Historic Highways of America Volume VI Part 6

This task fell to the lot of the second expedition into the Cherokee country. This was a joint campaign waged by North and South Carolina, and Virginia, each to furnish two thousand men. The North Carolinians under Rutherford were earliest in the field. This officer with twenty-four hundred men left the head of the Catawba and opened "Rutherford's Trace" leading to Swananoa Gap in the Blue Ridge and on to the middle Cherokee towns by way of Warrior's Ford of French Broad and Mount Cowee. The middle towns were destroyed, and, uniting with Williamson, the two bodies of men swept over the Cherokee valley towns until "all the Cherokee settlements west of the Appalachians had been destroyed from the face of the earth, neither crops nor cattle being left."

While the Carolinians had been sweeping into the lower Cherokee country, the Virginia troops had been a.s.sembling at the Long Island of the Holston under their leader Colonel William Christian. Their campaign against the Overhill towns was slowly formed here on the little westward pathway, and it was not until the first of October that all the contributions of men and arms from the settlements between Fort Watauga and the Virginia frontier were received. The advance, by way of Big Island of the Holston, was slow but determined--each encampment being made absolutely secure against surprise. The Indians, learning of the strength of Christian's army, knew better than to resist. They retired without a struggle and the borderers reached the heart of the Overhill country on the fifth day of November. Here they ravaged, burned, and razed to their hearts' content, until a deputation imploring peace came from the broken tribes. In this action old Dragging Canoe would have no part but stole away with a few followers toward the Chickamauga.

Christian agreed to a treaty which definitely marked out the boundary line between the Indians and the whites, and then returned home leaving a garrison near the Kentucky path by the Holston. In the words of Roosevelt, who of all writers has done this campaign most justice: "The Watauga people and the westerners generally were the real gainers by the war. Had the Watauga settlements been destroyed, they would no longer have covered the Wilderness Road to Kentucky; and so Kentucky must perforce have been abandoned. But the followers of Robertson and Sevier stood stoutly for their homes; not one of them fled over the mountains.

The Cherokees had been so roughly handled that for several years they did not again go to war as a body; and this not only gave the settlers a breathing time, but also enabled them to make themselves so strong that when the struggle was renewed they could easily hold their own. The war was thus another and important link in the chain of events by which the west was won; and had any link in the chain snapped during these early years, the peace of 1783 would probably have seen the trans-Alleghany country in the hands of a non-American power." If the holding of this pathway was of such moment the value of the pathway is plainly understood.

Turning now to the end of Boone's Road, it will be necessary to review briefly the Revolutionary War in the "far" West; though in many of the campaigns the road itself played no part, in a large and genuine sense it was the pilgrims of Boone's Road who fought the most important battles of the Revolution in the West.

Early in the struggle in the West, far-sighted ones saw signs of the growing despicable alliance of the savages to British interests; and before the b.l.o.o.d.y year of 1778 opened, it was only a question of how much England wanted of the savage allies who were crowded about their forts along the lakes. It is a terrible blot on the history of British rule in America, that when driven to face the same situation, English officers in the West used every means of retaliation for the use of which they so roundly condemned French officials a quarter of a century before. American officers employed Indians as guides and scouts, and were guilty of provoking inter-tribal war; but they did not pay Indians for bringing in British scalps, or praise them for their murderous successes and equip them for further service. As a brave American officer said, "Let this reproach remain on them"--and the people of the West will never forget the reproach, nor forgive! They remember, and always will remember, the burning words of Washington written more than ten years after the close of the Revolution: "All the difficulties we encounter with the Indians, their hostilities, the murder of helpless women and children along all our frontiers, results from the conduct of the agents of Great Britain in this country." There are today, in hundreds of homes of descendants of the pioneers in Kentucky, memories of the inhuman barbarities of British officers during the Revolution; these will never be forgotten, and will never fail to prejudice generations yet unborn. The reproach will remain on them.

