The American Revolution: The Western Front

The American War for Independence was not only fought in New England, Virginia and the Carolinas, but also on the western frontier where the English colonies had their own territorial claims. In fact, these claims were one of the major causes of the war. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 passed by King George III had attempted to deal with the long standing conflicts with the Indians by forbidding the American colonists from settling on or buying any lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. The intention of the King was to give the Indians some assurance of their rights as well as to get a hold on the trend of westward expansion to end the continuing conflicts between the Indians and settlers moving on to their lands. Many colonists, however, viewed this as a sinister policy meant to hem them in on the North American coast. They viewed it as a sell out by the King to the Indians, robbing them of lands they believed were destined to belong to them. Many colonies, especially Virginia, had made extensive claims on western lands and were not happy about Britain granting the Indians any recognition of ownership to these territories which they had won through the French and Indian War.

It is important to note that the ideal of expansion across the whole of North America did not start with the generally accepted age of Manifest Destiny in the next century. From the very start the revolutionaries in the colonies envisioned their future domain stretching across all of North America, including Canada and the Caribbean. This meant that the war would not be confined to the colonies itself as was proven early on when the revolutionary forces attempted to conquer Quebec. It also meant that sooner or later the war would spread to the western frontier of British North America. The man calling the shots for the Crown in this region was Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton at Ft Detroit, Michigan. He was appointed in 1775 to be Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Province of Quebec, which included the areas of Ohio, Illinois and other areas after the passing of the Quebec Act in 1774. This was also an act which the colonists opposed as it recognized French civil law and allowed religious freedom to the French Catholics which the radical Protestants of Puritan New England viewed with disgust.

Few histories comment on the state of affairs on the western frontier when Hamilton arrived to take up his post. Revolution had already broken out and the local French and Indian peoples under his administration were mostly the traditional enemies of Great Britain. To confront this situation, he had only a small garrison of British troops and knew he would have to rely on quick thinking and a great deal of diplomatic talent if he was to succeed in his new assignment. The idea of enlisting the Indians on the side of the Crown against the revolutionaries was always a controversial one and many in Great Britain opposed it. At first, the British hoped to be able to keep the Indians out of the conflict but necessity soon forced that policy to change. By 1777 it was clear that this was not going to be an easy war for Great Britain and Governor Hamilton received instructions to enlist the Indians on the side of the Crown to attack and raid colonial settlements in the claims of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Fortunately, soon after arriving Hamilton had worked hard to make friends and form alliances with the local Indian chiefs.

The colonists viewed this as the most inhuman of policies. Allying with the Indians, whom they viewed as bloodthirsty savages, to prey upon colonials, soldier and civilian alike, was viewed as nothing less than making a deal with the devil. Many more liberal types in Britain also opposed the use of Indian warriors in the conflict on any front and denounced the policy at home. Everyone knew that this would mean the death of innocents as well as rebels, but Governor Hamilton did what he could to keep his Indian allies under control. He sent British officers along with the Indian war parties and sometimes stiffened them with French Canadian militiamen to try to reign in their more violent tendencies, but of course this was not always entirely successful. These war parties raided western Pennsylvania as well as what is now Kentucky which was, at that time, claimed by the colony of Virginia.

The chief Crown official in the central Illinois country was a French soldier, Philippe-Francois de Rastel de Rocheblave who had very few troops on hand since most of the British regulars had been withdrawn in 1776 to cut costs and deploy to more vital areas. Resources of every kind were in short supply. There were only about 1,000 Europeans and Americans in the region, mostly French in nationality and roughly 600 slaves amongst a population of thousands of Indians. Just across the Ohio River in Kentucky though there were a fair number of settlers, mostly from Virginia, and these came under attack by the British led Indian war parties armed and directed by Hamilton in Detroit. The same year that the troubles began an effort to strike back was proposed by a young frontiersman named George Rogers Clark, 24, who was a major in the Kentucky County militia of Virginia. He wrote to Virginia Governor Patrick Henry that the British posts in Illinois could be easily taken and then Detroit itself threatened by a relatively small revolutionary force. Clark had sent spies into the region and they had reported that the French population, not surprisingly, were not exactly steadfastly loyal to King George III and that Kaskaskia was virtually undefended. Clark relayed this to Patrick Henry who agreed to meet with him to arrange an offensive.

