University of Virginia Library

HISTORY OF VIRGINIA

VOLUME II

CHAPTER I

WESTERN EXTENSION

The history of England, during the 16th Century, is the
story of the development of a small kingdom into a successful
rival with the gigantic power of Spain. Its history during the
17th Century and until the close of the French and Indian
War in 1763 was the story of a struggle of similar import with
France. Again, she was successful, and as a result of the war,
under the guidance of the great Minister of State, William
Pitt, she became the first power of the world. In 1758, Louisburg
was taken and the mouth of the St. Lawrence protected
against France. In 1759 Quebec was captured by the gallant
General Wolfe, who was killed in the assault. In the same
year, the British established their supremacy at sea by the
naval actions at Lagos and Quiberon Bay. In India Clive
won Bengal for England by the victory at Plassy (1757) and
French authority was finally overturned by Coote's victory
at Wandewash in 1760. In 1763, when peace was concluded
with the French, the British Empire covered a greater territory
than was ever before held by any country, ancient or
modern.

Its nucleus was found in the United Kingdom of England
and Scotland, and its outlying dependencies embraced Ireland,

General George Washington

the Island of Man, the Channel Islands, the Bermuda Islands,
the Bahama Islands, and many other bits of land in the sea;
all of Bengal, and other provinces in India; all of North America
east of the Mississippi, including Canada and New Foundland,
East and West Florida, and the thirteen English Colonies
lying between. Moderate affairs were even the Roman
Empire and the Empire of the Saracens compared with the
far flung dominions of England.

In effecting this result the Colonies played an important
part. They were zealous in prosecuting the war and contributed
liberally of men and money. As loyal subjects of the
King of England they gloried in the overthrow of the French.
Especially was this true of Virginia, which began the war. It
was a Virginia governor, Robert Dinwiddie, who lodged the
first protest against the plan of the French to hem in the English
Colonies by a line of forts reaching from Lake Erie down
the Ohio and down the Mississippi to its mouth. It was a
young Virginia officer, Washington, who acted as Dinwiddie's
agent in voicing the protest, and when the protest was disregarded
fired the first shot in the war which followed, and Virginia
blood was the first American blood to flow in this war.
The forces set in action at this time did not really end till the
overthrow of Napoleon in 1814. That shot of Washington
stirred up not only the French and Indian War in America
and the Seven Years War in Europe, but the American Revolution
and the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars. Of the
true significance of the French and Indian War William
Makepeace Thackeray expressed the idea better than any
other writer. In his "The Virginians—A Tale of the Last
Century," he says: "It was strange that in a savage forest
of Pennsylvania a young Virginia officer should fire a shot and
waken up a war which was to last for sixty years, which was
to cover his own country and pass into Europe, to cost France
her American Colonies, to sever ours from us and create the
great Western Republic; to rage over the Old World when extinguished
in the New, and of all the myriads engaged in the

vast contest, to leave the prize of the greatest fame with him,
who struck the first blow."

During the war, the Virginians, while contributing a fair
proportion of men and money, for which they were thanked by
the King, afforded in two cases services which were eminently
spectacular and praiseworthy. These were the timely protection
given in 1755 to the routed British Army under Braddock
by the Virginia militia under Washington, and a similar
service rendered the British troops under Major Grant by
Captain Thomas Bullett and his company in 1759. In money
Virginia provided the sum of half a million pounds sterling.

But the tide which bore Great Britain to a pitch of unprecedented
glory began to recede in a very little time after
peace was declared in 1763. Up to this time the Mother
Country, beyond attempting to regulate commerce, had interfered
very little in the current of affairs on this side of the
Atlantic. Some drastic action had been taken against New
England in 1682, but the interference had been due to the
tyranny of the ruling orders there, who had kept the people
at large in a state of political slavery. The new rule under
Andros endured only for a short time, and though tyrannical,
led to better conditions, for out of it came a new charter to
Massachusetts (1691), which broadened the franchise and
lessened the tyranny of the ecclesiastics. Nevertheless, the
proposition remained true that the American Colonies down
to 1763 were semi-independent communities, who disregarded
even the few laws by which England sought to assert her
authority. This was principally due to the increasing power
of France in Canada, which occupied all England's attention,
and rendered the policy of Colonial conciliation advisable.

