University of Virginia Library

THE BATTLE OF POINT PLEASANT.

Accordingly arrangements were made preparatory to leaving on the
following morning (Monday, 10th); but early on that morning two soldiers,
named Robertson and Hickman, went up the Ohio in quest of deer,
and after having gone a short distance they discovered a large body of
Indians, just arising from their encampment. The soldiers were fired
upon and Hickman was killed, but Robertson escaped and ran into camp,
hallooing, as he ran, that he had seen a "body of Indians covering four
acres of ground." This force consisted of the flower of the confederated
tribes, who had abandoned their towns on the Pickaway plains to meet
the Virginia troops and give them battle before the two corps could be
united. Within an hour after the presence of the Indians had been discovered,
a general engagement took place, extending from the bank of the
Ohio to that of the Kanawha, and distant a half a mile from the point.

General Lewis, who had witnessed a similar scene at Braddock's defeat,
acted with steadiness and decision in this great emergency. He arranged
his forces promptly and advanced to meet the enemy. Colonel
Charles Lewis (brother of the General), with three hundred men, formed
the right line, met the Indians at sunrise, and sustained the first attack.
He fell, mortally wounded, in the first fire, and was carried to the rear,
where he shortly after expired. His troops, receiving almost the entire
weight of the charge, were broken and gave way. Colonel Flemming,
commanding the left wing, advanced along the bank of the Ohio, and in
a few moments fell in with the right wing of the Indian line, which
rested upon the river. The effect of the first shock was to stagger the
left wing as it had done the right, and its commander was severely
wounded at an early stage of the conflict. But his men succeeded in
reaching a piece of timber land and maintained their position until the
reserve under Colonel Field reached the ground. It will be seen by examining
Lewis' plan of the engagement, and also the ground on which
the battle was fought, that an advance on his part and a retreat on the
part of his opponents necessarily weakened their lines by constantly increasing
their length, and if it extended from river to river, he would
be forced, eventually, to break his line or leave his flanks unprotected.
Writers upon the subject of Indian tactics inform us that it was the
great object of his generalship to preserve his flanks and overthrow those
of his enemy. They continued, therefore, contrary to their usual practice,
to dispute the ground with the pertinacity of veterans along the
whole line, retreating slowly from tree to tree until 1 o'clock P. M., when
they reached a strong position. Here both armies rested within rifle

range of each other until late in the evening, when General Lewis, seeing
the impracticability of dislodging the Indians by the most vigorous
attack, and sensible of the great danger which must arise to his army if
the contest were not decided before night, detached the three companies
commanded by Captains Isaac Shelby, George Mathews and John Stewart,
with orders to proceed up the Kanawha river, and under cover of
the banks of Crooked creek (a stream emptying into the Kanawha about
half a mile from the point) to attack the Indians in the rear. The
maneuver thus planned and executed had the desired effect, and gave to
the colonial army a complete victory. The Indians, finding themselves
suddenly encompassed between two armies, attacked in front and rear,
and doubtless believing that in the rear was the long expected reinforcement
under Colonel Christian, soon gave way, and about sundown commenced
a precipitate retreat across the Ohio, toward their towns on
the Scioto.

The desperate nature of this conflict may be inferred by the deep-seated
animosity of the parties toward each other, the high courage which both
possessed, and the consequences which hung upon the issue. The victory
was indeed most decisive, and many were the advantages obtained by it;
but they were dearly bought. One-half of the commissioned officers had
fallen, seventy-five men lay dead upon the field, and one hundred and forty
wounded. Among the slain were Colonels Lewis and Field; Captains
Buford, Morrow, Wood, Cundiff, Wilson and McClanahan, and Lieutenants
Allen, Goldsby and Dillon. The loss of the Indians could never be
ascertained, nor could the number engaged be known. Their army was
composed of warriors from the different nations north of the Ohio, and comprised
the flower of the Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo, Wyandotte and
Cayuga tribes, led on by their respective chiefs, at the head of whom was
Cornstalk, Sachem of the Shawnees, and King of the Northern Confederacy.
Never, perhaps, did men exhibit a more conclusive evidence of
bravery in making a charge and fortitude in withstanding a charge than
did these undisciplined soldiers of the forest on the field at Point Pleasant.
Such, too, was the heroic bravery displayed by those composing the Virginia
army on that occasion that high hopes were entertained of their future
distinction. Nor were these hopes disappointed, for in the various scenes
through which they subsequently passed, the pledge of after eminence then
given was fully redeemed, and the names of Shelby, Campbell, Lewis,
Mathews, Moore and others, their compatriots in arms on the bloody field
at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, have been inscribed in brilliant
characters upon the roll of fame. The following gentlemen, with others
of high reputation in private life, were officers in the battle of Point
Pleasant: General Isaac Shelby, the first Governor of Kentucky, and
Secretary of War during Monroe's administration; General William
Campbell and Colonel John Campbell, heroes of King's Mountain and