In October, 1777, Clark traveled over the Wilderness Road to Williamsburg where he met Governor Henry after being joined by about 100 Kentucky settlers who were fleeing from the British and Indian attacks. Clark put his plan forward but Henry was skeptical. Many people did not want to see any action by the colonials for fear that it would only make things worse. However, a small number of very elite Virginians looking to the future of their own colonial expansion endorsed the plan such as Thomas Jefferson, George Mason and George Wythe. These men and the enthusiastic Major Clark finally won the Governor over to their way of thinking and the Virginia General Assembly endorsed a very vague plan for an offensive against the British in the Illinois country. Everything was done very secretively and all that was said publicly was that Clark was to raise troops for the defense of Kentucky. He was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia (not the Continental Army) and set about raising what became known as the Illinois Regiment. His secret instructions were for an attack on the vulnerable town of Kaskaskia after which he was given authority to proceed as he saw fit.

George Rogers Clark in old age and a CGI of him as he would have looked at 24

Money was in short supply though and Clark was not able to recruit the full 350 men that had been authorized. Americans who wanted to fight had already had a few years of being recruited by the Continental Army and other colonial militias. The rough life on the frontier, far from civilization, was not always appealing and some also felt that this was a useless diversion of resources meant only to enrich an elite few and which would have little impact on what was considered the more vital front of the war in New England. Many settlers in the region were also more concerned with marauding Cherokees than the British in Illinois and Indiana and they hesitated leaving their homes undefended to go north to attack the British. There was also the fact that the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania had a long standing dispute over the western frontier territory and this came up again quickly when questions were asked as to who was going to control these soon to be conquered lands since it was a Virginia managed operation. Naturally there were not many Pennsylvanians willing to fight for what might only benefit Virginia.

One of the ways recruitment was encouraged was by playing upon anti-British sentiment and the savagery of the Indians. Stories circulated that Governor Hamilton in Detroit was paying bounties to the Indians for every scalp they brought him; presumably taken from colonial revolutionaries. He was dubbed Hamilton the Hair Buyer by the rebels though there are a few reasons to be skeptical about this story. For one thing, Hamilton did not exactly have a vast treasury at his disposal and it would be hard to verify where a scalp came from and if Indians were paid so handsomely for any scalp they presented it might very well endanger friend and foe alike. Nonetheless, the story was widely believed and is still generally accepted in most US history books. Even with these propaganda efforts the expedition had to be put off for a time as Clark tried to recruit more men. Finally they departed by boat on May 12, 1778 with three companies numbering about 150 frontier militia in total.

This was an unusual expedition in that it was a distinctly Virginian campaign for their own territorial protection and colonial expansion, evidenced by the 20 families of settlers who accompanied the troops to Kentucky, but also one which served the interests of the wider war against the British. For example, along the way Clark was given supplies by the Continental Army commander on the western frontier General Edward Hand. Such cooperation, however, was not always returned. When Clark and his men reached Ft Randolph in what is now West Virginia the place had just been hit by an Indian attack yet Clark refused to assist in pursuing the raiders. Clearly, at this stage, it was the British and their native allies who were dominating the war on the frontier. Clark also had more troubles when the forces he expected in Kentucky had not arrived. He sent messages for additional troops to Colonel John Bowman, commander of the Kentucky militia but when these finally arrived he accepted only 20 of them and sent the rest back to defend the settlements.

At his base on Corn Island in the Ohio River Clark finally revealed to his men that their true mission was to invade the Illinois country. Most were enthusiastic but a few deserted and less than ten of these were apprehended. Clark was mostly concerned about secrecy in the loss of these troops but he kept his eye on the prize and began training and drilling his men for the attack on Kaskaskia. The settler families who had accompanied him moved on and established themselves in what would eventually become the modern city of Louisville, Kentucky. Good news did finally come when Clark got word from Pittsburg that the Kingdom of France had allied with the fledgling United States. This was to prove very helpful in securing the sympathies of the local French population who had previously been at least passively loyal to the British.

On June 24, 1778 Colonel Clark and his riflemen set off on their invasion, leaving behind seven men who were judged too weak for the rugged demands of the frontier. He had about 175 men in four companies; hardly of sufficient number to match their grand title of the Illinois Regiment. Relying on the element of surprise, Clark did not take the easiest route to Kaskaskia via the Mississippi River but instead marched overland across southern Illinois. On route they intercepted some American hunters led by John Duff who had just been in Kaskaskia and provided valuable information as well as agreeing to serve as guides on the expedition. The men tramped through dense forests and across open prairies before arriving outside Kaskaskia on the night of July 4, 1778. Poor planning meant that the troop had run out of food two days earlier and the weary and hungry men were considerably bad tempered by this point and highly motivated to take the town and fill their bellies. Just after midnight they slipped across the Kaskaskia river and captured the town without firing a shot. Ft Gage had only a token British garrison and the colonials easily stormed in and captured the place, surprising Rocheblave in his bed.

