c: CO so 5$ *> BVUffiH^ lS-ANGEtfj> ^ i? I !* O9 IBRARY^ ir^ g J 8 * v-i| ON THE RAMPARTS. Hurrah ! hurrah ! it is our home where'er thy colors Ay, We win with thee the victory, or in thy shadow die ! " THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER IN WAR AND PEACE BY ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS AUTHOR OF THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN AND THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN SAILOR BOSTON LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY D. LOTHROP COMPANY. PRESS OF BERWICK & SMITH, BOSTON, MASS. PREFACE. THE simple story of the American soldier has never yet been told. Whoever wishes to know him as a man must study numerous confusing episodes, search through voluminous histories or sift out the man from the material in the crowding records of innumerable battles. This is more labor than the busy American cares to undertake, much as he may delight in the records of American valor and American endeavor. It is to attempt this for him, to draw from the mass of material already in print the character and achievements of the fighting man of America even from the earliest times and to present them in consecutive and connected narrative that this book has been undertaken. The description of battles and the causes of wars have not been entered into. These may be found and studied in detail in any one of the many excellent histories of the United States with which the libraries and homes of America abound. In this book the American soldier as an individual is depicted for the enlightenment and inspiration of Americans young and old. War is a terrible necessity. Looked at from the standpoint of humanity there is about it neither picturesqueness, nobility, romance nor delight ; it is but the emphasis of man's inhumanity to man. And yet there is another point of view. War has been in the history of the world alike civilizer, peace- maker and uplifter. There could have been no progress for the race had the element of strife been lacking. The efforts of those heroic souls " Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight if need be to die," have rung the death-knell of tyranny and moved the world forward toward a broader freedom. And so, through all the years that have witnessed the evolution of the American Republic, the American soldier has been a prime factor in this development. His valor has illumined history, his steadfastness has redeemed failure, his loyalty has glorified success. It is for us as Americans to remem- ber our debt to the heroes of Louisburg and Quebec, of Lexington and Saratoga and York town, of Lundy's Lane and New Orleans, of Shiloh and Gettysburg and Appomattox. Without their efforts there would have been no nation of freemen with sons ready to defend its honor and its life, there would have been no America to need or to have a soldier 9617 ' CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE ... II CHAPTER II. THE CONQUISTADORES . 32 CHAPTER III. COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN 56 CHAPTER IV. MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS 78 CHAPTER V. SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY 98 CHAPTER -VI. THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT 121 CHAPTER VII. A LEADERLESS WAR 143 CHAPTER VIII. WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR l66 CHAPTER IX. OVER THE MEXICAN BORDER . 190 vii viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. HORSE, FOOT AND DRAGOON .."......, 214 CHAPTER XI. BOYS OF 'SIXTY-ONE 232 CHAPTER XII. FROM SHILOH TO APPOMATTOX 255 CHAPTER XIII. BOOTS AND SADDLE 2/5 CHAPTER XIV. THE VETERAN SOLDIER 204 THE ACHIEVEMENTS ()[ THE AMERICAN SOLDIER ...... 313 THE BEST HUNDRED BOOKS ON THE AMERICAN SOLDIER . . . 338 IN " DEX 345 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PACK On the ramparts . L. J. Bridgman. Fronds. Initial A war chief of the Mound- Builders . u Indians attacking the mounds . 14 " lie halted and turned toward the enemy " . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 2\ " I >eath to the Mun-dua ! " . . . 27 Initial A Conquistador 32 DC Soto . . . .V ...... ... 34 " For Santiago and Spain ! " ... ..... 37 Coronado's march . L. J. Bridgman . . 43 The first white man . 53 The revolt of the train-bands tf.T. Smedlcy . . 60 Franklin as a private . . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 65 A muster of Colonial militia on Boston Common . . /'. T. Merrill . . 73 " They hung on the skirts of the retreat "... //'. SanJham . . 82 (ireen Mpimtain Boys on the march ... L. J. Bridgman . 85 The minute-men ... ... Ify. Sandham . . 87 " The British are coming ! " . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 93 The Cambridge elm ... 96 The battle of Oriskany 103 Marion and his men L. J. Bridgman . 105 Washington reviewing the Continental Army . 112 (f'ratti a fainting by J . S. Thompson.) A garrison of two . L. J. Bridgman . . 117 " Peace by no means brought satisfaction " 123 \ > fees, no executions, no sheriff !" . 129 Sentinel and ploughman 133 The battle of Tippecanoe L. J. Bridgman . . 135 Anthony Wayne 139 Initial James Wilkeson . 143 At work on the fortifications in 1812 147 Captain Hindman at Fort George .... L. J. Bridgman . . 153 Packenham's charge 158 x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Andrew Jackson . 163 The backwoods soldiers 169 In the " anti-rent war " 182 Caricaturing the militia . . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 185 The battle of Buena Vista . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 2or Marcy's perilous march . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . ' . 223 Good-by ............... 235 Our brother the enemy . . . . . . L. J. Bridgman . . 241 In the recruiting office .........'... 246 Working for the soldiers 251 Initial The heat of battle ...... Kemblc .... 255 Stannard's charge at Gettysburg ........... 258 " Do you want to live forever ?"....... .... 263 Morgan's raiders 267 After the battle ........ Kemble . . . . 271 " The home-coming of the Southern soldiers " . . Kemble .... 278 Custer's last stand . . . . . . . L, J. Bridgman . . 283 Once more a civilian .............. 289 Initial G. A. R. Post 56 294 The story of the fight IV. 7'. Smedley . . 297 The old flag . L. J. Bridgman . . 303 THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN SOLDIER. CHAPTER I. AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. AWFCKieF } of the ITHIN that section of South- ern Ohio where now stretches the pleasant County of Ross, there was enacted, a thousand years ago, a strange and stir- ring scene. Against the almost inky blackness of an autumn night blazed up suddenly, with flash and flare, the climbing flame of a beacon fire. Its fitful glare, swayed, now this way and now that, by the keen November blasts, threw into sudden relief a looming watch- tower and a long line of frowning battlements that, topped with a ragged palisade, crested a sharply rising hill and stretched far away into the encircling gloom. Another and yet another flaming beacon answer the summons of fire. One to the right and one to the left, and each a mile or more away from the central beacon, they light up the inky 12 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. ni^ht. There conies a stir behind those walls of stone. The o sharp, quick rallying cry sounds out. A long line of hurry- ing forms spring to the solid ramparts, which, rising to the height of ten feet, and with a width of more than thirty feet, afford standing place and fighting room for an army of defenders. Behind the palisades they gather, wary and watchful, with bows drawn and spears poised for the fling. Schooled to the ways of savage warfare the night surprise has found them ready and alert. They live upon their arms. From the watchers on the outer towers comes now the shrill cry of warning. They see the foe. Beyond the flickering rim of light a mass of crowding forms has been descried a host of naked, be-feathered warriors, dodging here and there behind the giant tree-trunks, or drawing stealthily nearer to the rising wall of that towering hill-fort. O And now with a long, rising whoop of defiance that grows to a terrible and blood-curdling yell as, one after another, the myriad throats of that beleaguering host take up the cry, the mass of naked warriors rush madly within the glare of the beacon fire and discharge a storm of arrows against o o the palisades. From the watchful defenders comes an answer- ing shower of arrows and of spears, while through the central entrance swarm out in sudden sortie an attacking force of o stalwart fighting men. These defenders of the beleaguered fort are dressed, each, in a belted blouse of woven cloth that falls nearly to the knee. The left arm of each long-haired soldier upholds a matted shield ; his right hand firmly grasps a long and deadly spear. Their bravest war-chief leads the sortie out. A leathern -buckler, edged with silver and gleaming with its copper boss, protects AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 13 his breast; an iron sword, broad and sharply-pointed, waves above his head in encouragement and command, and at his side dangles its copper scabbard. In close array and with something of martial order the sol- diers of the fort dash on to the charge, following the feathered plume and brandished sword of their gallant chief. Straight into that host of beleaguering savages they dash, regardless of the flying arrow and the whirling hatchet. Then, with yell and whoop, true to the tactics of savage strife, the horde of naked assailants disappears in the gloom only to swarm again before some less defended point there to let fly their cloud of arrows at the defenders behind the palisades. Through the long night again and again are the assault and the defense, the sortie, flight and fresh attack renewed. Then, with the dawn, the beleaguering host fades away into the forest fastnesses. And, as the morning sun rises above that Ohio hill, the wearied warriors within the fortified town prostrate them- selves toward the east and offer their thanks and sacrifices to the great sun-god who has given them the victory. Thus, then, as the curtain of the centuries is rolled aside for us, do we obtain a glimpse of the earliest American soldier the earliest, at least, worthy the name of soldier, who with some- thing of order and the show and circumstance of war could do such desperate battle in defense of fortress and of home. It is, for us, an insight into the ways and manners of that long- vanished and mysterious people known now but vaguely under the uncertain name of the Mound Builders a name given only because of the fast disappearing ruins of the marvelous works of engineering skill that they so long and valiantly defended against the ceaseless assaults of a relentless savagery. The fighting-man is as old as the human race. The com- I4 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. bative quality in men and nations has never lacked a represen- tative. Wherever rivalry has been engendered or ambition has had birth the man of war has ever and always resulted. " All antiquity," says Renan, " was cruel." No nation exists that does not rest on the foundation stones of strife and blood. The American people form no exception to the rule. Their INDIANS ATTACKING THE MOUNDS. prehistoric story is written in strife and told in eras of conflict. Evolved from savagery through long centuries of struggle and of warfare the early Americans were ever at strife and grew, apparently, only through the law of the survival of the fittest. .-l.V OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 15 The stronsr man and the war chief were leaders and rulers in O our prehistoric days. Invaded mound and rifled tumulus yield, always, among their meager spoil the inevitable arrow-head of flint or chalced- ony or hard obsidian. The shell-heaps and " kitchen-middens," that speak of a stage of human existence yet nearer to the brute, disclose, amid their crumbling dust, hatchet and arrow- head, dagger and knife of rough-hewed stone, while, alongside the half-fossilized human remains that speak of an almost fab- ulous antiquity for the American race, have been found the stone war-club and the beveled lance-head that tell, ever, the self-same story of conflict and of blood. Dating thus backward to the very beginning of things the American fighting-man has always been a product of American soil. There can, however, but little real identity attach to his story, until, from the uncertain testimony of the Western mounds and from the more credible legends of the red Indian who was the heir of all the ages that here preceded him we obtain our first tangible impression of the early American "soldier." And a soldier this same red barbarian was, despite his forest tactics and his ignorance of the real " art " of war. War was the Indian's second nature; it was his business, his pastime and his life. To attain the eagle's feather was his highest aim ; to achieve the seat of the war chief by the suf- frages of his comrades was the end of all ambition. The brave at home was but a lazy fellow, scorning manual labor and deem- ing toil as unsuited to one whose duty it was to become a hero. Hut on the war-path and in the forest foray he was a far dif- ferent creature. Then, no toil was too severe, no exertion was too harsh. Intent on the surprise and capture of his hereditary 1 6 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. foeman he brought into play all his knowledge of woodcraft, all his varied schooling in skill and cunning. With untiring patience and with an ability that was almost ge'nius he read the language of broken twig and trodden grass, of disturbed stream o o o <-* and of uncertain trail. The story of the intertribal wars of the American Indian, could this but be fitly told, would possess as much of courage, of endurance and of artifice as is to be found O ' in any mythical tradition of Troy's ensanguined plains or in the stirring legends of the Golden Fleece. The Roman Horatius, swimming the turbid Tiber, is fully paralleled by that brave Ojibway father who, burning to revenge the death of his warrior son, flung himself " with his harness on his back " into the vaster waters of the " Great Lake " (Supe- rior) and swam a distance of over two miles, from the island of La Pointe to the mainland, to join in the deadly battle that his tribe was waging against the hostile Dakotas. Ga-geh-djo-wa the Seneca the warrior with the heron's plume in his crest is the fiery Henry of Navarre of the American forests. The braves of the warlike Iroquois outshone in valor and endurance the legionaries of a triumphant Caesar, the spearmen of an Attila or an Alexander. " When you go to war," runs the old Ute proverb, " every one you meet is an enemy; kill all! " W T as not this, too, the policy of a Hannibal, a Pompey and an Alaric ? Among the Indians in the old days there were no impress- ments, there were no conscripts. All were volunteers. The American warrior was a free man. But the enlistment was unique. The plan of operations was according to a set form, as binding as were ever those of any marshal of France or any paladin of Spain. Let this glimpse at the military life of the Omahas show us the aboriginal AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 17 American soldier as he existed among the pre-Columbian tribes of the higher order of intelligence. Wa-ba-ska-ha the Ponka had suffered a great wrong at the hands of the Pawnees. His honor and the honor of his tribe demanded swiftest vengeance. But the initial move could only come from \Va-ba-ska-ha himself. He and none other must organize a war party. With his face bedaubed with clay, to indicate his grief, Wa- ba-ska-ha wandered among the lodges of his people. And as he wandered he cried, thus and often, to W 7 a-kan-da, the protect- ing spirit of the Omahas : " O, Wa-kan-da ! though others have injured me, do thou help me ! " And the people, hearing his appeal, said: "What! would you lead out a war-party, Wa- ba-ska-ha ? Who has wronged you ? Let us hear your story.'