[1478] Concerning this controversy, see Craig's Pittsburg, 111-128. The right of Pennsylvania to land beyond the Alleghanies is examined in a paper (1772) entitled "Thoughts on the situation of the inhabitants on the frontier", by James Tilghman, printed in the Penna. Mag. of Hist., x. 316. Cf. also Daniel Agnew's History of the Region of Pennsylvania north of the Ohio and west of the Allegheny River, of the Indian purchases, and of the running of the southern, northern, and western State boundaries; also, an account of the division of the territory for public purposes, and of the lands, laws, titles, settlements, controversies, and litigation within this region (Philadelphia, 1887).—Ed.
[1479] No Indian tribes had their homes in Kentucky. The territory was the common hunting and fighting ground of the Ohio Indians on the north and the Cherokees and Chickasaws on the south. See Butler's Kentucky, p. 8.
[1480] Brantz Meyer's Logan and Cresap, 1867, p. 149. Clark's letter is also printed in The Hesperian (Columbus, Ohio), 1839, ii. 309; Jacob's Life of Cresap, pp. 154-158, and portions of it in Perkins's Western Annals, 143-146.
[1481] Capt. Cresap was then thirty-two years of age, was a trader, and had had no experience in a former war. His father, however,—Col. Thomas Cresap,—was a noted Indian fighter. Clark and his party evidently supposed it was the father, and not the son, they were sending for. The Cresaps were a Maryland family, and the party who wanted a leader were Virginians.
[1482] A few days before, a canoe from Pittsburg, coming down the river, was fired on by Indians, near Baker's Bottom, two white men killed and one wounded. Baker's family had been warned, and were preparing to leave for one of the forts. Baker kept tavern, sold rum, and the Indians across the river were his habitual customers. Fearing an attack, he called in his neighbors. Twenty-one of them responded, but kept out of sight. A party of Indians appeared, and all with the exception of Logan's brother became very drunk. Logan's brother was drunk enough to be insolent, and he attempted to strike one of the white men. As he was leaving the house with a coat and hat which he had stolen, the white man whom he had abused shot him. The neighbors rushed from their concealment and killed the whole Indian party, except a half-breed child whose father was Gen. John Gibson. The Indians on the opposite shore, hearing the firing, came over in canoes. They were also fired on, and twelve of them were killed. (See the statements of John Sappington and others in Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, App. iv., 1800, and later editions; and Withers's Border Warfare, p. 113.)
[1483] This comment Jefferson cancelled in his edition of 1800.
[1484] "I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not.... Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature", etc.
Col. Thomas Cresap, well known in the West as an Indian fighter, was the father of Capt. Michael Cresap, and it is not strange that the rank of the father should have been given to the son. Public attention was not directed to Logan's speech, or the comments of Jefferson on the character of Capt. Cresap, until 1797, when Luther Martin, an ardent Federalist and the Attorney-General of Maryland (who had married a daughter of Capt. Cresap), addressed a public letter to an elocutionist, objecting to his reciting "Logan's Speech", on the ground that it was a slander on a noble man and patriot. The speech itself, he stated, was probably never made by Logan; and the letter had sneering allusions to the claim that Jefferson was a philosopher. Martin's letter is in Olden Time, ii. 51. Jefferson's letter to Gov. Henry of Maryland, of Dec. 31, 1797 (Writings, viii. 309), shows that he attributed Martin's attack to political motives, and that his feelings were greatly disturbed. He immediately set about collecting testimony (1) to prove the genuineness of Logan's speech, and (2) to justify the charges he had made against Cresap. On the first point, it was easy for him to show that he had not invented the speech; that it was common talk in Dunmore's camp; that he took it, as he printed it, from the lips of some person in Williamsburg in 1774, and that it was printed at the time in the Virginia Gazette. It appears that the speech was printed in the Gazette at Williamsburg, Feb. 4, 1775, and that twelve days later the speech, with important variations, was sent by Madison to his friend