In certain respects Virginia had stronger resemblances
to the Mother Country than any of the other Colonies. The
Colony had been settled, not like New England, by the representatives
of a single section of the English people having a
certain religious belief, but by representatives of the English
people at large. Then the great bulk of the early inhabitants

were, unlike the settlers in the Middle States, of English stock,
whose authority in Virginia was still dominant in 1763, despite
the great influx to the back of the Blue Ridge of hardy Scotch-Irish
settlers. In their religion, sports and pastimes the Virginians
and the English were very similar.

There were great differences, however, for while society
was organized at first on the principles which prevailed in
England of gentry, yeomanry and servants, these distinctions
eventually all passed away, and except for a limited number of
indentured white servants and convicts fresh from England,
the servant class in the 18th century was almost exclusively
negroes. The eighteenth century saw the rise in Virginia
of many men of great wealth and estates, who were proud of
their loyalty and imitated the English aristocracy in the
splendor of their establishments, but it must always be remembered
that their authority was not bottomed as in England
on white people, but on negro slaves. In Virginia during
the latter part of the 18th century every free white man
was master of his own actions, and in a certain sense the
poorer the man the more independent he was. This distinction
was noticed by Marquis de Chastellux, who wrote in his
Travels towards the end of the century that "a Virginian
never resembles a European peasant, he is always a freeman
and participates in the government."

This tendency to destroy the old public distinctions was
greatly promoted by the ease with which land might be obtained.
Rural life promoted the spirit of independence, and
color, not rank or wealth, became the fundamental distinction
in society. There was also the great liberality of the suffrage.
Down to 1736 free white manhood suffrage prevailed
in Virginia, for though in 1670 a freehold qualification was prescribed,
there was no limitation attached to the freehold, and
Spotswood tells us in 1713 that any one, though just out of the
condition of a servant, and owning half an acre of land, had as
much voice in the selection of the members of Assembly as

the man of the greatest estate in the country.[1] Even after
1736, when the freehold qualification was finally established,
many more people voted in Virginia than in Massachusetts,
where a native white servant class continued.[2]

This democratic tendency came bravely to the surface during
the seventeenth century under Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., and
found a great leader in Patrick Henry, Jr., at the dawn of the
American Revolution. The final result was seen in 1792, when
Virginia became the headquarters of the Democratic Republican
party led by Thomas Jefferson.

France being out of the way, the authorities in England
pursued an unfortunate plan of putting the colonies under
greater restrictions, a policy which eventually undermined the
affections of a people who loved to call themselves "His
Majesty's most ancient and loyal colony of Virginia." These
interferences, exasperating enough to be sure, proceeded
along many lines, but the most important were: First, Restricting
the Western Boundary; second, Regulating the currency,
and third, Imposing taxes by a vote of Parliament.
We shall first consider the question of the western boundary,
and observe how it affected the question of independence.

A proclamation of the King in 1763 forbade any trading
with the Indians or the issuance of any further grants for lands
beyond the ridge of the Alleghanies. This was a sore matter,
for Virginia from the earliest times had been accustomed to
look upon her boundary as extending indefinitely backward.
The charters of 1609 and 1612 had given her the territory from
sea to sea, and, though in 1624 the charter had been abrogated,
this had been understood to affect the government only and
not the political existence of the colony within the original
bounds, which remained intact, subject in its vacant lands
to the eminent domain of the King. These bounds were supposed
originally to have a front of two hundred miles on the
Atlantic and to embrace all the land between a line drawn due

west from its southern frontal end and a line drawn northwest
from its northern frontal end, and, out of this Virginia
territory, though very much against the wishes of the people,
Maryland and North Carolina had been carved.

Under this view the discovery of the West had been promoted
by the Virginia governors from the earliest days. Sir
William Berkeley had sent out various expeditions, and Spotswood
in surmounting the Blue Ridge looked, as he wrote to the
Board of Trade in 1710, to pushing occupation to the Ohio
River and thus cutting in two the line of communication proposed
by the French between Canada and their settlements on
the Mississippi. Later, in 1749, when the Ohio Company
obtained from the King a grant to 500,000 acres of land to be
surveyed on both sides of the Ohio, the authorities in England
in explicit terms recognized the jurisdiction of Virginia by
authorizing Sir William Gooch to issue his patent to said
company for 200,000 acres "within the dominion of Virginia."
This started a great boom for western land and the same year,
(1749) leave was given by the governor and council at Williamsburg
to Dr. Thomas Walker, John Lewis and others,
otherwise the Loyal Company, to survey 800,000 acres beyond
the Alleghanies in Southwest Virginia. In 1751, one hundred
thousand acres of land on the Greenbrier River, northwest and
west of the Cowpasture, were granted to the Greenbrier Company.
On the lands of these two grants, which stretched from
the Greenbrier to the Holston, hundreds of families had seated
themselves before the proclamation of 1763. The next evidence
of the territorial aspirations of Virginia is afforded by
the proclamation of Dinwiddie, issued February 27, 1754,
promising 200,000 acres of land "on the east side of the river
Ohio, within this Dominion," as an encouragement to such
soldiers as would enlist to build and support a fort on the
Ohio to resist the encroachment of the French. The legislature
took a hand and made their wishes known by an act passed
in 1752, for the encouragement of settlers on the waters of the

