When Braddock landed his army on the upper banks of the Potomac to make good the claim of his sovereign to the fertile region west of the Alleghanies, Morgan became a teamster with the ill-fated soldiers and accompanied the baggage train of the Second Division. In 1756 he was sent to Fort Chiswell with a wagon-load of supplies. It was while at this post that he received the terrible beating on his bare back which would have cost a less hardy man his life. A British lieutenant insulted him by striking him with the flat of his sword and was immediately stretched senseless on the ground by a blow from the teamster’s fist. A drum-head courtmartial sentenced him to receive five hundred lashes. He was forthwith stripped and tied to a white-oak tree. At the end of the castigation his flesh hung in tags. But his spirit was unbroken and King George was never forgiven for the cruelty his soldiers then inflicted.
When he arrived at about the age of twenty-three, he was a strikingly handsome man. In height, he was upward of six feet; his frame was massive and symmetrical; and, without carrying an ounce of superfluous flesh, his weight was two hundred pounds. But his conduct was not exemplary. He became at this time a trencherman of distinction. Yet so powerful was his constitution he was able to bear excess of liquor without becoming entirely under its influence. As a card player, he was as skillful as the most skillful, and he used his talent to add to his estate. So great was his prowess at fisticuffs and so constant his engagements thereat, that the little town of Berryville in the County of Clarke, where these combats were always held, is called “Battletown” to this day by the older residents of the Valley.
This, indeed, was the most unpromising time of Daniel Morgan’s life. To most of the vices which end in ruin, he was addicted. But, in the Providence of God, he was not overwhelmed. Grave faults, indeed, he had in plenty; but they appear to have proceeded, not from a depraved heart but from the rollicking, devil-may-care nature of a young frontiersman. Without parents to advise or friends to admonish, his bold wayward spirit was conscious of no restraint when impulse impelled it to action. What he needed to round the man was adventurous enterprise—dangerous commissions! The dash within him—the spirit of command—needed war. And, war came! Like Hotspur, he must have blows and “pass them current, too.”
First it was “Lord Dunmore’s War” for the protection of the frontier against the Indians under Chief Logan and Cornstalk. General Andrew Lewis, an Irishman born and thirteen years of age before he left Ireland for Virginia, was ordered to raise four regiments in the Southwestern counties; and while Lewis was organizing his forces, Morgan, now holding a commission by grace of William Nelson, Esquire, President of His Majesty’s Council and Commander-in-chief of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, took the field under Major Angus McDonald. He became at once an active factor. His splendid judgment, his knowledge of woodcraft, his understanding of the Indian character and their methods of warfare, his boldness and his courage, soon distinguished him among his comrades in arms as a man fit for leadership.
“Lord Dunmore’s War” ended with the defeat of Cornstalk at Point Pleasant and Morgan’s command turned homeward. When they reached the mouth of the Hockhocking, those stupendous events which had been happening in England and the Colonies during their absence became known to these Virginians, fresh from the wilderness. They learned that the Parliament of Great Britain had ordered the port of Boston to be closed. They were informed that the General Assembly of the mother colony had protested against such despotic legislation. They were told with solemn voices that representatives of the people were then assembled at Philadelphia to consider ways and means to resist the encroachments of the crown. And then and there, amidst the solitude of that wilderness, far from the outposts of civilization, Daniel Morgan and his band of liberty-loving Virginians resolved upon their course. “Upon hearing these things,” he wrote in an all-too-inadequate sketch of his military services, “we, as an army victorious, formed ourselves into a society, pledging our words of honor to each other to assist our brethren of Boston in case hostilities should commence.” I need not ask you New Englanders tonight how well they kept that pledge!
On the 22d day of June, 1775, by a unanimous vote of the Committee of Safety of Frederick County, he was appointed to command one of the two companies of Riflemen which the Continental Congress had ordered to be raised in Virginia. “In less than ten days after the receipt of his commission,” says Graham, “he raised a company of ninety-six young, hardy woodsmen, full of spirit and enthusiasm and practised marksmen with the rifle. John Humphreys, who was killed in the assault on Quebec, was his first lieutenant. William Heth, afterwards a Colonel, who greatly distinguished himself in the subsequent events of the war, was his second lieutenant. His ensign was Charles Porterfield, afterwards a Colonel, and an officer who by his many brilliant and daring achievements had earned a proud name among the defenders of his country, and was rapidly rising to distinction when he fell in the bloody field of Camden. A finer body of men than those who composed his company are seldom seen. One that rendered better service, or that shed a brighter lustre on the arms of their country, never had existence.”
