Volume I Part 14 (2/2)

85), ascribe to the earl treacherous motives. Brantz Mayer puts it thus: ”It was probably Lord Dunmore's desire to incite a war which would arouse and band the savages of the west, so that in the antic.i.p.ated struggle with the united colonies the British home-interest might ultimately avail itself of these children of the forest as ferocious and formidable allies in the onslaught on the Americans.” This is much too futile a theory to need serious discussion. The war was of the greatest advantage to the American cause; for it kept the northwestern Indians off our hands for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; and had Lord Dunmore been the far-seeing and malignant being that this theory supposes, it would have been impossible for him not also to foresee that such a result was absolutely inevitable. There is no reason whatever to suppose that he was not doing his best for the Virginians; he deserved their grat.i.tude; and he got it for the time being. The accusations of treachery against him were afterthoughts, and must be set down to mere vulgar rancor, unless, at least, some faint shadow of proof is advanced. When the Revolutionary war broke out, however, the earl, undoubtedly, like so many other British officials, advocated the most outrageous measures to put down the insurgent colonists.

17. See Brantz Mayer, p. 86, for a very proper attack on those historians who stigmatize as land-jobbers and speculators the perfectly honest settlers, whose encroachments on the Indian hunting-grounds were so bitterly resented by the savages. Such attacks are mere pieces of sentimental injustice. The settlers were perfectly right in feeling that they had a right to settle on the vast stretches of unoccupied ground, however wrong some of their individual deeds may have been. But Mayer, following Jacob's ”Life of Cresap,” undoubtedly paints his hero in altogether too bright colors.

18. Sappington, Tomlinson, and Baker were the names of three of his fellow miscreants. See Jefferson MSS.

19. At Greenbriar. See ”Narrative of Captain John Stewart,” an actor in the war.--_Magazine of American History_, Vol. I., p. 671.

20. Loudon's ”Indian Narratives,” II., p. 223.

21. See ”American Pioneer,” I., p. 189.

22. Letter of George Rogers Clark, June 17. 1798. In Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, Vol. I. (preserved in Archives of State Department at Was.h.i.+ngton)

23. Witness the testimony of one of the most gallant Indian fighters of the border, who was in Wheeling at the time; letter of Col. Ebenezer Zane, February 4, 1800, in Jefferson MSS.

24. Jefferson MSS. Deposition of John Gibson, April 4, 1800.

25. _Do_. Deposition of Wm. Huston, April 19, 1798; also depositions of Samuel McKee, etc.

26. ”Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., p. 468. Letter of Devereux Smith June 10, 1774, Gibson's letter, Also Jefferson MSS.

27. _Historical Magazine_, I., p. 168. Born in Albemarle County, Va., November 19, 1752.

28. Military Journal of Major Ebenezer Denny, with an introductory memoir by William H. Denny (Publication of the Hist. Soc. of Penn.), Phil., 1860, p. 216

29. The Cresap apologists, including even Brantz Mayer, dwell on Cresap's n.o.bleness in not ma.s.sacring Logan's family! It was certainly to his credit that he did not do so, but it does not speak very well for him that he should even have entertained the thought. He was doubtless, on the whole, a brave, good-hearted man--quite as good as the average borderer; but nevertheless apt to be drawn into deeds that were the reverse of creditable. Mayer's book has merit; but he certainly paints Logan too black and Cresap too white, and (see Appendix) is utterly wrong as to Logan's speech. He is right in recognizing the fact that in the war, as a whole, justice was on the side of the frontiersmen.

30. Devereux Smith's letter. Some of the evil-doers afterwards tried to palliate their misdeeds by stating that Logan's brother, when drunk, insulted a white man, and that the other Indians were at the time on the point of executing an attack upon them. The last statement is self-evidently false; for had such been the case, the Indians would, of course, never have let some of their women and children put themselves in the power of the whites, and get helplessly drunk; and, anyhow, the allegations of such brutal and cowardly murderers are entirely unworthy of acceptance, unless backed up by outside evidence.

31. Jefferson MSS., 5th Series, Vol. I. Heckewelder's letter.

32. Jefferson MSS. Deposition of Col. James Smith, May 25, 1798.

33. _Do_., Heckewelder's letter.

34. ”Am. Archives,” IV., Vol. I., p. 475.

35. _Do_., p. 1015.

36. _Do_., p. 475.

37. _Do_., p. 418.

38. _Do_., p. 774. Letter of the Earl of Dartmouth, Sept. 10, 1774.

A sufficient answer, by the way, to the absurd charge that Dunmore brought on the war in consequence of some mysterious plan of the Home Government to embroil the Americans with the savages. It is not at all improbable that the Crown advisers were not particularly displeased at seeing the attention of the Americans distracted by a war with the Indians; but this is the utmost that can be alleged.

39. _Do_., p. 808.

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