* And then he would recite his wrongs until all his tribe was ac- quainted with his story. Thereupon four messengers, friends of Wa-ba-ska-ha, ran as criers through the village, calling out the name of each warrior and bidding him come to an assembly. And when all the chiefs and warriors were gathered together, the war-pipe was filled and Wa-ba-ska-ha, stretching out his hands in appeal to his people, said, '* Pity me, my brothers ; do for me as you think best." Then said the chief who filled the sacred pipe : " If you are willing, O warriors, for us to take vengeance on the Pawnees, put this pipe to your lips. If you are not willing, put it not to your lips." And every man placed the sacred pipe to his lips and smoked it. Thus they volunteered for the foray, and \Ya-ba-ska-ha was glad. Then said the chief, " Now, make a final decision. Say you, O warriors, when shall we take this vengeance?" And one of the warriors made answer: "O 1 8 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. chief, the summer comes ; let us eat our food. When the leaves fall we will take vengeance on the Pawnees." This was the voice of the whole assembly. But Wa-ba-ska-ha would not let the matter rest. Through the whole summer, by day and by night, and even while they accompanied the people on the summer hunt, his four messengers, or captains, were continually crying out : " O Wa-kan-da ! pity me ! Help me in that which keeps me angry." And they would fast through all the day ; only in the night would they eat and drink. Then, when the hunt was over, Wa-ba-ska-ha gave the war- party a feast at his lodge ; and the four captains sat before the entrance while two messengers sat on either side the door. And as they ate and drank and sang the sacred war-songs they determined upon what day the war-path should be taken. And the five sacred bags, filled with red, blue and yellow feathers, and consecrated to the war-srocl, were distributed amonf the O O chiefs or leaders of the clans of the tribe. The day having been set the leaders of the war-party selected their lieutenants and assigned to each of the chiefs of the tribe O a company of twenty warriors. Secretly and at night all the warriors who had volunteered for the fight slipped out of their lodges and each company met its chief at a rendezvous agreed upon. Here they blackened their faces with charcoal or mud and fasted for four days. And when the four days were past they washed their faces, put plumes in their hair and gathering around the principal captains watched the opening of the sacred bags. Twenty policemen were appointed to keep the stragglers to their duty and four scouts were sent ahead, keep- ing from two to four miles in advance of the party. Directly after breakfast the war-party commenced its march. First came two of the minor captains, bearing the sacred bags. AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 19 A hundred yards behind marched the chiefs of the tribe, and following them came the warriors. Frequent halts for rest were made but, when resting, the party must always keep close together to avoid surprise. When the scouts had met the captains at a point agreed upon and made their report as to traces of the enemy or of game other scouts were appointed in their place and the march went on. So, under bright skies or beneath cloudy ones, the Ponkas advanced toward their vengeance. Along the forest trails and across the grassy meadows, ablaze with the nodding flowers of the early fall, they pressed straight on. But neither sky nor flower won any thought from them. And as they neared their foe those who were hot for revenge grew still more fierce and counseled their comrades to valorous deeds. Chief among these was Wa-ba-ska-ha ; for as the warriors marched he sprang in a furious dance before and around them, singing thus: "O make us quicken our steps ! make us quicken our steps ! Ho, C) war-chief! When I see him 1 shall have my heart's desire ! O war-chief, make us quicken our steps ! " And after he had thus sung he shouted to the listening warriors : " Ho, brothers, I have said truly that I shall have my heart's desire ! Truly, brothers, they shall not detect me at all. I am rushing on without any desire to spare a life. If I meet one of the foe I will not spare him." Each night when they camped for rest and sleep the four scouts would go out about a mile from the camping ground one toward the enemy's country, one to the rear, and one to either side of the camp. And, before the warriors lay down to 2 o AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. sleep, the " mikasi " or coyote dance, to keep up the spirits of all, would be engaged in by all except the captains. Before sunrise, each morning, the camp was awake ; break- fast was hastily eaten and the day's march resumed. At last the wary scouts far in advance sighted the village of the enemy and hastening back made their report. The sacred bags were opened, the scalp yell was raised and each warrior boasted anew of how he should conduct himself when he met the foe. And here, as the height of courage, Na-jin-ti-ce, the chief, the friend of Wa-ba-ska-ha, changed his name before the battle and bade the crier so proclaim it. And the crier, lifting his hands first toward the skies and then dropping them toward the earth, thus proclaimed it ; " Thou deity on either side, hear it ; hear ye that he has taken another name. He will take the name Nu-da-nax-a (Cries-for-the-war-path), halloo ! Ye big head-lands, I tell you and send my voice that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye clumps of buffalo grass, I tell you and send it to you that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye big trees, I tell you and send it to you that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye birds of all kinds that walk and move on the ground, I tell you and send it to you that ye may hear it, halloo ! Ye small animals of different sizes, that walk and move on the ground, I tell you and send it to you that ye may hear it, halloo! Thus have I sent to you to tell you, O ye animals ! Right in the ranks of the foe will he kill a very swift man and come back after holding him, halloo ! He has thrown away the name Na-jin-ti-ce and will take the name Nu-da-nax-a, halloo ! " Now that the enemy had been discovered all was interest and action. The scouts were sent forward to count the lodges and discover whether the foemen were asleep or awake for it was nightfall. Then one of the chiefs went himself to make a final HE HALTED AND Tl'KNKU TOWARD THK ENEMY." AN OVERTURE O* STRIFE. 23 examination. And at midnight, when all were ready, they moved stealthily forward ; going by twenties, each warrior hold- ing the hand of the man next him, they crawled toward the Pawnee village. Within arrow-shot of the village they halted, talking in whispers and exhorting each other to deeds of bravery. Just at daybreak, the leading war-chief drew his bow and sent an arrow toward the sleeping foe. Its flight could be distinctly seen by all the watching warriors. The time for the attack had arrived. The war-chief waved the sacred bag four times toward the enemy, he shouted his war-cry and at once the warriors, raising the scalp-yell, let fly their arrows. That terrible yell, familiar to Indian ears, roused the sleepers. Snatching at their ever-ready weapons they rushed out into the chill morning air. Too late ! The surprise was complete. Every surrounding tree-trunk sheltered a Ponka brave. Now from this quarter, now from that dashed out a hostile foeman to strike down or capture an unwary Pawnee. First to strike down and first to drag away his fallen foeman was Wa-ba-ska-ha. His vengeance had begun. For an instant the Pawnees gained the advantage. Mass- ing themselves for a rush they dashed against their enemy discharging their arrows as they ran. The Indian could seldom stand before a combined assault. His tactics were those of ambuscade and covert. The Ponkas fled before the Pawnee onset. But even as they ran Wa-ba- ska-ha heard the cry : " Nu-da-nax-a is killed ! " The bond of kinship was stronger than the fear of capture. He halted and turned toward the enemy. " Ho ! I will stop running," he said. He dashed headlong into the very thick of the foe and, across the dead body of his friend and kinsman, Wa-ba-ska-ha fell fighting. His vengeance was completed. 24 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE, But one such brave turn as his stayed the tide of retreat. The Pawnees fled at his approach and the Ponkas, following after, scattered or captured their routed foemen. The death of the two friends ended the conflict. The Omahas, to which race the Ponkas belonged, never continued a fight after a chief had been killed. Gathering up their spoil and their captives the Ponka warriors turned homeward and the foray was over. Within the shadow of their own lodges the victory was celebrated with song and dance, the rewards for bravery were distributed among the warriors who had most highly distinguished themselves and the deeds and deaths of Nu-da-nax-a and Wa-ba-ska-ha were loudly sung. They had gone in glory to the rewards of Wa-kan-da. Such heroic deaths as were those of these two friends were not uncommon amonsf the barbaric warriors of the American d> forests. The story of Damon and Pythias could find frequent parallels in Indian tradition. The " companion warriors " of the prairie tribes, the " fellowhood " of the Wyandots, the curious rites of the Zuni " Priesthood of the Bow " these and similar phases of Indian military life, of which the study .of American ethnology affords us frequent glimpses, are proof of a methodical system of war training and a standard of martial heroism among the naked warriors of the Western world that not even the days of Roman prowess or the later era of a brutal knight-errantry could surpass. The cultured Natchez of the Mississippi Delta had regularly established schools for the military training of their youth ; Toltec and Aztec, alike, laid especial stress upon the war-training of their boys ; and in the farther north Omaha and Iroquois, bravest of the forest races, gave the military education of their youth into the charge of efficient and established teachers. AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 25 Schooled thus to war and warlike ways the American Indian was a born soldier. A barbarian rather than a savage there was a method in his every move on war-path and in ambuscade and battle. And this was based on a peculiar school of tactics that was by no means the brutal hack and hew of the savage fighter. His art of war was built upon cunning and hedged about with strategy. It called fora course of fast and vigil that suggests the preliminaries of battle undertaken by the barbarian fighters of the so-called days of chivalry. The " knight of Arthur's court " and the brave of the Mohawk Valley differed but little in their ways of war. True, the Indian warrior did not ride out to the slaughter of undefended inferiors sheathed in steel and guarded at every point by the ingenuity of the blacksmith and the work of the ironmonger. His was the more heroic equality of man to man, unhelmeted, naked and free. His regimentals were his hideous daubs of mud or clay, his weapons the stone hatchet, the knotty war-club and the sharpened arrow, his oriflamme the heron's crest or the eagle's feather, his torture-chamber the forest clearing and the sacrifi- cial fire. At once the exigencies and the rivalries of his life made war an ever-present necessity ; but it was also an ever-pres- ent opportunity. His heroism was lofty, but it implied craft and cunning. The warrior who could circumvent was a greater brave than he who simply shot to kill. Glooskap the Algon- quin divinity was at once fighter and conjurer. Atotarho the Iroquois war-god was wizard and warrior as well ; while even the mythical Hiawatha was quite as much the wonderful magician as he was champion and diplomat. Centuries ago there lived on the rocky shores of Lake Superior a numerous and warlike people known as the Mun- 2 6 AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. dua. Presumably of Dakota stock this Indian tribe was fierce and cunning, relentless and strong. Into their homeland, forced westward by the all-conquering Iroquois, came the Ojibways, a people of Algonquin blood. For years the new- comers lived in continual terror of their ferocious neighbors. To hunt in the shadows of the Northern forests, to fish on the waters of the Great Fresh Sea meant for the Ojibways constant anxiety, and the risk of capture and the stake. To a people who had faced the Iroquois in fight such a state of vassalage was not to be endured. In union there is strength, reasoned the badgered Ojibways. Other tribes, their neighbors as well, lived like them in terror of the Mun-dua. To these the Ojibways suggested a confederacy of annihilation. The chiefs in council pledged their warriors to the attempt, and the wampum and the war-club were sent in summons among the lodges of the confederated tribes. o Volunteers responded from every village. The preliminary rites of fast and vigil, of mystic medicine and sacred dance were all performed, and on the appointed day there streamed from out the rendezvous the long and wavering line of a great war-party. Preceded by their watchful scouts and led on by their tribal chiefs, the confederated warriors stealthily threaded the narrow trails of the mighty forest, drawing nearer and yet nearer to the town of their common enemy, determined, so the record tells us, " to put out their fire forever." The '' great town " of the Mun-dua, protected by palisades, topped a sightly hill that overlooked the mighty lake. From their outlooks the Mun-dua spied out the advance of the besiegers ; but confident of their own prowess they laughed the laugh of scorn and made no movement to check their rebellious vassals. AN OVERTURE OF STRIFE. 27 The encircling forest poured out its host of besiegers. On every side of the Mun-dua town, save where the waters of the Great Fresh Sea broke on the rocky beach, the Ojibways and their allies swarmed before the palisades. With every mark and gesture of Indian de- fiance they shouted their challenge to the foe. They danced and sang, they raised the scalp- halloo and shot their flights of arrows at the unyielding wall. And yet the Mun- dua gave no reply ; they sent out no force of warriors to answer the defiance of their vassals. At last, after the first fury of the be- siegers had expended itself in war-whoop and harmless arrow- flight, the gates of the village opened and forth came, to scatter the presump- tuous rebels, not the warriors of the tribe, but the boys of the Mun-dua. The Indian contempt for an inferior foeman could no farther go. But the indignant allies, turning their "DEATH T and Havana had bidden such hearty godspeed and farewell. In all history there is scarcely to be found a sadder example of high hopes brought to ruin, of golden expectations unful- filled. It is a story bright with heroic exploits, black with per- fidious deeds. " The governor," says Orviedo, his chronicler, " was very fond of this sport of killing Indians ; '" and the marks of " the governor's sport " have streaked the winding trail of his wanderings with blood and left an irradicable stain O upon his memory. Brighter even than the story of Spanish heroism is the record of Indian patriotism. Step by step, through all these three years of wandering did the warlike tribes of the South, sinking their hereditary feuds, combine to repel the white in- vader. Stubbornly, tenaciously, heroically they contested the possession of their home-land and the bloody battle of Mauvilla, only saved to Spain by the charges of the resistless cavalry, proved the mettle, the valor and the self-devotion of the native American soldier. What De Soto was, what were Ayllon and Guzman, Ojeda and Balboa, Ponce de Leon and de Cordova, Narvaez and Cabeza de Vaca, that, also, were the hundreds and thousands of others fighting men and adventurers of every rank and of every grade in life who essayed to win fame and fortune in the New World and who, because of their valiant and intrepid deeds, their heroic achievements and profitless accumulations, their high-sounding titles, and never-weakening bombast, their marches and their battles, their rivalries and their feuds, have ever been remembered under the name they coveted - el conquistadores, the conquerors. With vast opportunities for bloodless and peaceable con- THE CONQUISTADORES. 