On February 5, 1779, Colonel George Rogers Clark and 120 determined American soldiers, left Kaskaskia and began an arduous winter trek eastward to capture the British post of Fort Sackville on the Wabash River, near the town of Vincennes. Many days were spent wading through frigid water, at times up to their necks. To compound matters, their pack horses all died and their provisions dwindled to what the men could carry on their backs.

After capturing Kaskaskia and Cahokia in July 1778, Colonel George Rogers Clark set his sights on the strategically critical British post of Fort Sackville, 200 miles to the east. Clark sent a local delegation to Vincennes who convinced its French inhabitants, never too fond of the British, to switch their allegiance to the American cause. Clark also sent Captain Leonard Helm and a small detachment to safeguard this newest American possession. Word of Clark’s daring exploits reached Fort Detroit, the main British outpost in the region. Its commander, Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton, assembled a relief force and headed south.

In 1778, Colonel George Rogers Clark presented a plan to Virginia Governor Patrick Henry and his executive council of Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and George Wythe to conquer the Illinois Country, part of the Province of Quebec. Clark proposed capturing British forts at Kaskaskia and Cahokia to access badly needed supplies from Spanish Louisiana and force the British to focus their attention away from Kentucky. Incredibly, Clark’s audacious plan to capture these distant British outposts would succeed without firing a shot.

The largest colony in British North America was the Province of Quebec, extending from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi and south to the Ohio. A debate ensued regarding whether Indians should be supplied and enlisted to help crush the rebellion in the colonies. In 1776, George Rogers Clark was living in a remote part of Virginia and helped petition Virginia’s Assembly to declare this area, known as Kentucky, to be a separate county. The priority of the county was to establish a militia to defend against Indian attacks and Clark became the acting commander of the Kentucky militia. In March 1777, a decision was finally made, and orders were issued by Lord George Germaine, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to commence what would prove to be a ruthless frontier Indian war.

On the eve of the American Revolution, the lands west of the Appalachians were ripe for conquest as the area was lightly defended by the British. All that was needed to exploit the situation and takeover this vast territory was an intrepid man with a vision. That leader would emerge in the person of George Rogers Clark. Born on November 19, 1752, on the family farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, George was not a great student. Recognizing his natural restlessness precluded farming as an occupation, father and son agreed George should learn surveying, and he proved to be an eager pupil. By age nineteen, with a head full of knowledge, some surveying equipment, and a rifle, George Rogers Clark headed west to make it on his own.

In October 1774, Colonel Andrew Lewis and 800 Virginia militiamen set up camp at Point Pleasant on the Ohio River, preparing to invade the Shawnee homeland. On the morning of October 10, hunters from Lewis’ party stumbled upon an encampment of 500 Shawnee warriors led by Cornstalk, their gifted chief. Despite losing the element of surprise, Cornstalk decided to attack, initially inflicting heavy casualties. Lewis then committed the bulk of his army to the fight and the tide began to turn.

In the fall of 1768, the British signed the Treaty of Hard Labour with the Cherokee and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois, relinquishing parts of present-day West Virginia and Kentucky to the British. Although they provided a brief respite from the violence, they were not permanent solutions. In September 1773, Daniel Boone led fifty settlers, including his entire family, into Kentucky. The group was ambushed by Shawnee warriors near the Cumberland Gap and several men, including Boone’s son James, were killed and badly mutilated. Colonists in Virginia demanded action and, in 1774, Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s Royal Governor, launched two expeditions to destroy Shawnee villages in the Ohio Country.

In October 1764, Colonel Henry Bouquet moved his army west from Fort Pitt to subdue the last of Pontiac’s rebellious allies and reestablish British authority around the Great Lakes. Bouquet led his 1,500-man force through a dense wilderness that no European army had ever penetrated. Dismayed at the size of Bouquet’s force, the Shawnee hastily pleaded for a peace conference. Finally, in the spring of 1765, British officials reached an accord with tribes in the Illinois Country, the final holdouts of Pontiac’s conspiracy. These agreements, coupled with the Royal Proclamation of 1763, achieved a sort of peace, but it was a temporary fix at best.

In August 1763, England’s Board of Trade replaced General Jeffery Amherst as commander-in-chief of North America with General Thomas Gage, who hoped to crush Pontiac’s rebellion the following summer. However, Sir William Johnson, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, reminded them of the exorbitant cost in men and material required to forcefully subdue the tribes. They reluctantly gave permission to Sir William to first try and buy the peace with presents, and many proud warriors accepted Johnson’s generous terms. But the remorseless Delaware and Shawnee scorned his offers, and Gage ordered Colonel John Bradstreet to proceed to Fort Detroit via Lake Erie, destroying all villages he encountered.

