The book of American wars

Preface

The United States is a country dedicated to freedom and to peace. Yet, first and last, it has been called upon to do a deal of fighting, and has done it well.

This volume does not pretend to go into details. It does not even touch upon the longest of all our wars, the one that continued intermittently for over two hundred and fifty years between hostile Indians and white men who were not always blameless.

It is an attempt to tell in a few words and in broad outline why our principal wars were fought, and how; to point out how one American war has differed from another in glory; and to show that wars, like mountain ranges or human beings, have personal characteristics of their own.

Washington, D. C. H. N.

September, 191 8

Contents

COLONIAL

PAGE

Washington's Baptism uy Fire 25

Chapter I

IT took courage to become an American. Today it is hard to realize how much was necessary. Discoverer, explorer, and settler crossed the Atlantic, each in turn endowed with a different kind of courage. That of the settlers was not the least, for the discoverers and explorers, from Columbus down, were sustained by the spirit of adventure. They were out to see strange sights ; they hoped to gain fame and fortune; but whatever their luck, they had always the sustaining hope of returning home to share with friends and countrymen the memory of their travels.

With the actual settlers it was very different: they expected to live and die in the wilderness. No matter how unhappy, or even tragic, their lives had been up to that moment, it must have seemed like stepping into an open grave when they set foot upon the uncomfortable little boats that brought them across the Atlantic. They had looked for the last time on home and kindred. And when, after tossing about for weeks and even months, suffering everything that the sea and their own thoughts could inflict on them, they came to land, it was to find that while they had left oppression and injustice behind, they had also left behind much that was agreeable. In place of the smiling, cultivated fields of the Old World, they saw only forests or forbidding rocks or, at best, untilled, grassy glades. For the herds and granaries of Europe they had only the small remnants of musty food left from the long voyage. Until something could be improvised on shore there was absolutely nothing for shelter except the ships they had come in. They had to send the ships back for supplies or they would indeed perish. It was not only food that they lacked. With good luck they might expect to provide that for themselves. But they had been able to bring with them only the smallest outfit of tools and clothing and guns, or even of ammunition for the guns they had ; and there was not a place for the making of any of these articles within three thousand watery miles. Whatever their feelings as they stepped aboard the ships to leave home, it was like the closing of a grave to watch them fade into the blue distance, eastward bound. The sea never looked so vast or the forest so full of danger as when they turned again toward their makeshift dwellings. It was for better, for worse, for all of life, and until death made them part of its very earth that they had given themselves to the New World.

It happened that settlers from England had most to do with founding the colonies that afterward became the United States; but we cannot understand our own history without giving a moment's thought to their neighbors. Columbus, as we all know, never saw the mainland of North America. Five years after his wonderful first voyage another man, John Cabot, an Italian navigator in the English service, landed somewhere on the Atlantic coast between Labrador and Nova Scotia, and took possession of it in the name of the English king, Henry VII. Thus England entered her claim to North America very early indeed. During the next hundred years Spaniards had the greatest success in such enterprises. Following the lead of Columbus, they sailed toward the south, saw the wonders of Mexico and Peru, looked upon the Pacific Ocean, and pushed as far north as our Southern States. Then England and France came again to the front, and France made thrilling voyages of exploration, taking a northerly route, sailing up the St. Lawrence and into the Great Lakes and following the Mississippi down to the Gulf of Mexico.

Although the English put in their claim early, for ninety years they did virtually nothing in the way of settlement or discovery. Spain had many ships; the English had few; and it was only after Drake's victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 that they could sail where they would. After that happened, they confined their attention to the stretch of North Atlantic coast that they called Virginia, leaving extended inland explorations to the French. Yet, despite the many years that passed between John Cabot's voyage and the sinking of the Spanish fleet, there are those who believe they see in that voyage of the Italian explorer the beginning of England's victorious navy. Cabot reported that he had encountered great schools of fish, numerous enough to stop a vessel. These reports encouraged fishermen to venture out to capture them. Stout ships had to be built to live in those stormy northern seas, and strong, able sailors were the only kind to man them. From these, as a beginning, grew the skill and the fleets with which Drake swaggered joyously and victoriously around the world.