At the outbreak of the war, chiefs of the Indian nations were invited to Pittsburg, where the nature of the struggle was explained to them in the following parable:

"Suppose a father had a little son whom he loved and indulged while young, but growing up to be a youth, began to think of having some help from him; and making up a small pack, he bid him carry it for him. The boy cheerfully takes this pack up, following his father with it. The father finding the boy willing and obedient, continues in this way; and as the boy grows stronger, so the father makes the pack in proportion larger; yet as long as the boy is able to carry the pack, he does so without grumbling. At length, however, the boy having arrived at manhood, while the father is making up the pack for him, in comes a person of an evil disposition, and, learning who was to be the carrier of the pack, advises the father to make it heavier, for surely the son is able to carry a larger pack. The father, listening rather to the bad adviser than consulting his own judgment and the feelings of tenderness, follows the advice of the hard-hearted adviser, and makes up a heavy load for his son to carry. The son, now grown up, examining the weight of the load he is to carry, addresses the father in these words: 'Dear Father, this pack is too heavy for me to carry, do pray lighten it; I am willing to do what I can, but am unable to carry this load.' The father's heart having by this time become hardened, and the bad adviser calling to him, 'Whip him if he disobeys,' and he refusing to carry the pack, the father orders his son to take up the pack and carry it off or he will whip him, and already takes up a stick to beat him. 'So,' says the son, 'am I to be served thus for not doing what I am unable to do?

Well, if entreaties avail nothing with you, Father, and it is to be decided by blows, whether or not I am able to carry a pack so heavy, then I have no other choice left me, but that of resisting your unreasonable demand by my strength, and thus by striking each other learn who is the strongest.'"

The Indians were urged to become neutral in the struggle that was opening. Impossible as such a course would have been to men who loved war better than peace, certain tribes promised to maintain neutrality.

In a few months, however, most of the nations were in open or secret alliance with British officers. Only the better element of the Delaware nation, led by Captain White Eyes, became attached to the American cause. England was always handicapped in her use of the American Indian, because of the want of men who could successfully exert control over him. Even when the forts of the French in the West pa.s.sed into British possession, Frenchmen were retained in control, since no Englishman could so well rule the savages who made the forts their rendezvous. The beginning of the successful employment of the Indians against the growing Virginian empire south of the Ohio, and against the multiplying cabins and forts of the Long Knives, may loosely be said to have begun in the spring of 1778 when three northern renegades, Simon Girty, Matthew Elliott, and Alexander McKee, eluded the continental General Hand at Pittsburg and took service under Lieutenant-governor Hamilton at Detroit. Bred to border warfare, and well known among the Indians from the Susquehanna to the Missouri, these three men were the "most effective tools for the purposes of border warfare" that the British could have secured. Hamilton immediately began to plan the invasion of Pennsylvania and the conquest of Pittsburg. The campaign was condemned by his superiors in the East, and was forgotten by its originator--when the news of a bold invasion of his own territory by a Virginian army suddenly reached his ears.

The Transylvania Company came silently but suddenly to an end when the Kentuckians elected George Rogers Clark and Gabriel John Jones members of the Virginian a.s.sembly, for the a.s.sembly erected the county of Kentucky out of the land purchased by Henderson at Fort Watauga in 1775.

Upon bringing this about, Clark, a native of Virginia and a hero of Dunmore's War, returned to Kentucky nourishing greater plans. With clear eyes he saw that the increasing affiliation of Indian and British interests meant that England, even though she might be unsuccessful in the East, could keep up an interminable and disastrous warfare "along the rear of the colonies," as long as she held forts on the northern edge of the Black Forest. Clark sent spies northward, who gained information confirming his suspicions; and then he hurried eastward, with his bold plan of conquering the "strongholds of British and Indian barbarity"--Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and Detroit.

He came at a fortunate time. The colonies were rejoicing over the first great victory of the early war, Saratoga. Hope, everywhere, was high.

From Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, Clark received two orders, one of which was to attack the British post Kaskaskia. He at once set out for Pittsburg to raise, in the West (where both Dunmore and Lewis raised their armies), troops for the most brilliant military achievement in western history. Descending the Ohio to Kentucky, where he received reenforcements, Clark marched silently through the forests--with one hundred and thirty-five chosen men--to Kaskaskia, which he took in utter surprise July 4, 1778. "Keep on with your merriment," he said to revelers whom he surprised at a dance, "but remember you dance under Virginia, not Great Britain." Clark brought the news of the alliance recently made between France and the United States into the Illinois country and used it with telling effect. A French priest at Vincennes raised a Virginian flag over that fort, telling the inhabitants and the Indians that their "French Father had come to life." In October Virginia incorporated the "County of Illinois" within her western empire--the first portion of the land north of the Ohio River to come under the administration of one of the states of the Union.

