Construction of other Forts.—Indian Assaults.—Expedition against the Kentucky Settlements—George Rogers Clarke.
built. Early in 1776, Colonel Benjamin Logan, and a small party of settlers, encamped about a mile west of the present town of Stanford, in Lincoln county, and erected a log fortification, which they called Logan's Fort. These two settlements and Boone's Fort were simultaneously attacked by a large party of Indians on the fifteenth of April, 1777. The assailants, having neither artillery nor scaling-ladders, made but little impression upon Boonsborough. A few men of the garrison were killed, and a quantity of corn and cattle belonging to the settlers was destroyed. Many of the assailants were killed.
On the fourth of July following, about two hundred warriors attacked Boonsborough with great vigor. The assailants were repulsed with the loss of seven of their number, while the garrison had but one man killed, and two wounded. The siege lasted two days and nights. On the ninth of September, 1778, a third attack was made upon Boonsborough. The Indians, five hundred in number, were led by Captain Duquesne, and other skillful Canadian officers. When the enemy appeared in front of the fort, the British flag was displayed, and a formal demand for the surrender of the fortress was made. Boone requested an allowance of two days for consideration. It was granted, and in the mean while the garrison, consisting of only fifty men, prepared for a vigorous defense. Boone assembled the defenders, and set before them the actual state of things. To surrender might insure them their lives, but they would lose all their property; to resist and be overcome, would result in the death of every man, woman, and child. Every one resolutely determined to defend the fort to the last, and this decision Boone communicated to Captain Duquesne. The Canadian was chagrined, and sought to obtain by stratagem what he feared he might not accomplish by force. * The siege was commenced, and lasted nine days, when the assailants, having lost many of their number, and unable to make any impression on the fort, retreated suddenly and in great confusion. This was the last, time that Boonsborough was assailed, for the garrisons of other forts between it and the Ohio were rapidly augmenting in numbers and strength, and made it dangerous for the enemy to penetrate far into Kentucky.
With the single exception of Dunmore's expedition in 1774, hostilities west of the
Alleghanies were nothing but a series of border conflicts, each little party acting upon its own responsibility, until 1778, when Major George Rogers Clarke led a regular expedition against the frontier posts of the enemy in the wilderness. Clarke first went to Kentucky in 1775, when he paddled down the Ohio with the Reverend David Jones,
* Duquesne, professing great humanity, proposed to Boone to send out nine of the principal men of his garrison to treat for an accommodation, the entire safety of the people within the fort being the basis. Unsuspicious of treachery, Boone and eight others went out to the camp of the enemy. While engaged in council, at a concerted signal, two strong warriors for each man attempted to seize and carry off the delegation. The whole nine succeeded in releasing themselves, and escaping to the fort amid a shower of bullets from the enemy. Only one man was wounded. The siege immediately commenced.
** George Rogers Clarke was born in Albermarle county, Virginia, on the nineteenth of November, 1752, little is known of his early youth, he was engaged in land surveying, and this led him to love a forest life. He commanded a company in Dunmore's army in 1774, and then first became acquainted with the country west of the Alleghanies. In 1775 he first went to Kentucky, and, while there, he was placed in temporary command of armed settlers. His subsequent military career, until the close of the Revolution, is given in the text. Three years after the conclusion of the war (1786), Clarke commanded an expedition of one thousand men against the Indians on the Wabash. It was disastrous. Several years afterward, Genet, the French minister, undertook to raise and organize a force in Kentucky, for a secret expedition against the Spaniards on the Mississippi, and General Clarke accepted a commission as major general in the armies of France, to conduct the enterprise. Before it could be matured, Genet was recalled, and Clarke's commission annulled. General Clarke never appeared in public life afterward. After suffering for many years from a rheumatic affection, he was prostrated by paralysis, and died near Louisville, in February, 1818, at the age of sixty-six.