  A few of the young Créoles were allowed to join in the attack, however, it being deemed good policy to commit them definitely to the American side.

    The Attack on the Fort.

Fifty of the American troops were detached to guard against any relief from without, while the rest attacked the fort:  yet Hamilton’s scouting party crept up, lay hid all night in an old barn, and at daybreak rushed into the fort. [Footnote:  Hamilton’s Narrative.  Clark in his “Memoir” asserts that he designedly let them through, and could have shot them down as they tried to clamber over the stockade if he had wished.  Bowman corroborates Hamilton, saying:  “We sent a party to intercept them, but missed them.  However, we took one of their men, ... the rest making their escape under the cover of the night into the fort.”  Bowman’s journal is for this siege much more trustworthy than Clark’s “Memoir.”  In the latter, Clark makes not a few direct misstatements, and many details are colored so as to give them an altered aspect.  As an instance of the different ways in which he told an event at the time, and thirty years later, take the following accounts of the same incident.  The first is from the letter to Henry (State Department MSS.), the second from the “Memoir.”  I.  “A few days ago I received certain intelligence of Wm. Moires my express to you being killed near the Falls of Ohio, news truly disagreeable to me, as I fear many of my letters will fall into the hands of the enemy at Detroit.” 2.  “Poor Myres the express, who set out on the 15th, got killed on his passage, and his packet fell into the hands of the enemy; but I had been so much on my guard that there was not a sentence in it that could be of any disadvantage to us for the enemy to know; and there were private letters from soldiers to their friends designedly wrote to deceive in cases of such accidents.”  Firing was kept up with very little intermission throughout the night.

His whole account of the night attack and of his treating with Hamilton is bombastic.  If his account of the incessant “blaze of fire” of the Americans is true, they must have wasted any amount of ammunition perfectly uselessly.  Unfortunately, most of the small western historians who have written about Clark have really damaged his reputation by the absurd inflation of their language.  They were adepts in the forcible-feeble style of writing, a sample of which is their rendering him ludicrous by calling him “the Hannibal of the West,” and the “Washington of the West.”  Moreover, they base his claims to greatness not on his really great deeds, but on the half-imaginary feats of childish cunning he related in his old age.] At one o’clock the moon set, and Clark took advantage of the darkness to throw up an intrenchment within rifle-shot of the strongest battery, which consisted of two guns.  All of the cannon and swivels in the fort were placed about eleven feet above the ground, on the upper floors of the strong block-houses that formed the angles of the palisaded walls.  At sunrise on the 24th the riflemen from the intrenchment opened a hot fire into the port-holes of the battery, and speedily silenced both guns. The artillery and musketry of the defenders did very little damage to the assailants, who lost but one man wounded, though some of the houses in the town were destroyed by the cannon-balls.  In return, the backwoodsmen, by firing into the ports, soon rendered it impossible for the guns to be run out and served, and killed or severely wounded six or eight of the garrison; for the Americans showed themselves much superior, both in marksmanship and in the art of sheltering themselves, to the British regulars and French Canadians against whom they were pitted.

Early in the forenoon Clark summoned the fort to surrender, and while waiting for the return of the flag his men took the opportunity of getting breakfast, the first regular meal they had had for six days.  Hamilton declined to surrender, but proposed a three days’ truce instead.  This proposition Clark instantly rejected, and the firing again began, the backwoodsmen beseeching Clark to let them storm the fort; he refused.  While the negotiations were going on a singular incident occurred.  A party of Hamilton’s Indians returned from a successful scalping expedition against the frontier, and being ignorant of what had taken place, marched straight into the town.  Some of Clark’s backwoodsmen instantly fell on them and killed or captured nine, besides two French partisans who had been out with them. One of the latter was the son of a créole lieutenant in Clark’s troops, and after much pleading his father and friends procured the release of himself and his comrade. Clark determined to make a signal example of the six captured Indians, both to strike terror into the rest and to show them how powerless the British were to protect them; so he had them led within sight of the fort and there tomahawked and thrown into the river. The sight did not encourage the garrison.  The English troops remained firm and eager for the fight, though they had suffered the chief loss; but the Detroit volunteers showed evident signs of panic.