Mississippi, which lands were declared to be "within the territory
of Augusta County."

The stoppage of this westward movement naturally created
much uneasiness and discontent with not only those persons
who had already settled beyond the Alleghanies, but those who
had the rights of Virginia in mind and were stimulated by a
vision of her future greatness. But Washington took the view,
which was doubtless the view of most thinking men in Virginia,
at the time, that the King's injunction was only a temporary
one, intended to prevent clashes with the Indians until
a permanent treaty ceding the lands could be had without
blood shed. In view of her history, Virginia could not very
well dispute the technical right of the King to bestow vacant
lands back of the mountains, and even to confer an independent
jurisdiction, but this is far from saying that her citizens
ever professed any willingness to be thus delimited. As a
matter of fact, the Virginians looked upon the territory back
of the mountains as a natural right, whatever the technical
construction might be. At any rate, the right of the eminent
domain in that country registered in the king had in their
opinion passed away with the settlement of so many persons
under encouragement from both the English and Virginia
authorities.

Indeed, for some years after 1763, no serious attempt was
made by anybody to set up a government across the mountains
independent of the sovereignty of Virginia, and in the
settlement of the Indian claims the consent of Virginia was
always recognized as necessary by the government in England.
In 1768 Dr. Thomas Walker, appointed by Lord Botetourt,
was present as the representative of Virginia at Fort
Stanwix, when the Iroquois Indians were induced to surrender
to the crown of England all the lands west of the Alleghanies
as far south as the mouth of the Tennessee River.
When John Stuart, appointed by the English government as
superintendent of Indian affairs for the Southern District
of America, in a treaty the same year at Hard Labor, South

Baron Botetourt

Carolina, with the Cherokees, conceded some of this land in
the absence of any representative of the Virginia government,
Governor Botetourt promptly protested and Dr. Walker and
Andrew Lewis were sent by him to confer with Stuart in regard
to a new line with the Cherokees. The Treaty of Hard
Labor declared that the Western boundary of Virginia should
begin at the end of the boundary line between North Carolina
and Virginia, run thence to Col. Cheswell's mine on the Eastern
bank of the great Kanawha River, and thence in a straight
line to the confluence of said river and the River Ohio.

Stuart made no objections to the propositions of Virginia,
provided the change was not too extensive, and in his
answer to Botetourt, assured the governor that he would
"resume negotiations for a new line when his Majesty shall
be pleased to signify his pleasure." Botetourt evidently expected
this reply, for on the same day that he gave Walker
and Lewis their instructions, he wrote to Lord Hillsborough
of the necessity of this change. Since Stuart agreed in this
necessity, the Board of Trade in their report on the boundary,
dated April 20, 1769, made favorable comment on the subject,
but recommended that the expense of any new purchase should
be borne by the Colony of Virginia.

The House of Burgesses in December, 1769, addressed a
memorial to Governor Botetourt, urging that "a line beginning
at the Western termination of the North Carolina line,
and running thence in a due west direction to the Ohio river"
(meaning the Mississippi), was the proper and desirable
boundary. The Burgesses dwelt upon the great difficulty of
marking and protecting a line through a mountainous region
and complained bitterly of the fact that a great part of that
"most valuable country" lying below the mouth of the Kanawha
lately ceded by the Iroquois at Fort Stanwix, and within
which area lands had already been legally patented, would be
separated and divided from the British Territory.[3]

To this memorial Stuart made an elaborate answer in

which he asserted that the permission of settlement so far to
the westward would arouse the hostility of every tribe and
cause another Indian war. His opinion in the end prevailed,
for the most part, and the House determined on June 15, 1770,
to enter upon a treaty with the Cherokees "for the lands
lying within a line to be run from a place where the North
Carolina line terminates in a due west direction until it intersects
Holston River and from thence to the mouth of the
Great Kanawha." For this concession Virginia agreed to
pay two thousand five hundred pounds, and the money was
raised by an issue of currency notes. The House of Burgesses,
as their reason for renouncing the western boundary proposed
in their memorial, and for accepting this, named the
danger to the frontier people of delaying any longer to settle
a line of some sort.

