TRANSYLVANIA PURCHASE AGAIN DECLARED VOID. 133 his heart throbbed with the pulsations of gratitude for the service she had done him; and he parted from her with emotions, the impressions of which were never effaced from his memory. As for his deliverer, she took an affectionate leave of him, and with many tender wishes for his safety, urged him to go and place himself beyond danger. Kenton never saw her afterward, but never forgot her. Years after, and in venerable age, the old pioneer delighted to dwell on the kindness, and expatiate on the courage and virtues, of his benefactress, the trader's gentle and comely wife. In his reveries, he often said, he had seen the angel woman a thousand times, sitting in the starlight, by the guns in the garden. The fugitives directed their steps toward the prairies of Indiana and the Wabash tributaries, and after thirty days of dangers and hardships, reached Louisville in July. From this point, after a short rest, Kenton shouldered his rifle and started for Vincennes to join Colonel Clark, now quartered there, and to tender his services as needed. It was in November of this year, 1778, that the Virginia Legislature, by act passed and approved, again voided the purchase by Henderson & Company, at Wataga, for the Transylvania Company; and in compensation for their outlay and improvements made, granted the said company two hundred thousand acres lying at the mouth, and on both sides, of Green river, and now a part of Henderson county. 134 CHAPTER XIV. (1779.) Critical situation of Clark at Kaskaskia. The British General Hamilton recaptures Vincennes. Threatens Clark with eight hundred British and Indians. Delayed in this, Clark marches on Vincennes with one hundred and seventy men, in winter, and through the swamps flooded with water. Incredible endurance and hardships. The amphibian soldiers reach Vincennes and invest it. Hamilton surprised, capitulates, after much parleying. The boats arrive after the surrender. His failure and retreat. Logan covers latter. Gallantly drives back the enemy, with severe loss. Chaos of war over the colonies everywhere. Industrial and monetary depression. Virginia seeks to replenish by sale of Kentucky lands. Land law passed. Provision for "squatters." Disputes over claims settled by a commission. Isaac Shelby's claim first presented. Three hundred family boats reach the falls in the spring of 1780. Corn reaches one hundred and sixty- Bryan's station established. built. Squire Boone builds Painted Stone station, near Shelbyville. McAfees return to their old station, in Mercer county. The "hard winter" of 1779-80. The McCoun boy taken prisoner and burnt at the stake. Rogers and Benham attacked on the Nearly one hundred men slain. Benham's peril and suffering. As the end of 1778 drew nigh, Colonel Clark was made gravely apprehensive of the condition which the affairs of the North-west were threatening to assume. The auxiliary forces which he had expected and fondly wished for had not arrived. Virginia was too deeply involved in the revolutionary struggle to spare re-enforcements so much needed. The colonial army under Washington had passed through the discouraging gloom and distress of Valley Forge, in the previous winter, and every soldier was needed for the continental army at the opening of spring. True, the alliance by treaty with France had given an inspiration of hope to the rebels; but the French THE BRITISH RECAPTURE VINCENNES. 135 auxiliaries had not arrived in numbers sufficient, as yet, to afford relief. Captain Helm was compelled to depend entirely upon the loyalty of the newly-converted French and Indian population to maintain his established authority at Vincennes, not even being supplied with a body-guard of Kentuckians. In this phase events drifted until January, 1779, Colonel Vigo, a wealthy and distinguished merchant of St. Louis, brought to Clark's headquarters at Kaskaskia the intelligence that Governor Hamilton had led an expedition from Detroit, late in December, and recaptured Vincennes, and reduced it to British power. The news was fully confirmed. It appeared that there was really but one other soldier besides the captain in the fort at the time of capture, by the name of Henry. When Hamilton approached with his forces, Captain Helm had a cannon well charged and placed in the open fort gate, while he stood by with a lighted match in his hand. When the British came in hailing distance, the American officer cried out, "Halt!" Hamilton stopped the movement, and demanded a surrender of the garri son. "No man shall enter till I know the terms," responded Helm. "You shall have the honors of war," answered the English officer; and then the fort was surrendered, with its garrison of one captain and one private. The information given by Colonel Vigo was important, as developing the plans and resources of the English. Hamilton had brought with his British troops some four hundred Indian auxiliaries, and had planned to march on Kaskaskia after capturing Vincennes. To keep these restless allies employed, he had detached some to harass the Kentuckians, and others to watch the Ohio river, as the season was now too far advanced to attempt the march on Clark's fortified posts on the Mississippi. The arrest of further military operations on the part of the British for the present was necessitated by the impassable condition of the country. The territory lying east of the Mississippi, and including the Wabash river and us tributaries, over Illinois and Indiana, was a vast prairie-land, with intervening growths of timber, and generally flat. The valleys of the streams draining this country, especially of the Wabash and its tributaries, were usually from one to five miles wide, and level with the banks of the rivers and creeks. At every unusual rainfall, these streams would fill the channels with their turbid waters, and overflow the valleys to the skirting banks of the table land. Even this level upland prairie, in the rainy seasons, was covered over with vast sheets of shallow waste water, for which there was not sufficient drainage, rendering it most difficult and uncomfortable for the movement of bodies of men. These rainfalls even yet occur almost annually, and usually about the midwinter season, flooding the face of the country and inundating the lower valleys. At midwinter, 1779, the flood was on, and Hamilton felt himself more secure at Vincennes, behind the barricades of water which spread over hundreds of obstructed miles between him and his enemy, than by the walls of his fort. In the meantime, from this double security he was planning and preparing for a sweeping campaign at the opening of spring, which aimed at no less than the obliteration of the Kentuckians and of Virginia authority west of the Alleghanies. These plans were correctly outlined by Colonel Vigo, who showed himself to be a true and worthy friend of the Americans. His statements were fully confirmed by the reports of spies, and by official documents that afterward came under the eye of Clark. With the British and Indian forces at Vincennes, Hamilton was to march on and capture Kaskaskia. "Here, he was to be joined by two hundred Indians from Michillimachinac, and five hundred Cherokees, Chickasaws, and other tribes of the South." With these combined forces, under orders from the commander-in-chief in Canada, he was "to penetrate up the Ohio to Fort Pitt, sweeping Kentucky on the way; and the more effectively to do this, a battery of artillery, composed of light brass cannon, was to be added to the military arm." Colonel Vigo imparted the important and pivotal fact, upon which future operations might mainly revolve, that Hamilton at that time had but eighty regular soldiers in garrison at Vincennes, and three cannon and some swivels mounted for the defense of the fort.1 Colonel Clark formed his resolutions with that promptitude for which he was ever noted. His tactics were those of aggression, not defense, whenever it was possible for him to employ them thus. "I would have bound myself," said Clark, "a slave for life for seven years to have had five hundred troops. I knew that if I did not take him, he would take me." Dauntlessly, he determined to invade the wilderness of floods, and with what arms he had, and such as he could improvise, march on and besiege the British in their fortified position, and determine the wage of battle at the enemy's headquarters. He immediately fitted up a large Mississippi boat as a galley, mounted it with two four-pounders and four swivels from the fort at Kaskaskia, and placed it in command of Captain John Rogers, with a company of forty-five men, with orders to force their way up the Ohio and Wabash, if possible, and station themselves at the mouth of White river, and suffer nothing to pass until further orders. Next, through the ardor of the French, he raised two companies from among the citizens of Kaskaskia and Cahokia; one in command of Captain McCarty, and the other of Captain Francoise Charleville. These, added to the Kentuckians, made the expeditionary force one hundred and seventy men. On the 7th of February, nine days after the receipt of the information brought by Colonel Vigo, this forlorn hope began its march over the drowned prairies and across the inundated valleys and swollen rivers. To divert his men from the dreariness and fatigues of such a march, Colonel Clark used many devices. He encouraged parties in hunting and in invitations successively to feasts of game, with war dances at night after the 1 Collins, Vol. II., p. 138. Butler, pp. 79-81; Clark's Memoirs. EXTRACT FROM MAJOR BOWMAN'S DIARY. 137 Indian manner, and other amusements. In this way they reached the Little Wabash on the 13th with comparatively not very serious obstruction. At this point the forks of the stream were three miles and the opposite banks five miles apart, the interval flooded with water from three to four feet deep. From a graphic description, by Mr. Bodley, of the remainder of this march, and its issues and results, copiously illustrated with quotations from the preserved memoirs of Captain Bowman and Colonel Clark, we deem it of interest to our narrative to quote here: "This aggressive march across the flooded flats of Illinois was the most desperate recorded in history. After days of trudging through rain and bog, and fording small streams, and night after night, wet, cold, without tents, without even a dry spot to lie upon, with only a little parched corn and the game they could kill for food, they at last reached the immediate valley of the Wabash, and their expected boat was not there. Here before them were miles and miles of water-two rivers swollen into one and on the other side an enemy who, once warned of their approach, would fall upon and easily destroy them. Yet they did not falter. Their young commander, himself painfully aware of their desperate plight, had through these days of weary marching resorted to every device which the most prolific ingenuity could suggest to keep up their spirits and cheer them on. They set to work, felled some trees, built a couple of canoes to carry their ammunition, and boldly pushed on into the deep and cold rivers at midwinter. "One of the brave men, Major Bowman (afterward Governor of Illinois), left a small diary in which, from day to day, he had noted the doings of this little band of men. Singularly and fortunately, it was preserved through fire and flood, and it tells the thrilling story so simply and so well that we can not do better than briefly quote from it: "February 16th.-(They had been marching nine days.) Marched all day through rain and water. Crossed the Fur river. Our provisions began to be very short. “February 17th.—Marched early; crossed several very deep runs; sent our commissary with three men to cross the Embarrass river, if possible, and steal some canoes to ferry us across the Wabash. Traveled till eight o'clock at night in mud and water, but find no place to encamp on. Still keep marching on. Found it impossible to cross the Embarrass river. We found the water falling from a small spot of ground, and stayed there the remainder of the night. Drizzly and dark weather. "February 18th.-At daybreak heard Governor Hamilton's morning gun. Set off and marched down the Embarrass river. At two o'clock came to the bank of the Wabash. Made rafts for four men to cross and go up to the town and steal boats, but they spent the day and night in the water to no purpose, for there was not one foot of dry land to be found. "February 19th.-Colonel Clark sent two men in the canoe down to meet the galley, with orders to come on day and night, that being our last |