THEODORE ROOSEVELT Premium Collection: History Books, Biographies, Memoirs, Essays, Speeches & Executive Orders by Theodore Roosevelt & Henry Cabot Lodge

Author:Theodore Roosevelt & Henry Cabot Lodge [Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027241699
Publisher: Musaicum Books
Published: 2018-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Mr. Kirke merely follows Ramsey, and adds a few flourishes of his own, such as that at the Chickamauga towns "the blood of the slaughtered cattle dyed red the Tennessee" for some twenty miles, and that "the homes of over forty thousand people were laid in ashes." This last estimate is just about ten times too strong, for the only country visited was that of the Overhill Cherokees, and the outside limit for the population of the devastated territory would be some four thousand souls, or a third of the Cherokee tribe, which all told numbered perhaps twelve thousand people.

921 Campbell MSS. Issued at Kai-a-tee, Jan. 4, 1781; the copy sent to Governor Jefferson is dated Feb. 28th.

922 The Tennessee historians all speak of this as a treaty; and probably a meeting did take place as described; but it led to nothing, and no actual treaty was made until some months later.

923 Calendar of Va. State Papers, II., letter of Col. Wm. Christian to Governor of Virginia, April 10, 1781.

924 State Department MSS., No. 15, Feb. 25, 1781.

925 Do. Letters of Col. Wm. Christian, April 10, 1781; of Joseph Martin, March 1st; and of Arthur Campbell, March 28th. The accounts vary slightly; for instance, Christian gives him one hundred and eighty, Campbell only one hundred and fifty men. One account says he killed thirty, another twenty Indians. Martin, by the way, speaks bitterly of the militia as men "who do duty at times as their inclination leads them." The incident, brilliant enough anyhow, of course grows a little under Ramsey and Haywood; and Mr. Kirke fairly surpasses himself when he comes to it.

926 Shelby MSS. Of course Shelby paints these skirmishes in very strong colors. Haywood and Ramsey base their accounts purely on his papers.

927 Ramsey and his followers endeavor to prove that the mountain men did excellently in these 1781 campaigns; but the endeavor is futile. They were good for some one definite stroke, but their shortcomings were manifest the instant a long campaign was attempted; and the comments of the South Carolina historians upon their willingness to leave at unfortunate moments are on the whole just. They behaved somewhat as Stark and the victors at Bennington did when they left the American army before Saratoga; although their conduct was on the whole better than that of Stark's men. They were a brave, hardy, warlike band of irregulars, probably better fighters than any similar force on this continent or elsewhere; but occasional brilliant exceptions must not blind us to the general inefficiency of the Revolutionary militia, and their great inferiority to the Continentals of Washington, Greene, and Wayne. See Appendix.

928 In the Clay MSS. there is a letter from Jesse Benton (the father of the great Missouri Senator) to Col. Thos. Hart, of March 23d, 1783, which gives a glimpse of the way in which the tories were treated even after the British had been driven out; it also shows how soon maltreatment of royalists was turned into general misrule and rioting.

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