It may be, however, that the news from London of the
activity of certain individuals, known as the Walpole Company,
to establish an independent colony on the back of the
Alleghanies was of deciding influence upon their minds.
Hillsborough, the Colonial Secretary, approved, and at
Lochaber, Stuart made a treaty with the Cherokees in October,
1770, in which it was finally agreed that the line should follow
the course accepted by the Virginia Assembly. But when, in
the latter part of 1771, Col. John Donelson, representing Virginia,
proceeded to run the line, he broke it off, with the consent
of the Indian chiefs, who accompanied him, at the head
of the Louisa River, a branch of the West Fork of the Big
Sandy River.

Curious to say, however, when the line came to be marked
out by Col. Donelson and was represented on a map prepared
by Stuart himself, the Louisa River was identified with the
Kentucky River, thus greatly enlarging the territory conceded
to Virginia.

This act of Stuart, whether due to a mistake or to the influence
of financial interests, met a favorable reception in
London. Lord Dartmouth, who succeeded Lord Hillsborough

as Colonial Secretary, was a patron of the Walpole Company,
which was interested in the region of western Virginia. He
had, therefore, no objections to the proposed line, and of
course Virginians, who regarded it at best as a temporary
expedient, had none.[4]

The history of the Walpole Company is interesting. It
comprised such men as Thomas Walpole, Horace Walpole,
Samuel Wharton and Benjamin Franklin. They petitioned
the Lords of the Treasury for a grant of 20,000,000 acres within
the confines of Virginia, and proposed to set up an independent
government within the same. Montague, the agent of the
Colony, informed the Virginia Committee of Correspondence
regarding the petition, in a letter dated January 18, 1770,
and warned them of "the very great and opulent persons"
concerned in this affair. He entered a caveat at the Board of
Trade, "to whom," he said, "it will, of course, be referred for
consideration."

It would be too tedious to give all the details about the
matter. The project was not only opposed by the Virginia
Assembly but by Hillsborough, the Secretary of State for the
Colony, and the Board of Trade itself. October 5, 1770, Washington
wrote to Lord Botetourt that "the bounds of the proposed
colony would comprehend at least four-fifths of the land,
for which Virginia had paid two thousand five hundred pounds
sterling" and "would prove a fatal blow to the interests of
this country." To a personal and more interested purpose
he pressed the claims of himself and the other soldiers, to
whom had been promised 200,000 acres of land by Governor
Dinwiddie for participation in the French and Indian War.

Lord Botetourt died not long after this and William Nelson,
the President of the Council, in a letter dated October 18,
1770, put forth practically the same arguments against the
grant as Washington had done; though he did not dispute
the technical right of the Crown to form a new colony, or the
idea that "when that part of the country (meaning the back

country), should become sufficiently populated it might be a
wise and prudent measure."[5] There can be no doubt, however,
that the people of Virginia as a whole were vastly opposed
to the scheme.

William Nelson's administration lasted till the fall of
1771, when Lord Dunmore arrived in Virginia as governor,
and he already had formed a decided opinion against the Walpole
Company. He had been in the Colony but a few months
when he joined with Doctor Walker and Colonel Lewis in an
attempt to acquire the land added by the surveying party to
that which was first understood to have been purchased from
the Cherokees at the treaty of Lochaber. In spite of every
opposition the Walpole Company, on August 14, 1772, obtained
an order from the Privy Council favoring the proposed
grant, and the whole subject was thereupon referred again
to the Lords of Trade in order that the form of constitution
and other matters preliminary to the establishment of the new
colony might be considered and reported upon. This was not
done till April, 1773, when the draft of a representation to His
Majesty, containing propositions respecting the establishment
of the said government and the grant of land proposed to be
made, was reported and finally signed May 6th.

