George Rogers Clark
Perhaps some people aren’t meant for ordinary life.
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The 1783 Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and her American colonies. When Britain signed the treaty, she ceded her claim on what was called the Old Northwest Territory, an area that included the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. This concession was largely due to the efforts of one man, George Rogers Clark.
In January 1779, Clark commanded a force of militiamen at Kaskaskia, a small town near the Mississippi River in what is now southern Illinois. The Revolutionary War was in progress, and the Continental Army could spare no money or men for western adventures, so Clark’s force was made up of local volunteers and funded in part by money Clark himself borrowed.
The British held Fort Sackville, located on the present-day site of Vincennes, Indiana, which was the key to controlling much of the territory further west. Clark planned to take the fort, which was 180 miles from Kaskaskia. He wrote to Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, “Who knows what fortune will do for us? Great things have been effected by a few men well conducted.”
On February 5th, Clark led a force of 170 men out of Kaskaskia. During their march, a journey on foot of eighteen days, it rained frequently and the party often had to cross flooded fields. They carried rations, but food ran low, and some days they went without. At night, they slept on the wet ground.
On February 13, the party reached the vicinity of the Wabash River. The river and it’s tributaries had spilled out of their banks and flooded the surrounding bottom land. Clark’s goal, Fort Sackville, was on the far side of the water, nine miles away. They spent the night, as an officer described in his diary, on a “small spot of ground” in “drizzly and dark weather.”
It took the party eight days to cross the flooded rivers, using canoes they built on the spot to carry their supplies. When the river channels were otherwise impassable, the men, too, rode in the canoes, but more often they waded through water that was February-cold.
In his own diary, Clark described the situation on February 21, sixteen days after they marched out of Kaskaskia. “[We] came to a copse of timber called the Warrior’s Island. We were now in full view of the fort and town, not a shrub between us … Every man now feasted his eyes and forgot he had suffered anything.” The British flag flew over a pair of two-story wooden buildings, a rectangular parade ground, and four other buildings, all protected by a wooden palisade.
An officer told what came next:
“Set off to cross the plain… about four miles long all covered with water breast high. Here we expected some of our brave men must certainly perish, having frozen in the night, and so long fasting. Having no other resource but wading this plain, or rather lake, of waters, we plunged into it with courage … We thought to get to town that night, so plunged into the water, sometimes to the neck, for more than one league when we stopped on the next hill, … there being no dry land on any side for many leagues. Rain all this day; no provisions.”
The next day, as the company reached the land occupied by the fort, Clark wrote that many of his men “would reach the shore, and fall with their bodies half in the water.” Nevertheless, they rallied and attacked.
The British had assumed no one could, or would, do what Clark and his men were doing, and they only learned of Clark’s approach when they were fired on. When they looked out of the fort they saw what appeared to be a substantial force of attackers, because Clark issued extra flags to his troops and maneuvered them to give the impression of an army of five hundred men.
Accurate long rifle fire from the experienced woodsmen in Clark’s force dispatched the gunners manning the fort’s cannon. He then ordered his men to begin tunneling toward the fort from the near-by river bank. The British commander knew this would lead to explosives under the fort’s walls, and he called for negotiations.
Clark insisted on unconditional surrender, and he emphasized his demand by executing five allies of the British. These were Indian warriors who, in Clark’s view, were guilty of killing innocent settlers during raids. At 10:00 AM on Thursday, February 25, 1779, the British surrendered.
It turned out that when the British abandoned the fort, they also abandoned their claim to the Old Northwest Territory, a concession that nearly doubled the size of the original thirteen colonies. The victory earned Clark public acclaim and the title “Conquerer of the Old Northwest.”
George Rogers Clark was not yet thirty, and he found no comparable challenge in his future. Within ten years he was forced out of the military, accused of being drunk on duty.
For much of the rest of his life, he struggled to no good effect. He took part in two ill-advised, and failed, conspiracies that sought to free the Mississippi River from Spanish control, even as his younger brother gained fame as the Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Never fully reimbursed for the military expenses he incurred in the campaign against Fort Sackville, he suffered in poverty and had to hide from creditors. He lived his final years in obscurity, needing the care of family members just to survive. It was the story of a man confused about what to do with his life, and unable to do it well.
And yet …
On February 22, 1779, when George Rogers Clark stood with his men on a water-logged bit of land, exhausted after more than two weeks of marching, wading, and freezing, with the British-held fort in view, he knew what to do.
“Whispered to those near me to do as I did, immediately put some water in my hand, poured on powder, blackened my face, gave a warwhoop and marched into the water, without saying a word. The party gazed and fell in, one after another, without saying a word.”
Perhaps some people aren’t meant for ordinary life.
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You can visit the site of Fort Sackville and George Rogers Clark’s exploit. It is located in Vincennes, Indiana, on the grounds of the George Rogers Clark Memorial, a National Historic Park. The park is next to the Lincoln Memorial Bridge where Route 50 once crossed the Wabash River, before it was rerouted to a bypass around Vincennes.
