The year 1779 was to see as brilliant an achievement in the West, as the East was to see in the capture of Stony Point. This was the recapture of Vincennes by Clark. Joined by an experienced adventurer, Colonel Francis Vigo, formerly of the Spanish service, Clark was persuaded that he must capture Hamilton or Hamilton would capture him. Accordingly, on the fifth of February, Clark set out for Vincennes with one hundred and seventy trusty men. In twelve days they reached the Embarras River, which was crossed on the twenty-first with great bravery, the men wading in water to their shoulders. On the twenty-fifth, Hamilton, the most surprised man in the world, was compelled to surrender. Within two weeks he was on his way to Virginia; where, being found guilty of buying Virginian scalps from the Indians, he was imprisoned, but was exchanged the year following.
In July, while returning from New Orleans with supplies; Colonel Rogers and his party of Kentuckians were overwhelmed by Indians, under Girty and Elliott, on the Ohio River. In a terrible running battle sixty Kentuckians were killed. The sad news spread quickly through Kentucky and a thousand tongues called loudly for revenge. In response Major Bowman led three hundred volunteers up the Scioto Valley and attacked the Shawanese capital. There was bungling somewhere and a retreat was ordered before victory was achieved.
During this summer the conqueror of Illinois expected to complete his triumph by the capture of Detroit. A messenger from Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, brought tidings that troops for this expedition would be forthcoming from Virginia and Kentucky, and rendezvous at Vincennes in July. When the time came, Clark found only a few soldiers from Kentucky and none at all from Virginia. The Detroit expedition fell through because of Virginia’s poverty in money and in men; though artillery, ammunition, and tools had been secured for the campaign from Fort Pitt, at Washington’s command. But with masterly foresight Governor Jefferson secured the establishment of a fort on the Mississippi River in the Illinois country. During this summer the little garrison which General McIntosh left buried in the Black Forest at Fort Laurens fled back over the trail to Pittsburg. Nowhere north of the Ohio were the scenes frequently enacted in Kentucky reproduced so vividly as at little Fort Laurens, on the upper Muskingum. At one time fourteen of the garrison were decoyed and slaughtered. At another time an army numbering seven hundred warriors invested the little half-forgotten fortress and its intrepid defenders. A slight embankment may be seen today near Bolivar, Ohio, which marks one side of the first fort erected in what is now Ohio, those near the lake shore excepted. Thus closed the year 1779: Clark again in possession of Vincennes, as well as Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but disappointed in the failure of the Detroit expedition; Hamilton languishing in a Virginia dungeon, twelve hundred miles from his capital—Fort Detroit; Fort Laurens abandoned, and the Kentucky country covered with gloom over Rogers’s terrible loss and Bowman’s inglorious retreat from the valley of the Scioto. On the other hand, the East was glorying in Mad Anthony Wayne’s capture of Stony Point, Sullivan’s rebuke to the Indians, and Paul Jones’s electrifying victory on the sea.
In 1780 four expeditions set forth, all of them singular in character, and noteworthy. The year before, 1779, Spain had declared war upon England. The new commander at Detroit took immediate occasion to regain control of the Mississippi by attacking the Spanish town of St. Louis. This expedition, under Captain Sinclair, descended the Mississippi from Prairie du Chien. The attack was not successful, but six whites were killed and eighteen taken prisoner.
At the time of Bowman’s expedition against the Shawanese, in the preceding year a British officer, Colonel Bird, had assembled a noteworthy array at Sandusky preparatory to the invasion of Kentucky. News of the Kentucky raid up the Scioto Valley set Bird’s Indians to “cooking and counselling” again, instead of acting. This year Bird’s invasion materialized, and the fate of the Kentucky settlements trembled in the balance. The invading army of six hundred Indians and Canadians was armed with two pieces of artillery. There is little doubt that this army could have battered down every “station” in Kentucky and swept victoriously through the new settlements. Ruddles’s station on the Licking was first menaced, and surrendered quickly. Martin’s fort also capitulated. But here Bird paused in his conquest and withdrew northward, the barbarity of the Indian allies, for once at least, shocking a British commander. The real secret of the abrupt retreat lay no doubt in the fact that the increasing immigration had brought such vast numbers of people into Kentucky that Bird dared not penetrate further into the land for fear of a surprise. The gross carelessness of the newly arrived inhabitants, in not taking the precaution to build proper defenses against the Indians, undoubtedly appeared to the British commander as a sign of strength and fortitude which he did not have the courage to put to the test. As a matter of fact, he could probably have annihilated every settlement between the Ohio River and Cumberland Gap.
In retaliation Kentucky sent an immense army north of the Ohio, a thousand men volunteering under Clark, the hero of Vincennes. A large Indian army was routed near the Shawanese town Pickaway. Many towns with standing crops were burned. A similar expedition from Pittsburg under General Brodhead burned crops and villages on the upper Muskingum.
In return for the attack on St. Louis, the Spanish commander at that point sent an expedition against the deserted British post of St. Joseph. Upon declaring war against England in the previous year, Spain had occupied Natchez, Baton Rouge, and Mobile, which, with St. Louis, gave her command of the Mississippi. But his Catholic Majesty was building other Spanish castles in America. He desired the conquest of the British northwest, to offset the British capture of Gibraltar. This “capture” of St. Joseph led to an amusing but ominous claim on the part of Spain at the Treaty of Paris: when, with it for a pretext, the Spanish Crown claimed all lands west of a line drawn from St. Joseph southward through what is now Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The Mississippi River boundary was, however, stoutly contended for and obtained by the American commissioners.
In this year the first “gunboat” to ply western waters was built under direction of Brigadier-general Clark. It was a galley armed with light artillery. This queer-looking craft soon fell into disuse, though it became a terror to the Indians who continually infested the lower Ohio. It was relished little better by the militia, who disliked service on water. But it stands as a typical illustration of the enterprise and devotion of the “Father of Kentucky” to the cause for which he had done so much.
The year following, 1781, saw the termination of the Revolution in the East, when Cornwallis’s army marched down the files of French and American troops at Yorktown to the melancholy tune “The World’s Turned Upside Down.” The Treaty of Paris was not signed until 1783, and in the meantime the bloodiest year of all the war in the West, 1782, was adding its horrors to all that had gone before. While the East was rejoicing, the central West saw the terrible massacre of Gnadenhutten—the more terrible because committed by white men themselves.
In May, 1782, the atrocities of the savages (encouraged by the British) along the Pennsylvanian and Virginian border were becoming unbearable, and an expedition was raised in the Monongahela country to penetrate to the Indian-infested country on the Sandusky River. Volunteers, four hundred in number, all mounted, rendezvoused at the Ohio near Mingo Bottom; they elected as commander Colonel William Crawford, an experienced officer of the Revolutionary War, following Washington faithfully through the hard Long Island and Delaware campaigns. Crawford struck straight through the forests, even avoiding Indian trails, at first, in the hope of taking his foe utterly by surprise. But his wily foe completely outwitted him and the Indians and British knew well each day’s progress. The battle was fought in a prairie land near the Sandusky River in what is now Crawford County, Ohio, and though not a victory for either side, an American retreat was ordered during the night following. Colonel Crawford was captured, among others, and suffered a terrible death at the stake, perhaps the saddest single atrocity committed by the redman in western history. This gray-haired veteran of the Revolution gave his life to appease the Indians for a massacre of Christian Indians perpetrated by savage borderers from the Monongahela country the year previous.