In this draft certain important concessions were made to
placate Virginia as to the loss of her territory. All land grants
which had been legally made within the ceded area of the Walpole
Company were confirmed by the Company. George
Mercer, agent for the old Ohio Company, whose ancient grant
was swallowed up in this wholesale proposition, was conciliated
by a promise of the governorship of the new colony
and by an allowance of two shares to his company. But this
was only the action of an agent without authority, and
at the first meeting of the Ohio Company afterwards, the
agreement made by Mercer was repudiated. George Mason,
who was a member of the Ohio Company, wrote an able paper

in 1773 in support of his Company's claims, and the rights of
Virginia.[6]

That the scheme failed at any time to secure any great support
in Virginia is shown by a petition of the settlers living
on the frontiers in Augusta, Botetourt and Fincastle Counties,
protesting against their annexation to the Colony of Vandalia,
as this proposed province was called.

Lord Dunmore, whatever his motive, continued loyal on this
question to the interests of the colony of which he was governor.
In sending the petition of the frontiersmen to England,
April 2, 1774, he urged the rights of Virginia, and pointed
out the great need of some form of government to the back
country. Later in a letter to Dartmouth, dated December 24,
1774, he argued strongly that the confirmation of the treaty
of Lochaber had authorized the extension of the Virginia
boundary.

But Dunmore went still further in his effort to neutralize
the proposed charter, which still lacked the final touches to
make it operative. The prohibition against making any grants
of lands west of the Alleghanies by the proclamation of 1763
remained unrepealed, but Dunmore ignored it. The Walpole
Company had agreed to protect all legal promises of land
made before 1770, and had specially provided for the promise
to the officers and soldiers made in 1754 by Dinwiddie. Their
intention was to take out for them 200,000 acres in some unbroken
tract, but Dunmore, under the sagacious tutoring of
Washington, permitted the total to be divided into twenty
different localities, and surveyors were sent in every direction
to select the "best sites" without regard to neighborhood.

This garbling of land was quite contrary to the plans of the
promoters of Vandalia, as the proposed new province was
called, and they raised much complaint.[7]

Dunmore also extended the rewards made to the British
troops under the proclamation of 1763 to the provincial troops

as well, and, through an order made by him in Council, December
15, 1774, these troops were authorized to locate their lands
whenever they should desire; and every officer was allowed a
distinct survey for every thousand acres.

The result was that the year 1773 was an active one for
both speculators and settlers in the back country. Their
operations extended far down into the Ohio Valley. It was in
1773 that Harrodsburg was founded and that the town of
Louisville was laid out by Dr. John Connolly, the western
agent of Lord Dunmore.

Lord Dartmouth severely rebuked Lord Dunmore, and forbade
him to continue his course, but Lord Dunmore answered
the complaints and censure with the assertion that he did not
suppose the proclamation of 1763 was any longer in force and
that, never having received any official notice of the lands of
the proposed colony of Vandalia, he supposed the treaty of
Lochaber had opened for settlement the western territory as
far as the Ohio.

In the meantime, on October 28, 1773, the attorney general
of England and the solicitor general were requested by the
Privy Council to prepare the grant of land to the Walpole
Company, but the excitement over the tea in Boston harbor
occasioned a new delay. Samuel Wharton, the leading and
most active member, prepared another memorial on the subject,
and a committee of the Privy Council recommended on
August 12, 1774, that the King comply with the petition. But
with the first Continental Congress, which met on September
5th, all real authority over Virginia passed away from England.
In the spring of 1775, the draft of the royal grant to
the Walpole Company was actually prepared, but the president
of the Privy Council requested Walpole and his associates
to wait until hostilities which had then begun between
Great Britain and her colonies, should cease. By the Revolution
the eminent domain possessed by the King in vacant
lands devolved upon the Commonwealth, and the Sovereignty
of Virginia under the charter of 1609 extended to all the western

country severed from England and not actually granted
away by previous charters.

Not content with antagonizing the policy of the English
with regard to the Walpole Company, Dunmore prepared himself
to contend for territory north and west of Vandalia. The
Pennsylvania western line was currently supposed by Virginians
to run much more easterly than the subsequent survey
proved to be the case. It was believed by Dunmore that when
the line should be run, the forks of the Ohio would fall several
miles to the west. Accordingly, upon the petition of the inhabitants,
Dunmore sent his agent, Connolly, to take possession
of the territory where Fort Duquesne once stood.
Connolly occupied the Fort, then called Fort Pitt, which had
been abandoned by the British troops, and rechristened it Fort
Dunmore. The consequence of this action was that Pennsylvania
officials showed their resentment and arrested Connolly
and threw him in jail, which brought a protest from the Virginia
Legislature and a recommendation to the Governor to
make overtures to Pennsylvania for the fixing of a temporary
line, until the true boundary should be ascertained. Connolly
was soon released.