55 quest, for Christian enlightenment and a gentler civilization they wrecked their mighty chances on the fatal reefs of greed. Never conquerors over themselves they have gone into history as destroyers and braggarts where they should have been up- builders and gentlemen. The boast of one of them : " I am not merely a De Soto though that, by St. James, were enough for any man. I am a Sotomayor, a Mendoza, a Bova- dilla, a Losada, a sir! I have blood royal in my veins, and you dare to refuse my challenge," was fitly answered by the response of a noble Englishman : " Richard Grenville can show quarterings, probably, against even Don Guzman Maria Magda- lena Sotomayor de Soto, or against the bluest blood of Spain. But he can show, moreover, thank God, a reputation which raises him as much above the imputation of cowardice, as it does above that of discourtesy." Still, with all their shortcomings their vices, their cruel- ties, their greed, their bombast, their bigotries and their credu- lity the old Conquistadores were a valiant and picturesque lot. If their record is smirched with tyranny and their valor is dimmed with blood, their ancestry and environments may be proffered as at once the reason and the excuse. They were, at least, the first link in the chain of fighting men that joins the new America to the old and have therefore due claim to a prominent place in our story as typical of that savagely pict- uresque life, when as Maurice Thompson tells us " priests were pirates and gentlemen were robbers " those romantic if brutal days when, according to Theodore Irving, " the knight- errantry of the Old World was carried into the depths of the American wilderness." CHAPTER III. COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. HE claim of Spain to the posses- sion of the Western world was not long to remain undisputed. The audacious " Bull " of that Pope of Rome, Alexander vi., who, himself a Spaniard and the favorer of his native land, sought to make all America Iberian - was a challenge to all the foes of Spain. And of these none were hotter, none more fierce than the daring spirits of England and of France. At once ships and sailors, adventurers and fighters sailed over-sea in the very track of Columbus's caravels. Rivalries J led to entanglements and these to relentless wars ; and while those summer seas that men call the Spanish Main grew red with blood as Avarice grappled with Greed, and Spanish Blood- hounds snarled at English Mastiffs, still further to the north, in Canada and Virginia and along the Atlantic sea-board, the flao-s of France and England floated above struggling settle- o o oo o ment and seaward-looking fort. After the first flush of disap- pointment at their failure to discover the always-coveted gold 56 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 57 had passed the freebooter gave place to the trader; explorers became occupiers and adventurers settled down as colonists. But, whether as adventurer, trader or colonist, life in the New World was ever precarious. To the danger of Indian attack and the personal jealousies of the settlers were added the race feuds, the religious differences and the international hostilities that made the American continent a continual bat- tle-ground. For years one could scarcely dare assert what flag might on the morrow float above the colony of which he was a part. On the pine-fringed northern border Frenchman and Englishman struggled for the possession of Canada and with defensive fortresses fronted each other on the broken Maine coast. The valiant Champlain and the fiery Frontenac made for themselves glorious records as loyal captains of France and only the unyielding hostility of the warlike Iroquois kept them from the conquest of the English border-lands. Farther to the south Dutchman and Englishman quarreled as to the right of occupancy and colonization in the lands about the Connecticut and the Manhattans. Dutchman and Swede grappled over the problem as to which was to have and which to hold the banks of the Delaware. Rival English factions disputed over their rights on the Chesapeake and, to the still further south, first Spaniard and Frenchman and then Spaniard and Englishman fought for Florida and the Gulf, making the story of Southern occupation a fearful tragedy, stained with the blood of the victims of such a butcher as Menendez and the revenges of such an assassin as Gourges. These continual disturbances, no less than the ever-present horrors of Indian hostilities, made every colonist of necessity a fighter. The trusty matchlock was as indispensable a piece of church equipment as psalter and prayer-book, and, after the 5 8 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. stern manner of those days of trial, the stoutest arm and the sturdiest frame were the defense and stay of every settlement. The block-house and the palisaded fort were near at hand for convenient retreat and shelter, while every church that crested the hill-top was sanctuary and bristling arsenal as well. Such a strong support stout of arm and sturdy of frame was that doughty Puritan fighter, Miles Standish, the Cap- tain of Plymouth. Longfellow's portraiture might apply to many another hardy leader of the colonial fighting-men of those earlier days : " Short of stature he was, but strongly built and athletic, Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles and sinews of , iron ; Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard was already Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes in November." Many another, too, might be able to make his professional boast : " Look at these arms," lie said, " the warlike weapons that hang here Burnished and bright and clean, as if for parade or inspection ! So I take care of my arms as you of your pens and your mkhorn. Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, invincible army, Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock, Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage, And, like Caesar, I know the name of each of my soldiers ! Look ! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer planted High on the roof of the church, a preacher who speaks to the purpose, Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic, Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen. Let them come, if they like, and the sooner they try it the better, Let them come, if they like, be it sagamore, sachem or pow-wow, Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or Tokamahamon ! " As quick, as choleric and as impetuous, too, was many an- other Colonial captain, with just as peculiar and by no means COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 59 kid-gloved methods of dealing with the Indian foeman. The stalwart Captain of Plymouth had little sympathy with the school of Las Casas and Eliot. Listen, as he sounds his de- fiance in the council : " What ! do you mean to make war with milk and the water of roses? Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your howitzer planted There on the roof of the church, or is it to shoot red devils ? Truly the only tongue that is understood by a savage Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from the mouth of the cannon! I^eave this matter to me, for to me by right it pertaineth. War is a terrible trade ; but in the cause that is righteous, Sweet is the smell of powder; and thus I answer the challenge !" Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a sudden, contemptuous gesture, Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with powder and bullets Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to the savage, Saying, in thundering tones : " Here, take it ! this is your answer ! " Such a fighter, though a much greater braggart, was Cap- tain John Smith, the " paladin " of Virginia. Such, too, was Captain John Mason, of the Connecticut colony, victor in the Pequot War ; and such were Captain Benjamin Church, the conqueror of " King " Philip, Captain %t Nat " Bacon, the bril- liant young Virginia fighter and leader in a somewhat remark- able rebellion, and Major Thomas Trueman, of Maryland, the murderer of the Susquehannoughs. Intrepid, deliberate and relentless, hating an Indian even more cordially than a " pa- pist," their methods were short, sharp and decisive, and to their tactics and their peculiar plans of action is due, very largely, the heritage of the America^ nation in Indian hatreds and Indian wars. Of all the fighting governors of colonial times Oglethorpe was the most heroic, Stuyvesant the most picturesque. Andros, with a full share of the belligerent spirit, was no match for a 6o COL ONIAL FIG HI 'ING-MEN. determined people ; Berkeley, a type of the old-time tyrant, could have made no head against the patriotism of Bacon, had not death stepped in as his ally. Few, if any, of the royal govern- ors, with the exception of Oglethorpe and Bienville, could sue- THE REVOLT OF THE TRAIN-BANDS " I.EISLER, YOU MUST LKM) US ! " cessfully direct the war-spirit that slumbered in the breasts of colonial trader and husbandman. It needed the deeper and underlying home interests of native or naturalized governors to lead their neighbors to action and to victory. It was Leis- ler, of New York, the "people's governor," a captain in the COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 61 city train-bands, who awakened in his fellow-countrymen the first desires for personal liberty and organized the first really offensive measures against the French power in Canada. It was Pepperell, the Maine merchant and militiaman, who at last brought this struggle for supremacy to a crisis and, con- queror of Louisburg, was the earliest of the native generals of his King. For our present purpose it will be sufficient to give brief mention here to two of the colonial leaders types of the foreign and the native stock -- who developed the martial spirit in the people and made out of colonists and farmers the first real American soldiers. These shall be James Edward Ogle- thorpe and William Pepperell. Born to a love of arms, a daring commander of men and a soldier of tried experience in European wars Oglethorpe yet came to the government of his Georgia colony desiring only peace, substantial growth and the good-will of men. That he was forced into prominence as a successful commander was due to the aggressions of the power of Spain. Alarmed at the growth of English colonization in the South the Spanish rulers in Cuba and Florida determined to crush out the Saxon. Hostilities were not long in commencing. Frederica and Saint Augustine were not far apart and the Spanish attacks on the Georgia settlements were speedily fol- lowed by the English assault on the Florida fortress. Oglethorpe was the soul of this latter movement. The friend of the Wesleys and of Whitfield and an ardent desirer of peace for his colony he was above all a soldier. If Spain determined for war, war she should have. His investment of St. Augustine was brilliant and strategic. Had he but been properly supported by his associates and subordinates the era 6 2 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. of Spanish occupation in North America would have come to an end lonsj before its lingering death nearly half a century later. But though St. Augustine did not surrender Oglethorpe 's energetic measures bore instant fruit. Men saw that the aide- O de-camp of Prince Eugene, the hero of Belgrade, had lost nothing of his old-time valor. Spain awoke to the fact that she must needs increase her power if she wished to overcome this old fighter of the Turks. Forced to the defensive until o such time as they were able to prepare a strong and formidable armament the Spaniards for two years longer kept behind their stone walls. At last, in the summer of 1742, they gathered for the decisive blow. In that year this new Spanish Armada sailed from Havana well equipped for the final and utter ex- tinction of the English power in the South. But the spirit of his ancestors lived in the gallant English- man. As the Oglethorpes of Surrey " in days of good Queen Bess " had rallied to the resistance of the first and greater o Armada so he, too, determined upon an heroic stand. " If we have no succor," he wrote, " all we can do is to die bravely in His Majesty's service." The Spanish fleet of fifty-one sail, carrying a force of nearly five thousand soldiers, bore down upon the Georgia coast. Oglethorpe had but six hundred and fifty men and a few small vessels. Men looked to see the Georgia colony go down in blood before the force of Spain. But to a hero nothing is impossible. " With a bravery and dash almost beyond comprehension," says Mr. Jones, " by strategy most admirable, Oglethorpe by a masterly disposition of the troops at command, coupled with the timidity of the invaders and the dissensions which arose in their ranks, before COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 63 the middle of July put the entire Spanish army and navy to flight." His personal daring turned the battle of the Bloody Marsh from a rout to a victory ; his inspiring courage beat back the Spanish galleys from an attack on Frederica and led the pur- suit under the very guns of their war-ships ; his pluck, his shrewd- ness and his ability to seize upon opportunities at just the right moment dismayed and confounded the Spanish commanders and absolutely drove away the invading army at the very instant when they might have struck a crippling blow and obtained a certain victory. There is much of truth, notwith- standing the apparent exaggeration, in \\ hitfield's enthusiastic comment : " The deliverance of Georgia from the Spaniards is such as cannot be paralleled but by some instances out of the Old Testament." And Mr. Lodge asserts that " Oglethorpe saved two provinces to England by as gallant fighting and shrewd generalship as the whole history of the American colonies can show. A brave soldier, an honest, upright, kind- hearted gentleman," so Mr. Lodge declares, "he is a man whom any State might regard with reverence and admiration as its founder, first ruler and defender." Of a different character but no less the gentleman and the soldier was William Pepperell, the merchant of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire. A colonial shop-keeper with but little knowl- edge of war, honored and respected rather because of his thirty years of service as an upright judge and a successful political adviser than for his acquaintance with military needs and tactics Pepperell was placed in command of the land forces in New England's greatest crusade against Canada. So skillfully did he conduct his part of the operations that the strong fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton the bul- 64 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. wark of Canada -- fell after an almost bloodless siege of fifty days. " It was a gallant exploit," says Mr. Lodge, "almost the only glory of an unsuccessful war." The greatest triumph of colonial fighting-days was secured by an undisciplined army " of New England mechanics and farmers and fishermen " led on by a Yankee merchant. It was really the first American army. Leisler's force of invasion, which a half-century before had failed through colonial jealousies and wrecked the mighty purpose of its energetic pro- moter, could scarcely assert its claim to be esteemed an American army. Pepperell's men were largely native-born. And Wil- liam Pepperell, tradesman though he was, may safely be con- sidered as the first native military leader produced by the colonies. Other commanders of American birth there had been but none had as yet been selected for so exalted a position. The titled adventurers who were royal governors by favor of the king of England were far too anxious themselves to pose as leaders and commanders to permit any mere " provincial " to usurp their dignities. It is therefore to the credit of Shirley, the King's Governor in Massachusetts and himself no mean soldier, that in the famous expedition against Louisburg he should have selected for chief command so able a native Ameri- can as William Pepperell. This Canadian success led to imme- diate honors. The victorious commander was created Sir William Pepperell. He was acting governor of the colony of Massachusetts and in 1757 he was commissioned as lieutenant- general and commander of the Massachusetts militia, now grown to over seven thousand men. He died on the very eve of the victorious campaign that gave Canada to England. Oglethorpe and Pepperell, however, were but the accom- paniments and the outgrowth of the years that were opening J COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 67 the way for the real American soldier. The hardships, the struggles, the defeats and the slow successes of colonial life brought to the service many leaders skilled in border war and toughened the temper of men from whom sturdy fighters came. Miles Standish's thirteen men, his "great, invincible army," could be duplicated in every one of the struggling settlements that looked out to the eastward upon the stormy Atlantic and westward into the no less dangerous wilderness. From these slender homeguards grew, in time, the provincial militia-men who volunteered for the wars against France and Spain and prepared the way for the greater revolution. But not always in fighting Indians or invading hostile lands were the colonial fighting-men in arms. Too often were these arms turned against one another. In jealousies of office and in border disputes, in hair-brained endeavors and in open rebellion, time upon time, did brother face brother and neighbor neighbor in the hot encounters of those earliest days. The very composition of the several colonies fomented dis- content. The mixed character of the settlers aggravated disorder. From the time of beginnings, when Captain John Smith of the Virginia colony " an adventurer of a high order in an age of adventurers" came into direct conflict with Governor Wingfield and his other associates, down to that later day, when in Boston streets Crispus Attucks and his riotous companions faced, and fell before a platoon of British soldiers, dissatisfaction, jealousies, desire and unrest stirred up continual strife which not unfrequently blazed out into open rebellion. Chief among these popular uprisings, according to chronological order, were : the Ingle roysterings in Maryland in 1645, *h e Bacon rebellion in Virginia in 1675, the Culpepper revolt in North Carolina in 1677, ^ e revolt of the people 68 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. against aristocratic oppression in 1689 led by Bradstreet in Massachusetts and Leisler in New York; the race "rebellion " of Father Sebastian Rasle in Maine in 1724, the election riots in Pennsylvania in 1739, the bloody march of the " Paxton Boys" on Philadelphia in 1763, and the revolt of the Regula- tors in South Carolina in 1764. The fight at Golden Hill, in New York City, and the Boston Massacre both disturbances of the year 1770, and both rather vaingloriously claimed as " the first blood of the Revolution" -fitly closed an hun- dred and fifty years of struggle, sedition and dispute. But, through all these (by means, even, of some of them) was the mixed condition of colonial society