Almost every expedition of importance tried to make some sort of settlement in America, but ill luck dogged them. Hardship does not always sweeten human nature, and in the little groups that made up these first settlements there were persons of varying degrees of wisdom and selfishness; some who were friends by instinct and others who were enemies without knowing why. Sudden danger, such as an Indian raid, might unite them all while it lasted; but in seasons of comparative prosperity quarrels were sure to arise. When we consider the danger from Indians, the danger from pestilence and famine, and the danger from explosive human nature, it seems a miracle that America was colonized at all.

It was very difficult. The Spaniards only succeeded in making one settlement that was destined to last and become part of the United States. This was St. Augustine, founded in 1565, almost three quarters of a century after the first voyage of Columbus. Jamestown was established in Virginia by the English in 1607; but England had been trying vainly for twentynine years to found a colony. France was unsuccessful in Canada and Florida for sixty-eight years before she laid the foundations of Quebec in 1608. Meantime, because of famine or sickness or attack by Indians or by white explorers with whom their country happened to be at war, settlement after settlement, begun in high hope, disappeared utterly. What became of some of them is not known to this day ; the tragic fate of others was learned only too well by later comers.

Although a large amount of American territory was soon covered, and returning voyagers brought back strange plants and animals and even Indians to prove their wonderful stories, these stories were wild indeed. One was that North America was inhabited by fauns. Only enough was known to arouse curiosity. Not only kings and nobles and rich merchants talked about it; there was scarcely a man so ignorant that he did not repeat fables and indulge in guesses about the New World. Perhaps this was just as well, for if the early settlers had realized what they would find here or had dreamed of what they must suffer, they would never have come.

But they did come, and settlements began to multiply. It was a time of great unrest and longing. Changes were taking place in trade, in politics, in religion, in ways of thinking, and ways of living. Ever since Europe had possessed a history the strong had ruled the weak, and the poor had been virtually the slaves of the rich. Very great things had been accomplished under these conditions. Immense castles had been built for the glory of kings, and immense and beautiful cathedrals raised to the glory of God. Universities had been founded; wars had been waged, great fortunes made. The need to safeguard the fortunes and to keep order so that the other advantages of civilized life could be enjoyed were bringing about increased respect for law and justice. Men with clear minds and warm hearts were beginning, to use their reason, and to ask whether any human being, even a king or a pope, had the right to be absolute master of another man's mind. The discovery of America greatly quickened such thoughts, and in time our New England colonies were peopled by sturdy men and women who came to find out the answer to just such questions.

From the beginning the Spanish and the French on the one hand and the English on the other entertained totally different ideas about their American colonies. To make this plain it may be said that the Spaniards and the French looked upon America as a mine, while England thought of it as a farm. The first two took riches from it greedily, but were unwilling to put improvements upon it in return ; England, however, desired to make permanent settlements and to develop the country, — to make real colonies.

Explorers from Spain had gone in search of gold. They believed tales about rivers of diamonds and trees that bore rubies. They imagined cities where every lintel was studded with io THE BOOK OF AMERICAN WARS

emeralds, where every man was a silversmith, and every woman wore a golden chain. Also, they searched for a fountain of eternal youth. The story of their early explorations reads like a wonderful romance. Not only did they start out in search of fairy tales; they saw very marvelous things, and their adventures lost nothing in the telling. Brave to the point of recklessness, they feared nothing on earth. They feared a great deal in Heaven, as they imagined Heaven, and, being religious after their fashion, laid great stress on converting the natives to Christianity. But they treated them as only fit for slavery, and at times were shockingly cruel.

The more practical French had not much faith in fables about golden cities and fountains of eternal youth. Their main object was to gain territory for their king; and like the Spaniards, they were eager to convert the Indians. They went about it in a kinder and more sympathetic spirit and, on the whole, managed to keep the friendship of the red men better than other Europeans. Many priests accompanied their expeditions ; but their story is no less marvelous and dramatic than that of the Spaniards. It tells of remarkable devotion, and of torture and suffering of all sorts endured as they carried loyalty to their king and the banners of their saints through end-

OUR HERITAGE OF COURAGE n

less leagues of our northern woods. Though their explorations led them through a region that has since become famous for its mines of copper and iron, they did not dream of all this hidden wealth. They saw a country rich in furs, which might be bought from the Indians for a handful of trinkets, and in this the French government recognized a mine well worth working.

As far as the records show, the English had small concern for the Indians' immortal souls. Yet they thought themselves, rightly enough, God-fearing folk. Three classes of people made up their growing colonies in the New World. There were men who had money to "adventure" ; who were ready for any sort of speculation that promised well. Then there were the planters, who did not care for that form of gambling in a savage region, but who came intending to clear the land and engage in agriculture. Last and most important in the making of our history were the earnest and pious men and women, interested in questions of right and wrong, who emigrated to America because they could not live in England as their consciences dictated. The first had the courage to risk their fortunes. The second risked their lives as well. The third came bringing the courage of their convictions.

Between them all, the English settlers and those from Spain and France, they planted upon fertile American soil most of the kinds of courage that have been potent in making the world's history.

Chapter II

AS the years passed, and the English colonies grew, each went on working for itself. What little heed they paid to neighbors was usually in the nature of criticism, for no two were alike, and each strongly preferred its own ways. Yet there was a family resemblance among them, and all were loyally English. The men and women who, for religion's sake, had sailed across the ocean to settle in the region of Massachusetts Bay, had preferred the privations of a colony in the wilderness to the hospitality of any nation where their children might lose affection for England or forget their mother-tongue. The well-to-do planters of Virginia and Carolina, whose interests were bound up in the growing of tobacco, sent their sons "back home" to be educated, and imported from England the books and good furniture and good wines with which their mansions were well stocked.

Individually, the colonists of both regions, rich and poor alike, were sturdy and independent. A century and more of colonial experience had taught them many things. They had learned to do without much that was considered necessary at home, and to do the essential things for themselves. Because they were far away they had been forced to decide matters of government without waiting for permission from king or Parliament; and because distances were vast even between the settlements of the same colony, these settlements got into the way of sending men to represent them and to look out for their interests at the place where the colonial governor had his residence. From this custom colonial legislatures developed almost of their own accord. The form of government differed in detail for each colony; yet there was one feature common to all that differed from any form of local government in Old England. England had nothing to say about local taxes in the colonies. That was a question for the colonial legislatures. Each decided for itself how much money should be raised and how it should be spent. This must not be forgotten, for it is the basic fact of much American history.

One other thing that Americans learned in their years of colonial experience was the great lesson that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. They had not grown from a mere handful of Europeans living behind stockades, within sight of the ocean, to their present condition of thirteen prosperous colonies without having to fight for peace. They had been trained in battle from the very beginning. Indians had been the bane of every new settlement, and Indian massacres the crudest visitations of pioneer life. The very necessity of the case had made every settler an expert marksman. He kept his loaded weapon beside him as he tilled his field, and carried it on his shoulder when he went to church. Inside the cabin it rested on a rack, ready to his hand. As settlements grew, and some of the cabins gave way to fine houses for rich folk, the habit remained. The southern planter had his guns and his horses and his dogs. The main difference was that he owned more of each than his equally prosperous New England brother.

It was not only against the Indians that the colonists had been forced to defend themselves. Time and again the French in Canada had allied themselves with the savages and descended upon English settlements. During the final seventy-five years that the French owned Canada there was open hostility about half the time. "King William's War" lasted from 1689 to 1697. Between 1703 and 1713 there was a decade of fighting known as Governor Dudley's Indian War, Governor Dudley being at that time governor of Massachusetts. Governor Drummer's Indian War occurred between 1722 and 1725. Between 1744 and 1749 there were five more years of fighting; in 1754 war was again declared, and continued until 1763, when France gave up her Canadian possessions to the British. This last is the struggle known as the French and Indian War, the only one with which, for the purposes of this volume, we have to concern ourselves.

Reasons for such wholesale hostilities were several. In the first place, loyal colonies were supposed to be ready to do battle whenever the mother countries went to war, and England and France had long ago formed the habit of flying at each other's throats. Then there was the standing quarrel as to which country really had the best right to Canada. England based her claim upon John Cabot's landing in 1497. France pretended to believe that this never happened, and pointed to her actual settlements. French explorers had pushed farther inland than the English ever thought of doing; French trappers and fur-traders had managed to link Canada with far-off Louisiana by a chain of posts on the St. Lawrence, on Lake Erie, near streams that led into the Mississippi, and on that mighty river itself. Even before 1700 the French realized the great importance of this, and one governor of Canada implored those in authority at home to send out ten thousand men and women to settle in the Ohio valley.

This brings us to the third and most important reason. Canada was rich in furs, but too far north for the profitable growing of corn, and in order to make the most of her great game-preserve north of the St. Lawrence River, it seemed evident that France must either gain a foot-hold on the Atlantic coast far enough south to grow grain, or keep supremacy in the valley of the Ohio. The country farther to the north and west that has since produced such wonderful crops of wheat was then unknown and uncharted. Even the country between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi was hardly inhabited by white men; but the English were increasing rapidly, and their settlements crept steadily forward. It was the part of wisdom, therefore, to take steps that would prevent their spreading farther. So the real and fundamental issue was the possession of territory, — was whether the opening wilderness of North America should belong to French Canadian huntsmen or to British farmers.

As there were no roads back of the settled districts near the Atlantic, it was impossible for any large number of white men to travel in company into those regions except along the natural waterways. Consequently, the government that held the few points to which these waterways inevitably led possessed the whole region. With this in mind, a single glance at the map shows how important was the line held by the French. They could sail along the St. Lawrence to Lake Erie, travel only a short distance by land, and reach streams that flowed into the Ohio, which, in turn, carried them into the Mississippi and through the center of the continent to the Gulf of Mexico. If they chose, instead, to leave the St. Lawrence at a point not far from Montreal, they could follow the Richelieu River to Lake Champlain and go on into Lake George, known at that time as the Lake of the Holy Sacrament, from which it was only a step to the upper waters of the Hudson River which led straight south into the very heart of British colonial possessions.

Every decisive battle of the French and Indian War took place on one or the other of these lines : at Fort Duquesne, near the forks of the Ohio, where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers come together to form that stream; or on Lake Erie; or somewhere on the St. Lawrence River or Gulf of St. Lawrence; or in the neighborhood of Lake George. Although dominance in the West was the prize, most of the fighting occurred in the East, because population was thicker there, and because the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson formed a direct route between the main strongholds of the two combatants.

France was the most powerful nation of Europe at that time, and this in itself gave the Canadians one advantage over their opponents. They lived under a strong central government whose orders had to be obeyed without question whether they were good or bad. When they were told to furnish a certain number of men, those men had to be forthcoming if it was physically possible. In the British colonies each separate legislature discussed such matters, voted whether or not to send out soldiers, decided how many should be raised in case any were raised, for how long a time they should be enlisted, and the rate at which they should be paid. It was rare indeed for two colonies to settle such questions at the same time or in the same way, and the resulting confusion can be imagined. In the long run it proved a blessing, for even the mistakes trained the people in self-government until they were fit to become an independent nation ; but it distinctly hurt their cause in the French and Indian War.

Two things made war in America different from war in Europe. The first was that it took place in a new and uncleared country. Battles were fought in thick woods where the most skilful general ever born could not have marched and deployed his troops or conducted his campaign as was done over the field and roads of a long-settled country. War in America had something the character of the old border forays between England and Scotland, where a few men under daring leaders swooped down upon temporarily defenseless towns or upon laborers in the field, captured, looted, and burned, and returned to their own territory with prisoners and booty. But it was even more primitive, for the fields were only clearings in the forest where corn grew between stumps of trees. Instead of old gray-stone cities, there were new settlements, scarcely begun; and in place of castles, square blockhouses built of heavy logs and surrounded by palisades of upright logs planted side by side as a protection against Indian attacks.

It was, however, the Indians who gave to these wars American peculiarities that lasted long after the Indians themselves had passed on to other hunting-grounds. Both the English and French feared them as enemies and sought them as allies ; and both, be it said to their shame, allowed them to do battle after their own savage fashion, with details too horrible to dwell upon. Although they were not always to be trusted as friends, it may be said in a general way that the Algonquins and kindred tribes living in Canada sided with the French, while the smaller, but more ferocious, group known as the Six Nations, among which were the Iroquois and the Mohawks of western New York, fought on the side of the British. Indians have proverbially long memories, and Iroquois hatred of the French dated back to 1609 when Champlain, just to show his power, pointed his loaded harquebus straight at an Iroquois chief and fired. Two Indians fell dead at the shot, and the rest fled; but the deed was never forgiven. Had it not occurred, it is possible that the northern boundary-line of the United States might have curved much further to the south.

The French Catholics had been more successful than British Protestants in gaining the friendship of the Indians and converting them to Christianity. Indeed, the British seem to have been almost insultingly indifferent to the red men's natural likes and dislikes; but the French, with greater sympathy and understanding of their natures, worked hard to keep their good will, and indulged their fondness for feasting and display, even at times when they themselves had to go hungry. A few who were not above turning religion to base uses tried to inflame race hatred by telling them that Christ had been a Frenchman, cruelly murdered by the English. Those who did not go so far as this made much of a fact that the Indians were just beginning to comprehend, namely, that the British intended to cultivate the land and would drive the Indians away from it forever. As far as the Indians could see, the French cared only for the hunting and were quite willing to share it with its original owners. All in all, it is small wonder that they preferred the French.

Official records seem to prove that the French authorities in Canada, having gained their friendship, fitted out scores and perhaps hundreds of parties of savages, paid and fed them, and sent them, either alone or in company with French soldiers, to make dashes upon the homes and farms of their British neighbors, committing all the barbarities of savage warfare. They shot down men at work ; killed their animals and cut out their tongues; seized women and children, braining such as they did not choose to carry into captivity, and, loading the others with packs of their own looted goods, drove them into the wilderness. If they became too weak to stagger along under their heavy burdens, they were killed, and their scalps torn off and, on the return of the expedition, exhibited at headquarters for the sake of the bounties France paid on such bloody tokens.

The English record is not without similar stains. The French seem to have done such things oftener, but British colonists were quite willing to treat the Indian according to his own code of warfare, and accounts of such expeditions give inordinate praise or scathing blame for the very same acts according as they were committed by friend or foe. There is a book, called a "Diary of Depredations," which contains a long list of such horrors. It not only leaves the reader sick at heart, but wondering how the frontier ever came to be settled. But such books gather within the limits of a few pages incidents and outrages that extended over a long frontier and a long term of years. There were intervals of peace, or comparative quiet, lasting until the settlers took fresh courage and dared push forward to open up new fields. If the Indians showed themselves at all during such times, it was to lounge about farms and settlements, demanding food and gifts, making themselves a nuisance, but apparently harmless.

But their very presence, indeed even their absence, held tragic possibilities. Any one of these brown loafers might change in an instant to a fiend incarnate. Any tree might hide a lurking enemy. More than a century of such evil possibilities, alternating with their actual happening, had trained American men in sharpness of sight and correctness of aim unknown abroad, and in habits of fighting behind shelter quite out of keeping with current ideas of honorable warfare as it was practised in Europe. All of these habits and practices had to be proved and tested in blood during the battles of the French and Indian War.

CHAPTER III Washington's baptism by fire

ALTHOUGH fought for an American object, on American soil, this most important of American colonial wars was really a part of the great Seven Years' War in Europe, in which France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Saxonybanded together to destroy the power of Frederick the Great England sided with Frederick, and since England and France had such large possessions in America, each hastened to send soldiers to guard its own territory and, if possible, capture that of its adversary.

The British were not indifferent to the rich prize of the Ohio Valley. As early as the autumn of 1753 Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia sent a tall young man out into western Pennsylvania to warn the French away from certain posts that they were establishing. Although only twentyone, this young man had been adjutant-general of Virginia forces for two years, having been given the office with the title of major at the age of nineteen, when his half-brother, Lawrence Washington, who held it before him, had to retire on account of ill health. The younger Washington was not uncomely, though his face was pitted with smallpox; and he was far from awkward, despite the fact that he was still so young that his hands seemed disproportionately large. He had an easy bearing, and held his naturally hot temper so well under control that his unruffled calm impressed older men as indicating unusual strength of character. Lawrence was a man of large property, but George was comparatively poor, for the Virginia law gave the lion's share of a father's estate to the eldest born. Fond of outdoor life, and not much of a student, he had left school at fifteen, and had since spent three years in the woods, following the profession of surveyor. He was no stranger, therefore, to the kind of country into which Governor Dinwiddie sent him. He carried his message, and was received and treated with personal courtesy by the French officer to whom he delivered it, but was given an answer that amounted to a notice that the French intended to build forts where they pleased, with the gratuitous advice added that the English had better keep hands off. This answer he brought back through winter woods in a journey that did not lack exciting moments. Once he was a target at close range for an Indian's aim; and having miraculously escaped death in that form, he had the misfortune to slip from a raft into the icy, rushing waters of the Allegheny River.