Following this there broke out an Indian War, which still
further complicated the situation. The Shawnees, the best
fighting Indians on the continent, had formerly inhabited the
valley of the Cumberland River and looked upon the present
territory of Kentucky as their own, though they had been
living for many years north of the Ohio in subordination to
the Six Nations. They were, therefore, not satisfied with the
treaty of Fort Stanwix, and began intrigues with the western
Indians. But they did not succeed to any great extent in
forming a confederacy, the Mingos being their chief reliance.
Murders occurred from time to time. Near the end of 1773
Daniel Boone went with a party of five families to make a settlement
in Kentucky. At Powell's Valley, on or near the tenth
of October, as they approached the Cumberland Gap, the
young men who had charge of the pack horses and cattle in

the rear were suddenly attacked by Indians. Boone's eldest
son, and all of the rest but one, were killed on the spot. The
survivors of the party were forced to turn back to the settlement
on the Clinch River. When the Cherokees were summoned
from Virginia to give up the offenders, they shifted the
accusation from one tribe to another, and the application for
redress had no effect. Later a white man killed an Indian at
a horse-race on the frontier, notwithstanding the company in
which he was tried to restrain him. This was the first Indian
blood shed by a white man since Bouquet's treaty in 1764.
Other conflicts ensued, but yet no Indian war. It became
known to Connolly that messages were passing between the
tribes of the Ohio, the western Indians and the Cherokees, and
on the 21st of April, 1774, John Connolly sent an open letter
to his agents on the Ohio to be on the alert.

Some frontiersmen understood this as a declaration of
war, though Connolly may not have so intended it. At any
rate it was followed by the murder of several Indian parties
in cold blood, among them being some relatives of Logan, a
Cayuga chief, by one Greathouse and his drunken companions.
The Shawnees and their allies, the Mingos, Cayugas and
Iowas flew to arms. The settlers threw themselves in their
stockade forts or fled to the east for safety. The war was seen
as an "Opportunity" by both Dunmore and the Virginians.
Dunmore ordered the county lieutenants of the western counties
to call out the militia and two armies were to be led in the
region of the old northwest to contend there for the rights of
the Old Dominion, despite the proclamation of 1763 and an act
of Parliament called the Quebec Act, which added the country
west of Pennsylvania to Quebec.

General Andrew Lewis was to command one of the armies
and Dunmore the other, both together, according to Dunmore,
consisting of 3,000 men.

Early in September the troops under command of General
Lewis rendezvoused at Lewisburg, in the County of Greenbrier.
They consisted of two regiments under Colonel William

Fleming, of Botetourt, and Colonel Charles Lewis, of
Augusta. At Camp Union, as Lewisburg was then called, they
were joined by a company under Colonel John Field, of Culpeper;
one from Bedford, under Colonel Thomas Buford, and
two from the Holston settlement (Washington County), under
Captains Shelby and Haubert. On the 11th of September,
General Lewis, with eleven hundred men, commenced his
march through the wildernesses, piloted by Captain Matthew
Arbuckle. On the 30th of September, after a march of 160
miles, they reached Point Pleasant, at the juncture of the
Kanawha and Ohio, appointed for the meeting place with
Lord Dunmore and his northern army enlisted from Frederick,
Dunmore and adjoining counties.

Not finding him there, Lewis dispatched some men to Fort
Pitt in quest of his Lordship but before their return the affair
had come to blows. The Indians, headed by Cornstalk, their
chief, crossed the Ohio on the evening of the ninth of October,
and began the battle on the next morning. Had it not been for
two hunters, who set out very early in the morning from
Lewis' camp and discovered the Indians, they might have
surprised and destroyed Lewis and his army, who had no suspicion
that the enemy were so near. The fight was obstinately
contested, and lasted the whole day. Finally the savages gave
way and at night retreated across the river. Colonel Charles
Lewis, and Colonel Field, who had served with Braddock, and
Captains Buford, Morrow, Murray, Ward, Cundiff, Nelson
and McClenachan, and lieutenants Allen, Goldsby and Dillon
were killed and Colonel Fleming was severely wounded.

The total loss of the Virginians in this action has been
variously estimated at from forty to seventy-five men killed
and one hundred and forty wounded. Some censure was attached
to General Lewis for remaining with the reserves to
defend the camp, and not leading the attack. It is claimed
that this conduct prevented his promotion by Congress during
the Revolutionary War. The loss of the savages was never
fully ascertained but the bodies of thirty-three slain were

found, and it is known that many of the killed were thrown
into the Ohio during the engagement. Cornstalk displayed
great skill and courage at Point Pleasant, and during the day,
amid the din of arms, his sonorous voice could be heard
exclaiming in his native tongue: "Be strong, be strong."

