And with the coming of Hamilton came all the wonderful story of the capture of Vincennes. And who can tell it? Who has told it? Historians hesitate. Romancers shrink from the task. Not one has surpassed George Rogers Clark's own letters, which read like fragments of the gospel of liberty.
Before the home fire at Caroline, John Rogers told the tale. A hush fell. The mother softly wept as she thought of her scattered boys, one in the west, two with Washington tracking the snows of Valley Forge, one immured in a prison ship where patriot martyrs groaned their lives away.
Little William heard the tale, and his young heart swelled with emotion. John Clark listened, then spoke but one sentence.
"If I had as many more sons I would give them all to my country."
All the way from Kentucky Daniel Boone was sent to the Virginia legislature. He said to Jefferson: "I doubt these charges against Governor Hamilton. Last Spring I was captured by the Shawnees and dragged to Detroit. Governor Hamilton took pity on me and offered the Indians one hundred dollars for my release. They refused to take it. But he gave me a horse, and on that horse I eventually made my escape."
"Did that prevent Governor Hamilton from sending an armed force of British and Indians to besiege Boonsboro?" inquired Jefferson.
Boone had to admit that it did not. But for that timely escape and warning Boonsboro would have fallen.
But Boone in gratitude went to the dungeon and offered what consolation he could to the imprisoned Governor.
The fact is, that Daniel Boone carried ever on his breast, wrapped in a piece of buckskin, that old commission of Lord Dunmore's. It saved him from the Indians; it won Hamilton.