In twenty-one days, Morgan, at the head of this company, each Rifleman wearing a cap with the legend “Liberty or Death,” marched a distance of six hundred miles to Boston, and when the roll was called every member of the command was present and ready for duty.
He was now come for the first time on that broader field of action in which he won a renown which will never die. It is not my purpose to dwell on the hardships of that extraordinary march into Canada led by Arnold. The sufferings endured by the Americans in the midst of the snow’s and ice of the Canadian winter are beyond the power of human speech to depict. Half-clad, bare of foot or shod only with moccasins, half-starving, with their comrades in arms dropping in their weary tracks to die—such sufferings could only be endured by men whose natural hardihood and love of country could not be overwhelmed by the agonies of physical torture. At intervals, some helpless hero would be overcome by the hardships of the march and tenderly laid aside to die, with a single devoted comrade to hunt for a squirrel or jay or to gather wild herbs for his food, the while he watched his expiring breath and caught the last whispered message of affection for the loved ones at home. Morgan himself was dressed in a costume similar to that of an Indian. He wore leggings and a cloth about the middle. His thighs were bare and their laceration because of it was painfully obvious. But he appeared to be impervious to pain. Judge Henry, who was a member of the expedition, in his “Campaign” describes Morgan at this time as being “a large, strong-bodied personage”—“with a stentorian voice”—“whose appearance gave the idea history has left us of Belisarius.” Those high qualifications for command, which became more and more distinguished as the war progressed, manifested themselves on this occasion. He led the vanguard. And in eight weeks’ time he penetrated an unexplored wilderness for six hundred miles and stood ready with his Riflemen to assault the fortified walls of gun-fringed and snow-crowned Quebec.
If the fame of Daniel Morgan as one of the most intrepid of soldiers depended alone on his conduct at the storming of Quebec, it would live as long as the heroic deeds of the Revolution are remembered of men. At the height of a tempest in which the blinding snow was driven with terrible effect, in the early hours of the first day of the New Year, 1775, the assault began. Armed with scaling-ladders and spontoons, as well as rifles, Morgan’s men, with their captain at their head, were first over the walls. With a sublime courage and a voice which rang above the roar of the tempest he commanded his men, and they, with a devotion as faithful as it was unquestioning, obeyed. Into the heart of the town they fought their way. But, alas, the brave fellows were not supported. The disastrous results of the assault—the wounding of Arnold at its commencement, the death of Montgomery, the brave, while leading those sixty heroes from New York, and the capture of Morgan, of the lion’s heart—are tales of devotion which every American schoolboy knows and which were so extraordinary as to become the subject of public eulogy in the Commons of Great Britain. With “the flower of the rebel army,” Morgan was “cooped up” in the town. His half-starved and poorly clad men were all but frozen in the terrible northeast storm. Their eyes could not endure the hail; their faces were “hoar with frost” and weird with pendant icicles; their rifles were practically useless. Finding himself alone with a few of his men and a sprinkling of brave Pennsylvanians, and confronted in a narrow street by his massed enemies, he resolved to cut his way through. The attempt was madness itself. At last, he stood at bay with his back to a wall. With tears streaming down his face, he refused to surrender and challenged his enemies to come and take his sword. A hundred muskets were levelled at his breast, when several of his men begged him to resist no further. Denouncing his enemies as cowards, he acquiesced in the importunities of his followers, but refused to surrender his sword to any person save a noncombatant priest who chanced to be near.
The heroism of the Americans in this assault attracted the admiration of the world. Frederick, of Prussia, praised Montgomery as a military chieftain. In the British Parliament, Barrè, Montgomery’s veteran friend and comrade in the war with France which annexed Canada to the crown, “wept profusely,” in extolling his virtues and the bravery of his men. Edmund Burke pronounced him a hero and his men brave patriots. Lord North, in reply for government, cursed the virtues of the Americans and denounced them as rebels. “The term rebel,” retorted Fox, “is no certain mark of disgrace. The great assertors of liberty, the saviors of their country, the benefactors of mankind in all ages have been called rebels. We owe the constitution which enables us to sit in this house to a rebellion.” And North was silent!