In the meantime, Lord Dunmore with the Northern Army
of a thousand men, instead of proceeding to the mouth of the
Kanawha to effect a junction with Lewis, crossed the Ohio and
marched upon the Indian settlements. Near Chillicothe, a
Shawnee town on the banks of the Scioto, he made a fort and
called it Camp Charlotte after the Queen of England. On the
march hither he sent a runner to Lewis to join him at Chillicothe.
Soon after the Indians sued him for peace, and thereupon
he sent another runner with orders for Lewis to stop his
march.

Lewis, after the defeat of the Indians, erected a small fort
at Point Pleasant and, leaving a small garrison to hold it,
crossed the Ohio, and, disregarding the Governor's second
order, which met him on the way, advanced within three miles
of Dunmore's camp, eager to deal another blow to the savages.

Dunmore, accompanied by an Indian chief, came to Lewis'
camp and reproved him for disobedience to orders, and
ordered him and his troops back home. And having appointed
a day in the next spring for a meeting of all the Ohio Indians,
Dunmore himself returned to Williamsburg. All sorts of
charges were afterwards brought against Dunmore in connection
with this affair, but he can scarcely be blamed for preferring
a peaceful solution to the war, to one achieved in
blood, as Lewis desired.

The significance of the battle of Kanawha was great. It
can hardly be considered the opening battle of the American
Revolution, as it is sometimes, for Dunmore's land policy
and Indian war were both against the express policy and
orders of the English government. In the next year, his confidential
agent, Connolly, was arrested on his way to the
Ohio, and beneath his saddle were discovered papers which

seemed to show a purpose to stir up the savages against the
Virginians, but conditions had at that time changed, and the
colony was in open rebellion against the English authority.
Lord Dunmore had an interest, it is true, in the Wabash Company,
formed in 1774 to settle the region north of the Ohio, but
certainly a sufficient explanation of the war lies in the long
friction existing between the Indians and Americans on the
Border. It is difficult to believe that Lord Dunmore, however
regarded, would have plunged the country into war in the
interests of land speculations, as is sometimes alleged.

Logan, the Cayuga chief, who had gratified his spirit of
revenge in a series of horrible butcheries and outrages, assented
to the peace, but he refused to attend with other chiefs
at Camp Charlotte, and sent his speech in a wampum belt by
an interpreter, which Mr. Jefferson immortalized by publishing
in his "Notes on Virginia."

But the effects of the war were epochal. By the victory
of the Great Kanawha, the settlers who poured into Kentucky
and Tennessee were effectually relieved from all immediate
peril from the Indians of the Northwest. It almost amounted
to the winning of the West, for had it not been possible to
occupy this region during the early years of the Revolutionary
War, it is not improbable that the treaty of 1783 might have
fixed the western boundary of the United States at the Alleghanies
instead of the Mississippi.

Ever since 1750, when Dr. Thomas Walker visited Kentucky
in the interest of the Loyal Company, the valleys of
Tennessee and Kentucky had been visited by traders and
hunters. In 1769 Captain William Bean, from Pittsylvania
County, built the first cabin on the Watauga, a source of the
Tennessee River. He was soon followed by many other early
adventurers, and in 1770 James Robertson, born in Brunswick
County, Virginia, spent sometime in the Watauga region.
Others came and settled in that country, and at first it was
supposed that Watauga was in Virginia. The settlers in that
region formed an association, known as the "Watauga Association,"
which was virtually an independent colony, but in

1776, on petition, it was received under the jurisdiction of
North Carolina. While it lasted, the most daring spirit in this
little state was John Sevier, born in Augusta County, Virginia.

