Illinois campaign
The Illinois campaign, also known as Clark's Northwestern campaign, was a series of engagements during the American Revolutionary War in which a small force of Virginia militia led by George Rogers Clark seized control of several British outposts in the region northwest of the Ohio River in what is now Illinois and Indiana. The campaign is the best-known action of the western theater of the war and the source of Clark's reputation as an early American military hero.
In July 1778, Clark and his men descended the Ohio River from the Falls of the Ohio, crossed overland to the Mississippi River and took control of Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and several other villages in British territory. Vincennes, on the Wabash River was occupied a few weeks later. The occupation was accomplished without firing a shot because many of the French-speaking inhabitants of the region were sympathetic to the Patriot cause. To counter Clark's advance, Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant-governor based at Fort Detroit, reoccupied Vincennes with a small force in December 1778. In February 1779, Clark returned to Vincennes in a surprise winter expedition and retook the town, capturing Hamilton in the process. Virginia capitalized on Clark's success by establishing the region as Illinois County.
The importance of the Illinois campaign has been the subject of much debate. Because the British ceded the entire area northwest of the Ohio River to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, some historians have credited Clark actions with nearly doubling the size of the original Thirteen Colonies. For this reason, Clark was acclaimed "Conqueror of the Northwest", and his Illinois campaign—particularly his surprise march on Vincennes—was greatly celebrated and romanticized.
Background
The Illinois Country was a vaguely defined region northwest of the Ohio River which included much of what is now the states of Indiana and Illinois. The area had been a part of the Louisiana district of New France until the end of the French and Indian War when France ceded sovereignty of the region east of the Mississippi to the British in the 1763 Treaty of Paris. In the Quebec Act of 1774, the British officially made the Illinois Country part of the Province of Quebec.In 1778, the population of the Illinois Country consisted of less than 1,000 people of European descent, mostly French-speaking, and about 600 African-American slaves. Thousands of Native Americans lived in villages concentrated along the Mississippi, Illinois, and Wabash Rivers. British official military presence in the region had been nonexistent after the 70 soldiers based at Kaskaskia's Fort Gage had been ordered east during the 1775 Invasion of Quebec. When the soldiers departed, Philippe-François de Rastel, Sieur de Rocheblave, a resident trader and former French officer, was authorized to administer Kaskaskia. Rocheblave, however, lacked the money, resources, and men needed to administer and protect the settlements in the region.
During the Revolutionary War, the Ohio River marked the border between the Illinois Country and Kentucky, which was then a newly settled area claimed by Virginia. The British originally sought to keep Native Americans out of the war, but in 1777, Lieutenant Governor Hamilton received instructions to recruit and arm Indigenous war parties to raid frontier settlements. These war parties were to be accompanied by British Indian Department officers or volunteers from the Detroit militia so as to prevent atrocities. "From 1777 on," wrote historian Bernard Sheehan, "the line of western settlements was under almost constant assault by white-led raiding parties that had originated at Detroit."
In 1777, George Rogers Clark was a 25-year-old major in the Kentucky County, Virginia, militia. Clark believed that he could end the raids on Kentucky by capturing the British posts in the Illinois Country and then moving against Detroit. In April 1777, Clark sent two spies to Kaskaskia. They returned two months later and reported that the fort at Kaskaskia was unguarded, that the French-speaking residents were not greatly attached to the British, and that no one expected an attack. Clark immediately wrote a letter to Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia in which he outlined a plan to capture Kaskaskia.
Planning
Because the settlers living in Kentucky lacked the authority, manpower, and supplies to launch the expedition themselves, Clark traveled to Williamsburg in October 1777 via the Wilderness Road to meet with Governor Henry. He was joined by a party of about 100 who were leaving Kentucky due to Indigenous raids. Clark presented his plan to Governor Henry on December 10, 1777. To maintain secrecy, Clark's proposal was only shared with a small group of influential Virginians, including Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and George Wythe. Although Henry initially expressed doubts about whether the campaign was feasible, Clark managed to win the confidence of Henry and the others. The plan was approved by the members of the Virginia General Assembly, who were only given vague details about the expedition. Publicly, Clark was authorized to raise men for the defence of Kentucky. In a secret set of instructions from Governor Henry, Clark was instructed to capture Kaskaskia and then proceed as he saw fit.Governor Henry commissioned Clark as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia and authorized him to raise seven companies, each to contain fifty men. This unit, later known as the Illinois Regiment, was a part of Virginia's state forces and not a part of the Continental Army. The men were enlisted to serve for three months, once they reached Kentucky. To maintain secrecy, Clark did not tell any of his recruits that the purpose of the expedition was to invade the Illinois Country. Clark was given £1,200 in Continental currency to purchase supplies.
Clark established his headquarters at Redstone Old Fort on the Monongahela River, while three of Clark's associates from Dunmore's War, Joseph Bowman, Leonard Helm and William Harrod, began recruitment efforts. Clark commissioned Captain William Bailey Smith as a major, and gave him £150 to recruit four companies in the Holston River valley and meet Clark at the Falls of the Ohio.