In June 1763, Pontiac’s Rebellion moved east towards the remaining British outposts along the frontier and the settlements just beyond. On June 22, Delaware Chief Turtle’s Heart appeared at the gates of Fort Pitt, the keystone of the region, expressing great friendship and concern for the Brits and begging them to leave before it was too late. Captain Ecuyer, the commander, aware of Pontiac’s Rebellion, declined the offer and the Delaware warriors commenced their siege.

Following Pontiac’s attack on Fort Detroit, word quickly spread to Indian villages across the region and other tribes followed suit. On May 16, Wyandot warriors approached Fort Sandusky, on the south shore of Lake Erie, and asked to smoke a peace pipe with the commandant, Ensign Paully. Unaware of the rebellion and on friendly terms with the Wyandots, Paully opened the gates and the warriors massacred the fifteen-man garrison. Similar stories began to unfold throughout the region.

Pontiac, an Ottawa war chief, launched his rebellion in May 1763 when he attacked Fort Detroit and its 120-man garrison commanded by Major Henry Gladwyn. The uprising would be the longest and most widespread ever in North America. Pontiac’s initial targets were nine British outposts, including Fort Detroit, the centerpiece of the region. These forts were more than 100 miles apart, rendering them incapable of supporting one another, a fact not lost on Pontiac.

As a result of the French and Indian War, the Ohio Country and the land around the Great Lakes changed from French to British control in the early 1760s. Indian nations worried that their way of life would be adversely affected by this change, and a charismatic Ottawa chief named Pontiac was determined to prevent this from happening. In late 1762, Pontiac sent emissaries to tribes across the region, challenging them to join his endeavor to drive out the British.

Since 1607, when the first English settlers arrived in Jamestown, British America had largely been confined to the eastern seaboard. As the colonies began to expand west in the mid-1700s, they came into conflict with their longtime nemesis, the French, primarily over which nation would dominate the lucrative fur trade in the Ohio Country. In 1754, these tensions erupted into the French and Indian War, and when it ended, the map of North America was redrawn. France was essentially expelled from the continent and England was awarded all lands east of the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, except for New Orleans.

The first Europeans to reach North America and explore its interior were the Spanish in the early 1500s, who came mainly for “gold, glory, and God.” France also established a colonial empire in North America beginning with Samuel de Champlain in the early 1600s, calling their holdings New France. In 1692, La Salle, a former Jesuit priest, canoed down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the land for France and naming it Louisiana.

What Nathanael Greene accomplished in his two years in command of the southern Continental Army was nothing short of miraculous, especially considering his starting point. The army Greene inherited was in a shambles after the opening phases of the war and many saw little hope for the cause. His tactics were so effective that within six months of Greene taking command, Lord Charles Cornwallis moved his shrinking British army into Virginia and closer to his date with destiny at Yorktown.

By the late summer of 1781, the American Revolution was drawing to a close. Hoping to inflict more damage to the British, Major General Nathanael Greene planned a strike at the one remaining British army in South Carolina. The Battle of Eutaw Springs, fought on September 8, 1781, sixty miles from Charleston, resulted in another frustrating loss for General Nathanael Greene and his Continental Army, a fight Greene described as the most obstinate he ever saw.

In the spring of 1781, American forces under General Nathanael Greene rolled up the British garrisons in the interior of the Carolinas one by one. The last British holdout was the fortified town of Ninety Six, in the foothills of western South Carolina. On June 12, with the end in sight for the Brits, a rider brought word that a relief column under Lord Francis Rawdon was on the way from Charleston. Greene decided to lift the siege but not before trying one final assault on the night of June 18, an attack that failed terribly.

In late April 1781, Lord Charles Cornwallis made the painful decision to abandon the Carolinas and Georgia, and took his 2,000 veteran soldiers to Virginia. General Nathanael Greene’s strategy to wear down and frustrate Cornwallis had worked masterfully, as Cornwallis wrote he was “quite tired of marching about the country in quest of adventures.” The remaining British outposts in the southern colonies were left in the capable hands of Colonel Francis Rawdon, but they were not mutually supporting. Greene recognized this fatal flaw and immediately began to reconquer them one at a time.

In March 1781, General Nathanael Greene decided to finally confront Lord Charles Cornwallis’s British army in a pitched battle and selected Guilford Courthouse in western North Carolina as the spot. Greene positioned his troops as Daniel Morgan had at Cowpens, with two ranks of militia in front and a final line of seasoned Continentals led by Colonels Otho Williams and John Howard. With hand-to-hand fighting raging just in front of him and the contest hanging in the balance, Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire grapeshot point blank into the mass.