The first objective of the revolutionary campaign on the frontier had been a complete success and now was the time for diplomacy. Clark addressed the locals and asked for their support, presenting the news of the French alliance as encouragement. On the whole his words had the desired effect, especially after he convinced the parish priest, Father Pierre Gibault, that Virginia was not as radically Protestant as New England and that the rights and freedom of the Catholic Church would be respected. Townspeople took oaths to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the new United States of America. Those who were deemed too close to the British to be trusted, such as Rocheblave, were taken prisoner and sent back to Virginia. Throughout the rest of the month Clark used Kaskaskia as a base from which to extend US control throughout the region, taking in the allegiance of towns like Cahokia and Vincennes.

The colorful Father Gibault was instrumental in the taking of Vincennes. He offered his services to Colonel Clark and on July 14 the priest took some riflemen and rode into Vincennes. The town was easily persuaded to take the oath of allegiance and they garrisoned Ft Sackville with their own militia. Father Gibault was able to return to Colonel Clark in August and report that Vincennes was securely American and that the Stars and Stripes flew over Fort Sackville. It had cost Clark nothing and all he had to part with was one captain to go and take command of the French militia at Vincennes. It all seemed very glorious with such a string of bloodless victories, but the success was largely illusory. All Clark had really done was surprise a token garrison and claim a number of undefended villages. It was not until the following month that word reached Lt Governor Hamilton in Ft Detroit about the revolutionary invasion of the Illinois country and as soon as he learned this he took immediate action. The real fight was yet to come.

Hamilton was no novice when it came to military matters. He was a veteran of the French and Indian War and had risen to the rank of brigade major in the British army before entering the political arena. He quickly made preparations for a counterattack on Vincennes and was able to scrape together 30 British regulars, 145 French Canadian militia and 60 Ottawa warriors under the chief Egushawa. On October 7 they set out on the 300 mile wilderness trek to Vincennes. Hamilton enlisted the help of more Indian warriors along the way, even some who had pledged support to Clark when he had arrived in the area. By the time he reached Vincennes Hamilton had 500 troops and native warriors under his command. He arrived on December 17 and as soon as his force approached Ft Sackville the French militia garrisoning the place immediately deserted, leaving the few American colonials and their captain little choice but to surrender. Easy come was easy go for Colonel Clark as the French villagers who had been so quick to swear allegiance to the United States just as quickly renounced their oaths and pledged allegiance to King George III once Hamilton arrived.

With that much accomplished and winter coming on strong Governor Hamilton decided to fort up and wait for spring to continue his counteroffensive. Most of the Indians and the militia from Detroit went back to their homes while Hamilton and 90 British and other soldiers remained at Ft Sackville. Colonel Clark at Kaskaskia got word on January 29, 1779 from an Italian fur trader that Vincennes was once again in British hands. Clark decided on a rash gamble. He did not know when or if more help would be coming from Virginia and he knew that Hamilton would renew his attack with a vengeance when warm weather came. His only options were to retreat or attack Hamilton immediately and that is what he decided to do. Winter operations were very uncommon in those days and although not totally unheard of, both sides in any war generally preferred to stay quiet during winter. Nonetheless, on February 6, 1779 Colonel Clark and 127 militia volunteers set out for Vincennes.

The miserable march toward Vincennes

The attack was well planned and though he would have the British outnumbered Clark left nothing to chance. He dispatched 40 men in a makeshift war galley on the Wabash River to cut off any British retreat while he and the bulk of his force made the 180 mile overland march to attack Vincennes. It was a brutal struggle just to make the trip in the freezing cold and driving rains. Flooding was common and supplies were scarce. Clark and his men had to hunt for their fresh meat and build makeshift canoes to cross the flooded Little Wabash River. Each day seemed to bring new hardships and morale sunk lower and lower. The colonial troops suffered terribly from the harsh weather, exacerbated by dampness as they were constantly sloshing through deep water and being forced to subsist on fewer and fewer supplies. Talk of desertion began to spread as men questioned if all of this misery was worth it. Clark had to use his powers of persuasion just to keep his little command together as his men detoured to the Wabash River to build boats for the crossing.

