Cornwallis was menacing all Virginia with desolation; the financial resources of Congress were at their lowest point, and operations on the western frontier were confined to defensive acts. Like a lion chained, Clarke beheld the British and their forest allies lording it over the chosen country of the pioneers, who were without strength sufficient to drive them away, or hardly able to beat them back when they came as assailants. Finally, the disastrous battle at the Blue Licks, which spread a pall of gloom over Kentucky, aroused his desponding spirit, and he raised a war-cry which awoke responsive echoes every where in that deep forest land. * That battle was fought in August,Aug. 19, 1872 and in September, General Clarke, at the head of more than one thousand mounted riflemen, assembled at the mouth of the Licking (opposite the present city of Cincinnati), crossed the Ohio, and pressed forward to the Indian towns on the Sciota. He was accompanied by Simon Kenton as pilot, and who had command of a company on that occasion. The natives fled before the invaders and eseaped; but five of their villages, and numerous corn-fields and orchards, were laid waste. The Kentuckians returned to the mouth of the Licking on the fourth of November.2 This expedition had a salutary effect; it awed the savages, and no formidable Indian war party ever afterward invaded Kentucky. For more than ten years subsequently, the Indians on our northwestern frontier were troublesome, and it was not until Wayne and a powerful force desolated their country,1794 and wrung from them a general treaty of peace,1795 that they ceased their depredations.
Let us return from the "dark and bloody ground" west of the Alleghanies, and view the progress of events at Williamsburg and vicinity.
* The battle at the Blue Licks! in Nicholas county, Kentucky, occurred on the nineteenth of August, 1782. For some time a strong body of Indians, partially under the control of Simon Girty, had committed depredations in the neighborhood, and it was finally resolved to pursue and chastise them. Daniel Boone with a party from Boonsborough, Trigg from Harrodsburgh, and Todd from Lexington, joined their forces at Bryant's Station, about five miles northeast of Lexington. The little army consisted of one hundred and eighty-two men. They marched on the eighteenth, notwithstanding the number of the enemy was nearly twice their own, but expecting to be joined by General Logan, then at Lincoln, within twenty-four hours. Early on the following morning they came within sight of the enemy at the lower Blue Licks, who were ascending the opposite bank of the stream. The Kentuckians held a council of war, and Boone proposed waiting for the arrival of Logan. They were generally inclined to adopt the prudent council of the veteran, when Major M'Gary, impetuous and imprudent like Meeker before the fatal battle of Minisink, raised a war-whoop, dashed with his horse into the stream, and, waving his hat, shouted, "Let all who are not cowards follow me!" Instantly the mounted men and footmen were dashing through the strong current of a deep ford in wild confusion. They ascended the bank and rushed forward in pursuit of the enemy, and, as Boone had suggested, fell into an ambuscade. The Indians, concealed in bushy ravines, almost surrounded the Kentuckians, who stood upon a bald elevation between. The Kentucky sharp-shooters fought like tigers, but the Indians, greatly superior in numbers, came up from the ravines, closed in upon their victims, and produced terrible slaughter. Most of the Kentucky leaders, including a son of Daniel Boone, were killed, and utter destruction seemed to await the pioneers. It was soon perceived that the Indians were extending their line to cut off the retreat of the Kentuckians. A retrograde movement was immediately ordered. A tumultuous retreat ensued, and great was the slaughter by the pursuing Indians. The mounted men eseaped, but nearly every man on foot was slain. A large number were killed at the ford, and the waters of the river were reddened with the blood of the victims. Those who succeeded in crossing the river plunged into the buffalo thickets, and by various routes escaped to Bryant's Station.—See M'Citing's Sketches of Western Adventure.
** It was while the expedition was slowly winding its way down this hill above Cincinnati (then an unknown name, now a city with almost 120,000 inhabitants), that Captain M'Cracken, then dying from the effects of a wound in his arm, proposed that they should all enter into an agreement that, fifty years thereafter, the survivors should "meet there and talk over the affairs of the campaign." On the fourth of November, 1832, many of those veterans met in Cincinnati, and more would doubtless have been there, had not the ravages of the cholera prevented. Kenton was still living, but debility prevented his joining his old companions in arms.—See Collins's Kentucky.
Affairs at Williamsburg.—Patrick Henry's bold Resolutions in favor of Military Preparations.—His eloquent Defense of them.
We left Governor Dunmore and the Virginia House of Burgesses in open rupture. The governor had dissolved them, and they had assembled at the Raleigh tavern in convention, and appointed delegates to represent Virginia in the approaching General Congress. That Congress met; its acts have elsewhere been noticed in detail. * The breach between the governor and the people continued to widen; the affairs of Great Britain and her American colonies rapidly approached a crisis. Every day the power of royal governors became weaker; every day the representatives of the people became bolder. To sagacious minds war appeared inevitable, and preparations for it were regarded as acts of common prudence.
In the Virginia Legislature, convened at Richmond in March, 1775, Patrick Henry, in a series of resolutions, recommended a levy of volunteer troops in each county, for the better defense of the country; in other words, a standing army of minute-men, pledged to the republican cause. He had seen with impatience the temporizing spirit of his colleagues, and he determined to test their courage and patriotism by a bold proposition in' the form of resolutions. Like his famous Stamp Act resolutions ten years before, these filled the House with consternation. His proposition was considered as premeditated rebellion, and it was opposed as rash and premature by several who afterward became his most zealous co-workers. Opposition aroused all the fire of Henry's genius, and he poured forth a flood of brilliant eloquence such as the Virginia Assembly had never heard. March 23, 1775 He closed his speech with a loud cry of "Give me Liberty or give me Death!" and when he sat down, not a murmur of applause or of disapprobation was heard. ** "After the trance
* See pages 265-270 inclusive.
** Mr. Wirt, in his life of Patrick Henry, gives the following report of his speech on that occasion. Referring to the apparently gracious manner in which the king had received their petitions, he exclaimed: "Sutler not yourselves to be betrayed by a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win us back to our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir! These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask, gentlemen, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of armies and navies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying argument for the last ten years.... We have petitioned; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted: our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free; if we wish to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending: if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us. "They tell us, sir, that we are weak—unable to cope with so formidable an enemy. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week, or next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. And again, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. * There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable! and let it come!! I repeat it, sir, let it come!!! It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace; but there is no peaee! The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!* Our brethren are already in the field! What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me," he cried, with both arms extended aloft, his brow knit, every feature marked with the resolute purpose of his soul, and with his voice swelled to its loudest note, 'Give me Liberty or give me Death!!!'"
* This prediction was speedily fulfilled; for almost "the next gale from the north" conveyed the boom of the signal-gun of freedom at Lexington.