WEBVTT NOTE 51. The War in the West 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Volume 4, Chapter 51, The War in the West 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:11.000 The war in the West, as in the North, largely consisted of a series of terror raids. 3 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:21.000 But here the essence of the war was not a series of raids by heavily armed, counter-revolutionary forces at war with the populace itself. 4 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:44.000 Here the main pro-British forces were the Indians, understandably deeply hostile to the settlers who had pushed back their territory. Indian raids were proportionately more massive, and warfare in the West was a guerrilla war on both sides, a genocidal war between two hostile peoples. 5 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:50.840 Of course, another difference in the Western War was the vast amounts of unoccupied land 6 00:00:50.840 --> 00:00:57.000 and the scarcity of inhabitants. That made the war in the West relatively unimportant 7 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:03.480 and overlooked in the scale of the war as a whole. Its ultimate and long-range importance, 8 00:01:03.480 --> 00:01:10.280 however, was considerable, for the ultimate disposition of the vast Western Territory 9 00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:12.240 was at stake. 10 00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:17.320 The region north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, captured by the British from 11 00:01:17.320 --> 00:01:22.920 the French in the Seven Years' War, was virtually unoccupied. 12 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:28.520 This region, as well as what is now northern and western New York, was controlled during 13 00:01:28.520 --> 00:01:31.160 the Revolution by the British. 14 00:01:31.160 --> 00:01:37.280 The two strong British forts commanding the region, Detroit on Lake Michigan and Niagara 15 00:01:37.280 --> 00:01:44.320 in Western New York were the hub of operations for British regulars, Tory bands and Indians 16 00:01:44.320 --> 00:01:46.280 against the frontier. 17 00:01:46.280 --> 00:01:52.520 The mutual devastation, especially in more populated upstate New York, was enormous. 18 00:01:52.520 --> 00:01:57.560 The story of the Revolutionary War in the West is essentially the story of the brilliant 19 00:01:57.560 --> 00:02:02.360 young Virginia frontiersman George Rogers Clark. 20 00:02:02.360 --> 00:02:07.960 It has already been shown that Clark played a large part in the early phases of the war, 21 00:02:07.960 --> 00:02:13.920 in saving the Kentucky settlers from the domination of the Transylvania Company. 22 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:19.040 He had also been appointed as a major in the Virginia militia and the head of its forces 23 00:02:19.040 --> 00:02:21.080 in Kentucky. 24 00:02:21.080 --> 00:02:26.840 Clark conceived a truly daring scheme with his handful of Kentuckians he would strike 25 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:33.400 Secretly and swiftly at the French towns in what is now southern Illinois, towns that 26 00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:39.120 could serve as sources of attack upon the Kentuckians by Illinois Indians. 27 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:44.960 The complacent British had left these French towns virtually undefended. 28 00:02:44.960 --> 00:02:50.920 Approving of Clark's plan, Governor Patrick Henry made him a lieutenant colonel and authorized 29 00:02:50.920 --> 00:02:52.640 him to proceed. 30 00:02:52.640 --> 00:02:57.920 By the time Clark reached the last lap of his expedition, the departure from the Falls 31 00:02:57.920 --> 00:03:06.920 of the Ohio on June 26, 1778, his force had dwindled to considerably fewer than 200, and 32 00:03:06.920 --> 00:03:14.400 he had estimated 500 men as his minimum need. His command would be outnumbered five to one 33 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:21.040 by the resident militia of the French towns, and more than that by the Indians of the region. 34 00:03:21.040 --> 00:03:26.240 Nevertheless, he characteristically paid little attention to the odds. 35 00:03:26.240 --> 00:03:32.040 The more I reflected on my weakness, the more I was pleased with the enterprise. 36 00:03:32.040 --> 00:03:37.280 Sailing down the Ohio to the mouth of the Tennessee River by June 30, Clark marched 37 00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:40.880 up quietly through the Illinois country. 38 00:03:40.880 --> 00:03:46.800 On the night of July 4, the hungry little band reached and captured the French town 39 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:52.800 In the town of Cascasquia, without firing a shot, the surprise had been complete. 40 00:03:52.800 --> 00:04:04.800 Clark shrewdly spared the people of Cascasquia from any military reprisals or plunder, and also told them of the French entry into the war. 41 00:04:04.800 --> 00:04:10.800 Led by Father Pierre Gibault, the French now hailed the American forces as liberators. 42 00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:16.800 The nearby towns of Cahokia and Prairie du Rocher fell as painlessly. 43 00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:21.920 It was clear that to safeguard the newly captured towns, the next objective would have to be 44 00:04:21.920 --> 00:04:26.800 Vincennes, another French town 180 miles to the east. 45 00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:32.360 Vincennes, on the Wabash River, was a key town commanding the Great Portage and River 46 00:04:32.360 --> 00:04:39.080 Route from the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes and Detroit down to the Wabash and thence 47 00:04:39.080 --> 00:04:45.560 2, The Ohio River. Vincennes, too, was left in the hands of French militia and undefended 48 00:04:45.560 --> 00:04:51.760 by British troops. Father Gibault rushed to Vincennes and persuaded the French population 49 00:04:51.760 --> 00:04:57.840 to change sides, and the people of Vincennes readily agreed. A single American platoon 50 00:04:57.840 --> 00:05:04.580 was enough to occupy the town. Clark's meager force, now dwindled to 100, was scattered 51 00:05:04.580 --> 00:05:12.340 among the four French towns and was kept supplied from Spanish-held New Orleans. Through bravery 52 00:05:12.340 --> 00:05:19.300 and bluff, Clark's charismatic personality and his ability to appear out of the blue 53 00:05:19.300 --> 00:05:24.540 deeply impressed the powerful Indian tribes of the region, and he was not only able to 54 00:05:24.540 --> 00:05:30.940 occupy the four towns of the Illinois-Indiana region, but also to neutralize the massive 55 00:05:30.940 --> 00:05:38.380 Indian Power on which the British had counted to move against the American frontier. 56 00:05:38.380 --> 00:05:44.100 At this point, British Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, Commandant of Detroit, embarked 57 00:05:44.100 --> 00:05:48.340 upon the reconquest of the Illinois-Indiana region. 