Contemporaneously with Clark's stirring conquest, an expedition was raised at Pittsburg to march against the Indians in the neighborhood of the British fort at Sandusky--possibly to counteract the rumored attempt to invade Pennsylvania, by Hamilton at Detroit. Troops and supplies were to be a.s.sembled at Fort Pitt, where the famous route of Bouquet was to be followed toward the lakes. The expedition was put in charge of General Lachlan McIntosh. Distressing delays made the half-hearted Indians who were to guide the army, chafe; and McIntosh started before his stores arrived, fearing that longer delay would alienate his friendly Indians, among whom was the Delaware, White Eyes, now turned from a neutral course. At the mouth of the Beaver River McIntosh built the fort which bears his name--the first fort built by the Americans on the northern side of the Ohio. Advancing westward over Bouquet's tri-trail track with twelve hundred men, he reached the Muskingum (Tuscarawas) River in fourteen days, arriving November 19, 1778, where he erected Fort Laurens.

But Lieutenant-governor Hamilton, learning of Clark's seizure of Kaskaskia and the treachery of the fickle inhabitants of Vincennes, set about to reconquer Illinois. Departing from Detroit on a beautiful October day, the expedition descended the Detroit River and entered the Maumee. The weather changed and it was seventy-one days before the American Captain Helm at Vincennes surrendered his wretched fort and became a prisoner of war. Hamilton was unable to push on to Kaskaskia because of the lack of provisions, and sat down to watch the winter out where he was. Thus the spectacular year 1778 closed--Clark at Kaskaskia, watching his antagonist feasting at Vincennes; McIntosh's little guard at Fort Laurens undergoing continual hara.s.sing and siege.

In the East the evacuation of Philadelphia, the battle of Monmouth, and the terrible Wyoming ma.s.sacre were the events of the year.

The year 1779 was to see as brilliant an achievement in the West, as the East was to see in the capture of Stony Point. This was the recapture of Vincennes by Clark. Joined by an experienced adventurer, Colonel Francis Vigo, formerly of the Spanish service, Clark was persuaded that he must capture Hamilton or Hamilton would capture him. Accordingly, on the fifth of February, Clark set out for Vincennes with one hundred and seventy trusty men. In twelve days they reached the Embarras River, which was crossed on the twenty-first with great bravery, the men wading in water to their shoulders. On the twenty-fifth, Hamilton, the most surprised man in the world, was compelled to surrender. Within two weeks he was on his way to Virginia; where, being found guilty of buying Virginian scalps from the Indians, he was imprisoned, but was exchanged the year following.

In July, while returning from New Orleans with supplies; Colonel Rogers and his party of Kentuckians were overwhelmed by Indians, under Girty and Elliott, on the Ohio River. In a terrible running battle sixty Kentuckians were killed. The sad news spread quickly through Kentucky and a thousand tongues called loudly for revenge. In response Major Bowman led three hundred volunteers up the Scioto Valley and attacked the Shawanese capital. There was bungling somewhere and a retreat was ordered before victory was achieved.

During this summer the conqueror of Illinois expected to complete his triumph by the capture of Detroit. A messenger from Thomas Jefferson, Governor of Virginia, brought tidings that troops for this expedition would be forthcoming from Virginia and Kentucky, and rendezvous at Vincennes in July. When the time came, Clark found only a few soldiers from Kentucky and none at all from Virginia. The Detroit expedition fell through because of Virginia's poverty in money and in men; though artillery, ammunition, and tools had been secured for the campaign from Fort Pitt, at Washington's command. But with masterly foresight Governor Jefferson secured the establishment of a fort on the Mississippi River in the Illinois country. During this summer the little garrison which General McIntosh left buried in the Black Forest at Fort Laurens fled back over the trail to Pittsburg. Nowhere north of the Ohio were the scenes frequently enacted in Kentucky reproduced so vividly as at little Fort Laurens, on the upper Muskingum. At one time fourteen of the garrison were decoyed and slaughtered. At another time an army numbering seven hundred warriors invested the little half-forgotten fortress and its intrepid defenders. A slight embankment may be seen today near Bolivar, Ohio, which marks one side of the first fort erected in what is now Ohio, those near the lake sh.o.r.e excepted. Thus closed the year 1779: Clark again in possession of Vincennes, as well as Kaskaskia and Cahokia, but disappointed in the failure of the Detroit expedition; Hamilton languishing in a Virginia dungeon, twelve hundred miles from his capital--Fort Detroit; Fort Laurens abandoned, and the Kentucky country covered with gloom over Rogers's terrible loss and Bowman's inglorious retreat from the valley of the Scioto. On the other hand, the East was glorying in Mad Anthony Wayne's capture of Stony Point, Sullivan's rebuke to the Indians, and Paul Jones's electrifying victory on the sea.

