Let another tale be related of this same Benjamin Logan and this same siege. "Another danger now assailed this little garrison. 'There was but little powder or ball in the fort; nor any prospect of supply from the neighboring stations, could it even have been sent for, without the most imminent danger.' The enemy continued before the fort; there was no ammunition nearer than the settlements at Holston, distant about two hundred miles; and the garrison must surrender to horrors worse than death, unless a supply of this indispensable article could be obtained. Nor was it an easy task to pass through so wily an enemy or the danger and difficulty much lessened, when even beyond the besiegers; owing to the obscure and mountainous way, it was necessary to pass, through a foe scattered in almost every direction. But Captain Logan was not a man to falter where duty called, because encompassed with danger. With two companions he left the fort in the night and with the sagacity of a hunter, and the hardihood of a soldier, avoided the trodden way of Cumberland Gap, which was most likely to be waylaid by the Indians, and explored his passage over the Cumberland Mountain, where no man had ever traveled before, through brush and cane, over rocks and precipices, sufficient to have daunted the most hardy and fearless. In less than ten days from his departure, Captain Logan, having obtained the desired supply, and leaving it with directions to his men, how to conduct their march, arrived alone and safe at his 'diminutive station,' which had been almost reduced to despair. The escort with the ammunition, observing the directions given it, arrived in safety, and the garrison once more felt itself able to defend the fort and master its own fortune." The siege was at last raised, but on the body of one of the detachment were found the proclamations of the British governor of Canada, offering protection to those who should embrace the cause of the king, but threatening vengeance on all who refused their allegiance. Thus it was brought home to the struggling pioneers of Kentucky, that the British and the Indians were in league against them.
Men like Daniel Boone, James Harrod and Benjamin Logan, fighting, bleeding, hunting game for the beleaguered garrisons, were the precursors of George Rogers Clark. Clark possessed prescience. He knew the British had determined on the extermination of the Kentucky settlements, because these settlements thwarted the British plan of preserving the west as a red man's wilderness. He had been in the fights at Harrodstown, in 1777, and doubtless knew that the British partisans at Detroit were paying money for scalps. Knowing that all the irruptions of savages into Kentucky were encouraged and set on foot from Kaskaskia, Vincennes and Detroit, he suddenly resolved upon the bold project of capturing these strongholds. This would put the British upon the defensive, relieve the frontiers of Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and in the end add a vast territory to the domain of the republic. In the accomplishment of all these designs the soil of Kentucky was to be used as a base of operations.
It is not the purpose of this work to give a history of the Clark campaigns, nor of the daring stratagems of that great leader in effecting his purposes. Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, each in turn fell into his hands, and when Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant-governor at Detroit, received the astounding news that the French on the Mississippi and the Wabash had sworn allegiance to the Americans, he abandoned his enterprise of capturing Fort Pitt and at once entered upon a campaign to retrieve the lost possessions and "sweep" the Kentuckians out of the country. His scheme was formidable. With a thousand men, and with artillery to demolish the stockades and destroy the frontier posts, he proposed to drive the settlers back across the mountains. "Undoubtedly," says Roosevelt, "he would have carried out his plan, and have destroyed all the settlements west of the Alleghenies, had he been allowed to wait until the mild weather brought him his host of Indian allies and his reinforcements of regulars and militia from Detroit." How Clark with his Virginians and Kentuckians, and a few French allies from the western posts, anticipated his attack, swam the drowned lands of the Wabash, and surprised him at Vincennes, has been well told. Instead of "sweeping" Kentucky, the "hair-buyer" general was taken a prisoner to the dungeons of Virginia, and the newborn possessions were erected into the county of Illinois.
For a number of years following the revolution, there were those in the east, and especially in New England, who suffered from myopia. They utterly failed to see the future of the republic, or the importance of holding the western country. To them, such men as Harrod and Kenton, Logan and Boone, were "lawless borderers" and willful aggressors on the rights of the red man. And yet, back of the crowning diplomacy of John Jay, that placed our western frontiers on the banks of the Mississippi, and extended our northern lines to the thread of the lakes, lay the stern resolution of the men of Kentucky and the supreme audacity of the mind of Clark.