merging into some- thing definite, into something American. As it took an hun- dred years and more to make of the caste-hedged emigrant of Europe a free American, so, too, did it need fully a century of emergencies to mold from the pioneer, the borderer and the partisan the real American soldier. For years the American colonist was but a transplanted Englishman, an expatriated Dutchman, an " assisted " German, Frenchman or Swede. These fought, when necessity compelled them, against Indian marauder or border enemy; they resisted, when personal griev- ances inflamed or local leaders uro-ed them, the invasion of their O assumed "rights," but they never marched, as Americans, step to step and shoulder to shoulder, until the final invasion of Canada and the first drum-beats of revolution cemented them together as Americans, as brothers conscious of their own strength and needs. It was this lack of union that brought the rebellion of Bacon and the bold stand of Leisler to naught. And though each O O colony, as it grew in numbers and in strength, organized its able-bodied fighting-men into some semblance of a provincial COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 69 militia, these "bulwarks of the state" did but little in the way of concerted action, and did that little grudgingly. It takes a great motive to change a partisan into a patriot. As, around its church or block-house or ragged fort of logs, each struggling settlement grew, the earlier home-guards which might be Captain Standish's " Twelve men, all equipped, having each his rest and his matchlock. Eighteen shillings a month, together with diet and pillage," or might be the " three and fifty raw and tired Marylanders " whom " that noble, right valiant, and politic soldier " Thomas Cornwallis led against the Susquehannas developed into the Train-Bands or Military-Bands common to each colony. While from time to time the red-coat garrisons of the king became familiar sights in the larger towns, it was chiefly upon these Train- Bands, made up of their own numbers, that the people of the colonies depended for their military strength. u We know, from more than one incident," says Mr. Doyle, " that there was no lack of individual courage or soldierly skill among the settlers." In every province the able-bodied male " freeholders " were held subject to military duty. When occasion demanded they could be called upon for active service. The charter of the Maryland province invested the proprietors with the right to " call out and arm the whole fighting population, wage war, take prisoners, and slay alien enemies ; also to exercise martial law in case of insurrection." In Massachusetts each town, from the earliest days, had its own military company, for service in which every man was liable, excepting the "magistrates, elders, deacons, shipwrights, millers and fishermen." The law of 1766 required all males in the colony to attend ?0 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. military exercise and service. Each company of foot in the colo- nial militia was composed of musketeers and pikemen ; two thirds bearing the matchlocks and the cumbersome " rest," one third carrying the long and murderous-looking pikes, or spears. While the demands of farm and merchandise were held superior to those of war and while the colonist-soldier was ever slow to leave these until their protection became an absolute necessity the records of those old days show the train-band-man to have been an important factor in the life and growth of every settlement. " In the seventeenth century," says Mr. Lodge, " all men went armed ; even the farmers wore swords, and the military spirit was wide-spread and ardent. All adults were in the militia and the training-day, when the soldiery went out to drill with pike and musket, was the great break in the dark monotony of daily life." At the outbreak of the great English revolution of 1688 a revolution that gave fresh impulse to the longings for personal liberty in America the population of the colonies was less than two hundred thousand. Of this number perhaps thirty thousand may be considered a fair estimate for the fighting pop- ulation the persons able to bear arms. But of this latter esti- mate a small proportion only were really men-at-arms, members of the train-bands. Captain Underbill's "army," which, in 1640, at the instigation of the treacherous and bloody-minded Kieft he led out from Dutch New York against the defenseless O Indians thereabouts, consisted of but one hundred and twenty men. The force at the head of which Captain John Mason, in 1637, marched from the Connecticut country to the extermi- nation of the warlike Pequots was less than an hundred men. In 1675 the joint " army " of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Plymouth, raised under the spur of desperate necessity to fight COLONIAL FJGhTING-MEN. 71 the Indian warrior Philip of Pokanoket and drawn from a population of some seventy thousand souls, amounted to but eleven hundred men. The six free companies or train-bands of New York who in 1689, united under the energetic Leisler to strike if need be for the Stadtholder king and civil liberty num- bered less than five hundred men ; the whole provincial force that in that summer of 1689 responded to the summons of the first colonial congress and gathered on the northern frontier for the invasion of Canada fell far below the eight hundred and fifty men promised by the congress. In fact, no considerable nor adequate military force was enlisted in the colonies for warlike purposes until the mid-years of the eighteenth century showed to England and her colonies, alike, that if America was to be the heritage of Englishmen the struggle with France must be a united one and fought to the bitter end. Then, at last, both king and colonist put forth their greatest strength. And in the seven years of war that broke the power of France in America and ended in triumph on the historic heights of Quebec no small share of the glory as of the fighting must be accorded to the now-aroused " pro- vincials " whom British officers and soldiers so affected to despise. This studied contempt of regulars for volunteers is but a part of the always-existing arrogance of military aristocracy. It held place in the legions of Rome as in the cohorts of Xerxes and reaches back even to that older day when by the Wells of Harod the chosen three hundred of Gideon lapped the water " like a dog " and were alone of all the Israelitish host, deemed worthy to fight the Midianites. But never, surely, was there less reason for this professional bias than in the days of the colonial fighting-men of America. ?2 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. It was the South Carolina militiamen who, rallying to the defense of their struggling colony in 1706, made so spirited an attack upon the French invaders that they drove back Le Feboure in defeat across Charleston bar with nearly one half of his eight hundred men killed or prisoners. It was the fifty Carolina volunteers of Governor Moore who, in 1702. plunged through the Georgia forests to the attack of the boastful Span- iards and established the claim of England to all the southern country as far as the walls of Saint Augustine. In the dis- astrous and horribly mismanaged expedition of 1739, by which Eno-land was to conquer the Spanish possessions of Mexico and Peru, it was the "provincials" who won the only fame that came from that ill-starred endeavor as, all unsupported, they led in the storming of the San Lazaro fortress of Carthagena ; while of the thousands who left their bones in that pestilential climate nine tenths were the contemned " provincials." It was a New Hampshire volunteer, William Vaughn, who in the attack on Louisburg in 1745 an enterprise in which, it is asserted, " the provincial forces displayed courage, activity and fortitude that would have distinguished veteran troops" cap- tured the royal French battery and with only thirteen men held it against all the enemy sent for its retaking. It was John Stark and his five hundred New Hampshire foresters who marched through the trackless wilderness that lay between the Connecticut and the Hudson, compassed the reduction of Crown Point and shed about the only light that fell upon the disgrace- ful defeat at Ticonderos;a. O It was Phineas Lyman, the commander of the New England volunteers u a man of uncommon martial endowments" who, in 1755, won the victory at Lake George; and, on the same fatal day of Dieskau's defeat it was Macmnnes and his two COLONIAL FIGHTING- MEN. 73 hundred provincials who met and thoroughly defeated a superior French force at the portage of Fort Kdward. It was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, the father of the American militia (of whom Logan wrote : " I principally esteem Benjamin Franklin for saving the country by his contriving the militia"), A MUSTER OK COLONIAL MILITIA ON BOSTON COMMON. who, when elected in 1744 to the command of one of the reg- iments he had raised, declined the honor of leadership and him- self marched in the ranks and did his sentry duty, carrying a musket as "a humble volunteer." It was Peyronney, the Vir- ginia captain, who at Braddock's terrible defeat in 1755, "when those they call regulars ran like sheep before the hounds," still 74 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. held the fight with his valiant colony men until he and nearly every man in his company were killed. It was George Wash- ington the Virginia colonel ("that heroic youth/ 1 so wrote Davies, the New Jersey minister, "whom I cannot but hope Providence has preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country") who, on that same awful day, when the king's soldiers fell or fled before the Indian ambuscade, saved the rout from being an utter massacre; though shot at until two horses fell under him and his coat was riddled with bullets, he still protected the retreat, with what Braddock /had contemptuously termed his " raw American militia." It was the men of Monckton's brigade three out of every four of them being " provincials" -who stood the chief shock of the conflict on the Plains of Abraham where on " the battle-field of the Celtic and Saxon races " the valor of their stand gave victory to England in that one of the decisive battles of the world that o closed the long struggle for supremacy in America with the death of the heroic but victorious Wolfe. Of this final and greatest endeavor of the colonial fighting- men the story has become a twice-told tale. But it is worth relating here, as that of a struggle in which the undervalued O OO " provincials " bravely bore their part and, waking to a sense of their real strength, made the Plains of Abraham but the fore- runner of the yet grander plain known as the Common of Lexington. The mid-years of the eighteenth century had come. For nearly an hundred and fifty years had England and France been crowding one another in the western world, each claiming *-* O its ownership, each determined to possess it. The success of England, though clearly foreshadowed, had not as yet been apparent. Canada might be doomed but France defended her- COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 7S self right valiantly. Louisburg had fallen, Acadia had been conquered, but to the northwest, above the rock-bound fortresses of Quebec and Montreal, the Bourbon banner of the fleur-de-lis still floated in triumph. France still held the key to the con- tinent and in the great valleys of the west the blue uniforms x)f her guardsmen garrisoned all the rapidly-growing outposts. The governors of New France were energetic and aggressive. To the grim and martial Frontenac had succeeded the politic De Callieres, the warlike Vaudreuil, the energetic Beauhar- nais, the wily Galissoniere and La Jonquiere, admiral of France. Following him came, in turn, the impetuous Ouquesne and yet another Vaudreuil the last of the French governors. Equal in valor, though ever at odds with their official superiors, stood the royal commandants, than -whom none were braver in fight than the last : Dieskau, who fell at Lake George, and Mont- calm, the noble and heroic Montcalm, whose career in Canada has been pronounced "a wonderful struggle against destiny." England opposed but inferior leaders to these energetic sons of France. Braddock, the obstinate, fell in utter and almost ignominious defeat; Shirley and Johnston had neither the pluck nor the ability to follow up the advantages of success. Loudon was a pompous do-nothing, Abercrombie a slow and heavy-witted incapable, Amherst was a stolid and over-cautious martinet, Webb a timid and dilatory tactician. Only with Wolfe young, brilliant, energetic and intrepid did anything like real success come to the arms of England. Sailing from conquered Louisburg, where his great ability had already displayed itself, Wolfe, in June, 1759, headed toward Quebec. The slow methods of England had enabled France to succor her principal stronghold in Canada and when Wolfe landed on the Island of Orleans Amherst's twelve thousand men still 7 6 COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. lingered on the shores of Lake Champlain. "The whole mass & of the people of Canada," says Bancroft, " had been called to arms," and Wolfe, with his less than eight thousand men, found himself fronted by Montcalm with a force of fourteen thousand, not counting the Indian allies." The entire summer was wasted in ineffectual attempts on either side to obtain the advantage; Amheist and his expected reinforcements did not appear and at last on the third of September Wolfe decided upon a movement as adventurous as it was hazardous. Sick in body but intrepid in spirit he ordered his men to scale the precipitous heights above Quebec. Here was the one weak point of the enemy ; here must the assault be made. Once determined upon this was quickly done. Aided by "sheer good luck quite as much as by skill and courage " Wolfe and his little force exactly four thousand eight hundred and twenty-six in number in the gray of a September morning, silently pulled themselves up the steep incline and at sunrise, says Mr. Clinton, " looked down from the Heights of Abraham .upon the city which for nearly three months they had wearily watched across the water." Thus outgeneraled and surprised Montcalm saw that instant action was his only salvation. With his seventy-five hundred fighting men he marched to meet the enemy. The battle was joined at once. On came the French ; but not until they were within forty yards of the " thin red line " of England was their fire returned. Then the iron hail burst from the Eng- lish ranks ; another volley quickly followed and, as the smoke cleared away, Wolfe charged the wavering French line. The blue coats broke in panic; alike English and French comman- der fell mortally wounded and as the French battalions turned in flight the fate of Canada was sealed. One of the decisive COLONIAL FIGHTING-MEN. 77 battles of the world was fought and won in precisely ten min- utes by the watch. Montreal fell in "the following summer. Rogers and his American rangers captured the western posts and with the close of 1760 the last hope of France was extinguished. The lilies of the French king fell in surrender; the red cross of St. George waved over conquered fortresses and captured posts, and America was English from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. The thirteen colonies were wild with joy. They were saved. The always-present danger of French conquest was over forever and its final overthrow was due as much to American valor as to English discipline. Though British councillors and commanders might sniff and sneer, the people knew in how great measure they had helped to the end. " Provincials," says Bancroft, 14 had saved the remnants of Braddock's army; provincials had conquered Acadia; provincials had defeated Dieskau." And provincials, too, had captured invulnerable Louisburg, had de- stroyed Fort Frontenac, reduced Niagara and planted the English flag in victory on the ruined bastions of Duquesne. Such a schooling in warfare as that was not to go unheeded. Alike ranger and forester, militiaman and volunteer gained the inspiration of victory from this, the last stand against France. The day for yet greater deeds was close at hand and the colonial fighting-man was to become the defender and the deliverer of his home-land. English contempt was to develop into English tyranny and at the call of their leaders the despised provincials of the past were to become the patriots of the future. From the ranks of the village train-bands and the colonial militiamen was to step ready and armed for resistance the determined and now immortal Minute-man. The real American soldier was ready at last. CHAPTER IV. MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. R. BRATTLE presents his Duty to his Excel- lency Gov. Gage, he apprehends it his Duty to acquaint his Excel- lency from Time to Time with every Thing he hears and knows to be true and is of Im- portance in these trou- blesome Times, which is the Apology Mr. Brattle makes for troubling the General with this Letter. o Capt. Minot of Concord, a very worthy Man, this Minute informed Mr. Brattle that there had been repeatedly made pressing Applications to him to warn his Company to meet at One Minutes Warning, cquipt with Arms and Ammunition, according to Law ; he had constantly denied them, adding, if he did not gratify them he should be constrained to quit his Farms and Town ; Mr. Brattle told him he had better do that than lose his Life and be hanged for a Rebel." Thus, on the twenty-ninth of August, 1774, ran the opening 78 MIXUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 79 of a letter addressed to the commanding officer of the British troops in Boston by William Brattle, the brigadier in command of the provincial militia. For Boston was garrisoned by the troops of King George. The temper of her people was hot and aggressive toward England and the authorities across the water had determined to nip rebellion in the bud. It was a note of warning, but it came too late. Military rule in America meant an increase of oppression ; and to further oppression men were unalterably opposed. Resistance was duty. To this duty the colonists were urged and those especially who enrolled in the militia were implored to hold themselves ready for any emergency. And at last the emergency came. For years the relations between king and colonists had been growing more r.nd more strained. Freedom from abso- lute influence of the kingly authority had for more than a gen- eration been creating in men a desire for greater personal freedom. There is a mighty impetus toward emancipation in the un-bridged distance of three thousand miles of sea. So at last out of dispute came action. Tyranny on the one side and unyielding opposition on the other ended as it only could end in blows, and when the clash came the " minute's warning" had its full effect. The Minute-men were ready and alert. The first shock of arms came in the Massachusetts colony. When the British government sent orders to General Gage, the commander in Boston, that he should bid his troops fire upon the people when he should deem it necessary, the match was put to the tinder. The people's protest showed itself in the storing of munitions of war for their own defense and in the drill and continual readiness of the Minute-men. In 1775 came the climax. 