In 1780 four expeditions set forth, all of them singular in character, and noteworthy. The year before, 1779, Spain had declared war upon England. The new commander at Detroit took immediate occasion to regain control of the Mississippi by attacking the Spanish town of St. Louis.

This expedition, under Captain Sinclair, descended the Mississippi from Prairie du Chien. The attack was not successful, but six whites were killed and eighteen taken prisoner.

At the time of Bowman's expedition against the Shawanese, in the preceding year a British officer, Colonel Bird, had a.s.sembled a noteworthy array at Sandusky preparatory to the invasion of Kentucky.

News of the Kentucky raid up the Scioto Valley set Bird's Indians to "cooking and counselling" again, instead of acting. This year Bird's invasion materialized, and the fate of the Kentucky settlements trembled in the balance. The invading army of six hundred Indians and Canadians was armed with two pieces of artillery. There is little doubt that this army could have battered down every "station" in Kentucky and swept victoriously through the new settlements. Ruddles's station on the Licking was first menaced, and surrendered quickly. Martin's fort also capitulated. But here Bird paused in his conquest and withdrew northward, the barbarity of the Indian allies, for once at least, shocking a British commander. The real secret of the abrupt retreat lay no doubt in the fact that the increasing immigration had brought such vast numbers of people into Kentucky that Bird dared not penetrate further into the land for fear of a surprise. The gross carelessness of the newly arrived inhabitants, in not taking the precaution to build proper defenses against the Indians, undoubtedly appeared to the British commander as a sign of strength and fort.i.tude which he did not have the courage to put to the test. As a matter of fact, he could probably have annihilated every settlement between the Ohio River and c.u.mberland Gap.

In retaliation Kentucky sent an immense army north of the Ohio, a thousand men volunteering under Clark, the hero of Vincennes. A large Indian army was routed near the Shawanese town Pickaway. Many towns with standing crops were burned. A similar expedition from Pittsburg under General Brodhead burned crops and villages on the upper Muskingum.

In return for the attack on St. Louis, the Spanish commander at that point sent an expedition against the deserted British post of St.

Joseph. Upon declaring war against England in the previous year, Spain had occupied Natchez, Baton Rouge, and Mobile, which, with St. Louis, gave her command of the Mississippi. But his Catholic Majesty was building other Spanish castles in America. He desired the conquest of the British northwest, to offset the British capture of Gibraltar. This "capture" of St. Joseph led to an amusing but ominous claim on the part of Spain at the Treaty of Paris: when, with it for a pretext, the Spanish Crown claimed all lands west of a line drawn from St. Joseph southward through what is now Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The Mississippi River boundary was, however, stoutly contended for and obtained by the American commissioners.

In this year the first "gunboat" to ply western waters was built under direction of Brigadier-general Clark. It was a galley armed with light artillery. This queer-looking craft soon fell into disuse, though it became a terror to the Indians who continually infested the lower Ohio.

It was relished little better by the militia, who disliked service on water. But it stands as a typical ill.u.s.tration of the enterprise and devotion of the "Father of Kentucky" to the cause for which he had done so much.

The year following, 1781, saw the termination of the Revolution in the East, when Cornwallis's army marched down the files of French and American troops at Yorktown to the melancholy tune "The World's Turned Upside Down." The Treaty of Paris was not signed until 1783, and in the meantime the bloodiest year of all the war in the West, 1782, was adding its horrors to all that had gone before. While the East was rejoicing, the central West saw the terrible ma.s.sacre of Gnadenhutten--the more terrible because committed by white men themselves.

