That night we buried Shelby Cousin on the bank of the Kanawha and built a fire over his grave to conceal it. Colonel Christian arrived at midnight, and there was some lurid profanity when his men learned they had arrived too late for the fighting. One week after the battle eleven hundred troops crossed the Ohio to carry the war to the Indian towns for a final decision.
When thirteen miles south of Chillicothe, the town Governor Dunmore had ordered us to attack and destroy, a message arrived from His Lordship, directing Colonel Lewis to halt his advance, for peace was about to be made. Hostile bands had fired upon us that very morning, and the position was not suitable for a camp. Colonel Lewis continued the march for a few miles. Another messenger arrived with orders for us to halt, for the peace was about to be consummated.
We went into camp on Congo Creek, about five miles from Chillicothe. The men raged something marvelous. They insisted that no decisive battle had been fought and that we had thrown away nearly a hundred lives if the fighting were not renewed. The Shawnees were in our power. What folly to let them escape!
Dunmore and White Eyes, the friendly Delaware chief, rode into camp and conferred with Colonel Lewis; and as a result we started the next day for Point Pleasant and Virginia. The men were all but out of bounds, so furious were they at not being loosed at the Shawnees.
Then began the talk that Dunmore brought on the war to keep our backwoodsmen busy in event the colonies rebelled against England; also, that he closed it prematurely so that the Indians might continue a menace to the border and thus keep the frontier men at home.
I was as hot as any against His Lordship for the way the campaign ended. We demanded blood for blood in those days; and never had the Virginia riflemen a better chance for inflicting lasting punishment on their ancient foes. And we were quick to blame His Lordship for a variety of unwholesome motives.
But with political rancor long since buried we can survey that campaign more calmly and realize that as a result of the battle the northwest Indians kept quiet for the first two years of the Revolutionary War, and that during this period Kentucky was settled and the vast continent west of the Alleghanies was saved to the Union.
If the battle of Bushy Run took the heart out of the tribes confederated under Pontiac’s masterly leadership, then Dunmore’s War permitted us to begin life as a republic without having the Alleghanies for our western boundary. Nor can I hold in these latter days that His Lordship was insincere in waging the war; for England was against it from the first.
I believed he pushed the war as vigorously and shrewdly as he knew how; and I believe his was the better judgment in securing the best peace-terms possible instead of heaping defeat on defeat until the allied tribes had nothing left to bargain for. So I give His Lordship credit for making a good bargain with the Indians, and a bargain which aided the colonists during the struggle almost upon them. But I was very happy when Colonel Andrew Lewis drove him from Virginia.