Long Island; General William Shelby, one of the most favored citizens of
Tennessee, often honored with confidence of that State; General Andrew
Moore, of Rockbridge county, the only man ever elected by Virginia to
a seat in the United States Senate from the country west of the Blue
Ridge; Colonel John Stewart, of Greenbrier; General Tate, of Washington
county, Virginia; Colonel William McKee, of Lincoln county,
Kentucky; Colonel John Steele, afterward a Governor of Mississippi
Territory; Colonel Charles Cameron, of Bath county, Virginia; General
Bazaleel Wells, of Ohio, General George Mathews, a distinguished officer
in the war of the Revolution, the hero of Brandywine, Germantown and
Guilford, a Governor of Georgia, and a Representative from that State in
the Congress of the United States; Captain William Clendenin, the first
Representative from Mason county in the Legislature of Virginia; General
Andrew Lewis, a Brigadier-General during the Revolution, twice wounded
at the siege of Fort Necessity, the commandant of the troops that drove
Lord Dunmore from Gwynn's Island in 1776, and announced his orders of
attack by putting the match to the first gun, an eighteen-pounder, himself.
Robertson, who gave the first alarm at Point Pleasant, afterward rose to
the rank of Brigadier-General in Tennessee.

The day after the battle Colonel Christian, at the head of three hundred
Fincastle troops, arrived at Point Pleasant and at once proceeded to bury
the dead. A fort was hastily erected and named Fort Randolph, in which
a garrison of one hundred men were left. The Virginia army, made
eager by success and maddened by the loss of so many brave officers,
crossed the Ohio and dashed away in pursuit of the beaten and disheartened
savages. Our next information of the Virginians is that a march of
eighty miles through an untrodden wilderness has been performed, and on
the 24th of October we find them encamped on Congo creek, in what is
now Pickaway township, Pickaway county, within striking distance of the
Indian towns, but there again compelled to await the movements of the
Tory governor, at the head of the left wing, who was then encamped further
north, at a point called Camp Charlotte, and from which place he
sent a messenger to General Lewis, forbidding his further advance into the
hostile country, as he (Dunmore) was now negotiating for peace with the
Indians. The peace was concluded, a junction of the two divisions was
formed, and the whole army returned by way of Fort Gower (at the
mouth of the Muskingum) to Virginia. Thus ended Dunmore's war.

To the student of history no truth is more patent than this—that the
battle at Point Pleasant was the first in the series of the Revolution, the
flames of which were then being kindled by the oppression of the mother
country, and the resistance of the same by the feeble but determined
colonies. It is a well-known fact that emissaries of Great Britain were
then inciting the Indians to hostilities against the frontier for the purpose
of distracting attention, and thus preventing the consummation of the
union which was then being formed to resist the tyranny of their armed

oppressors. It is also well known that Lord Dunmore was an enemy of
the colonists, by his rigid adherence to the royal cause and his efforts to
induce the Indians to co-operate with the English, and thus assist in reducing
Virginia to subjection. It has been asserted that he intentionally
delayed the progress of the left wing of the army that the right might be
destroyed at Point Pleasant. Then, at the mouth of the Great Kanawha
river, on the 19th day of October, 1774, there went whizzing through the
forest the first volley of a struggle for liberty which, in the grandeur and
importance of its results, stands without a parallel in the history of the
world. On that day the soil upon which Point Pleasant now stands, drank
the first blood shed in defense of American liberty, and it was there decided
that the decaying institutions of the Middle Ages should not prevail in
America, but that just laws and priceless liberty should be planted forever
in the domains of the New World.

Historians, becoming engrossed with the more stirring scenes of the
Revolution, have failed to consider this sanguinary battle in its true import
and bearing upon the destiny of our country, forgetting that the colonial
army returned home only to enlist in the patriot army, and on almost every
battle-field of the Revolution represented that little band who stood face to
face with the savage allies of Great Britain at Point Pleasant. But all
did not return. Many thus early paid the forfeit of their lives, but they
were not forgotten. Though no marble marks their place of rest, and no
historian has inscribed their names on the roll of the honored dead, yet
their memory lives in the rehearsal around the cabin fires of the mountains
of West Augusta, and in the rustic mountain ballads which were chanted
many years after the storm of the Revolution had spent its force and died
away.