In May, 1782, the atrocities of the savages (encouraged by the British) along the Pennsylvanian and Virginian border were becoming unbearable, and an expedition was raised in the Monongahela country to penetrate to the Indian-infested country on the Sandusky River. Volunteers, four hundred in number, all mounted, rendezvoused at the Ohio near Mingo Bottom; they elected as commander Colonel William Crawford, an experienced officer of the Revolutionary War, following Washington faithfully through the hard Long Island and Delaware campaigns. Crawford struck straight through the forests, even avoiding Indian trails, at first, in the hope of taking his foe utterly by surprise. But his wily foe completely outwitted him and the Indians and British knew well each day's progress. The battle was fought in a prairie land near the Sandusky River in what is now Crawford County, Ohio, and though not a victory for either side, an American retreat was ordered during the night following. Colonel Crawford was captured, among others, and suffered a terrible death at the stake, perhaps the saddest single atrocity committed by the redman in western history. This gray-haired veteran of the Revolution gave his life to appease the Indians for a ma.s.sacre of Christian Indians perpetrated by savage borderers from the Monongahela country the year previous.

Kentucky had witnessed minor activities of the savages during the spring. In August a grand Indian army a.s.sembled on the lower Scioto for the purpose of invading Kentucky. The a.s.sembly was harangued by Simon Girty, and moved southward and invaded Bryant's Station, one of the strongest forts in Kentucky. After a terrible day, during which re-enforcements kept arriving, only to be compelled to fight their way into the fort or flee, Girty attempted to secure capitulation.

Outwitted, the renegade resorted to a stratagem, as cunningly devised as it was terribly successful. In the night the entire Indian army vanished as if panic-stricken. Meat was left upon the spits. Garments lay strewn about the encampment and along the route of the fugitive army. The more experienced of the border army, which was soon in full cry on the trail, scented the deception; but the headstrong hurried onward in hope of revenge. At the crossing of the Licking, near the lower Blue Licks, the Indian ambush received the witless pursuers with a frightful burst of flame, and the battle of Blue Licks became a running fire, a headlong rout and ma.s.sacre.

A thousand men joined Clark for a retaliatory invasion of the north, and the usual destruction of villages and crops was accomplished. This may be considered the last military event in the Revolutionary War in the West.

CHAPTER V

AT THE END OF BOONE'S ROAD

On the nineteenth of April, 1775, the rumble of the running fire at Lexington and Concord told that the farmers of New England had at last precipitated the struggle which had been impending for a full generation. It was a roar that, truly, was "heard round the world."

One day later, April 20, 1775, Colonel Henderson and his fellow-pioneers of the Transylvania Company reached Boonesborough; there they were joyfully received by a running fire of five and twenty muskets discharged by Boone's vanguard, which had preceded them to cut the road.

If the musket-shot behind the New England stone walls was heard round the world, the rattle of that score of muskets in distant Kentucky was heard around a continent. The former uttered a hoa.r.s.e defiance to tyrants--a cry to G.o.d for liberty; what was the faint roar which echoed back a thousand mountain miles from Kentucky but an answer to that cry?

an a.s.surance that "to him that hath shall be given?" There is something divinely significant to me in the coincidence of the opening shock of the Revolution, and the arrival in Kentucky of the first considerable body of determined, reputable men.

The story of the Revolutionary War in the West has been told in preceding pages, as the merest record of fact. It is unnecessary to state that it was the most important conflict ever waged there, and it is equally trite to observe that the struggle centered around Kentucky.