Clark was unable to raise all 350 men authorized for the Illinois Regiment. His recruiters had to compete with recruiters from the Continental Army and from other militia units. Some believed that Kentucky was too sparsely inhabited to warrant the diversion of manpower, and recommended that it should be evacuated rather than defended. Settlers in the Holston valley were more concerned with the Cherokee to the south than with the Indigenous tribes north of the Ohio. A longstanding boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia meant that few Pennsylvanians volunteered for what was perceived as a campaign to protect Virginia territory, although some did enlist.
Clark's journey down the Ohio
After repeated delays to allow time for more men to join, Clark left Redstone by boat on May 12, 1778, with about 150 recruits, organized in three companies under captains Bowman, Helm, and Harrod. Clark expected to rendezvous with 200 Holston men under Major Smith at the Falls of the Ohio. Traveling with Clark were about 20 families who were going to Kentucky to settle.Clark and his men picked up additional supplies at Fort Pitt and at Henry that were provided by Brigadier General Edward Hand, the Continental Army Western Department commander. They reached Fort Randolph soon after it had been besieged by an Indigenous war party. The fort commander asked for assistance in pursuing the raiders, but Clark declined, believing that he could not spare the time.
Clark stopped at the mouth of the Kentucky River and despatched a message upriver to Major Smith, telling him that it was time to rendezvous. Clark soon learned, however, that of Smith's four promised companies, only one partial company under a Captain Dillard had been raised. Clark therefore sent word to Colonel John Bowman, the senior militia officer in Kentucky, requesting that the colonel send Dillard's men and any other recruits he could find to the Falls of the Ohio.
Clark's flotilla reached the Falls on May 27. He set up a base camp on a small island in the midst of the rapids, later known as Corn Island. When the additional recruits from Kentucky finally arrived, Clark added 20 of these men to his force, placing them in a company under Captain John Montgomery, and sent the others back to help defend the Kentucky settlements. Clark then revealed to his men that the real purpose of the expedition was to invade the Illinois Country. The news was greeted with enthusiasm by many, but some of the Holston men deserted that night; seven or eight were caught and brought back, but others eluded capture and returned to their homes.
While Clark and his officers drilled the troops in preparation for the Kaskaskia expedition, the families who had traveled with the regiment down the Ohio River settled on the island and planted corn. These settlers moved to the mainland the following year, founding the settlement which later became Louisville. While on the island, Clark received an important message from Pittsburgh: France had signed a Treaty of Alliance with the United States. Clark hoped that this information would be useful in securing the allegiance of the French-speaking inhabitants of the Illinois country.
Occupation of the Illinois Country
Clark set off from Corn Island on June 24, 1778. The date of departure is sometimes given as June 26, based on a letter Clark wrote to George Mason, but Clark corrected the date in his memoir, since they left the same day as a solar eclipse. Clark left behind seven soldiers who were deemed not hardy enough for the journey. These men stayed with the families on the island and guarded the provisions stored there. Clark's force numbered about 175 men in total, organized in four companies under Captains Bowman, Helm, Harrod, and Montgomery.On June 28, the Illinois Regiment reached the mouth of the Tennessee River. Normally, travellers going to Kaskaskia would continue to the Mississippi River, and then head upstream to the village. Because Clark hoped to take Kaskaskia by surprise, he decided to march his men across what is now the southern tip of Illinois and approach the village by land, a journey of about. Clark's men captured a boatload of American hunters led by John Duff who had recently been at Kaskaskia. They provided Clark with intelligence about the village and agreed to join the expedition as guides. That evening, Clark and his troops landed their vessels on the north side of the Ohio River, near the ruins of Fort Massac, a French outpost abandoned after the French and Indian War.
The men marched through forest before emerging onto a prairie. When the chief guide announced that he was lost, Clark suspected treachery and threatened to kill the man unless he found the way. The guide regained his bearings, and the trek resumed. They arrived outside Kaskaskia on the night of July 4. Thinking they would have arrived sooner, the men had carried only four days worth of rations so had gone without food for the last two days of the six-day march. "In our hungry condition," wrote Joseph Bowman, "we unanimously determined to take the town or die in the attempt."
They crossed the Kaskaskia River about midnight and quickly secured the town without firing a shot. The Virginians captured Rocheblave, who was asleep in his quarters when the Americans burst into Kaskaskia's unguarded fort. The next morning, Clark began work to secure the allegiance of the townspeople—a task made easier because Clark brought news of the Franco-American alliance. Residents were asked to take oath of loyalty to Virginia and the United States. Father Pierre Gibault, the village priest, was won over after Clark assured him that the Catholic Church would be protected under the laws of Virginia. Rocheblave and several others deemed hostile to the Americans were kept as prisoners and later sent to Virginia.
Clark next extended his authority to the nearby French settlements. On the afternoon of July 5, Captain Bowman was sent with 30 mounted men, along with some citizens of Kaskaskia, to secure Prairie du Rocher, St. Philippe, and Cahokia. The towns offered no resistance, and within 10 days, more than 300 people had taken the American oath of allegiance. When Clark turned his attention to Vincennes, Father Gibault offered to help. On July 14, Gibault and a few companions set out on horseback for Vincennes. There, most of the citizens agreed to take the oath of allegiance. Gibault returned to Clark in early August to report that an American flag now flew over Vincennes's Fort Sackville. Clark dispatched Captain Helm to Vincennes to take command of the dilapidated fort.