The era of settlement in Kentucky began in 1769, when
Daniel Boone, with five other backwoodsmen, left his family
on the Yadkin river in North Carolina to make explorations
for a settlement in Kentucky. Boone returned to the Yadkin
in 1771, and in 1773 he visited again this region. An attack
was made upon him and his party by the Shawnees, from
which attack, as already stated, he lost his son. He returned
with his family to the Clinch River, where he remained for
sometime. After having served in conveying a party of surveyors
to the Falls of the Ohio, he settled himself in 1775
at Boonesborough, near the Kentucky River. Other parties
visited Kentucky, the McAfees from Botetourt County, Virginia,
and George Rogers Clark, from Albemarle. Most
significant, was the coming in 1774 of James Harrod, with a
large party from the Monongahela, who laid out the town of
Harrodsburg, and soon after Boonesborough, St. Asaphs and
Boiling Spring were begun and fortified by forts. Next
came the Transylvania Company, whose leading spirit was
Judge Richard Henderson, born in Hanover County, Virginia,
at that time a leading citizen of North Carolina, who claimed
all of Kentucky by purchase from the Cherokees, and called it
Transylvania.[8]

The Henderson Company advertised the sale of lands
and organized government over the settlement, but this was
denounced by Lord Dunmore in his proclamation dated March
31, 1774, as an invasion of the rights of Virginia. Thereupon
George Rogers Clark determined to contest Henderson's
claims and planned a meeting of the people, which he called at
Harrodsburg June 6, 1776, to have agents appointed, who
should treat with the Virginia Assembly for concessions and
advocate the establishment of an independent state in case
they should fail to secure it. When Clark reached Harrodsburg
on the day appointed, he found that a meeting had already

been held and that he and another had been appointed
to attend at Williamsburg and present a petition asking for
recognition as a separate county.

He set out for Williamsburg and learned before he got
there that the Legislature had adjourned. He pushed on and
after an interview with Governor Patrick Henry, presented
his petition to the Council, at the same time asking for 500
pounds of powder, then sorely needed for the defense of
Kentucky.

The Council offered to make a loan of the ammunition provided
Clark would himself become responsible, but this offer
he promptly rejected, saying, "if the country is not worth
protecting, it is not worth claiming." Fearful lest Clark
should seek protection from their neighbors, the French, the
Council finally acquiesced, and at the December session the
new county of Kentucky was established.

The adoption of a constitution by Virginia as an independent
state on June 29, 1776, transferred to the Commonwealth
the rights of the Crown, and a clause in this paper expressly
declared "that no purchase of lands should be made
of the Indian natives but in behalf of the public by authority of
the General Assembly." This was only a reaffirmation of a
policy repeatedly declared by Virginia respecting lands derived
from the Indians, as expressed in legislative action
reaching far back into Colonial times.

The pretensions of Henderson and his company were accordingly
suppressed, as were also those of the Indiana Company,
formed of traders who had obtained from the same
Indians, after the peace of 1763, as a compensation for injuries
inflicted on them, a cession of a tract of land on the Ohio south
of the Province of Pennsylvania. This difference was made
in the two cases. The Henderson Company having really performed
an important part in populating the country and establishing
a barrier against the Indians, were compensated by the
Legislature at its session, in October, 1778, by an assignment
of 200,000 acres on the Ohio and Green rivers.

When, however, Congress showed some disposition to

legislate in regard to these claims acquired from the Indians,
the Virginia Legislature, at its fall session in 1779, in a firm
but temperately worded paper protested that the "United
States hold no teritory but in right of some one individual
state in the Union," and the contrary assumption "would be
a violation of public faith, introduce a most dangerous precedent
which might hereafter be urged to deprive of territory
or subvert the sovereignty and government of any one or more
of the United States, and establish in congress a power which
in process of time must degenerate into an intolerable despotism."[9]

Thus Virginia, at the very threshold of our history, denied
this pretension of sovereignty in Congress, and firmly planted
herself on the doctrine of pure state sovereignty. Indeed none
of the other states took any other ground than this, and the
idea of the Union as a nation from the beginning was a growth
of subsequent development, which reached its acme of absurdity
in the messages of Lincoln eighty-two years later, when he
pretended to appeal to history to prove that a state had no
more dignity than a county.

In the clash of interests between the Colony of Virginia
and the Mother Country, manifested in the Western Expansion,
the contradictions in the aspirations of both were plainly
visible, and no doubt contributed to the final separation.
Alvord, to whose researches I am greatly indebted in writing
this chapter, states[10] that while born in Massachusetts, where
the Boston Massacre and the famous Tea Party were the all
important events, he is constrained to say that "whenever the
British ministers soberly and seriously discussed the American
problem, the vital phase to them was not the disturbances
of the maddening crowd of Boston and New York, but the
development of that vast transmontane region that was acquired
in 1763 by the treaty of Paris. In this development
the Virginians, as was usually the case, took the lead,[11] but not
always in the way desired by the authorities in England.