    Surrender of the Fort.

In the afternoon Hamilton sent out another flag, and he and Clark met in the old French church to arrange for the capitulation.  Helm, who was still a prisoner on parole, and was told by Clark that he was to remain such until recaptured, was present; so were the British Major Hay and the American Captain Bowman.  There was some bickering and recrimination between the leaders, Clark reproaching Hamilton with having his hands dyed in the blood of the women and children slain by his savage allies; while the former answered that he was not to blame for obeying the orders of his superiors, and that he himself had done all he could to make the savages act mercifully.  It was finally agreed that the garrison, seventy-nine men in all, should surrender as prisoners of war.  The British commander has left on record his bitter mortification at having to yield the fort “to a set of uncivilized Virginia woodsmen armed with rifles.”  In truth, it was a most notable achievement.  Clark had taken, without artillery, a heavy stockade, protected by cannon and swivels, and garrisoned by trained soldiers.  His superiority in numbers was very far from being in itself sufficient to bring about the result, as witness the almost invariable success with which the similar but smaller Kentucky forts, unprovided with artillery and held by fewer men, were defended against much larger forces than Clark’s.  Much credit belongs to Clark’s men, but most belongs to their leader.  The boldness of his plan and the resolute skill with which he followed it out, his perseverance through the intense hardships of the midwinter march, the address with which he kept the French and Indians neutral, and the masterful way in which he controlled his own troops, together with the ability and courage he displayed in the actual attack, combined to make his feat the most memorable of all the deeds done west of the Alleghanies in the Revolutionary war. It was likewise the most important in its results, for had he been defeated we would not only have lost the Illinois, but in all probability Kentucky also.

    Capture of a Convoy from Detroit.

Immediately after taking the fort Clark sent Helm and fifty men, in boats armed with swivels, up the Wabash to intercept a party of forty French volunteers from Detroit, who were bringing to Vincennes bateaux heavily laden with goods of all kinds, to the value of ten thousand pounds sterling. In a few days Helm returned successful, and the spoils, together with the goods taken at Vincennes, were distributed among the soldiers, who “got almost rich.” The officers kept nothing save a few needed articles of clothing.  The gun-boat Willing appeared shortly after the taking of the fort, the crew bitterly disappointed that they were not in time for the fighting.  The long-looked-for messenger from the governor of Virginia also arrived, bearing to the soldiers the warm thanks of the Legislature of that State for their capture of Kaskaskia and the promise of more substantial reward.

    Disposal of the Prisoners.

Clark was forced to parole most of his prisoners, but twenty-seven, including Hamilton himself, were sent to Virginia.  The backwoodsmen regarded Hamilton with revengeful hatred, and he was not well treated while among them, save only by Boon ­for the kind-hearted, fearless old pioneer never felt any thing but pity for a fallen enemy.  All the borderers, including Clark, believed that the British commander himself gave rewards to the Indians for the American scalps they brought in; and because of his alleged behavior in this regard he was kept in close confinement by the Virginia government until, through the intercession of Washington, he was at last released and exchanged.  Exactly how much he was to blame it is difficult to say.  Certainly the blame rests even more with the crown, and the ruling class in Britain, than with Hamilton, who merely carried out the orders of his superiors; and though he undoubtedly heartily approved of these orders, and executed them with eager zest, yet it seems that he did what he could ­which was very little ­to prevent unnecessary atrocities.

The crime consisted in employing the savages at all in a war waged against men, women, and children alike.  Undoubtedly the British at Detroit followed the example of the French in paying money to the Indians for the scalps of their foes.  It is equally beyond question that the British acted with much more humanity than their French predecessors had shown.  Apparently the best officers utterly disapproved of the whole business of scalp buying; but it was eagerly followed by many of the reckless agents and partisan leaders, British, tories, and Canadians, who themselves often accompanied the Indians against the frontier and witnessed or shared in their unmentionable atrocities.  It is impossible to acquit either the British home government or its foremost representatives at Detroit of a large share in the responsibility for the appalling brutality of these men and their red allies; but the heaviest blame rests on the home government.

    The Country Pacified.