Fortunately for Clark at this critical time, Governor Hamilton had no idea of his approach. Most military commanders would have considered such an operation unthinkable in the existing conditions. However, Clark was made aware of this by a group of five frontiersmen captured on February 20 and it only emboldened him to push on knowing that he had the element of surprise on his side. He drove his men forward through the cold winds and icy waters, being forced to use boats much of the time. When they finally neared Vincennes a friendly local told Clark that his advance was still unknown. Clark, perhaps a little upset at the easy changes of allegiance the people of Vincennes had made, sent the man back into town with a warning for his people that Clark was about to attack and that anyone seen outside their homes would be considered an enemy. The French villagers must have seen which way the wind was blowing as the message was openly read in the town square and yet not one word of warning reached Governor Hamilton at Ft Sackville.

On the evening of February 23 Colonel Clark and his men, in two columns, marched into Vincennes. Because the terrain hid all but the tops of his flags from view to anyone looking from Ft Sackville, Clark arranged a bluff for Hamilton to try to make his ragged group of less than 200 men appear to be a powerful column of 1,000 soldiers. Hoping to unnerve the British, even while he was still securing the town, Clark sent men out to open fire on the fort. It was a good plan, but did not quite work the way Clark intended. His effort to frighten the British actually did nothing of the sort and the few shots at the walls went unnoticed until a bullet came through a window and by pure chance hit one of the British soldiers inside. It was only then that Hamilton realized he was under attack at all. He was not in a very enviable position, under attack by superior enemy forces and with a village full of French settlers who, he must have realized by now, had never been serious about their renewed oaths of allegiance to the King. Nonetheless, he had the protection of the fort, good men inside and the only artillery to use in his defense.

Unfortunately for the British, Clark got his men in close enough that the cannon inside the fort was of little benefit to them. His men began digging in about 200 yards off the main gate, selected riflemen kept up a hot covering fire and smaller detachments managed to get within 30 yards of the walls to take aim at those inside. The artillery could not get a clean shot at these men and most of the British cannon fire only destroyed houses in Vincennes. Even this Clark was able to stop when his marksmen began firing through the portholes of the fort, showing the incredible skill of the American frontiersman, and picked off the British artillerymen. When enough were killed or wounded, and since the guns were having no real effect on the battle, the Royal Artillery soon fell silent. Battle lines on the frontier were also never clear, as the British had already learned, and this was proven again when the French townspeople donated a secret cache of gunpowder and ammunition they had hidden from the British as well as when the Piankeshaw chief Young Tobacco (gotta love a name like that!) offered to reinforce Clark with 100 of his warriors. Clark refused the offer for fear that his own men might mistake them for British allied Indians and spark further bloodshed.

Hamilton and the British were in a bad position and everyone knew it. They were outnumbered, surrounded and steadily losing men to the deadly accurate rifle fire of the colonial frontiersmen. On the morning of February 24, thinking Hamilton should have had enough of this by then, Clark sent a message to the fort demanding that the British surrender. Hamilton could plainly see that he was in a no-win situation, yet he felt that to give in to the demands of the young rebel at his very first bark would be a dishonor to his prince and he refused. The shooting resumed with the colonials sniping away at the British inside the fort and the defenders trying to return fire. Two hours later, trying to conduct things in a more honorable fashion, Hamilton sent out Captain Leonard Helm to offer terms for the surrender of the fort. It was Captain Helm who had been placed in charge of the largely French garrison at Ft Sackville by Colonel Clark after Father Gibault had seized the area. However, Clark was not prepared to deal with Hamilton in the genteel way the British wished. He sent Captain Helm back to Hamilton with a demand that Hamilton surrender unconditionally within half an hour or he would storm the fort.

It should have been clear to Clark that Hamilton was aware of his hopeless position and was simply trying to go about his surrender with a little bit of dignity, with a discussion and honorable terms. Clark, still a young firebrand, would have nothing of it and seemed determined to make surrendering as difficult and humiliating as possible for the British. Before the half hour was up Captain Helm was sent back to Clark again with a counter proposal from Hamilton for a three day cease fire to discuss his capitulation. Once again, Clark refused, but perhaps worrying now about going too far, he did agree to meet with Hamilton himself at the parish church. With this, it would seem that the final act in the war on the frontier had been played, but that was not the case as one, final incident remained and it was to be an ugly one.