8o MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. " On the nineteenth day of April, one thousand seven hun- dred and seventy-five, a day to be remembered by all Ameri- cans of the present generation, and which ought and doubtless will be handed down to ages yet unborn, the troops of Britain, unprovoked, shed the blood of sundry of the loyal American subjects of the British king- in the field of Lexington." So ran what Dr. Hale calls " the prophetic introduction " of the report of the Battle of Lexington which the provincial congress of Massachusetts forwarded in haste to England. Of that notable nineteenth of April how often has the story been told. And yet, who tires of reading it ? From the instant when Paul Revere caught the flash of the signal lan- tern from the pigeon-haunted belfry of the North Church in Boston town and rode his ride of warning the story grows in interest. " And lo ! as he looks, on the belfry's height A glimmer and then a gleam of light ! He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight A second lamp in the belfry burns ! A hurry of hoofs in a village street, A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet : That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the light, The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by the steed in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat." The land was ready to be kindled. The anxious waiting of Paul Revere as, all " impatient to mount and ride Booted and spurred, with a heavv stride," MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 81 he paced the grassy shore of the "sluggish Charles" was but typical of the unsettled feeling that pervaded all the colonies. Not alone in Massachusetts were bold men urging action. North and south the mysterious " Sons of Liberty " were form- ing. In more than one section were to be found those who expressed not only their willingness but their desire to fight. From that historic seventh of October, 1765, when in the city of New York, a congress of the thirteen colonies voiced the protest of the people against the tyranny of England down to the climax-year that precipitated revolution, the people were everywhere preparing. The spirit of resistance broke out again and again. The angry crowd that danced about the effigy of Oliver the stamp-master, as it dangled from a Boston elm, the five hundred hard riders who stopped the way of Ingersoll the Connecticut collector and forced him to resign his office, fling aloft his hat and hurrah three times for " Liberty and Property," the New York mob that broke open the stables of the royal governor, dragged out his coach, mounted his Ex- cellency's effigy upon it and then burned the whole equipage on the Bowling Green, the four hundred Marylanders who assembled at Frederick town armed with " guns and toma- hawks " and threatened to break up the provincial government, the indignant people of North Carolina who threatened the British war-sloop that bore the stamped paper, seized its boat, which they dragged on a cart to Wilmington and there sur- rounding the governor's house threatened to burn both house and governor if he did not accede to their demands, the mut- terings of opposition in Pennsylvania, in South Carolina and in Georgia that rose and fell with popular opinion and were displayed in the customary mobs and effigy burnings all these were but the precursors of that determined opposition to 82 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. tyranny that, after ten years of smouldering, was fanned into a flame by the famous stand of the Minute-men on Lexington Common and about the old North Bridge at Concord -- the historic span of America's Rubicon, the sacred spot " Where once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard round the world." It was that day's fight that showed the courage and tested the spirit of America's citizen soldiery. Little need to tell here the story of Lexington. Every school- boy is familiar with its details and not a few schoolboys of that distant day seemed to have been filled with prophetic inspirations. It is related that as Lord Percy's troops marched out of Boston heading for the highway that led toward distant Concord they played with much spirit the shrill but sar- castic strains of Yankee Doodle. " Ho, ho ! " jeeringly called out a smart Roxbury boy perched on a con- venient stone wall, "you fellows go out by 'Yankee Doodle;' you'll come back fast enough by ' Chevy Chase.' ' And a " Chevy Chase " it was indeed. The Percy of that famous day essayed the role of his ancestor of three centuries back only to repeat on Massachusetts highways the story of that " woful hunting" in Scottish woods. The old ballad tells us how THEY HUNG ON THK SKIRTS OK THE RETREAT. MINUTE-A\fEN AND CONTINENTALS. 83 " To drive the deer with hound and horn Earl Percy took his way ; The child may rue that is unborn The hunting of that day." The " embattled farmers " of the fair New England fields like the supporters of another Douglas rallied to protect their home- lands and by their acts said as did he " Show me," said he, " whose men you be That hunt so boldly here, That, without my consent, do chase And kill my fallow-deer?" The Minute-men won the day. Baffled and dispirited the British marauders straggled back to Boston. Like bull-dogs the now aroused farmers snapped and growled at their heels ; they hung on the skirts of the retreat ; with flint-lock and king's-arm they emphasized their protests and only desisted when the British troops were safe again beneath the protecting batteries of Boston town. Here was war at last. The tidings of that long day's fight fired the colonies from Maine to Georgia. North, west and south the stirring tidings sped. It was on Wednesday the nineteenth of April, 1775, that Lord Percy's routed columns ran their twenty-mile race with death. On Sunday morning following, a swift courier clattered down the Broad Way bring- ing the story of the fight to New York. Elizabeth, New Bruns- wick, Princeton, Philadelphia, quickly heard the news. On the twenty-seventh it was in Baltimore and in the early days of May the southern colonies knew of the bravery of the Massa- chusetts farmers and cheered the tidings lustily. The Minute- men of the old Bay colony had precipitated revolution. 84 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. On that very tenth of May when the men of Georgetown in South Carolina flung aloft their caps at the news of Lexington fio-ht, away to the North, amid the rolling hills that make so t5 J picturesque the verdant shores of Lake Champlain, another body of New England .Minute-men, gathered from among the New Hampshire Grants and known as the Green Mountain Boys, made a dash upon the enemy that has become famous in history. Led on by Ethan Allen, a mountain partisan, and Benedict Arnold, a Connecticut horse-jockey, less than an hundred Green Mountain Boys surprised the British post of Ticonderoga in the early dawn of that May morning. Thus unceremoniously routed from his bed, the sleepy commandant had the distinction of making the first actual surrender of the king's property to the revolting colonists, yielding with as good grace as possible to the rather pompous summons of the blustering Allen who summoned him to surrender the fort u in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress ! " O "The careful annalists," says Dr. Hale, " observe that the Continental Congress did not meet until after the surrender of Ticonderoga." But little did Allen care. He had a point to make and he made it. No one comprehended better than did this bold borderer the force of the questionable old adage: "All is fair in love and war." Lexington and Ticonderoga were but the awakening. Minute-man and militiaman, responding to the call of the Committee of Safety, hurried to the investment of Boston. They had whipped the British in the open field; now they would push them into the ocean. Mr. Frothingham has a story to the effect that when on one of those last days of May, 1775, the British generals, Howe, MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 85 Clinton and Burgoyne, were sailing into Boston harbor with reinforcements for the army of the king, they spoke a packet, outward-bound. Burgoyne hailed the skipper: "What news above ? " he cried. Back came the answer that Boston town was surrounded by ten thousand countrymen. " How many C.RF.FN MOUNTAIN BOYS ON THE MARCH. regulars in Boston ? " asked the Englishman. " About five thousand." "What!" shouted Burgoyne, "can ten thousand Yankee Doodles shut up five thousand soldiers of the king? Well ; well ! Only let us get in there and we'll soon find elbow-room." 86 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. But that elbow-room never came. Closer and tighter about the beleaguered town drew the cordon of besieging yeomanry. In all the country 'round farmers and village folk grasped musket and pikes ready for action, and hurried to the places of rendezvous and on the seventeenth of June the Provincial Congress, assembled at Watertown, issued an order that ran as follows : "WHEREAS the hostile Incursions this Country is exposed to, and the frequent Alarms we may expect from the Military Operations of our Enemies, make it necessary that the good People of this Colony be on their Guard and prepared at all Times to resist their Attacks, and to aid and assist their Brethren : Therefore, Resolved, That it be and hereby is recommended to the Militia in all Parts of this Colony, to hold themselves m Readiness to march at A MINUTE'S WARNING, to the Relief of any Place thai may be attacked, or to the Support of our Army, with at least twenty Cartridges or rounds of Powder and Ball. And. to prevent all Confusion or Delays, It is further recommended to the Inhabitants of this Colony, living on the Seacoasts, or within twenty Miles of them, that they carry their Arms and Ammunition with them to Meeting, on the Sabbath and other Days, \\hen they meet for public Worship." Summons and caution came none too soon. On that very seventeenth of June the environed British made one bold push for release. Their jailers were prepared for them. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought. O It proved the sturdiness as it tested the courage of the American Minute-man. A moral victory although an actual defeat, the battle of Bunker Hill showed alike to English sol- dier and to Colonial tory that Boston-town was not to be held in safety for the king. On the same historic seventeenth of June the Continental Congress, in session at Philadelphia, appointed as "general- issimo" of the soldiers of revolt, Colonel George Washington of o o Virginia. Fighting men from all the New England colonies, volunteers from the middle provinces, riflemen from Maryland and Virginia and the further south, led by their own officers THK MINUTE-MEN. M1XUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 89 and making in all a loosely-organized force of more than sixteen thousand men, encamped upon the hills and plains to the west of Boston. Under a spreading elm on the commons of Cambridge a tree that yet stands, strong and sturdy, the best memorial of that time of blossoming revolution minute-men and rifle- men, militiamen and volunteers were mustered on the third of July, 1775; and there "His Excellency George Washington, Esquire, Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces of the Thirteen United Colonies " assumed command of the soldiers of freedom. Revolution was organized. The Minute-men of Lexington and Bunker Hill became from that day forward the Continental Army. But, before we turn from this opening chapter in the real story of the American soldier, let us glance at those historic figures that, by their deeds, so royally illustrate its pages. These Minute-men, this raw militia, that faced and fought the well-trained red-coats of England who were they ? What were they like ? Soldiers we can scarcely call them, for the soldier presup- poses discipline, drilling and training. Some crude instruction of this sort they may have had. Some of the men, indeed, were veterans of the colonial conflicts that had preceded the Revolution, but as a rule these first fighters for liberty were busy toilers all, farm-born or village bred. Hastily summoned and still more hastily accoutered they left the plough in the furrow, the tool on the bench, the quill in the ink and, all unused to war, sprang to arms. In motley uniforms, in half- uniforms, in no uniform at all, with here a military coat, there a three-cornered hat or perhaps only a home-made cockade pinned to the homespun lapels, with the rusty flint-lock 9 o MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. cauo-ht down from above the broad chimney-piece where it had & huno- for years as heirloom or trophy, a motley array, lacking in 5 ^ discipline, over-generous of advice to their superiors neighbors, comrades and brothers all, they had swarmed to the ragged fences that flanked the king's highway between Concord and Boston ; they had camped in most unmilitary style on hillside or in field, fallen behind the hastily-tossed earthworks on Bunker Hill or died beneath the blossoming apple-trees beside the flowing Mystic. And the officers about whom these earlier fighters rallied were a scarcely less motley group than were the men who but haltingly acknowledged their authority. Here in the first fights for freedom, within the straggling camps or meeting in that first council of war at the: foot of pleasant Prospect Hill came the waverer, the blusterer, the man of moderate experi- ence, the would-be martinet, the newly-elected captain, ignorant of tactics and uncertain as to the proper use of his sword food for merriment and contempt among the trained warriors of the English king, but patriotic none the less, formidable because sheathed in the justice of their cause. "Thrice is lie armed that hath his quarrel just ; And lie but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted "- Surely never did those noble words which the great poet puts into the mouth of an English king find fitter application than toward these patriot leaders in the new England across the seas, where once again the old issue between tyranny and personal freedom was to be fought to the end. Here, to the leadership at the camp on Prospect Hill, came Heath the only colonel or, at least, the first of the colonels; MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 91 here, too, came Artemas Ward, " commander-in-chief " by sufferance; Prescott of Pepperell, the valiant veteran of the Canadian campaign; Putnam, the modern Cincinnatus, who literally turned from the plough to the battle-field; Warren the Roxbury doctor and busy committee-man, who fought as a volunteer and fell in the rush from the captured earthworks, the noblest victim of the stand on Bunker Hill; Knowlton the brave Connecticut leader ;Gridley the cannonier who had trained the guns on Louisburg; Stark the doughty Indian fighter from the New Hampshire Grants and Reed the equally intrepid son of those granite hills; Brooks, the Medford major; Thomas the Kingston doctor; Spencer of Connecticut; Greene of Rhode Island men whose names are indissolubly linked to those opening days of revolution and whose memories should linger with their countrymen as of those who by their courage, their endurance and their sturdy patriotism fired and cemented the stock from which was to spring the real American soldier. "Will he fight?" asked General Gage, as, in the battery on Copp's Hill the tory lawyer whoXfood by the General's side pointed out the stalwart figure^rf" his rebel brother-in-law, rallying the farmers behind the rudely-lined breastworks on Bunker Hill. u Fight ! " was the reply, "yes, yes ; you may depend on him to do that to the very last drop of blood in his veins." A notable figure in those stirring days was this same rebel brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott. A type of the Ameri- can fighters for freedom, his statue to-day fitly crowns the height which he so valiantly defended and seems to guard the tall gray shaft that commemorates for us that eventful seven- teenth of June. Fifty years of age, a splendid figure, handsome 9 2 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. of face, full of energy and of inspiring words, he wore that hot June day in the trenches a simple uniform the blue coat, lapped and faced and adorned with a single row of buttons ; the knee breeches and silver-buckled shoes, and the inevitable three-cornered hat, while his directing hand grasped the un- sheathed sword whose temper had already been proven in battle for that English king who was now no longer his master. Of a like type and of equal valor were the men who com- manded and the men who followed, the men who fought and those who fell in the opening battles of the war. It was these fighters from the New England farms and their o o brethren from the plantations of the further South frank, fearless, illy-disciplined, determined and alert, who gathered on the commons of Cambridge and, merging themselves into the <_> o o Continental Army, accepted George Washington of Virginia as their commander and generalissimo. Such then, when he took command at Cambridge, were the troops of Washington. " A hardy militia, brave and patriotic, but illy-armed, undisciplined, unorganized and wanting in almost everything necessary for successful war." What could he make of them ? Full justice can never be done to the ability of the first American General. Hampered and harassed by the uncer- tainty of his forces, by the lack of proper munitions of war, by the half-hearted measures of a hesitating Congress and even O O by the wavering desires of the people whose interests he was to defend, he was yet able, with all the hazards against him, * o to drive a disciplined British Army from Boston and to hold against gathering odds the important city of New York. De- feated at Brooklyn by a force of British regulars outnumbering him three to one, he saved his armv bv one of the most mas- MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. 95 terly retreats known to history. With forces continually decimated by desertions and by the unceremonious leave-taking of militiamen whose short terms of service were constantly ex- piring, he yet so maneuvered, marched and handled his dis- heartened forces as to strike, at just the critical moment, at the very center of Britain's chief dependence the hireling Hes- sians at Trenton. And thus he grasped out of almost certain defeat the victory that strengthened the patriotic cause and re- sulted finally in the one measure that he knew was necessary for success the organization and establishment of a regular army. America's merriest Christmas was, really, the one that promised to be its sorriest - - that eventful twenty-fifth of December, 1776, when Washington's meagre force pushed through the floating ice of the Delaware and captured the unsuspecting Hessians. " The life of a nation," says Mr. Lodge, " was at stake." Washington's brief campaign at Trenton and at Princeton has rightly been characterized as quite as brilliant and as full of skill and daring as is anything in the annals of modern warfare. Mr. Lodge asserts that, if Washington had never fought another battle, this decisive action on the Delaware would entitle him to the place of a great commander. That it was decisive no one who reads history carefully can question. It reassured a doubting nation, organized strength out of weakness, brought triumph from disaster and, as one of its immediate results, merged all the shifting forces of the unreliable Continentals into the definite and finally victorious army of the Soldiers of Liberty. That brief period from the muster beneath the elms of Cam- bridge Common in the warm July weather of 1775 to the cold 9 6 MINUTE-MEN AND CONTINENTALS. Christmas night on the Delaware in the dying days of 1776 is crowded with incident. It saw the disastrous invasion of Can- ada that ended in defeat at Montreal and Quebec ; the death of the gallant Montgomery, one of America's most promising gen- erals, and the daring of Arnold whose later treason, even, should not be permitted to eclipse his brilliant record amid Canadian snows. It saw the patriot victories in North Carolina; the gallant defense of Charleston by the heroic Moultrie ; the stubborn but hopeless effort to hold New York, the remarkable bat- tle of Brooklyn, the spirited engage- ments at Harlem Heights and White Plains. It brought O to the front men whose names were TIIK cAMiikiucE ELM. to become famous as intrepid and gal- lant fighters; and, through the inefficiency of British generals and the tireless labors of Washington drew to what was in fact, if we regard the numbers engaged, but a trifling military campaign the attention and the plaudits of a watching world. A large, a veteran and a disciplined army, led by generals whom England esteemed her best, was out-maneuvered by a demoralized assemblage of untried and unreliable militiamen, " not much superior," says General Cullom, " to an armed mob ; MINUTE-MI-. \ A.\n CONTINENTALS. 97 but the one was held together by a machine-like discipline and backed by an obstinate tyranny, the other, unsatisfactory though it might be, was still inspired by a determined patriot- ism. When disaster seemed most certain triumph came forth, and out of the most unpromising surroundings there emerged, to carry the war to its close, the dauntless Soldiers of Liberty. Henceforward minute-man, militiaman and continental are to stand through all that struggle for freedom as the veteran American Soldier. CHAPTER V. SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. IR, the Hessians have surrendered!" Thus, in joyful tones, came Baylor's report as, in a lull in that sharp morning's fight at Trenton, he gal- loped up to the anxious Commander- in-Chief. " Thank God ! " was Washington's devout rejoinder. And that fervent exclamation of gratitude, the sim- plest and yet the strongest that man can utter, was freighted with a still deeper meaning than even Washington himself could imagine. For that triumphant report of the hard-riding Baylor bore in its one O J brief sentence the success of the Revolution. It is always darkest just before the dawn. When Glover's fishermen-soldiers from Marblehead, on that cold December night of 1776, pushed out into the floating ice the clumsy boats that were to carry Washington's troops across the Delaware the expedition seemed to be but a forlorn hope. The little force of twenty-five hundred men, whose ill-shod 98 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 99 feet had literally marked their march across the snow with blood, constituted almost the entire fighting force at Washing- o o o ton's disposal. His army had, as yet, no compelling law to hold its numbers intact or keep its volunteers reliable. Here to-day and gone to-morrow seemed to be the rule with the home-raised militia who had ranged themselves under his banner. Something must be done. The more than thirty thousand men who made up the British Army about New York so far outnumbered the Continental fighting-force that could be counted on for actual service that ruin to the patriot cause seemed almost inevitable. But despair formed no part of Washington's in- domitable nature. Success must be won. In the most somber of those dark days he wrote to his brother, " I cannot entertain the idea that our cause will finally sink though it may remain for some time under a cloud." And it was from under this cloud that he determined to bring the cause that was dearer to him than life. When, erect but anxious, he directed from his open flat-boat the crossing of his little army from one icy bank to the other he literally, as Mr. Lodge asserts, " carried the American Revolution in his hands." This one stroke of Washington's generalship saved the cause of the colonies. For, apart from the moral effect of the victory, it aroused a hesitating Congress to agree to Washington's demand for a standing army. The enthusiasm that blazes into conflict and breaks into open rebellion against tyranny not unfrequently fails to stand the test of prolonged endeavor when the first frenzy of indig- nation is past. To a certain extent this was true of the American revolu- tionists. The valor that lined the fences and thronged the fields between Concord and Boston, that led the assault on IOO SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. Ticonderoga and held the breastworks on Bunker Hill grew lukewarm with long days of inaction in camp. Crops were o-rowino- in the home farm-lands ; work which seemed quite as & <^> important as forcing the English king to yield to colonial demands had been left to over-burdened housewives or to unskilled helpers. When their brief term of enlistments came to an end the volunteers were quite ready to hurry back to their crops, their stock or their neglected duties at home. So, again and again, the militia of the land, who acknowl- edged no central authority and were held only by their pledges to a short term of actual service would dwindle to a mere handful or be succeeded by raw levies who must be schooled to the demands and discipline of warfare. In a letter to the President of the congress, written after the defeat on Long Island and that masterly retreat from Brooklyn, Washington said : " The jealousy of a standing army and the evils to be apprehended from one are remote and in my judgment, situated and circumstanced as we are, not at all to be dreaded ; but the consequence of wanting one according to my ideas formed from the present view of things, is certain and inevitable ruin. For, if I was called upon to declare upon oath whether the militia have been most serviceable or hurtful, upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter." He had his wish at last. On the twenty-seventh of Decem- ber, 1776, the very day after the brilliant dash upon the Hes- sians at Trenton, Congress " having maturely considered the present crisis and having perfect reliance on the wisdom, vigor and uprightness of General \Yashington," granted him the power as General of the United States to raise, organize and officer sixteen battalions of infantry, three thousand light- horsemen, three regiments of artillery and a corps of engineers. SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 101 This was to be considered as in addition to the eighty-eight battalions furnished by the separate States. Here was high-sounding promise indeed, but it was never fully realized. It accomplished one excellent result, however, for it paved the way for the attainment of Washington's desires. For, though the numbers obtained were far too few for the always pressing needs of the revolted colonies and though the promises of the States were but meagerly fulfilled, a plan of enlistments for the term of at least three years kept up a standing force throughout the rest of the revolution. This supplied a basis on which Washington as commander-in-chief could frame his campaigns; while the militia, called out for extra service when occasion demanded, enabled the Congress to keep a fair showing of a fighting-force always in the field. And yet, correct as was Washington's judgment and uncer- tain as was this fluctuating militia, how often upon their action did victory depend? It was the minute-men and militia of New England who gave the lie to the assertion of the bullying peers of Britain that the Americans would not fight. Before the guns of these same hastily-gathered militia-men the very flower of the British army reeled backward down the smoke-wreathed slope of Bunker Hill. It was the militia of the Mohawk Valley who stood the brunt of the bloody battle of Oriskany. It was the militia of New Hampshire and New York who stormed the earthworks at Bennington, captured or scattered the Hessian foeman and saved Mollie Stark from widowhood. It was the militia who triumphed over Burgoyne at Saratoga, decided the fate of the Revolution and made that famous en- gagement one of the fifteen decisive battles of the world. It was the militia of the South the men who marched with Pickens at Charleston, with Campbell and Sevier at King's I02 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. Mountain, with Stephens at Guilford and with Marion at Eutaw who came to the assistance of the regular Continental troops and, again and again, turned defeat into victory. It is in no part the province of this volume to describe in de- tail the battles of the Revolution. Our duty lies rather in photo- graphing, as well as we are able, the American Soldier who fouo-ht for the liberty of his land. The story of the several to us who 3 O look back upon them calmness, candor and dispassionate judgment. If these are to be employed in the study of the past we must accord to the long-despised Tories of the Revolu- tion valor, integrity and renown. They wagered their all on their opinions. They fought and they lost. And we, looking at the result from their stand-point, can surely say with them " For Loyalty is still the same Whether it win or lose the game." All over the continent, so we have the assurance of his- torians and observers, the " loyal " provincial regiments proved on many a stubborn field their worthiness to stand in line with the veterans of the British army. Sir John Johnson, Tory though he was, showed himself yet more merciful than did the " peacock patriots " of Schuyler and the five thousand men of Sullivan, from whose raid on the Six Nations, in 1779, dates, so it is asserted, " the inextinguishable hatred of the red-skins to the United States." As this struggle between freedom and tyranny was pro- SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. 119 longed, the armies of that same " tyranny " received constant support from local volunteers. In 1779 New York gave Knyphausen six thousand good troops from among her citizens. The " Gentleman Volunteers " of Boston were commanded by Timothy Ruggles, declared even by his foes to be the best soldier in the colonies. With Clinton in New York in 1782 were over two thousand Loyalists all battle-scarred veterans. When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown he had with him detachments from various regiments of American Loyalists whom continued service and hard righting had converted into the very best fighting material. The Pennsylvania Loyalists and the Queen's Rangers of Philadelphia did efficient service for Great Britain. The Loyal Light Horse of Colonel James de Lancey successfully with- stood the combined assault of Washington and his French allies. The New York Loyal Volunteers decided by their valor the bloody battle of Eutaw Springs. And these same Tories from Manhattan, after taking part in many a well-fought contest were one of the last regiments in the British service to relinquish their hold on American soil. The Americans who did not rebel may have been mistaken. Certainly, when the end came, they suffered for their loyalty and lost in exile and poverty the stake they had wagered on their honestly-held opinions. But let us be just. Honor can surely be given where honor is rightly due. Even in such a strife as was this, where brother shot down brother and friend worked vengeance upon friend, we who now look calmly over those frightful battle-grounds can speak, with pride in their valor as soldiers even while we regret the mistake that swayed their judgment and decided their choice, the names of those whom our ancestors condemned as " detested tories " Drum- 120 SOLDIERS OF LIBERTY. mond of New York, Delancy " the outlaw of the Bronx," Sir John Johnson the feudal lord of the valley of the Mohawk, Ruo-o-les of Massachusetts, De Peyster, the hero of King's >> Mountain, whose New York " Tories " seven times repelled the furious charge of the " rebels," Thomas and Hovenden and James, whose provincials and refugees were invaluable as light troops while the British lay at Philadelphia these and many more who might be added prove that even in the tory ranks we have so long been taught to despise there lived the valor, the bravery and the self-sacrifice that have ever been the peculiar pride of the American Soldier. The smoke of conflict died away when at Yorktown the charge on the British redoubt led by Hamilton and Lafayette showed to Cornwallis the absolute impracticability of longer continuing his defense. The allied