58 00:05:48.340 --> 00:05:53.900 Ultimately, he hoped to join with British agent John Stewart and southern Indians to 59 00:05:53.900 --> 00:05:59.780 sweep away all traces of Americans west of the Appalachians. 60 00:05:59.780 --> 00:06:06.700 Setting out in early October 1778, Hamilton expected to attract thousands of Indians along 61 00:06:06.700 --> 00:06:14.500 his march. He reached Vincennes on December 17 with 600 men and marched in and took the 62 00:06:14.500 --> 00:06:21.660 town without opposition. The French militia, seeing on which side their bread was now buttered, 63 00:06:21.660 --> 00:06:27.620 had quickly shifted back to the English side. The winter weather was extremely bad and so 64 00:06:27.620 --> 00:06:33.740 So Hamilton decided to wait until spring to rendezvous with Stuart's Southern Indians 65 00:06:33.740 --> 00:06:40.380 on the Tennessee River. Clark, of whom Hamilton had just heard for the first time, and the 66 00:06:40.380 --> 00:06:46.740 town of Kaskaskia could be attended to in due course. Confidently, Hamilton sent home 67 00:06:46.740 --> 00:06:53.580 most of his force to winter more comfortably in Detroit, and sent out his Indians on various 68 00:06:53.580 --> 00:06:59.660 AIDS. He remained at the Vincennes Fort with eighty men, awaiting the Great Assembly in 69 00:06:59.660 --> 00:07:05.760 advance the following spring. An ordinary American commander would have taken advantage 70 00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:12.060 of this respite to hightail it out of the Illinois area. But Clarke was no ordinary 71 00:07:12.060 --> 00:07:18.940 commander. To Clarke the situation was clear. In the spring, Hamilton would be able to assemble 72 00:07:18.940 --> 00:07:23.680 Clark was able enough men at Vincennes not only to capture Illinois but Kentucky and 73 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:29.680 perhaps Pittsburgh, able indeed to sweep the Americans out of the West. 74 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:35.940 Now Hamilton was weak and the only course for the Americans was an immediate surprise attack 75 00:07:35.940 --> 00:07:41.620 against an overconfident British force who would never expect an American attack in the 76 00:07:41.620 --> 00:07:45.560 midst of the vile midwinter weather. 77 00:07:45.560 --> 00:07:51.440 Clark decided on a joint attack by land and by water, the latter consisting of one warship 78 00:07:51.440 --> 00:07:55.840 which proved unable to reach Vincennes in time for the fray. 79 00:07:55.840 --> 00:08:01.440 To supplement his fewer than 90 Americans, Clark attracted about 80 Frenchmen to the 80 00:08:01.440 --> 00:08:05.840 cause by display of enormous confidence and assurance. 81 00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:10.380 He launched his seemingly quixotic expedition on February 5. 82 00:08:10.380 --> 00:08:22.120 Slogging through intense rains and rising floods, his little band was able to reach Vincennes undetected by the enemy by February 23rd. 83 00:08:22.120 --> 00:08:34.860 Replacing surprise by bluff, Clark won over the opportunistic French townspeople, none of whom ever dared to inform the British garrison in the fort of the arrival of the Americans. 84 00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:42.620 He swiftly occupied the town, added eager French militia to his force and laid siege to the British fort. 85 00:08:42.620 --> 00:08:48.900 He continued to employ daring and braggadocio to cripple the morale of the British forces, 86 00:08:48.900 --> 00:08:53.900 so impressing the French half of the garrison that they were ready to surrender. 87 00:08:53.900 --> 00:08:58.300 The gamble had succeeded with hardly the loss of a single man. 88 00:08:58.300 --> 00:09:01.420 Stunned at the sudden reversal of his fortunes, 89 00:09:01.420 --> 00:09:08.740 The intimidated Hamilton was induced to surrender on February 25. Universally hated by the 90 00:09:08.740 --> 00:09:14.700 frontiersmen for buying American scalps from the Indians, he was almost killed several 91 00:09:14.700 --> 00:09:20.960 times en route to his prison, where he was treated very badly for nearly two years by 92 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:27.580 his Virginia captor, the usually humane Governor Thomas Jefferson. 93 00:09:27.580 --> 00:09:34.200 At this point, Clarke's remarkable and intuitive daring temporarily deserted him. 94 00:09:34.200 --> 00:09:39.340 It was now, with the British demoralized and the French population of Detroit on the verge 95 00:09:39.340 --> 00:09:45.500 of rebellion, that Clarke could have taken his two hundred men and struck at the heart 96 00:09:45.500 --> 00:09:49.020 of British power in the West, Detroit. 97 00:09:49.020 --> 00:09:55.100 But he allowed himself to be guided by more conventional military considerations and waited 98 00:09:55.100 --> 00:09:59.580 for Expected Reinforcements, most of which never arrived. 99 00:09:59.580 --> 00:10:04.860 By June, the opportunity to seize Detroit was lost. 100 00:10:04.860 --> 00:10:11.300 Even so, his achievement was still monumental, for he had stopped in its tracks the mammoth 101 00:10:11.300 --> 00:10:16.300 British invasion southward that would have conquered the West. 102 00:10:16.300 --> 00:10:24.240 By early spring of 1779, five British expeditions, picking up hundreds of French and Indians 103 00:10:24.240 --> 00:10:31.120 en route were on the way to meet Hamilton in Illinois. Two expeditions left southwestward 104 00:10:31.120 --> 00:10:37.960 from Lake Erie and three set forth from Mackinac at the head of Lake Michigan. The electrifying 105 00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:44.960 news of Hamilton's capture totally demoralized the French and Indians who deserted en masse. 106 00:10:45.480 --> 00:10:50.720 All the columns were forced to return home and the British timetable for conquest in 107 00:10:50.720 --> 00:10:59.320 in the West was completely disrupted. The 1779 campaign was finished. In addition, thousands 108 00:10:59.320 --> 00:11:05.880 of frontiersmen and settlers were so buoyed by Clark's victory as to pour into Kentucky 109 00:11:05.880 --> 00:11:11.960 and add to its defenses. Others erected completely new settlements at the bend of the Tennessee 110 00:11:11.960 --> 00:11:18.880 River. To the northeast on the New York frontier, the density of the population of American 111 00:11:18.880 --> 00:11:27.640 and of Indian villages led to a more genocidal form of warfare than on the sparsely populated 112 00:11:27.640 --> 00:11:30.560 frontier of the Ohio Valley region. 113 00:11:30.560 --> 00:11:38.080 With the failure of the Burgoyne and St. Leisure expeditions of 1777, it was clear that the 114 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:44.400 brunt of fighting on the New York frontier thereafter would have to be borne by the Iroquois 115 00:11:44.400 --> 00:11:46.680 and by the Tories. 116 00:11:46.680 --> 00:11:53.440 In charge of the Indian effort was the brilliant, well-educated, and fiercely pro-British Mohawk 117 00:11:53.440 --> 00:11:57.000 chieftain, young Joseph Brandt. 118 00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:03.200 The Tory forces were led by Butler's Rangers, organized by Sir John Johnson's old deputy 119 00:12:03.200 --> 00:12:06.680 Indian agent, Colonel John Butler. 120 00:12:06.680 --> 00:12:11.880 In the late spring of 1778, the two agreed that Butler would launch an attack on the 121 00:12:11.880 --> 00:12:17.720 in the Wyoming Valley, while Brandt would launch a series of covering raids further 122 00:12:17.720 --> 00:12:20.300 north in New York. 123 00:12:20.300 --> 00:12:27.480 The Loshan isolated Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania on the Susquehanna River had 124 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:33.260 been populated by settlers from Connecticut who, with some logic, claimed it on behalf 125 00:12:33.260 --> 00:12:35.060 of their home state. 126 00:12:35.060 --> 00:12:41.120 But Pennsylvania's bitter hostility to the settlers and to Connecticut's claims weakened 127 00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:48.000 the Defense of the Valley and gave Butler and his Tories an easy target for mayhem and 128 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:49.800 plunder. 129 00:12:49.800 --> 00:12:56.060 In late June, about the same time Clark left Kentucky for Illinois, Butler set forth from 130 00:12:56.060 --> 00:13:04.640 his camp at Unidilla from which he could strike north and east at New York or south at Pennsylvania. 131 00:13:04.640 --> 00:13:12.120 With 200 Tory Rangers and 500 Indians, he marched down the valley, forcing two stock 132 00:13:12.120 --> 00:13:14.040 aides to surrender. 133 00:13:14.040 --> 00:13:20.960 He then trapped the main American defense force in a clever ambush on July 3 and massacred 134 00:13:20.960 --> 00:13:22.960 the fleeing defenders. 135 00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:27.600 With several hundred Americans slaughtered in the battle and only three losses to the 136 00:13:27.600 --> 00:13:34.160 Tory Indian force, the remainder of the Garrison and settler families surrendered at the main 137 00:13:34.160 --> 00:13:40.920 and Stockade of Forty Fort. The terms of the surrender called for their being disarmed and 138 00:13:40.920 --> 00:13:47.400 then released unharmed in return for their promise that they would not fight any further 139 00:13:47.400 --> 00:13:53.760 in the American cause. Butler and his Indians were surprisingly scrupulous in keeping the 140 00:13:53.760 --> 00:14:00.760 agreement even though the valley's homes, mills and livestock were burned, plundered 141 00:14:00.760 --> 00:14:08.560 and Destroyed. But in their hysteria, the Wyoming refugees confused the disastrous battle 142 00:14:08.560 --> 00:14:15.240 with the later surrender, and convinced everyone, even the British, that Butler and the Indians 143 00:14:15.240 --> 00:14:22.700 had conducted a horrible massacre in the Wyoming Valley. Such was the power of atrocity propaganda 144 00:14:22.700 --> 00:14:29.400 that the Wyoming campaign became well known as the Wyoming Valley Massacre. Actually, 145 00:14:29.400 --> 00:14:34.580 The breaking of agreements cut the other way, for most of the survivors promptly broke their 146 00:14:34.580 --> 00:14:40.840 promise unhappily for Americans captured in later campaigns. 147 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:46.820 Butler's successful devastation of the Wyoming Valley had strategic significance. Congress 148 00:14:46.820 --> 00:14:53.480 had just authorized General Lachlan McIntosh, Commandant at Pittsburgh, to march westward 149 00:14:53.480 --> 00:15:00.000 to capture the critical British base of Detroit. But Butler's strike near home ended that 150 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:07.960 expedition, and this relief of pressure enabled Hamilton to embark on his autumn campaign 151 00:15:07.960 --> 00:15:15.040 against Vincennes and the Shawnee Indians to attack settlements in Kentucky. 152 00:15:15.040 --> 00:15:21.480 In the meantime, beginning at the end of May 1778, Joseph Brandt conducted a spectacular 153 00:15:21.480 --> 00:15:28.000 A series of covering raids in the Mohawk Valley on the New York frontier. 154 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:34.200 Fighting with him were some 300 Indians, plus a floating number of eager Tories of whatever 155 00:15:34.200 --> 00:15:36.760 neighborhood he happened to be in. 156 00:15:36.760 --> 00:15:43.440 Employing mobile and elusive guerrilla tactics, he marched back and forth for two months among 157 00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:50.440 the villages and farmlands of the Mohawk, the Susquehanna and the Delaware watersheds, 158 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:56.800 burning, plundering, destroying, terrorizing American patriots, especially the leaders, 159 00:15:56.800 --> 00:16:04.200 and rescuing and recruiting Tories. But while Brandt systematically destroyed American property, 160 00:16:04.200 --> 00:16:10.520 depriving Washington's army of the important Mohawk Valley source of wheat and meat, he 161 00:16:10.520 --> 00:16:16.840 took care not to murder indiscriminately. There were no complaints in an age when such 162 00:16:16.840 --> 00:16:23.040 Much protest readily arose of his killing or maltreating American civilians. 163 00:16:23.040 --> 00:16:27.880 The only Americans he killed were armed men in the heat of battle. 164 00:16:27.880 --> 00:16:33.160 Most prisoners were released after Brandt lectured them on their wickedness as rebels 165 00:16:33.160 --> 00:16:36.320 against King George. 166 00:16:36.320 --> 00:16:42.240 Hated by the Butler Rangers, Brandt went on to strike a devastating blow in mid-September 167 00:16:42.240 --> 00:16:45.480 to the most fertile part of the Mohawk Valley. 168 00:16:45.480 --> 00:16:51.140 The German Flats District in the West Valley, while the citizens of the community huddled 169 00:16:51.140 --> 00:16:59.960 safely but helplessly in Forts Herkimer and Dayton, the 500 Indians and Tories thoroughly 170 00:16:59.960 --> 00:17:06.600 and methodically burned and destroyed all the homes and property of that region. 171 00:17:06.600 --> 00:17:11.840 The American military authorities decided that counter raids of vengeance and collective 172 00:17:11.840 --> 00:17:16.220 punishment upon the Indian communities were in order. 173 00:17:16.220 --> 00:17:21.140 The most important of these took place in early October when Colonel William Butler 174 00:17:21.140 --> 00:17:28.200 led four companies of continental riflemen upon Indian towns on the upper Susquehanna 175 00:17:28.200 --> 00:17:29.720 River. 176 00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:35.240 Only defenseless women and children were to be found in these villages and the Americans 177 00:17:35.240 --> 00:17:41.720 added mass rape of the captured Indian women to the usual plundering and devastation of 178 00:17:41.720 --> 00:17:44.280 property on both sides. 179 00:17:44.280 --> 00:17:52.920 This gratuitous sexual brutality greatly shocked the Indians and led to escalating counter-brutalities 180 00:17:52.920 --> 00:17:57.000 in subsequent Indian attacks upon New York. 181 00:17:57.000 --> 00:18:02.380 All that Butler and the other American raiders had accomplished was to goad the Indians into 182 00:18:02.380 --> 00:18:06.220 to Greater and More Destructive Attacks. 183 00:18:06.220 --> 00:18:11.540 By late 1778, the year's campaign was supposed to be over. 184 00:18:11.540 --> 00:18:17.320 The New York and Pennsylvania frontiers had suffered devastating losses, including the 185 00:18:17.320 --> 00:18:21.660 destruction of potential supplies for the American Army. 186 00:18:21.660 --> 00:18:27.460 Sporadic Indian raids had also been severe on the southern frontier, but for the energetic 187 00:18:27.460 --> 00:18:34.000 Young Tory Walter Butler, who had replaced his ailing father John as head of Butler's 188 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:38.060 Rangers, the year's work was not over. 189 00:18:38.060 --> 00:18:44.900 He persuaded Brandt and the Indians, infuriated by the barbarities of the American raids, 190 00:18:44.900 --> 00:18:52.660 to join him in a winter march on strategic Fort Alden in New York's Cherry Valley. 191 00:18:52.660 --> 00:18:58.100 Butler failed to keep his advance a complete surprise, but this did not matter. 192 00:18:58.100 --> 00:19:04.820 Colonel Ichabod Alden, commandant of the fort, not only refused to heed warnings of the Tory-Indian 193 00:19:04.820 --> 00:19:12.580 approach, but also refused to allow anyone to take refuge inside the walls of his command. 194 00:19:12.580 --> 00:19:19.400 He and his top officers heedlessly lived outside the fort and paid for this carelessness with 195 00:19:19.400 --> 00:19:27.160 for their lives when Butler swept down to attack on November 11, 1778. 196 00:19:27.160 --> 00:19:32.680 Butler, however, at once lost control of his Indian troops, especially the Seneca and the 197 00:19:32.680 --> 00:19:38.160 Cayuga, who preferred to attack the defenseless residents of Cherry Valley rather than the 198 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:39.680 armed fort. 199 00:19:39.680 --> 00:19:44.160 The defenders, meanwhile, remained in the safety of their garrison. 200 00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:51.160 This time it truly was a massacre, as lives were no longer spared in the general devastation. 201 00:19:51.160 --> 00:19:56.800 Even the Wells family, old friends of Brant and Butler, were slaughtered by the rampaging 202 00:19:56.800 --> 00:20:00.520 Indians without their commander's knowledge. 203 00:20:00.520 --> 00:20:07.120 Only when the British forces reassembled did Brant and Butler prevail over the bitter objections 204 00:20:07.120 --> 00:20:12.800 of the Indians and set free the prisoners taken at Cherry Valley. 205 00:20:12.800 --> 00:20:19.820 The Cherry Valley Massacre, occurring so close to the center of population and late and isolated 206 00:20:19.820 --> 00:20:26.560 in the winter campaign, also found an important place in the public consciousness and in American 207 00:20:26.560 --> 00:20:33.200 propaganda against the British, and with more justice than the Wyoming incident. 208 00:20:33.200 --> 00:20:41.560 The next year, 1779, Congress decided upon total retaliation against the Iroquois. 209 00:20:41.560 --> 00:20:48.560 The plan was to devastate the Indian country on the New York-Pennsylvania frontier by sending in three divisions of troops. 210 00:20:48.560 --> 00:20:57.560 The main body of three brigades under Sullivan was to advance north from eastern Pennsylvania through the Wyoming Valley and up the Susquehanna River to Tioga. 211 00:20:57.560 --> 00:21:03.520 Brigades under Sullivan was to advance north from eastern Pennsylvania through the Wyoming 212 00:21:03.520 --> 00:21:10.040 Valley and up the Susquehanna River to Tioga. General James Clinton was to take another 213 00:21:10.040 --> 00:21:18.480 brigade southwest from the Mohawk and down the Unidilla River to join Sullivan at Tioga. 214 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:23.840 In the meantime, Colonel Daniel Broadhead was to march northeast from Pittsburgh up 215 00:21:23.840 --> 00:21:26.920 What's the Allegheny Toward Tioga? 216 00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:34.640 The campaign began inauspiciously as Clinton sent a force of nearly 600 to attack and devastate 217 00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:36.640 the Onondaga country. 218 00:21:36.640 --> 00:21:43.440 A swift surprise force in late April dutifully burned three Onondaga towns. 219 00:21:43.440 --> 00:21:48.960 The difficulty here was that the Onondaga had been the least warlike of the Iroquois 220 00:21:48.960 --> 00:21:52.120 tribes and had yearned for peace. 221 00:21:52.120 --> 00:21:56.220 Now they resolved to fight the Americans. 222 00:21:56.220 --> 00:22:02.000 By late June, Clinton had assembled sixteen hundred troops at Lake Otsego and was ready 223 00:22:02.000 --> 00:22:03.000 to go. 224 00:22:03.000 --> 00:22:05.940 But Sullivan was having his troubles. 225 00:22:05.940 --> 00:22:10.100 Not only was Pennsylvania still reluctant to defend the Connecticut settlers of the 226 00:22:10.100 --> 00:22:16.400 Wyoming Valley, but his long unpaid New Jersey troops began to mutiny. 227 00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:22.400 Furthermore, he kept insisting upon ever more troops and supplies for the campaign. 228 00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:26.440 Sullivan was not ready to march until the end of July. 229 00:22:26.440 --> 00:22:31.760 The British and Allied forces knew of the developing American plans, and for their part 230 00:22:31.760 --> 00:22:38.480 the Iroquois, always oriented to New York rather than to the West, were undaunted by 231 00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:43.400 the news of Clark's capture of Hamilton at Vincennes. 232 00:22:43.400 --> 00:22:48.680 Grant and Butler tried flank attacks on New York settlements, but Sullivan refused to be 233 00:22:48.680 --> 00:22:55.440 lured into defending the frontier areas. Only aggression, not mere defense, he argued, could 234 00:22:55.440 --> 00:23:01.800 eliminate the Indian menace for good and all. He joined forces with Clinton at Tioga, and 235 00:23:01.800 --> 00:23:08.560 on August 26 they marched west with a huge force of 4,000 veteran Continental troops 236 00:23:08.560 --> 00:23:14.160 intent on totally devastating the Indian villages and farms. 237 00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:20.280 Guarding against surprise attack were veteran frontiersmen, Oneida Scouts and Morgan's former 238 00:23:20.280 --> 00:23:22.480 rifle unit. 239 00:23:22.480 --> 00:23:29.280 His force, numbering only 750, Butler was obviously no match for this massive troop 240 00:23:29.280 --> 00:23:34.040 and he assumed a defensive position at the Indian village of Newtown. 241 00:23:34.040 --> 00:23:39.000 He counted on surprise, however, and surprise he did not have. 242 00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:45.160 He and Brandt were smashed at the Battle of Newtown on August 29 and were forced to flee 243 00:23:45.160 --> 00:23:49.420 post haste westward to the Genesee. 244 00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:55.240 The bodies of the Indian fallen were savagely mutilated by the American forces. 245 00:23:55.240 --> 00:24:00.760 The entire heartland of the powerful Iroquois nation lay open to total destruction, to which 246 00:24:00.760 --> 00:24:07.280 which Sullivan applied himself with a will. It was to be so devastating as to eliminate 247 00:24:07.280 --> 00:24:15.600 any capacity of the Iroquois to make war or even to subsist in their homeland. Towns, 248 00:24:15.600 --> 00:24:22.960 substantial wooden and stone houses with windows, cornfields, gardens, orchards, livestock, 249 00:24:22.960 --> 00:24:29.500 storehouses, all were burned to the ground. There were few prisoners or hostages taken 250 00:24:29.500 --> 00:24:36.540 and Few Indian Lives Lost, as the despairing Indians fled before Sullivan's advance. 251 00:24:36.540 --> 00:24:44.540 Meanwhile, during late August and early September, Broadhead's force of over 600 devastated Seneca 252 00:24:44.540 --> 00:24:51.340 and Mingo towns on the Allegheny, burning 11 towns and returning to Pittsburgh without 253 00:24:51.340 --> 00:24:54.000 losing a single man. 254 00:24:54.000 --> 00:25:00.240 Washington reached the Genesee on September 15 and levelled the great Seneca Castle, the 255 00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:03.400 mighty stronghold of the Seneca tribe. 256 00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:09.520 Lacking supplies to press on to Niagara, he turned back to finish off those towns and 257 00:25:09.520 --> 00:25:13.180 farmlands overlooked in the previous devastation. 258 00:25:13.180 --> 00:25:18.360 No captives were taken, despite Washington's desire for hostages. 259 00:25:18.360 --> 00:25:24.800 They did manage to burn alive a very aged squaw and a crippled Indian child, whom they had 260 00:25:24.800 --> 00:25:30.880 taken prisoner. Returning, he was hailed throughout the country for his achievements. His policy 261 00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:38.000 of brutal devastation of Indian houses and property, his sweeping attacks on Indian villages 262 00:25:38.000 --> 00:25:44.480 seem to have reaped great fruits and to have justified the risk of employing a large chunk 263 00:25:44.480 --> 00:25:51.920 of Washington's Continental Army. The Tory-Iraquois military force had been routed. Forty-one 264 00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:58.440 Iraquois towns and surrounding farms had been mercilessly burned to the ground, leaving 265 00:25:58.440 --> 00:26:06.000 only one town left standing in the entire Iraquois region. Thousands of distraught Indian 266 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:13.240 men, women and children were homeless and starving. The Indians were surely impressed 267 00:26:13.240 --> 00:26:19.280 by the Invincibility of the American Forces, and all this achieved with the loss of only 268 00:26:19.280 --> 00:26:22.620 40 Americans dead. 269 00:26:22.620 --> 00:26:30.340 The end of 1779 thus saw the Americans victorious on the two frontier fronts, New York and the 270 00:26:30.340 --> 00:26:36.260 Ohio Valley, and seemingly in command of both frontier regions. 271 00:26:36.260 --> 00:26:42.900 For his efforts Sullivan was rewarded by Congress by what was fast becoming an American tradition. 272 00:26:42.900 --> 00:26:45.700 He was forced into retirement. 273 00:26:45.700 --> 00:26:50.920 In Sullivan's case, however, it was because of his chronic complaining. 274 00:26:50.920 --> 00:26:57.620 There was a fatal flaw, however, in these seemingly coldly realistic calculations which 275 00:26:57.620 --> 00:27:02.180 ignored the fate of innocent Indian women and children. 276 00:27:02.180 --> 00:27:08.980 The Indians' property was devastated, but they were still alive, thirsting for vengeance. 277 00:27:08.980 --> 00:27:16.220 Now based at the English stronghold at Niagara, they were utterly dependent on English supplies, 278 00:27:16.220 --> 00:27:18.460 both food and munitions. 279 00:27:18.460 --> 00:27:24.960 The Americans, their absolute and total enemy, they were irrevocably wedded to the English 280 00:27:24.960 --> 00:27:26.560 war effort. 281 00:27:26.560 --> 00:27:32.100 The aggrieved Iroquois could and did strike back. 282 00:27:32.100 --> 00:27:40.860 The victories of 1779 turned out to be mere delaying actions, delays forming a prelude 283 00:27:40.860 --> 00:27:45.620 to mighty British offensives of 1780. 284 00:27:45.620 --> 00:27:52.100 The resurgence in 1780 of Indian attacks on the New York frontier rapidly demonstrated 285 00:27:52.100 --> 00:27:56.780 the ultimate pragmatic failure of the Sullivan campaign. 286 00:27:56.780 --> 00:28:03.140 As early as April, Joseph Brandt was back, wreaking havoc up and down the frontier. 287 00:28:03.140 --> 00:28:10.780 The pro-American Oneida were severely punished by his forces, and he took particular satisfaction 288 00:28:10.780 --> 00:28:15.180 in the destruction of his old birthplace of Kana Jahari. 289 00:28:15.180 --> 00:28:21.400 This town had had to be evacuated by the Mohawks at the outbreak of the war, when their places 290 00:28:21.400 --> 00:28:27.840 were taken by white settlers who received their comeuppance when Brandt emulated Sullivan 291 00:28:27.840 --> 00:28:32.920 by burning their grain fields as well as their horses and livestock. 292 00:28:32.920 --> 00:28:39.040 In the meantime, Sir John Johnson, taking over from Butler as head of the Tory Rangers, 293 00:28:39.040 --> 00:28:45.760 burst down from Crown Point to capture his old hometown of Johnstown and used this as 294 00:28:45.760 --> 00:28:51.320 his headquarters for pillaging and burning the lower Mohawk Valley and killing many of 295 00:28:51.320 --> 00:28:57.080 of its inhabitants. By the time Governor Clinton had gathered enough militia to march against 296 00:28:57.080 --> 00:29:05.040 him, Johnson had burned Johnstown to the ground before abandoning it to return safely to Crown 297 00:29:05.040 --> 00:29:11.880 Point and thence to Canada. George Washington, who had spared a huge force the previous year 298 00:29:11.880 --> 00:29:18.280 for Sullivan's brutal and ultimately inconclusive offensive, now felt that he could spare no 299 00:29:18.280 --> 00:29:24.320 No. 1 for the worthier task of defending the frontier settlements. Though worried about 300 00:29:24.320 --> 00:29:31.600 diminishing supplies, he made no attempt to save the principal sources of his provisions. 301 00:29:31.600 --> 00:29:36.920 The next series of incursions on the New York frontier was a more organized and systematic 302 00:29:36.920 --> 00:29:44.640 effort. In a miniature of the two-pronged attack of 1777, Major Guy Carlton, nephew 303 00:29:44.640 --> 00:29:56.640 The view of the former Canadian governor advanced down Lake Champlain in October 1780 with 800 men, including 600 British regulars. 304 00:29:56.640 --> 00:30:06.640 At the same time, Johnson and Brandt burst upon the frontier with 1200 men further south near the headwaters of the Schoharie River. 305 00:30:06.640 --> 00:30:18.640 This was supposed to coincide with a thrust by General Sir Henry Clinton up the Hudson from New York City upon the delivery of West Point by Benedict Arnold. 306 00:30:18.640 --> 00:30:27.640 Carlton managed to capture Forts Ann and George, but was forced to turn back after capturing Balston near Saratoga. 307 00:30:27.640 --> 00:30:42.640 Johnson and Brant laid waste the Schoharie River region but turned west from Albany and, avoiding American forts, devastated the Mohawk Valley and crushed several militia units. 308 00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:54.640 Johnson was finally defeated on October 19 at Clocks Field by 1,500 Hudson Valley militia under General Robert Van Rensselaer, 309 00:30:54.640 --> 00:31:09.640 Pursued only briefly by the sluggish Van Rensselaer, who thereby gave up the chance of a smashing victory, Johnson's forces fled westward to return to Oswego on Lake Ontario and thence to Canada. 310 00:31:09.640 --> 00:31:17.640 The revived English threat of capturing Albany and uniting on the Hudson had been easily thwarted. 311 00:31:17.640 --> 00:31:27.640 But at the end of 1780, the whole New York frontier west of Schenectady was a smoking desert for whites and Indians alike. 312 00:31:27.640 --> 00:31:43.640 One amusing incident of the Johnson brand foray was the single-handed saving of the Middle Fort by Morgan's crack rifleman Timothy Murphy, the same man who had shot General Frazier at the Battle of Bemis Heights. 313 00:31:43.640 --> 00:32:00.640 When Johnson demanded that the fort surrender, the cowardly major, Melanchthon Woolsey, was quickly ready to comply, he was prevented several times by Murphy, who threatened to kill anyone, including Woolsey, who attempted to carry out such a surrender. 314 00:32:00.640 --> 00:32:07.640 Murphy was backed in this courageous mutiny by the militia and the Tory Indian units moved on. 315 00:32:07.640 --> 00:32:15.140 In the West, the British launched an attack southward in 1780, similar to the invasion of the year before. 316 00:32:15.140 --> 00:32:20.140 Again, the proximate goal was to conquer Illinois and Kentucky. 317 00:32:20.140 --> 00:32:24.140 The ultimate goal was to capture the entire West. 318 00:32:24.140 --> 00:32:33.140 Spain had entered the war against Britain in 1779, and this time the British hoped to use their base at Pensacola, 319 00:32:33.140 --> 00:32:39.940 in West Florida to sweep the Spanish out of Louisiana, the land west of the Mississippi. 320 00:32:39.940 --> 00:32:49.740 It was this time a three-pronged invasion of armies of Indians stiffened by Tories, French-American militia and a few English regulars. 321 00:32:49.740 --> 00:33:00.340 One force of nearly a thousand, commanded by Captain Emmanuel Hess, set forth from Mackinac, then down the Wisconsin and the Mississippi. 322 00:33:00.340 --> 00:33:06.980 A second and smaller force commanded by Captain Charles LaGlade sailed down Lake Michigan 323 00:33:06.980 --> 00:33:13.060 from Mackinac and thence down the Illinois to meet Hess at the Mississippi. 324 00:33:13.060 --> 00:33:18.620 LaGlade's force was to serve as a distraction from the main Hess column. 325 00:33:18.620 --> 00:33:24.500 The third and largest English troop of over a thousand men marched south from Detroit 326 00:33:24.500 --> 00:33:30.980 under Captain Henry Byrd, south down the Miami River Valley and into Kentucky. 327 00:33:30.980 --> 00:33:37.660 The Byrd force carried with it two huge cannon to breach American fortifications. 328 00:33:37.660 --> 00:33:44.180 This three-pronged blow at the American west got smoothly underway in early May of 1780. 329 00:33:44.180 --> 00:33:50.620 The defense against this formidable threat devolved again upon George Rogers Clark, whose 330 00:33:50.620 --> 00:33:56.660 His already small force had been decimated by the staggering depreciation of the inflated 331 00:33:56.660 --> 00:34:04.020 paper dollar. His supply system from Spanish New Orleans was undone by Virginia's refusing 332 00:34:04.020 --> 00:34:09.980 to honor his requisitions, a pattern that was to be set for the remainder of his life. 333 00:34:09.980 --> 00:34:14.900 He was now virtually reduced to the local militia of the scattered towns of the Illinois 334 00:34:14.900 --> 00:34:23.460 In late May, Clark was suddenly informed of Hess's march down the Mississippi and its 335 00:34:23.460 --> 00:34:29.660 grave threat to Cahokia and to the Spanish town of St. Louis on the other side of the 336 00:34:29.660 --> 00:34:31.660 Mississippi River. 337 00:34:31.660 --> 00:34:37.180 Rushing up north as few men from Fort Jefferson, which Clark was constructing near the mouth 338 00:34:37.180 --> 00:34:45.860 South of the Ohio, Clark happily reached Cahokia on May 25, the day before Hesse's assault. 339 00:34:45.860 --> 00:34:52.260 The British confidently launched twin attacks on Cahokia and St. Louis. Clark repulsed the 340 00:34:52.260 --> 00:34:58.180 assault on Cahokia while Spanish soldiers and French natives managed to repulse the 341 00:34:58.180 --> 00:35:04.740 major action against St. Louis. As usual, when facing any rebuff, Hesse's Indians became 342 00:35:04.740 --> 00:35:10.420 became intensely discouraged and began to melt away, unhappy in any event because of 343 00:35:10.420 --> 00:35:17.180 the military despotism enforced in the British Army. Hess was forced to retreat rapidly, 344 00:35:17.180 --> 00:35:23.580 pursued eagerly by a Franco-Spanish-American volunteer force organized by Clark. He was 345 00:35:23.580 --> 00:35:29.820 chased as far as the Rock River, while the Glan's force, its Indian support also crumbly, 346 00:35:29.820 --> 00:35:32.820 As Pursued Back to Lake Michigan 347 00:35:32.820 --> 00:35:38.300 Clark had to deny himself the pleasure of leading the pursuit, for he had to race eastward 348 00:35:38.300 --> 00:35:41.220 to save Kentucky from Bird's army. 349 00:35:41.220 --> 00:35:48.820 To evade capture by Chickasaw Indians besieging Fort Jefferson, Clark and two companions disguised 350 00:35:48.820 --> 00:35:56.580 themselves as Chickasaws and rushed 300 miles through the wilderness to reach Harrodsburg 351 00:35:56.580 --> 00:36:02.280 in Time to Organize Kentucky Against the Coming Invasion. 352 00:36:02.280 --> 00:36:08.900 In late June, Byrd struck directly at Populous Central Kentucky, quickly storming the stockade 353 00:36:08.900 --> 00:36:13.880 at Ruddell's Station by devastating use of his big cannon. 354 00:36:13.880 --> 00:36:19.480 Byrd personally guaranteed the safety of the surrendered Americans, but as the gate opened, 355 00:36:19.480 --> 00:36:26.040 the Indians ignored their commander and rushed in to massacre and mutilate most of the helpless 356 00:36:26.040 --> 00:36:35.920 Next, the smaller stockade at Martin's Station quickly fell to the British, but the Indians 357 00:36:35.920 --> 00:36:42.200 were getting out of hand and were increasingly restive at Byrd's attempts to save the lives 358 00:36:42.200 --> 00:36:43.960 of his prisoners. 359 00:36:43.960 --> 00:36:50.460 Moreover, their range-of-the-moment attitude toward food supply, for example, immediate 360 00:36:50.460 --> 00:36:56.820 Slaughter of All Captured Cattle caused food shortages in Bird's Army. The final straw 361 00:36:56.820 --> 00:37:02.180 came when the Indians learned that George Rogers Clark, of whom they were already in 362 00:37:02.180 --> 00:37:09.180 great awe, had miraculously turned up to lead the Kentucky defense. They began to melt away, 363 00:37:09.740 --> 00:37:15.820 and the disillusioned bird had no option but to leave Kentucky as fast as he could, dismiss 364 00:37:15.820 --> 00:37:28.340 The Great English Invasion of the West in 1780 had been repulsed and driven back, virtually 365 00:37:28.340 --> 00:37:33.540 the single-handed achievement of George Rogers Clark. 366 00:37:33.540 --> 00:37:36.420 But Clark was not finished with the year's work. 367 00:37:36.420 --> 00:37:42.900 In retaliation, he swiftly raised a force of 1,000 Kentucky volunteers who assembled 368 00:37:42.900 --> 00:37:49.180 He sailed on the Ohio River on August 1 with a captured cannon. He took his men up the 369 00:37:49.180 --> 00:37:57.940 Miami to punish the Shawnee, the Indian tribe most hated by the Kentuckians. Slashing swiftly 370 00:37:57.940 --> 00:38:05.980 upriver, Clark captured Chillicothe, a leading Shawnee town, and burned it and its adjacent 371 00:38:05.980 --> 00:38:12.680 cornfields to the ground. At the next town, Pequois, the heavily outnumbered Shawnee made 372 00:38:12.680 --> 00:38:37.680 The Americans then burned Piquois and its cornfields. Despite the accelerating collapse of the paper dollar and subsequent economic chaos and shortage of supplies created by reversion to barter in the West, the emboldened Clark attempted to strike at the heart of the enemy and captured Detroit itself. 373 00:38:37.680 --> 00:38:54.680 Despite Virginia's increasing military distress, he left for Pittsburgh in late January 1781. He had planned to assemble 2,000 militia at Pittsburgh, move down the falls of Ohio and northward to Detroit. 374 00:38:54.680 --> 00:39:08.680 But this year, the British decided to avoid the failing strategy of relying on massive Indian invasions and to rely instead on a lengthy series of violent raids on the frontier. 375 00:39:08.680 --> 00:39:18.680 The Americans' troubles were aggravated by the previously neutral Delaware Indians coming down on the British side. 376 00:39:18.680 --> 00:39:26.680 Finally, the Americans were forced to pull back from Kaskaskia, from Vincennes and from Fort Jefferson. 377 00:39:26.680 --> 00:39:34.680 To cap these problems, Clark found it impossible to recruit the necessary troops for his projected march. 378 00:39:34.680 --> 00:39:44.680 Thus, Daniel Broadhead refused to join Clark and instead struck westward from Pittsburgh to punish the Delawares for entering the war. 379 00:39:44.680 --> 00:39:53.680 With a force of nearly 300, Broadhead swiftly seized and burned Cosh Cotton and murdered a batch of Delaware prisoners. 380 00:39:53.680 --> 00:40:04.680 The major effect of this brutality was to intensify the Delaware's anti-American resolve, and they burned nine Kentucky prisoners in reprisal. 381 00:40:04.680 --> 00:40:13.680 Pennsylvania, moreover, was distrustful of Virginia's lead in the projected Clark Expedition and sent no troops to support it. 382 00:40:13.680 --> 00:40:19.680 Finally, Clark's potential recruits from the Valley of Virginia refused to join his force. 383 00:40:19.680 --> 00:40:29.680 Instead, they sprang to counter the British invasion of eastern Virginia and heeded Virginia's decision to call off the expedition. 384 00:40:29.680 --> 00:40:35.680 Clark could only rely on local Kentucky and Ohio Valley settlers. 385 00:40:35.680 --> 00:41:05.680 He finally assembled 400 volunteers at Wheeling. Inauspiciously, the continuing mass desertions from his army forced him to start down the Ohio. Luck continued to fail him when the force of over 100 Pennsylvanians under Colonel Archibald Lockrey, marching to join Clark, was wiped out in late August in a sudden slashing attack by a slightly smaller force led by none other than Joseph Brandt. 386 00:41:05.680 --> 00:41:12.680 At Louisville, a series of councils in early September had to decide Kentucky's course. 387 00:41:12.680 --> 00:41:24.680 While Clark's faithful Illinois officers argued for his plan to attack Detroit, the majority of the Kentucky councils realized that the force was too small for such a campaign. 388 00:41:24.680 --> 00:41:30.680 They decided there would be no American offensive, and a discouraged Clark lamented that 389 00:41:30.680 --> 00:41:36.920 I have lost the object that was one of the principal inducements to my fatigues and transactions 390 00:41:36.920 --> 00:41:43.480 for several years past. My chain appears to have run out. I find myself enclosed with 391 00:41:43.480 --> 00:41:46.920 few troops in a trifling fort. 392 00:41:46.920 --> 00:41:52.640 Brandt had been shifted to the west in the early summer of 1781 to help check the expected 393 00:41:52.640 --> 00:41:59.480 drive by Clark against Detroit. Now, after the destruction of Lockrey's force, he proposed 394 00:41:59.480 --> 00:42:06.280 to move swiftly upon Clark at Louisville with his full force of Tories and Indians, while 395 00:42:06.280 --> 00:42:12.200 the Americans were still demoralized. But once again, the Indians themselves were as 396 00:42:12.200 --> 00:42:18.320 fully demoralized by victory as by defeat. In learning of Kentucky's abandonment of 397 00:42:18.320 --> 00:42:24.320 the Detroit invasion plan, they no longer feared destruction at the hands of an invading 398 00:42:24.320 --> 00:42:31.140 American Force. They deserted en masse, as did the Tory Rangers, reducing a sizeable 399 00:42:31.140 --> 00:42:38.140 force to a mere troop of 200 men. The projected attack on Clark had necessarily 400 00:42:38.140 --> 00:42:45.320 become a surging terror raid of killing and plundering in the Kentucky settlements, at 401 00:42:45.320 --> 00:42:50.720 which point Brandt was forced by the Indians' satisfaction with their loot to turn back 402 00:42:50.720 --> 00:42:55.840 Back Across the Ohio Because he could not conquer Kentucky, Brant 403 00:42:55.840 --> 00:43:03.920 finished out the war disgruntled, like his counterpart, Clark. 1781 ended with Kentucky 404 00:43:03.920 --> 00:43:10.000 still in the hands of American settlers and with the British back in control of the land 405 00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:17.880 north of the Ohio, roughly the status quo at the outset of the Revolutionary War. 406 00:43:17.880 --> 00:43:23.920 In contrast to these mixed conditions, the New York frontier was in virtually a hopeless 407 00:43:23.920 --> 00:43:27.080 state during 1781. 408 00:43:27.080 --> 00:43:32.360 Brandt and the Indians were emphatically in control of western New York. 409 00:43:32.360 --> 00:43:37.520 Indian terror raids began as early as January, and the American settlers were permanently 410 00:43:37.520 --> 00:43:43.640 confined to two dozen stockades from which they dared emerge only to plant their fields 411 00:43:43.640 --> 00:43:45.240 under armed guard. 412 00:43:45.240 --> 00:43:59.240 Moreover, the redoubtable Fort Stanwix, the westernmost American stronghold in the Mohawk Valley, had to be abandoned under siege, and the western bastion fell back to Fort Herkimer. 413 00:43:59.240 --> 00:44:11.240 Raiding parties roamed and destroyed the New York frontier almost at will, and the two major upstate towns of Albany and Schenectady feared imminent attack. 414 00:44:11.240 --> 00:44:27.240 Left to defend the New York region was the radical young Colonel Marinus Willett, who conducted guerrilla warfare on his own by using Kana Jahari as his base from which to attack Indian raiding parties. 415 00:44:27.240 --> 00:44:37.240 But these were only last-ditch actions, and once again Washington felt he could spare no man to assist in the grievous burden of defense. 416 00:44:37.240 --> 00:44:46.240 One gauge of the terrible American losses on the frontier during the war was the depopulation of frontier Tryon County. 417 00:44:46.240 --> 00:44:52.240 At the start of the war, the county had 2,500 enrolled in its militia. 418 00:44:52.240 --> 00:44:57.240 By 1781, fewer than 800 were eligible. 419 00:44:57.240 --> 00:45:04.240 One contemporary estimate held that of the mammoth reduction, one-third were casualties. 420 00:45:04.240 --> 00:45:27.240 The final British thrust on the New York frontier came in the autumn of 1781, as Washington's move south to Yorktown emboldened the British to try, for the third time, a three-pronged offensive to cut New York in two. 421 00:45:27.240 --> 00:45:33.280 The American force had dwindled to only 2,000 men under General William Heath in the Hudson 422 00:45:33.280 --> 00:45:38.600 Highlands, and this seemed to provide a golden opportunity. 423 00:45:38.600 --> 00:45:45.280 Driving down Lake Champlain to Ticonderoga, St. Leisure became embroiled in negotiations 424 00:45:45.280 --> 00:45:50.800 with the independent state of Vermont and never proceeded further. 425 00:45:50.800 --> 00:45:57.660 Until Sir Henry Clinton, commanding 16,000 idle men in New York City, failed with his 426 00:45:57.660 --> 00:46:06.160 typical indolence to make any move northward to attack Heath. Only Major John Ross moved 427 00:46:06.160 --> 00:46:13.160 from Oswego on October 10, falling upon the Lower Schoharie. But Brandt's absence in 428 00:46:13.160 --> 00:46:19.360 the West deprived Ross of the bulk of the expected Iroquois allies, and his own force 429 00:46:19.360 --> 00:46:26.800 A force of nearly 500 was not sufficient to penetrate further than the outskirts of Schenectady. 430 00:46:26.800 --> 00:46:33.280 His withdrawal was harried by Ouellette, who had quickly assembled hundreds of militia. 431 00:46:33.280 --> 00:46:38.800 The engagements in the pursuit were inconclusive, but the settlers were immeasurably cheered 432 00:46:38.800 --> 00:46:45.720 by the news that, fallen in battle, was perhaps the most hated man on the New York frontier, 433 00:46:45.720 --> 00:46:47.340 Walter Butler. 434 00:46:47.340 --> 00:46:53.500 As Van Every puts it, there was more rejoicing in Tryon County over his death than over 435 00:46:53.500 --> 00:46:57.540 the coincidental news from Yorktown. 436 00:46:57.540 --> 00:47:02.580 Spain was willing to aid the American cause, but when it entered the war against Great 437 00:47:02.580 --> 00:47:12.000 Britain in 1779, it was to recapture her territory and weaken her old enemy, Great Britain, not 438 00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:15.300 to aid Republican revolutionaries. 439 00:47:15.300 --> 00:47:21.540 William Clark won his great victories in Illinois in 1778 and James Willing, brother of the 440 00:47:21.540 --> 00:47:28.100 partner of Robert Morris, headed a band early that year to plunder unmercifully the planters 441 00:47:28.100 --> 00:47:30.860 of Natchez in West Florida. 442 00:47:30.860 --> 00:47:36.180 Spain realized that the aggressive Americans in the long run posed a greater threat to 443 00:47:36.180 --> 00:47:41.600 her holdings and ambitions in the West than did Britain's bases there. 444 00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:47.080 The only thing that Willing's plunder accomplished for the American cause was to make confirmed 445 00:47:47.080 --> 00:47:52.880 tories of the natchez planters, and to lead Britain to construct a series of forts on 446 00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:58.000 the lower Mississippi that effectively blocked American navigation. 447 00:47:58.000 --> 00:48:04.920 As soon as Spain went to war openly in 1779, she moved swiftly to recapture the coveted 448 00:48:04.920 --> 00:48:11.400 territory Britain had seized from her in the Peace of 1763. 449 00:48:11.400 --> 00:48:18.000 Spain's young governor, Bernardo de Galvez, with remarkable swiftness, attacked and overwhelmed 450 00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:24.780 every English post on the lower Mississippi, before the defenders had had a chance to learn 451 00:48:24.780 --> 00:48:27.560 that Spain was in the war. 452 00:48:27.560 --> 00:48:36.560 Fort Manchac, Baton Rouge, Fort Pamur and Natchez all fell to de Galvez in September, 453 00:48:36.560 --> 00:48:42.200 The Spanish ships defeated the British to gain control of Lake Pontchartrain, north of New 454 00:48:42.200 --> 00:48:43.880 Orleans. 455 00:48:43.880 --> 00:48:50.960 In a few weeks, de Galvez had captured over 1,100 English troops and eight English ships. 456 00:48:50.960 --> 00:48:58.760 The following March, he captured Mobile, gaining control of the entire lower Mississippi Valley. 457 00:48:58.760 --> 00:49:05.120 To forestall American settlers, Spanish commanders crossed the Mississippi further north in the 458 00:49:05.120 --> 00:49:17.120 The Spanish flag was even hoisted in early 1781 over St. Joseph, now in southern Michigan, which had been captured by Captain Eugene Poore in a march from St. Louis. 459 00:49:17.120 --> 00:49:25.120 Spain's final spoils of the war was de Galvez's capture, in May 1781, of mighty Pensacola. 460 00:49:25.120 --> 00:49:34.120 The Spanish flag was even hoisted in early 1781 over St. Joseph, now in southern Michigan, which had been captured by Captain Eugene Poore in a march from St. Louis. 461 00:49:34.120 --> 00:49:45.120 The mighty Pensacola, the major English base in the South, a capture which included the final surrender by Britain of all of West Florida. 462 00:49:45.120 --> 00:49:56.120 Once in control of West Florida, the Spanish proved extremely lenient rulers, even to British rebels who had temporarily seized Fort Penmure.