A small troop of Indians and French Canadians loyal to Great Britain had been off on a raid and returned having no idea that Vincennes was once again in American hands. As they approached they were intercepted by rebel militiamen. A small firefight ensued and six of the Crown forces were taken prisoner by the revolutionaries; two French Canadians and four Indians. The peace talks between Clark and Hamilton had yet to take place and yet, in spite of the impending end of all hostilities, Clark decided to make an example of these men. The French population of Vincennes appealed to Clark for the lives of the two Canadians and out of respect for their assistance these were released. The four ruminating Indians, however, were not so fortunate. In what can only be described as a cruel act of barbarism, Clark had the four Indian prisoners of war forced to the ground and tomahawked to death. The bodies were then mutilated; scalped Indian style, and thrown into the river. Hamilton later wrote that Clark himself had killed some of them though he, of course, did not witness the event. Some historians have since tried to justify the actions of Colonel Clark in this regard, but given that arrangements had already been made for peace, with the end of hostilities in sight, such a savage execution of unarmed prisoners of war should only be condemned and likely would have been even at the time were the victims not Indians. For his part, Clark never claimed to have personally taken part in the killings but defended the actions after the war on the grounds that they were done in retaliation for the British led Indian attacks on the Kentucky settlements. In other words, even by his own standards, Clark was arguing that two wrongs do make a right and that such an atrocity would frighten the Indians away from any further raids on the Virginian settlements.

Colonel Hamilton surrenders Ft Sackville to George Rogers Clark

Hamilton did not immediately know about this and the meeting at the church went ahead as planned. Lt Governor Hamilton met with Colonel Clark and Captain Joseph Bowman and agreed to surrender his command. At ten in the morning of February 25, 1779 Hamilton formally surrendered Ft Sackville, marching his small force of 70 soldiers out and handing the place over to Colonel Clark. Governor Hamilton, his seven officers and 18 British troops were taken prisoner and sent to Williamsburg, Virginia while the remaining French Canadians were paroled and allowed to go home after taking an oath to remain neutral in the ongoing war between Great Britain and the colonies. As Colonel Clark and his men marched into Fort Sackville and raised the US flag, renaming the place Ft Patrick Henry in honor of their own governor, the major campaign of the Revolutionary War on the western frontier came to an end.

It would be safe to say, thanks in large part to the unequaled talents of the colonial revolutionary propagandists, that Henry Hamilton was one of the most hated British officials of the war in American eyes. He was not to be accorded the status of a normal prisoner of war but rather was treated as a war criminal by the new Governor of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, who kept him in irons for much of his imprisonment. It was only on orders from General George Washington that Hamilton was exchanged, granted a parole and allowed to return to London in 1781. He always maintained that he had done no more than his duty, stressed that he had done his best to minimize any atrocities by his Indian allies and also pointed out that the revolutionaries committed crimes as bad or worse during the course of the war. Hamilton returned to North America the following year where he served as Lt Governor of Canada in 1782, Deputy Governor of Quebec and after that Governor of Bermuda and later Governor of Dominica where he died in 1796.

Lt Colonel George Rogers Clark emerged from the campaign as a great American hero. When the British, as part of the peace negotiations ending the war, ceded all of the Northwest Territory to the United States, this was credited to the successful campaign of Colonel Clark. However, a closer inspection shows this to be mostly revolutionary propaganda making a mountain out of a molehill. Clark actually achieved very little beyond the pacification of the immediate area under his control. His actions certainly had no bearing on the negotiations in Europe at the end of the war and, in fact, it was Governor Hamilton who can claim to have had the greater long term impact. The American thirst for western lands and his actions in securing the friendship of the local Indians was to continue for some time. One of the reasons the American War Hawks gave to justify the War of 1812 was the fact that most of the Indians in the region were still attacking their encroachments into the area and that they were allied with the British who they continued to see as the only ally open to them.

The drive to pacify the Indians of the Northwest was a major concern in that next war with Great Britain and it proves that, as was most often the case, the Indians were the real losers in the conflict. Because of British actions in the past they had been somewhat reluctant to rally to them whole heartedly, though Hamilton made considerable gains in that regard. By the time they realized that they would have to stand and fight and that the British Empire was their only available ally against the United States it was largely too late. Nonetheless, the western front of the American Revolution was extremely important. Not only did it play a part in sparking the war in the first place but it also spurred American settlement of the Kentucky and southern Illinois and Indiana regions as well as placing the local Indian population squarely in the British camp for the next conflict which was the War of 1812; a conflict which was in part a remnant of the American Revolution in the west and a testament to the fact that the success of the revolutionaries there were not so complete as they would like to believe.