Part 27 (1/2)

Second

on < niagara=”” .=”” .=””>< 1814.=”” battles=”” of=”” chippewa=”” and=”” lundys=”” war=”” for=”” land=”” lane,=”” and=”” capture=”” of=”” fort=””>

Independence < americans=”” driven=”” from=””>

/ 1813. Expedition against Montreal.

St. Lawrence < 1814.=”” british=”” come=”” down=”” from=””>

Defeated on Lake Champlain.

/ 1812. Blockade of the coast south of Rhode Island.

War on

1813. Ravages on the coast of Chesapeake Bay.

the

1814. Entire coast blockaded.

Seaboard. < new=”” england=””>

Was.h.i.+ngton taken and partly burned.

Baltimore attacked.

1815. Victory at New Orleans.

War on / The s.h.i.+p duels.

the sea. The fleet victories on the Lakes.

CHAPTER XIX

PROGRESS OF OUR COUNTRY BETWEEN 1790 AND 1815

%273.% Twenty-five years had now gone by since Was.h.i.+ngton was inaugurated, and in the course of these years our country had made wonderful progress. In 1790 the United States was bounded west by the Mississippi River. By 1815 Louisiana had been purchased, the Columbia River had been discovered, and the Oregon country had been explored to the Pacific. In 1790 the inhabitants of the United States numbered less than four millions. In 1815 they were eight millions. In 1790 there were but thirteen states in the Union, and two territories. In 1815 there were eighteen states and five territories.

%274. The Three Streams of Westward Emigration.%--Spa.r.s.e as was the population in 1789, the rage for emigration had already seized the people, and long before 1790 the emigrants were pouring over the mountains in three great streams. One, composed of New England men, was pus.h.i.+ng along the borders of Lake Champlain and up the Mohawk valley. A second, chiefly from Pennsylvania and Virginia, was spreading itself over the rich valleys of what are now West Virginia and Kentucky.

Further south a third stream of emigrants, mostly from Virginia and North Carolina, had gone over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and was creeping down the valley of the Tennessee River.[1]

[Footnote 1: For an account of the movement of population westward along these routes, see _The First Century of the Republic_, pp. 211-238.]

For months each year the Ohio was dotted with flatboats. One observer saw fifty leave Pittsburg in five weeks. Another estimated that ten thousand emigrants floated by Marietta during 1788. As this never-ending stream of population spread over the wilderness, building cabins, felling trees, clearing the land, and driving off the game, the Indians took alarm and determined to expel them.

%275. The Indian War.%--During the summer of 1786 the tribes whose hunting grounds lay in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky took the warpath, sacked and burned a little settlement on the Holston, and spread terror along the whole frontier. But the settlers in their turn rose, and inflicted on the Indians a signal punishment. One expedition from Tennessee burned three Cherokee towns. Another from Kentucky crossed the Ohio, penetrated the Indian country, burned eight towns, and laid waste hundreds of acres of standing corn. Had the Indians been left to themselves, they would, after this punishment, have remained quiet. But the British, who still held the frontier post at Detroit, roused them, and in 1790 they were again at work, ravaging the country north of the Ohio. They rushed down on Big Bottom (northwest of Marietta) and swept it from the face of the earth. St. Clair, who was governor of the Northwest Territory, sent against them an expedition which won some success--just enough to enrage and not enough to cow them.

%276. St. Clair; Wayne.%--Not a settlement north of the Ohio was now safe, and had it not been for the men of Kentucky, who came to the relief, and in two expeditions held the Indians in check till the Federal government could act, every one of them would have been destroyed. The plan of the Secretary of War was to build a chain of forts from Cincinnati to Lake Michigan, and late in 1791 St. Clair set off to begin the work. But the Indians surprised him on a branch of the Wabash River, and inflicted on him one of the most dreadful defeats in our history. Public opinion now forced him to resign his command, which was given to Anthony Wayne, who, after two years of careful preparation, crushed the Indian power at the falls of the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio. The next year, 1795, a treaty was made at Greenville, by which the Indians gave up all claim to the soil south and east of a boundary line drawn from what is now Cleveland southwest to the Ohio River.

%277. Kentucky and Vermont become States.%--These Indian wars almost stopped emigration to the country north of the Ohio, though not into Kentucky or Tennessee. For several years past the people of the District of Kentucky had been desirous to come into the Union, but had been unable to make terms with Virginia, to which Kentucky belonged. At last consent was obtained and the application made to Congress. But the Kentuckians were slave owners, were identified with Southern and Western interests, and cared little for the commercial interests of the East, and as this influence could be strongly felt in the Senate, where each state had two votes, it was decided to offset those of Kentucky by admitting the Eastern state of Vermont.

What is now Vermont was once the property of New Hamps.h.i.+re, was settled by people from New England under town rights granted by the governor of New Hamps.h.i.+re, and was called ”New Hamps.h.i.+re Grants.” In 1764, however, the governor of New York obtained a royal order giving New York jurisdiction over the Grants on the ground that in 1664 the possessions of the Duke of York extended to the Connecticut River. Then began a controversy which was still raging bitterly when the Revolution opened, and the Green Mountain Boys asked recognition as a state and admission into the Congress, a request which the other states were afraid to grant lest by so doing they should offend New York. Thereupon the people chose delegates to a convention (in 1777), which issued a declaration of independence, declared ”New Connecticut, alias Vermont,” a state, and made a const.i.tution. In this shape matters stood in 1791, when as an offset to Kentucky Vermont was admitted into the Union. As she was a state with governor, legislature, and const.i.tution, she came in at once.

Kentucky had to make a const.i.tution, and so was not admitted till 1792.

Four years later (1796) Congress admitted Tennessee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE UNITED STATES AND TERRITORIES July 4, 1801.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE]