the same, yet fifty-six thousand "Southerners" went to the front where but thirty-four thousand Pennsylvanians appeared. New York had double the military population of South Carolina, while New Hampshire's was slightly greater, yet from this small State "the Southerners" who shouldered muskets outnumbered the New Hampshire men more than two to one, and they exceeded New York's quota by twenty-nine thousand. Out of every forty-two of her military popula tion, Massachusetts enlisted thirty-two-a splendid showing. But in South Carolina thirty-seven "Southerners " out of every forty-two "were able" to enlist and fight, and they did so.1 It is not pleasant to make such comparisons as this, yet the provocation is wanton, and the temptation not to be resisted. Really, if the story of our republic deserves to be told at all, the aim should be to tell the truth; and it can not be to the permanent benefit of "students," or general readers, to have themselves saturated with prejudice and error. Equally misleading is Professor Channing's reference to the proposition Governor Rutledge is said to have made to the British. The professor's statement leaves the impression on the mind of the 1 The South, by Dr. J. L. M. Curry-referring to General Knox's official estimate. reader that the general situation in the Southern States was so hopeless that South Carolina proposed to lay down arms and remain neutral in the struggle. Collegiate bulls in historical china-shops do, indeed, make sad havoc, and the learned Harvard professor is no exception. The Rutledge letter was not an expression of general despondence. It was the tentative proposition of an official who had been caught unready for defense by a large British army; and who, in the excited counsels of the mo ment, sought to save the chief city of the South by a concession which would have rendered the British conquest of no practical service to them. The proposition ought not to have been made, was protested against by some of the Governor's strongest advisers, was disapproved by General Moultrie, and was spurned by John Laurens, who refused to be the bearer of it. It required the exertion of General Moultrie's authority to get an officer who would carry it. The British rejected it; General Moultrie declared that he would fight rather than surrender; and his decision was heard with a burst of satisfaction. "Now, we are on our feet again!" cried John Laurens, and nothing could prove more conclusively the general feeling among those whose duty it was to do the fighting. The facts are that a British army appeared before Charleston, catching the city unprepared. Governor Rutledge and a majority of his council favored a capitulation. General Moultrie, John Laurens, Colonel McIntosh, and most of the other officers opposed it. Rutledge and the British commander, Prevost, began to exchange notes. The exact terms Rutledge proposed are in dispute. According to the written statement of Laurens himself, the Governor's conditions, if accepted, would have rendered Charleston useless to the enemy. It certainly is significant that Prevost refused to consider them. Moultrie had determined to fight; his lieutenants hailed his decision with joy, the flag was waved to put the enemy on notice that negotiations were off, and his main body began to retire. So far were" the Southerners" from any inten tion of quitting the contest that Prevost only escaped capture by reason of the fact that General Lincoln, of Massachusetts (who finally lost Charleston), did not know how to bring up his reenforcements, which were in striking distance. It was Lincoln's extreme tardiness that caused Rutledge's predicament and his proposition-a proposition which there is no reason to believe that his people would have ratified. CHAPTER XXII GEORGE ROGERS CLARK WHILE the Revolutionary War was raging in the East and South, the Western frontier was the scene of many a bloody skirmish between Britishled Indians and the white settlers who had pushed across the Alleghany Mountains. From headquarters at Detroit, agents of the English Government penetrated southward and westward, rousing the Indians, bribing them with rewards for scalps, until the whole of the vast wilderness along the Illinois and the Ohio was a dark and bloody ground. American hunters and trappers were ambushed and scalped; defenseless women and children in the lonely cabins were tomahawked and scalped. Sometimes the white man would be carried away alive, to be burnt later at the stake. Sometimes the women and children would be led off to the woods, the children to grow up as savages, the women to become squaws of the savages. The British Governor at Detroit encouraged every Indian that roamed the woods, for the scalps were delivered and the rewards paid at Detroit. The English policy was opposed to the westward expansion of the American people. But just as the Carolinians had crossed over into what is now Tennessee, and had made good their footing against hostile, hard-fighting Indians, so had men of the same fiber passed on into Kentucky and into the Illinois country. Men like Boone and Kenton and Clark loved the wilderness, its huntinggrounds, its freedom from restraint, almost as well as the Indians loved it. Restless, fond of adventure, impatient of system or confinement, these half-wild pioneers formed the skirmish-line of advancing civilization. What deeds of reckless courage they did, what shocking barbarities they committed, what privations they endured, what tragic fates so many of them met-is a story most eloquently told in the simplest language of bare fact. They carried their lives in their hands always; the rifle and the knife never left their sight. Sleepless vigilance was the very law of existence-vigilance, fearlessness, and infinite re source. In the winter of 1776-77 the struggle along the skirmish-line was one of extermination. The British were bent upon driving it back to the old borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Hamilton's or ders were to "kill and burn." British Canadians, French Canadians, renegade Tories from the col onies, Huron Indians, and Shawnees swooped |