Clark soon received some small reinforcements, and was able to establish permanent garrisons at Vincennes, Kaskaskia, and Cahokia.  With the Indian tribes who lived round about he made firm peace; against some hunting bands of Delawares who came in and began to commit ravages, he waged ruthless and untiring war, sparing the women and children, but killing all the males capable of bearing arms, and he harried most of them out of the territory, while the rest humbly sued for peace.  His own men worshipped him; the French loved and stood in awe of him while the Indians respected and feared him greatly.  During the remainder of the Revolutionary war the British were not able to make any serious effort to shake the hold he had given the Americans on the region lying around and between Vincennes and the Illinois.  Moreover he so effectually pacified the tribes between the Wabash and the Mississippi that they did not become open and formidable foes of the whites until, with the close of the war against Britain, Kentucky passed out of the stage when Indian hostilities threatened her very life.

The fame of Clark’s deeds and the terror of his prowess spread to the southern Indians, and the British at Natchez trembled lest they should share the fate that had come on Kaskaskia and Vincennes., N, Vol.  II., pp. 17 and 45.  Letter of James Colbert, a half-breed in the British interest, resident at that time among the Chickasaws, May 25, 1779, etc.] Flat-boats from the Illinois went down to New Orleans, and keel-boats returned from that city with arms and munitions, or were sent up to Pittsburg; and the following spring Clark built a fort on the east bank of the Mississippi below the Ohio. It was in the Chickasaw territory, and these warlike Indians soon assaulted it, making a determined effort to take it by storm, and though they were repulsed with very heavy slaughter, yet, to purchase their neutrality, the Americans were glad to abandon the fort.

    Clark Moves to the Falls of Ohio.

Clark himself, towards the end of 1779, took up his abode at the Falls of the Ohio, where he served in some sort as a shield both for the Illinois and for Kentucky, and from whence he hoped some day to march against Detroit.  This was his darling scheme, which he never ceased to cherish.  Through no fault of his own, the day never came when he could put it in execution.

He was ultimately made a brigadier-general of the Virginian militia, and to the harassed settlers in Kentucky his mere name was a tower of strength.  He was the sole originator of the plan for the conquest of the northwestern lands, and, almost unaided, he had executed his own scheme.  For a year he had been wholly cut off from all communication with the home authorities, and had received no help of any kind.  Alone, and with the very slenderest means, he had conquered and held a vast and beautiful region, which but for him would have formed part of a foreign and hostile empire [Footnote:  It is of course impossible to prove that but for Clark’s conquest the Ohio would have been made our boundary in 1783, exactly as it is impossible to prove that but for Wolfe the English would not have taken Quebec.  But when we take into account the determined efforts of Spain and France to confine us to the land east of the Alleghanies, and then to the land southeast of the Ohio, the slavishness of Congress in instructing our commissioners to do whatever France wished, and the readiness shown by one of the commissioners, Franklin, to follow these instructions, it certainly looks as if there would not even have been an effort made by us to get the northwestern territory had we not already possessed it, thanks to Clark.  As it was, it was only owing to Jay’s broad patriotism and stern determination that our western boundaries were finally made so far-reaching.  None of our early diplomats did as much for the west as Jay, whom at one time the whole west hated and reviled; Mann Butler, whose politics are generally very sound, deserves especial credit for the justice he does the New Yorker.

It is idle to talk of the conquest as being purely a Virginian affair.  It was conquered by Clark, a Virginian, with some scant help from Virginia, but it was retained only owing to the power of the United States and the patriotism of such northern statesmen as Jay, Adams, and Franklin, the negotiators of the final treaty.  Had Virginia alone been in interest, Great Britain would not have even paid her claims the compliment of listening to them.  Virginia’s share in the history of the nation has ever been gallant and leading; but the Revolutionary war was emphatically fought by Americans for America; no part could have won without the help of the whole, and every victory was thus a victory for all, in which all alike can take pride.]; he had clothed and paid his soldiers with the spoils of his enemies; he had spent his own fortune as carelessly as he had risked his life, and the only reward that he was destined for many years to receive was the sword voted him by the Legislature of Virginia.