troops of America and France republicanism and absolutism fighting side by side - made the United States a nation. The seven years of war were ended. A strife that had been of slow but certain growth ever since the days when the first colonists from across the sea set foot on the wild shores of the New World had come to its logical conclusion and a nation of freemen was born. On many a stubborn field, in many a bloody fight the sturdy arm and the valiant heart had proved the moral strength that lay behind them. The first endeavors of the real American Soldier had brought from dependence in- dependence and through patriotism freedom. Henceforth the troops of America were to be the Army of the People. CHAPTER VI. THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. O N a certain memorable October morning in the year 1781 a British drummer boy climbed to the parapet of an English redoubt at Yorktown. There, vigorously plying his drumsticks, he sounded the parley. Hostilities ceased. Two days afterward, at two o'clock in the afternoon of the nineteenth of October, the British troops marched out of their works, with colors cased and the soldiers of King George laid down their arms in sur- render. Appropriately enough their drums rattled out the quickstep " The World turned Upside Down." The world was indeed turned upside down so far as all the tradi- tions of power were concerned, for, with that surrender at Yorktown, the American Revolution practically came to an end. Tyranny acknowledged itself defeated and a "parcel of rebels" became a nation of freemen. But, though the war closed with the surrender of Cornwallis, not for two full years did the troops of England finally leave the land they had so confidently come to conquer. On the twenty-fifth of November, 1783, Sir Guy Carleton evacuated the 121 122 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. city of New York. As the British rear guard pushed off from the Battery the advance guard of the Americans a troop of horse, a regiment of infantry and a company of artillery - filed into the deserted fort. Through the streets of the city that for fully seven years had lain in possession of the soldiers of the English king, sounded the joyful roll of the drums. Escorted by Captain Delavan's " West Chester Light Horse," Washington marched into the city with a veteran following of j * the Continental troops and the last vestige of England's authority in her former colonies disappeared forever. But before that day of evacuation and possession arrived the army of the United States had practically been disbanded. When it became evident that no further hostility on the part of England was to be feared the greater portion of the Continental troops was dismissed upon long or indefinite furloughs. On the nineteenth of April, 1783, just eight years to a day from the time of the historic conflict at Lexington, a cessation of hostil- ities was publicly announced to the American army, and on the eighteenth of October in the same year that army was, by proclamation of the Congress, officially disbanded. This final act took effect on the second of November following and when, on the twenty-fifth of the month, the city of New York was evacuated by the British troops only a small body of veteran soldiers under the command of General Knox represented the American army. Peace brought respite from war, but it by no means brought satisfaction to those by whom it had been secured. The inspir- ation of victory is haloed all about with exultation and excite- ment. The after-happenings of victory are sometimes singularly lacking in enthusiasm. Patriotism is broad and self-sacrificing O* but even patriotism needs to be kept alive by such homely THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 123 necessities as bread and butter. The laborer is worthy of his hire ; and when long-promised wages were not forthcoming even the Soldiers of Liberty began to grumble. The Congress of the United States at a cost of one hundred and forty millions of dollars had waged the war of revolu- I'KACE HV NO MEANS WROUGHT SATISFACTION. tion to a successful termination. But the cost of this war, small as it may appear in these days of vast expenditures, had loaded the States with a burden of debt greater than they seemed willing or able to carry. The Congress, straining every nerve to force out its plans to success and keep its armies in I24 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. the field, was scarcely able to meet even the bare necessities of war and when Cornwallis laid down his arms at Yorktown the United States of America found themselves largely in arrears to the very men by whose valor their existence had been ren- dered possible. The two years that intervened between the surrender at Yorktown and the evacuation of New York were full of discon- tent and orumblins:. Brave men who had sacrificed so much O of the most serious of these disturbances was that known as Shays' Rebellion. This celebrated rising grew out of questions as to the proprietorship of land, out of the pressure of the hard times, the unwise exactions of those who held claims for money due, the weaknesses of certain laws enacted and especially the attempt, in Massachusetts, to levy State and federal taxes. In the " ranks of the poor " were many who had been soldiers in the Continental Army. The revolt drew to its sup- port numbers of people in Western Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, Vermont, and even in Eastern New York. The leader was Captain Daniel Shays. He was a man who had seen service in the Revolution and the malcontents who put themselves under his command were speedily drilled into some semblance of military discipline. But an armed mob is much like a pirate crew. Both are outlaws and all attempts at discipline or authority are rated only at second-hand. Leader- ship is an uncertain quantity. Number One is always the main consideration. So, when the army of Massachusetts, forty-four hundred strong and marshaled by stout old General Lincoln, put itself in motion and actually faced the malcontents in fight the mutinous spirit speedily yielded to the organized forces of Law. There was much threatening and bluster, no little show of resistance, and some fighting, even ; but the determination of Lincoln and his militia carried the day THE TKOOrS OF DISCONTENT. 129 and saved not alone the State of Massachusetts but the entire confederation of States from what might have been a disas- trous and suicidal popular sentiment. It is in dealing with the troops of discontent that real dis- cipline best exhibits itself. To be stern and unyielding when occasion demands, to be lenient and forgiving when superiority is once established this is the only course that wins in all encounters with mobs. When Shays at the head of two thousand men marched upon the arsenal at Springfield the commandant, General NO FEES, NO EXECUTIONS, NO SHERIFF !" Shepard, thinking to frighten the invaders ordered his men to fire in the air. But the rebel ranks contained too many old soldiers who had smelled powder on real battle-fields and Shepard only recovered from his mistake by an actual and dis- astrous volley. When General Cobb, an old Revolutionary officer, was menaced by the rioters at Taunton where he was holding court as judge he faced them without an instant's delay I30 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. and bade them disperse. " Sirs," he said, " you cannot frighten me. I shall either sit here as a judge or die here as a general." " I do not care a rap for your bayonets," shouted that sturdy Revolutionary veteran, Artemas Ward, a judge of Massachusetts but an old soldier as well, when the guards of the rioters barred his way into the court-house at Worcester ; " run 'em through me if you dare ! I am here to do my duty and I'll do it if I die for it." Firmness in emergencies is almost certain to win and firmness was a quality eminently possessed by the old soldiers of the Revolution. " No fees, no executions, no sheriff ! " was the demand of the rioters at a later day around this same court-house at Worcester. The sheriff, plucky Colonel Greenleaf, looked undismayed upon the triple line of bayonets levelled to bar his progress. " All right," he replied calmly ; " if you think the fees for executions are too high why, I'll hang you all for nothing and high enough to suit you too." " ' Burgoyne' Lincoln and his army," was the cry of the rebels in Western Massachusetts when they heard of the military advance against them. But Lincoln and his army were not to be " Burgoyned." The rising of the peo- ple to oppose the march of the invading British General whose defeat at Saratoga gave victory to Revolution was not to be repeated when the invaders and the people were of the same kin. Lincoln's spirited march through winter snows showed that this old campaigner, this valiant secretary of war in the Rev- olutionary days was not to be trifled with and rebellion finally yielded to law. Defeated and dispirited the Troops of Discon- tent lay down their arms at the feet of Authority, the rebellion broke into pieces and the danger that was so widely feared was at last averted. This anti-tax rebellion in the North found its counterpart in THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 131 an anti-tax uprising in the South. The protest of the people of Pennsylvania and Maryland, in 1794, against the federal tax upon spirit distilled within the United States again awoke the troops of discontent who provoked that dramatic episode in American history known as the " Whiskey Insurrection." Seven thousand men marshaled by Bradford the "Commander- in-chief " of the revolt pledged themselves to resist to the last the collection of the objectionable tax and speedily laid the whole region within the shadow of the Alleghanies under the terror of mob rule and military despotism. " The whole western country," says Mr. McMaster, "began in the language of that time, to bristle with anarchy-poles. From some floated red flags bearing the name of the rebellious counties. On others were the words 4 Liberty or Death,' or ' Liberty and Equality,' or ' No Excise.' ' But the government acted quickly. President Washington made a requisition on the governors of Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and fifteen thousand men under the command of " Light Horse Harry "Lee a fighter of the old wars marched against the malcontents. The battle-cry of the rebels was " Liberty and no Excise." But Liberty to them meant License. " No Excise " meant the free distillation of whiskey. As the troops advanced, the discontented elements fled before Light Horse Harry's men. They could make no stand against organized opposition. The rising was speedily quelled. It was a bloodless rebellion indeed and though of sufficient force to seem at one time to threaten the very existence of the Union the strength of the military force gathered for its overthrow was so irresistible that danger was averted and once again the Troops of Dis- content dispersed at the advance of Authority. I32 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. In one way or another, though less serious than were the disturbances already cited, did the chafing O f the people of the new nation under unfamiliar and untried laws display itself in resistance and revolt. It is unpleasant to note that the conduct of the soldiers enlisted to quell these insurrections seems to have been open to criticism. Military power, when unchecked, frequently becomes tyranny. The brutalities of Armstrong's troops in the Wyoming trouble of 1784 appear to have found its counterpart in the outrages by the militia of the same Quaker State of Pennsylvania during the short-lived troubles of 1799, known as Fries' Rebellion. These instances of over-zeal, however, were to be expected in so crude and unor- ganized a body of troops as was the citizen soldiery of the United States in the last days of the eighteenth century. But this crudeness, so prone to display itself in offensive measures upon unresisting women and children, was compelled to stand a test of quite another sort when brought into battle against the red warriors of the frontier. o The Indians of the west resisted with reasonable justice the encroachments of the settlers who were crowding into their lands beyond the Ohio. Remonstrance and appeal meeting with no attention or resulting only in a contemptuous continu- ance of occupation, the red-men resorted to their final arguments the torch, the rifle and the tomahawk. "No white man shall plant corn in Ohio." This was the Indian fiat. " That the threat was not an empty one/ 1 says Mr. Black, " soon became apparent. The planter fell in his tracks. The crops were burned and mangled by unseen hands. Death lurked on the Kentucky frontier. There must be war." The settlers demanded protection. The government re- sponded to their appeal, and in September, 1790, General Josiah THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. '33 Harmar with an army of fourteen hundred and fifty men was sent into the Ohio country to " discipline " the Indians. But, alas, the boot was found to be quite upon the other foot ! 14 Never before," says Mr. Me Master, "had such a collec- tion of men been dignified with the name of army." The troops were without discipline, intelligence or decent equipment. The officers were jealous, incompetent and ignorant of military rules. As was to be expected, this collection of " ragged regi- ments " proved no match for the wary and warlike Indians. The expedition ended, as might have been conjectured, in defeat and disgrace, and the remnant of his army, says Mr. Black, " which Harmar led back to Cincinnati had the unsubdued savages al- most continually at their heels." A second expedition au- thorized by the President was sent against the Ohio Indians in the autumn of the next year. It mustered two thousand three hundred regulars and six hundred militia and was under the command of General Arthur St. Clair the governor of the Northwest Territory and a prominent officer of the Revolu- tion. This second army met with an even more disastrous defeat than did the troops of Harmar. Torn with official jealousies, weak in discipline and detail, shamefully supplied with useless equipments by unfaithful government agents, shaking with chills and fever, hungry, tired, sick, and altogether heedless as to their surroundings, St. Clair's ON THE FRONTIER. I34 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. army was on the third of November, 1791, surrounded, am- bushed and attacked by a host of Indians led on by Brant the half-breed u hero of Wyoming " and utterly and terribly defeated. Twice outgeneraled and twice so utterly routed ! It was a bad record for the American soldier a fighter who had proved his valor on many a bloody field. But American pluck, without a final struggle, would not leave the Western country to the victorious Indians. A fresh force was at once enlisted. Five thousand men made up this new army of the West. During the winter of 1791-92 these fresh troops were, according to the direction of President Washington, " trained and disciplined " for the especial service they had entered upon. " Do not spare powder and lead," wrote Washington, "so the men be made marksmen." The result was an army altogether different from those of Harmar and St. Clair. This army of invasion was rather pompously styled the Legion of the United States. It was especially trained to meet the exigencies of Indian warfare and was divided not into brigades and regiments but into four sub- legions provided with legionary and sub-legionary officers. The command was given to one of the most popular of the Revolutionary heroes, General Anthony Wayne, the conqueror of Stony Point. " A better officer," says McMaster, "could not have been found." A born soldier, one whose boyhood had been passed in constructing mud-forts and teaching his com- rades how to storm redoubts, this gallant Pennsylvanian had fought with valor through the Revolution, had been decorated by Congress for his bravery and enthusiastically nicknamed by his soldiers and the people " Mad Anthony Wayne." He assumed the command determined to win. And he THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 137 did win. With an army made efficient through careful drill, through discipline, appropriate equipment and all the requisites that its 'unfortunate predecessors had lacked the "Legion of the United States" marched into the Ohio country, made a vigorous attack upon the Indians and their Canadian allies and in the bloody battle of the Maumee fought on the twentieth of August, 1794, with all the valor of Monmouth and all the dash of Stony Point, utterly routed and scattered the Indian foeman. "Such was the impetuosiiy of the charge, by the first line of infantry," so runs General Wayne's report, 44 that the Indian and Canadian militia and volunteers were driven from their coverts in so short a time that but a part of the legion could get up in season to participate in the action." Almost as ferocious and still more famous because it made the record of a brave American soldier and a popular American president was the battle of Tippecanoe. This celebrated Indian engagement was fought within the limits