Boone's Road had made possible the sudden movement of population westward, and this pioneer host immediately drew upon itself the enemies that otherwise would have scourged the frontiers of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. The first and princ.i.p.al portion of the Kentucky pioneers--those who fought the Revolutionary battles--entered Kentucky by the c.u.mberland Gap route. James Lane Allen writes: "That area [Kentucky] has somewhat the shape of an enormous flat foot, with a disjointed big toe, a roughly hacked-off ankle, and a missing heel. The sole of this huge foot rests solidly on Tennessee, the Ohio River trickles across the ankle and over the top, the big toe is washed entirely off by the Tennessee River, and the long-missing heel is to be found in Virginia, never having been ceded by that State. Between the Kentucky foot and the Virginia heel is piled up this immense, bony, grisly ma.s.s of the c.u.mberland Mountain, extending some three hundred miles northeast and southwest. It was through this heel that Kentucky had to be peopled. The thin, half-starved, weary line of pioneer civilizers had to penetrate it, and climb this obstructing mountain wall, as a line of traveling ants might climb the wall of a castle. In this case only the strongest of the ants--the strongest in body, the strongest in will--succeeded in getting over and establishing their colony in the country far beyond. Luckily there was an enormous depression in the wall, or they might never have scaled it. During about half a century this depression was the difficult, exhausting entrance-point through which the State received the largest part of its people, the furniture of their homes, and the implements of their civilization; so that from the very outset that people represented the most striking instance of a survival of the fittest that may be observed in the founding of any American commonwealth. The feeblest of the ants could not climb the wall; the idlest of them would not."[21] Mr. Speed agrees wholly in this opinion: "The settlers came in ... increasing numbers.... A very large proportion came over the Wilderness Road."[22]

In the early days river travel was not practicable. During the Revolutionary War and for some time thereafter travel down the Ohio River was dangerous, both because of the hostility of the savages and because of the condition of the river. In earlier days the journey from the Ohio into the populated parts of Kentucky was a great hardship. The story of one who emigrated to Kentucky by way of the Ohio shows plainly why many preferred the longer land route by way of c.u.mberland Gap. The following is from an autobiographical statement made by Spencer Record, preserved by the Wisconsin Historical Society:

"About the Twentieth of November (1783) we embarked on the Monongahela in our boat, in company with Kiser, I having with me four head of horses and some cattle. We landed at the mouth of Limestone Creek, but there was then, no settlement there. We made search for a road, but found none. There was indeed a buffalo road, that crossed Limestone Creek a few miles above its mouth, and pa.s.sing May's lick about twelve miles from Limestone, went on to the Lower Blue Lick on Licking river, and thence to Bryant's station: but as we knew nothing of it, we went on, and landed at the mouth of Licking river, on the twenty ninth of the month.

"The next day, we loaded periogue, and a canoe, and set off up Licking, sometimes wading and pulling our periogue and canoe over the ripples.

After working hard for four days, we landed, hid our property (which was whiskey and our farming utensils) in the woods, and returned to the Ohio, which by this time had taken a rapid rise and backed up Licking, so that we took Kiser's boat up, as far as we had taken our property and unloaded her. We left on the bank of Licking, a new wagon and some kettles. Leaving our property to help Kiser, we packed up and set off up Licking, and travelled some days; but making poor progress, and snow beginning to fall, with no cane in that part of the country, for our horses and cattle, we left Kiser and set off to hunt for cane. He sent his stock with us, in care of Henry Fry, who had come down in his boat with cattle for his father.

"When we came to the fork of Licking we found a wagon road cut out, that led up the South fork. This road had been cut by Colonel Bird, a British officer, who had ascended Licking in keel boats, with six hundred Canadians and Indians. They were several days in cutting out this road which led to Riddle's fort, which stood on the east side of Licking, three miles below the junction of Hinkston's and Stoner's fork, yet our people knew nothing of it, till they were summoned to surrender.... We took the road and went on, the snow being about half leg deep. Early in the morning, about three miles from Riddle's fort, we came to three families encamped. They had landed at Limestone but finding no road, they wandered through the woods, crossed Licking, and happening to find the road, took it.... We went on to the fort, where we found plenty of cane. The next morning, John Finch and myself set off to try to find Lexington, and left the horses and cattle ... as there was no road, we took up Will creek, and towards the head of it we met some hunters, who lived on the south side of Kentucky river who gave us directions how to find a hunting trace, that led to Bryant's station.... We went on, found the trace, and arrived at Bryant's station."[23]

Adding to the difficulties of land travel the dangers of the river tide, the difficulty of securing boats, and their great cost, it is little wonder that emigrants from Virginia preferred the long but better-known land route, through Powell's Valley and c.u.mberland Gap to the Braddock Road and the Ohio River. At a later date, however, the difficulties of river pa.s.sage were materially decreased and the Ohio became the great outward emigrant route.

But for the return traffic from Kentucky to Virginia, there was no comparison between the ease of the land route and the water route. Mr.

