The Penobscot Expedition stalled soon after the fighting started due to a squabble between the army commander, General Solomon Lovell, and his naval counterpart, Commodore Dudley Saltonstall. Showing a reluctance to engage the enemy that bordered on cowardice, Saltonstall was an obstacle that Lovell could not overcome. Without the support of Saltonstall’s guns, Lovell refused to risk a frontal assault on Fort George. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Americans, they were now in a race against time as a British fleet under Sir George Collier was sailing north from New York to relieve the British garrison in Penobscot Bay.

The Penobscot Expedition that sailed from Boston Harbor consisted of 1,400 men loaded onto 25 transport vessels and defended by 19 warships, the largest fleet ever assembled by the Americans during the war. It approached Penobscot Bay on July 25, 1779, six weeks after the British had arrived and began construction on Fort George. Despite their best efforts, the fort was unfinished and remained only a five-foot-tall earthen rampart. Early on July 28, the Americans stormed ashore and, following a determined assault, the Massachusetts militiamen reached the edge of the woods at the top of the plateau, a few hundred yards from the fort.

The greatest naval disaster in our nation’s history until Pearl Harbor was a largely forgotten episode that took place on the remote coast of Maine in the summer of 1779. That year, Lord George Germaine, the British Secretary of State for the American colonies, decided to establish a northern foothold on the coastline between Boston and Halifax to better suppress smuggling that was rampant in New England.

Between 1779 and 1782, Spain pressed the British in such disparate places as Gibraltar, the Caribbean, and Central America, and even threatened to invade Britain’s home islands, thus tying up dozens of British warships and numerous regiments of British regulars. Luckily for the United States, two key regions important to America became Spanish priorities as well – British held Florida and the Mississippi River Valley. Almost singlehandedly, the Spanish removed the British from West Florida, which forced England to also relinquish East Florida as part of the terms to end the war.

Despite cultural differences, Spain and Americans living west of the Appalachians became natural allies in the fight against England. The welfare of both was tied to the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans, and both wanted the British out of the region. Over the course of the war, Spain provided loans that allowed the United States to purchase over 200 cannons, 30,000 muskets and bayonets, half a million musket balls, and 150 tons of gun powder, most of it going to support George Rogers Clark’s western army. Importantly, these supplies kept America’s fragile western war effort alive when our own Congress was helpless to send Clark any munitions.

Even before America’s declaration of independence, Spain began to secretly supply the colonists with war materials. Soon after France and the United States signed its Treaty of Alliance, Spain declared war on England to support her French cousins, thus indirectly becoming America’s ally. Spain stretched British war-fighting capacity beyond the breaking point, turning a regional war into a costly conflict between the world’s two greatest colonial empires.

Simply based on results, George Rogers Clark was the most successful American field commander of the American Revolution. He never lost a battle or failed to accomplish whatever military mission he started. No other American commander can make that claim, not Washington or Arnold or Greene. Sadly, following the war, as disappointment built on disappointment, Clark turned from the country he had fought so hard to defend, and offered his services to both Spain and Revolutionary France. Nothing ever came of these intrigues, but they forever sullied Clark’s reputation, the commodity upon which he placed the most value.

In August 1782, Loyalist Captain William Caldwell led three hundred warriors into Kentucky and attacked Bryan’s Station. Caldwell’s men could do little against the palisaded walls of the stockade and withdrew towards the Ohio when they learned of the approach of a relief force led by Colonel John Todd and Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Boone. The Kentuckians surprisingly caught up with Caldwell at a river crossing known as Lower Blue Licks, but Daniel Boone sensed an ambush. A hotheaded Major named Hugh McGary accused Boone of cowardice, jumped on his horse, and yelled for all to hear, “Them that ain’t cowards follow me.”

Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington at Yorktown in October 1781, but the harsh warfare in Kentucky continued unabated. Forty-seven Kentuckians were killed or captured in the first three months of 1782, and it got worse after that. But the ruthlessness on the frontier cut both ways. In March, three hundred Pennsylvania militiamen went in search of hostiles, but only found a tribe of Christian pacifists known as the Moravian Indians. Frustrated by years of suffering at the hands of Indians, the militiamen rounded up ninety-six innocent Moravians and proceeded to tomahawk and scalp all of them, including twenty-nine women and thirty-nine children.

As 1781 opened, Colonel George Rogers Clark’s unbroken string of successes had greatly annoyed British officials and Sir Frederick Haldimand, the Governor General of the Province of Quebec, wanted Clark dealt with once and for all. Haldimand recruited Joseph Brant, a talented Mohawk from New York and the most successful partisan fighter during the war, to destroy Clark’s army. Although their primary objective was to destroy Clark’s army, the Indians following Brant had little desire to try their luck against Clark, and they soon shifted their focus to easier targets.

For several years, Kentucky had suffered greatly from Shawnee raids, but in June 1780, Colonel George Rogers Clark decided it was time to take the fight into their homeland. Awaiting Clark’s army was Simon Girty and several hundred Shawnee warriors. On August 8, Clark attacked the entrenched Indians, who fought fiercely as men will when defending their homes. The Americans made little progress until Clark brought his cannons into play and blasted away at the blockhouse, the strong point of the Indian’s defenses.

Since the attack on Logan’s Fort in May 1777, the settlements of Kentucky had been under constant assault by tribes north of the Ohio. In September 1778, Blackfish, a Shawnee chief, led a large contingent of warriors to Boonesboro. The siege lasted 12 days, but Daniel Boone’s efforts saved the post and Blackfish was forced to retire. In the spring of 1780, the British, in conjunction with their invasion of the southern colonies, launched an offensive to recapture the Illinois Country, but Colonel George Rogers Clark repelled that force near Cahokia on May 25. Clark’s army then crossed the Ohio in August and headed north into Shawnee territory to exact some revenge.

Lieutenant Colonel George Rogers Clark and his small army arrived on the outskirts of Fort Sackville in the fading sunlight on February 23, 1779, undetected by the British garrison. Such was the fear and respect Clark’s reputation inspired that no one in the town of Vincennes informed the British garrison of the impending attack. At twilight, Clark deployed his men and commenced the siege, announcing his presence by firing on the palisaded walls. When Henry Hamilton, the British commander, asked about all the commotion, his American prisoner Captain Leonard Helm replied, “It means that you and all your men are prisoners of George Rogers Clark.”

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.