William Bradford, and was printed in a New York newspaper. Both versions are in Amer. Archives, 4th series, i. 1020. (See also Rives's Madison, i. 63, and Mayer's Logan and Cresap, p. 177.) The fact that the speech as printed was actually delivered was more difficult to prove, as it depended wholly on the statement of Gen. John Gibson, the interpreter. It will never be known what part of it was Logan's and how much of it was Gibson's. Jefferson was not successful in justifying the charges he had made against Cresap. Such of the collected evidence as answered his purpose he printed in Appendix iv. in the edition of his Notes of 1800 (Philadelphia). Some copies of the appendix were printed separately, and it was first mentioned on the title-page in the edition printed at Trenton, 1803. (See Writings, viii. 457-476.) Such of the testimony as did not answer his purpose he suppressed. One of these suppressed statements is the letter of George Rogers Clark to Dr. Samuel Brown, already quoted. It was found among his papers purchased by the United States in 1848, and is now in the State Department at Washington. Brantz Mayer vindicated Cresap in a paper read before the Maryland Historical Society in 1851, on Logan the Indian and Cresap the Pioneer, and more fully in Tah-Gah-Jute, or Logan and Cresap (Albany, 1867); Thomson, Bibliog. of Ohio, nos. 805, 806. Dr. Joseph Doddridge, in his Notes, 1824 (reprinted 1876, and used by Kercheval, Winchester, Va., 1833), made severe strictures on Cresap, but did not charge him with killing Logan's family. An extract from Doddridge, with other matter, called Logan, Chief of the Cayuga Nation, was published in Cincinnati by Wm. Dodge in 1868. Doddridge's attack on Capt. Cresap caused the Rev. John J. Jacob, who in youth had been Cresap's clerk, and had accompanied him in his Western expeditions, to write his Life (Cumberland, Md., 1826; reprinted, with notes and appendix, for Wm. Dodge, Cincinnati, 1866; Field's Ind. Bibliog., nos. 769, 770; Thomson, Bibliog. of Ohio, nos. 640-1). With slight claim to literary merit, and much inaccuracy as to dates, it contains some important documents, and is an earnest vindication of Cresap's character. Charges of baseness and cruelty against Cresap were older than any publication of Logan's speech. The early accounts which came to Sir William Johnson charged the origin of the war upon him. Writing June 20, 1774, Sir William says: "I received the very disagreeable and unexpected intelligence that a certain Mr. Cressop [sic] had trepanned and murdered forty Indians on the Ohio, ... and that the unworthy author of this wanton act is fled.... Since the news of the murders committed by Cressop and his banditti, the Six Nations have sent me two messages", etc., and much more of the same character (N. Y. Col. Doc., viii. 459, 460, 461, 463, 471, 477; a biographical sketch of Cresap by Dr. O'Callaghan is on p. 459). The subject is treated in Olden Time, ii. 44, 49-67; Potter's Amer. Monthly, xi. 187; Old and New, x. 436; New Eclectic, 169; Annual Report, 1879, of the Sec. of State, Ohio, Columbus, 1880; Stone's Sir William Johnson, ii. 370; Dillon's Indiana (1859), p. 97; Atwater's Ohio, p. 116; Monette, i. 384; Jacob's Cresap (1866), 92-125; Amer. Jour. Science, xxxi. 11; Withers's Border Warfare, p. 118; Amer. Pioneer, i. 7-24, 64, 188, 331. The Amer. Pioneer, 1842-43, was the organ of the "Logan Historical Society", the object of the society being to erect a monument to Logan, on which "his speech as given by Thomas Jefferson shall be fully engraved in gilt letters." The title is a full-page woodcut, representing Logan and Gen. Gibson sitting on a log, the former making his "speech" and the latter taking it down.
Capt. Cresap, in June, 1775, enlisted a company of one hundred and thirty riflemen in Maryland, twenty-two of whom were his old companions-in-arms from the country west of the Alleghanies, and marched them to Boston in twenty-two days. Here his health gave way, and he was compelled to return. He reached New York, and there died, Oct. 18, 1775, at the age of thirty-three. His gravestone is in Trinity churchyard, New York city, opposite the door of the north transept. An accurate woodcut of his gravestone is in Mayer's Logan and Cresap, p. 144, and in Harper's Mag., Nov., 1876, p. 808. A view of his house is in Harper's Mag., xiv. 599.
[1485] See Withers's Border Warfare; Monette, i. 374; Dillon's Indiana, 93; Amer. Archives, 4th series, i. 722.