of the Illinois country in the year 1811. Uniting for the annihilation of the white man, under their politic and patriotic chieftain Tecumthe, the Indians of the northwest confederated for white destruction, burst upon the little army of General Harrison in the dark of the early morning of the seventh of November, 1811. Ft was an unwise move for the red-man and was brought about, not by the genius of Tecumthe, but by the influence of his uncanny-looking kinsman " The Prophet." Harrison's nine hundred men sturdily stood their ground. The battle was long and bloody, the loss in officers was especially noticeable, but the Indians were defeated and Tecumthe's carefully-laid plan for an Indian confederacy was forever overthrown. In all the hostile encounters succeeding the Revolution I3 8 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. there was, indeed, much that must astonish and annoy the patriotic student of American character who cannot precisely square the cowardice and unruliness, the crudeness and the lack of discipline with the standing of Revolutionary veterans and the traditions of American valor. But, even while admit- ting the existence of these negative qualities, there must be found in the story of those immature days much that can brighten an uninteresting record and illumine an often-clouded picture. There was, as we have seen, alike pluck and courage in the days of discontent. And, even in Harmar's undisciplined foray, the skill and daring of such true-hearted soldiers as Major Fontaine of the Regulars shed a certain glory over the gloom of defeat. The spirited bayonet charge of Colonel Darke, roused to fury at the fall of his son, almost retrieved the disasters of St. Clair. The pluck and valor of Anthony Wayne's nine hundred, who at the Maumee Rapids routed a British and Indian force of more than twice their number, were emphatically displayed in deeds of personal prowess that were inspired by the bravery and bearing of the intrepid commander. " In what light, sir," demanded the British commandant, Major Campbell, " am I to view such near approaches of an American army almost within reach of the guns of a post belonging to His Majesty the King of Great Britain ? " " The muzzles of my small arms, sir, in yesterday's fight gave the most full and most satisfactory answer to your ques- tion," Wayne defiantly replied. " Had the action continued until the Indians were driven to the protection of the post you mention even the guns of that post would not have impeded the progress of the victorious army under my command." On the field of Tippecanoe that bloody battle in the dark THE TKOOPS OF DISCONTENT. '39 - the vigilance and valor of General Harrison brought to his name a lasting renown and inspired the men who won that historic victory; for Tippecanoe, though a triumph dearly bought, was far-reaching in its results. " Where is the captain of this company ? " the general demanded as, peering through the gloom he saw on the high ground where the prairies meet a little body of men gallantly holding their own. " Dead, sir," said the young Ensign Tipton. 41 Where are the lieutenants?" "Dead." "Where is the ensign ? " " I am here." " Stand fast, my brave fellow," said the general with a look of approval at the gallant little band and its no less gallant leader; "one moment longer and I will relieve you." The relief came and the victory of Tippecanoe was assured. For any lack of valor, of discipline or of martial moods in the davs of conflict * that make up the story of the Troops of Discontent and the Soldiers of Immaturity we must look for the cause to the very composition and methods of the Americans themselves. The Revolution was over. A land, wasted by seven years of war, demanded immediate attention or the work of years of preparation would be lost. Beyond the battle-scarred land lay the wildernesses of the vaster West. They were full of promise, fertile of hope, and called for men to conquer, to settle and to develop them. To all such home-builders further strife was repugnant. The political sky, too, was so clouded, so full of warring ele- ments, so dark with uncertainties that, to the majority of the ANT 1 1 UN Y \VAYNK. I4 o THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. people, the army was an unpleasant and unprofitable national incubus, the life of the soldier was deemed as but the last resort of the shiftless, the drone or the outcast. And yet, notwithstanding the popular objections to a stand- ing army, Congress managed to have under its control, even from the very adoption of the Constitution, at least the shadow of such an army. The War Department of the United States was organized on the seventh of August, 1789, with General Knox as the first Secretary of War. He found a standing force of six hundred and seventy-two available men as the " bulwark " of the new nation a weak enough bulwark for so undefended a land! O From the date of the organization of the Department to the War of 1812 the Secretaries of War were, respectively: Henry Knox, Timothy Pickering, James Me Henry, Samuel Dexter, Roger Griswold, Henry Dearborn and William Eustis. Of these, all except Dexter were veterans of the Revolution, but the incoherencies, the frail finances and, above all, the national animosity to a standing army gave our first Secretaries little in the way of material and much in the way of worry. As Indian wars and international disputes warranted an increasing force the troops of the United States grew from the paltry seven hundred of 1789 to somewhat more respectable proportions. In 1792 this force was increased to 5120 men, in 1794 it fell to 3629; it rose to 5144 in 1804, dropped to 3278 in 1807, and, in 1810, footed up 7154. Between these years, too, its generals-in-chief were of an equally shifting character. Washington was succeeded by Knox in 1783, Knox by Mannar in 1788, Harmar by St. Clair in 1791, St. Clair by Wayne in 1792, Wayne by Wilkinson in 1796, Wilkinson by Washington in 1798 and Washington again by Wilkinson in 1800. THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. 141 Washington's term as Lieutenant-General began on the third of July, 1798, just twenty-two years to a day after his assuming command of the Revolutionary troops on the commons of Cambridge. It was his last service to the American people and was the result of the popular war-wave that swept the land when, in 1/98, the insults of France, steeped in the fanatical fury of a righteous revolution unrighteously upheld, almost drove the former allies into war. Throughout the States the black cockade was the symbol of patriotism ; the old fervor of the fighting days returned and the doggerel of the time, sung and whistled in every town, gave the key note of determination : " Americans then fly to arms, And learn the way to use 'em ; If each man fight to 'fend his rights The French can't long abuse *em." The war fever grew. Line-of-battle ships sprang from hastily-laid stocks. Along the Atlantic coast forts were traced out, built or strengthened. Volunteers rushed to the militia recruiting offices and, as the citizen soldiers of America pledged themselves anew to the defense of the land they loved, they shouted huzza ! and yet again huzza ! to the most popular of all the toasts and sentiments of the day: " Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute ! " But neither defense nor tribute became necessary. Napo- leon the Shrewd as well as the Great, recognized the unwisdom of making another foe in the "nation of debaters " across the western sea. France recalled her hasty words and stopped her hostile ways. The allies of old became friends once more and the army of the United States was reduced to a peace foot- I42 THE TROOPS OF DISCONTENT. in warlike of European nations. It was a power whose soldiers had faced the victorious armies of the great Napoleon, whose grenadiers were led on by generals schooled to the ways of war in the wild Mahratta battles of India or in the more momentous conflicts that had checked the career of the greatest of modern conquerors in the stubborn battles of the Spanish peninsula. 1813 was a year of failure for the American arms. 1814 IS o A LEADERLESS WAR. was but little better. The exigencies of a losing fight were, however, developing certain capable commanders in the ranks of American captains. These generals indeed did not rise to the position of real leaders, but their very impatience over the disgrace that was clouding the name of the American Soldier o-ave them so much determination that their earnest examples & and their tireless efforts began at last to infuse something like discipline and effectiveness into the wavering ranks of an undisciplined army. In the swamps and morasses of the distant South the sturdy and unyielding Jackson was learning in the savage school of Indian warfare that untiring vigilance and sleepless energy that were to work such terrible results upon the veteran troops of England in the opening clays of 1815. The victory of Tohopeka, by which on the twenty-seventh of January, 1814, General Andrew Jackson, after a furious fight of more than five hours, broke forever the power of the Creek Confederacy, found its still create r results in the more ojorious but utterly C3 *_> J needless victory at New Orleans. In the north, upon the Canadian frontier, the patience and persistence of Winfield Scott imparted a steadiness and efficiency to those uncertain volunteers who had rallied to the defense of the northern border. The ludicrous failure of Wilkinson with which the cam- paign of 1814 had opened was fully retrieved by the gallantry of Scott's brigade at Chippe.vay and the obstinate courage of that same band of fighters at Lundy's Lane. And yet neither Chippeway nor Lundy's Lane can rightfully be claimed as American victories. They were simply not American defeats; and it is the chief glory of both these savage actions that they showed the spirit that really slumbered in American fighting men and by their obstinacy changed British contempt into A LEADERLESS WAR. i 5I British caution. Even William James, most prejudiced of all the English chroniclers of this war with America, is forced to admit that, "upon the whole, the American troops fought bravely ; and the conduct of many of the officers would have done honor to any service." And yet that same year of 1814 saw the glory of American endeavor at Chippevvay and Lundy's Lane clouded by the shame of American feebleness on the Chesapeake. No page in Ameri- can history is more disgraceful than that which tells of the invasion of Maryland by the British troops and how a small force of the red-coated enemy put to flight a largely superior force of Americans at Bladensburg, set the whole American government in hasty and undignified retreat from the American capital, captured Washington, destroyed the public buildings, scattered the Americans by a vigorous bayonet charge at North Point and spread terror and dismay through all the Chesapeake region. " That Americans," says Professor Soley, " when properly led could make as good fighting material as any other people, had been shown in the Revolution and was still more forcibly shown, later, in the war with Mexico and in the Civil War; but in 1812-15 tne Y were without leaders. With the exception of Brown, Jackson, Scott, Gaines, Harrison, Macomb, and Ripley, most of whom were at first in subordinate positions, there were few general officers worthy of the name and it required only the simplest strategic movement to demonstrate their incompetency." " The British regulars," says Mr. Roose- velt, " trained in many wars thrashed the raw troops opposed to them whenever they had anything like a fair chance. Our defeats were exactly such as any man might have foreseen and there is nothing to be learned by the student of military IS2 A LEADERLESS WAR. matters from the follies committed by incompetent com- manders and untrained troops when in the presence of skilled officers having under them disciplined soldiers." It is a truth not to be disguised that this War of 1812, which from the outset was so marred by " the humiliating surrenders, abortive attacks and panic routs " of the land forces of the Union, was turned into victory and success by the darins: and the dash of the American Sailor. O But this is the darker side of the annals. It would indeed be a disgraceful stain on the soldier's record of American valor if O the story of our second war with England rested here. With a brave people, out of defeat springs new determination ; out of humiliation, heroism. It is this regal purpose that we can read between the lines as we trace that record of disaster by land and of victory on the sea. The story of the land operations which began in loss at Mackinaw and ended in triumph at New Orleans is an ever- increasing assurance of the growing valor, persistence and patriotism of the American Soldier. Hampered by all the restrictions that must spring from a weak and wavering govern- ment, from internal dissensions and political strifes, from raw and unsteady comrades and from the disheartening incom- petency of generals who would be leaders but could not, the soldiers of the United States learned steadiness from disaster and determination from disgrace, and gradually developed into seasoned fighters who could play on even terms with the British invaders. Thus, step by step, the militia-man became the veteran. The gallantry of Croghan and his weakened garrison at Fort Stephenson. the irresistible charge of the mounted riflemen of Kentucky who broke the line of Proctor's regulars at the A LEADERLESS WAR. 155 battle of the Thames showed, each of them, that even thus early in the war the old-time American valor was by no means a forgotten quantity. The terrible bayonet charge with which in fair fight the valiant fellows of Scott's brigade hurled backward in flight an equal force of British regulars and turned the day at Chippeway ; the inspiring valor with which at Lundy's Lane the modest but gallant Miller led his men against the battery on the hill and carried it by an assault that was as full of danger as it was of bravery ; the equal gallantry with which Ripley and his comrades held that same captured hill-top against three des- perate assaults by the enemy's entire force; the bold and masterly sortie from beleaguered Fort Erie, by which General Gaines scattered the British besiegers, saved his post and, indeed, the whole New York frontier a dash which for brilliancy, so one author asserts, " has never been excelled by any event in the same scale in military history' these, as the war progressed, were convincing proofs that American courage only needed opportunity to display itself even upon the most uncertain field. When at Lundy's Lane Colonel James Miller was ordered to storm and capture the British battery to which reference has already been made and which, crowning a hill-top, was really the key to the enemy's position he made but the simple reply : "I'll try, sir" -and took it! "If success attend my steps," wrote, in a letter to his father, that General Pike who in 1813 led into Canada the successful invasion that cost him his life, " honor and glory await my name ; if defeat still shall it be said that we died like brave men and conferred honor, even in death, on the American name." " We demand the joint use with you of this Lake Ontario as a public highway, or you shall not i 5 6 A LEADERLESS WAR. detach your troops," said Colonel Van Rensselaer, standing under a flag of truce in British headquarters. This audacious demand being denied, the young American colonel declared that all negotiations for an armistice were at an end. The o boldness of his stand angered the British officers. They sprang to their feet while General Sheaffe, their commander, signifi- cantly placing his hand on his sword-hilt said sternly, " Sir, you take hi^h oround." Nothing daunted by this hostile attitude o o o J of his enemies Van Rensselaer as quickly clapped hand to his own sword-hilt and replied " I do, sir, and will maintain it ; but you dare not detach the troops/' Such pluck found recognition from the British soldier; he begged Van Rensselaer's pardon for his hastiness and agreed to the joint use of the Lake. On the ninth of May, 1813, there came a lull in the vigorous bom- bardment of Fort Meigs. Under a flag of truce Major Cham- bers representing the British besiegers was introduced into the presence of General Harrison, the commander of the American post. He presented a demand for the immediate surrender of the fort. " Assure General Proctor," was Harrison's reply, " that he will never have this post surrendered to him upon any terms. Should it fall into his hands it will be in a manner calculated to do him more honor than any capitulation could possibly do." So pluckily did Harrison keep his word that the " butcher of Frenchtown " fell back baffled and defeated. The spirit that lived in such words as these that came from the lips of officers, gradually found its counterpart in the sub- ordinates or privates who fought under them. The younger officers quickly imbibed this growing confidence and determi- nation. We read of one passage of arms within sound of the roar of Niagara marked for especial brilliancy and valor in which not a single American officer en