Outlines of the Life and Public Services, Civil and Military, of William Henry Harrison (Classic Reprint)
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| Partner: | buecher.de |
| Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Cushing, Caleb) |
| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Outlines of the Life and Public Services, Civil and Military, of William Henry Harrison It was no holiday service in which Harrison was to learn the duties of a soldier. The Northwest, at that time thinly inhabited by the hardy pioneer settlers, was overrun by numerous bands of hostile Indians, their enmity to the United States stimulated and fostered by the intrigues of Great Britain. Indeed, the British ministers treated the 37 ears immediately following the war of Independence as an imperfect truce, rather than an assured peace. Notwithstanding the efforts of the United States, during the war of Independence, to induce the British Government to allow the Indians to stand neutral during that contest; notwithstanding the indignant denunciation of the policy of Great Britain in this respect, by such men as Chatham and Burke, in the British Parliament; the ministers armed the Indians on the frontier, and let loose upon our defenceless women and children the savage instruments of massacre and conflagration. Thus the life of the early settlers in the West was one of fearful danger, or of continual contest with a foe who recognized no rules of civilized warfare. When the independence of the United States was at length acknowledged by Great Britain, our people considered, in good faith, that peace was come, and the tide of their emigration began to set in a steady stream to the fertile fields of the West. But they found that the British Government persisted, in violation of treaty, in retaining military possession of the great frontier posts in the Northwest; that she still fomented the hostile passions of the Indians, and supplied them with arms; and that she was prompting and combining them in a project to drive our people out of the Northwest, and to establish, between the Ohio and the Lakes, a great, independent Indian Empire, looking to her for protection; and thus restoring to her influence one half of the territory nominally recognized as ours by the Treaty of Peace. Between 1783 and 1789, it is estimated that fifteen hundred men, women, and children were killed or taken prisoners by the Indians on the waters of the Ohio, and an incalculable amount of property plundered or destroyed. At length, a formal war broke out; and its opening events were most disastrous to the United States. First came the defeat of General Harmar, and the dispersion of the army under his command. Next, General St Clair, with a still larger force, was defeated, with great loss, by the confederated Indians under Little Turtle. The whole country was now filled with consternation. Men, who would have cheerfully gone to the encounter of regular troops in the field, shrunk from the hardships of a laborious service in the wilderness of the West, and from exposure to the rifle and tomahawk of the merciless Indian. Great as were the difficulties of the case, however, General Washington met them with his characteristic vigoi and firmness. The war had ceased to be an affair of the frontier; it had assumed national importance. General Anthony Wayne, an officer who had won a merited distinction in the Revolutionary War, by that union of sound judgment and successful daring which constitutes the highest military talent, was selected to take the command in the Northwest. But an army was to be created, as well as a commander found; for the previous army had been nearly annihilated in the defeats of Harmar and St. Clair; and most of the experienced officers were slain, or had resigned their commissions. Accordingly, the army was newly organized; and the first business of General Wayne was to discipline his raw levies, to give them the habit and skill of combined action, and, above all, to reinfuse into the troops the necessary confidence, which the calamitous campaigns of Harmar and St. Clair had done so much to destroy. Assiduous exercises in the camp, toilsome marches, incessant watching, and hard fare on the way, deadly peril in th
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