To recount the endless horrors endured by the people south of the Ohio during the remaining days of the revolution, and for long years afterwards, would be impossible. Parties of savages, accompanied ofttimes by French-Canadians from Detroit, scoured the country, stealing horses, driving away the cattle, attacking solitary cabins, waylaying the unwary, and often carrying women and children away into captivity. "Many fell victims to the Indians," says Mann Butler, "many were burned and tortured, with every refinement of diabolical vengeance; others were harrowed with the recollection of their children's brains dashed out against the trees; the dying shrieks of their dearest friends and connexions." In 1781, the raids were appalling. "One of the official British reports to Lord George Germaine, made in October 23rd of this year, deals with the Indian war parties employed against the northwestern frontier. "Many smaller Indian parties have been very successful. * * * * It would be endless and difficult to enumerate to your lordship the parties that are continually employed upon the back settlements. From the Illinois country to the frontiers of New York there is a continual succession * * * the perpetual terror and losses of the inhabitants will I hope operate powerfully in our favor." In 1783, twenty-three widows were in attendance at the court at Logan's station to take out letters of administration upon the estates of their husbands who had been killed in the Indian wars of the day. "Since my first visit to this district," says Judge Harry Innes, writing from Danville, Kentucky, on the 7th of July, 1790, "which was the time above named (1783), I can venture to say, that above fifteen hundred souls have been killed and taken in this district, and emigrating to it; that upwards of twenty thousand horses have been taken and carried off and other property, such as money, merchandise, household goods and wearing apparel, have been carried off and destroyed by these barbarians, to at least fifteen thousand pounds."
From this crucible of fire and blood a great people emerged, hardy, brave, chivalrous, quick to respond to the cries and sufferings of others, but with an iron hate of all things Indian and British stamped eternally in their hearts. Others might be craven, but they were not. Every savage incursion was answered by a counterstroke. The last red man had not retreated across the Ohio, before the mounted riflemen of Kentucky, leaving old men and boys behind to supply the settlements, and with a little corn meal and jerked venison for their provision, sallied forth to take their vengeance and demolish the Indian towns. Federal commanders, secretaries of war, even Presidents might remonstrate, but all in vain. They had come forth into the wilderness to form their homes and clear the land, and make way for civilization, and they would not go back. In every family there was the story of a midnight massacre, or of a wife or child struck down by the tomahawk, or of a loving father burned at the stake. To plead with men whose souls had been seared by outrage and horror was unavailing. All savages appeared the same to them. They shot without discrimination, and shot to kill. They marched with Clark, they rode with Harmar, and they fought with Wayne and Harrison. In the war of 1812, more than seven thousand Kentuckians took the field. It was, as Butler has aptly termed it, "a state in arms." You may call them "barbarians," "rude frontiersmen," or what you will, but it took men such as these to advance the outposts of the nation and to conquer the west. Strongly, irresistibly, is the soul of the patriot moved by the story of their deeds.
With all its bloody toil and suffering, Kentucky grew. After the spring of 1779, when Clark had captured Vincennes, the danger of extermination was over. Following the revolution a strong and ever increasing stream of boats passed down the Ohio. The rich lands, the luxuriant pastures, the bounteous harvests of corn and wheat, were great attractions. Josiah Harmar, writing from the mouth of the Muskingum in May, 1787, reports one hundred and seventy-seven boats, two thousand six hundred and eighty-nine men, women and children, one thousand three hundred and thirty-three horses, seven hundred and sixty-six cattle, and one hundred and two wagons, as passing that point, bound for Limestone and the rapids at Louisville. On the ninth of December of the same year, he reports one hundred and forty-six boats, three thousand one hundred and ninety-six souls, one thousand three hundred and eighty-one horses, one hundred and sixty-five wagons, one hundred and seventy-one cattle, and two hundred and forty-five sheep as on the way to Kentucky, between the first of June and the date of his communication. In 1790, the first census of the United States showed a population of seventy-three thousand six hundred and seventy-seven. On June 1st, 1792, Kentucky became the fifteenth commonwealth in the federal union; the first of the great states west of the Alleghenies that were to add so much wealth, resource and vital strength to the government of the United States.