Speed affirms that the road through c.u.mberland Gap "was the only practicable route for all return travel."[24] Of course for a long period there were no exports from Kentucky, as hardly enough could be raised to feed the mult.i.tude of immigrants; but when at last Kentucky strode to the front with its great harvests of wheat and tobacco, the Mississippi and Ohio ports received them.

The East received comparatively little benefit, in a commercial way, from Boone's Road; but in the earliest days that slight track furnished a moral support that can hardly be exaggerated. The vast population that surged westward over it was a mighty barrier which protected the rear of the colonies from the savages, until savage warfare was at an end.

Though the frontiers of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia suffered greatly during the Revolution, it was Kentucky that was the thorn in the side of the British; Kentucky drew the fire of both British and Indians which otherwise would have desolated the rear of the eastern colonies, and necessitated a greater number of men than could possibly have been maintained there. It was not at Fort Pitt that the British were constantly striking, but at the Kentucky "stations;" it was not up the Allegheny or Monongahela that Colonel Burd pushed his keel boats, but up the Licking. This fact is splendidly urged by Col. John Floyd, in a letter to the governor of Virginia written on the sixth of October, 1781, in a plea for a.s.sistance in maintaining the Kentucky settlements:

"... A great deal more might be said concerning the dangerous situation of these counties, but I have not been informed whether Government think it absolutely necessary for the advantage of the community at large to defend this country [Kentucky] at so considerable expense as must be incurred thereby; and I therefore beg leave to offer your Excellency one or two reasons why it may be of advantage to defend the Kentucky country. It is now beyond a doubt, that the attention of at last [least]

6000 savage warriors is fixed on this spot, and who will not disturb any other part of the Continent as long as we maintain our ground. But, on the contrary, as soon as this country is laid waste, they will immediately fall upon the inhabitants of Washington, Montgomery, Greenbriar, &c--in short, from South Carolina to Pennsylvania. I believe all the counties on the west side of the Blue Ridge were kept for many years penned up in forts by the Shawanese, Mingoes, Delawares & a few of their adherents; if so what will be the consequence when at least fifteen powerful Nations are united and combined with those above mentioned against about twelve hundred militia dispersed over three very extensive counties. Those nations have absolutely been kept off your back settlements by the inhabitants of Kentucky. Two or three thousand men in this country would be sufficient to defend it, and effectually secure the back settlements on New River & its waters, as well as those high up James River & Roanoake."[25]

In addition to conferring the inestimable advantage of defending the frontiers of the colonies, the early settlement and the holding of Kentucky insured American possession of the Middle West; this meant everything to the East--for the steady, logical expansion of the nation was the one hope of the country when independence was secured. Upon the Americanization of the Mississippi Valley depended the safety of the eastern colonies, and their commercial and political welfare. It meant very much to the East that a strong colony was holding its own on the Ohio and Mississippi during the hours when the Revolutionary struggle was in progress; and it meant even more to the East that, upon the conclusion of that struggle, thousands whose future seemed as black as the forests of the West could immediately emigrate thither and begin life anew. But for the Virginians and Kentuckians along the Ohio it is almost certain that Great Britain would have divided the eastern half of this continent with the triumphant revolutionists. For the few posts along the lakes that she did hold there was a spirited wrangle for twenty years, until they were at last handed over to the United States.

Boone did not blaze his road one day too soon, and the hand of divine Providence is not shown more plainly in our national history than by the critical timeliness with which these pioneers were ushered into the meadow lands of Ken-ta-kee. The onslaughts of Shawanese and Wyandot did not overwhelm them; nor were they daunted by the plotting of desperate British officers, who spread ruin and desolation along the flank and rear of the fighting colonies.

Again, this earliest population in the immediate valley of the Mississippi had a powerful influence on the att.i.tude of the United States toward the powers that held the Mississippi. Had it not been for a Kentucky in embryo in 1775-82, it is unquestionable that the confused story of the possession of that great river valley would have been worse confounded. The whirl of politics in Kentucky during the four decades after the Revolutionary War daunts even the student of modern Kentucky politics; and of one thing we may rest a.s.sured--had the State possessed a little less of the sober sense that came from Virginia through c.u.mberland Gap, it is certain the story of those wild days would not be as readable to modern Kentuckians as it is. It was more than fortunate for the young Republic that at the close of the Revolution there was a goodly population of expatriated Virginians and North Carolinians on the Mississippi, ready to press its claims there.