| Title: |
Thomas Jefferson to George Rogers Clark, January 29, 1780
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| Source: |
Thomas Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress
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| Overview: |
Thomas Jefferson issues instructions for the construction of a fort on the Falls of the Ohio, offering the services of surveyors Thomas Walker and Daniel Smith, who are in the field plotting a line between North Carolina and Virginia. Addressing the need to defend the western frontier from British advances, Jefferson authorizes Clark's recruitment of a battalion of soldiers, with land warrants issued as payment. Jefferson also expresses concern over the establishment of peaceful relations with French settlers and Native groups already in the region.
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Williamsburg Jan. 29, 1780
Your letters of October 26th and 28th and Novr 6th came safely
to hand and lastly that of August 24th. I am glad the proposition
of establishing a post at or near the mouth of Ohio Maps:
is likely to
answer as well in practice as to us who judged on theory only
it seemed likely to do. I have therefore written to Messers Walker and
Smith, as you will see by the enclosed copy of my letter to them,
to take observations of the latitudes thereabouts that we may proceed
on the surest grounds. You will please to furnish assistants, guards, and
all necessaries. I expect the description of the cliffs &c will be so minute
as that when you see them you will know them in the plat and of
course know their latitude. the choice of the ground for your fort must
be left to yourself. It should be as near the mouth of Ohio Maps:
as can
be found fit for fortification and within our own lines, some attention
will be proper also to the circumjacent grounds as it will probably
become a Town of importance. the nature of the defensive works
and their extent you will accommodate to your force. I could recommend your attention to the woods of which you make your stockades, that it be of the most lasting kind. From the best information
I have had, I take for granted that our line will pass below the
mouth of Ohio Maps:
. Our purchases of the Cherokees hitherto have not
extended southward or westward of the Tanissee. of course the
little tract of country between the Missisipi Maps:
, Ohio Maps:
, Tanissee Maps:
and
Carolina line (in which your fort will be) is still to be purchased
from them before you can begin your works. To effect this I have
written to Major Martin our Cherokee Agent of which letter I
inclose you a copy; If the new fort should fall within this territory and it can be purchased we may grant land to settlers
who will fix around about the fort, provided the Assembly
should approve of it, as from its reasonableness I think they will.
The manner in which the lots of land are laid off about the
French villages I have thought very wise and worthy of
imitation. perhaps besides guarding your promises of lands
to settlers with the conditions above mentioned it would be well
to add also the mode of laying them off. I send you recruiting
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instructions for having your Battalion filled up with men to be
inlisted for the war, as I wish to avoid receiving any on any other
terms. Your instructions for recruiting which were communicated to
us by some of your officers in the fall, we took in and gave them
such as are now sent you. Instead of bounty money I send
you three hundred Land warrants for five hundred and sixty
acres of Land each, which at forty pounds the hundred being
the Treasury price, amounts to the bounty allowed by Law.
These we think more likely to induce men to enlist than the
money itself. I also send you twenty four blank commissions
which will be necessary to officer eight companies the present
plan of the Continental Army having that number in a battalion
and a Captain, Lieutenant and ensign only to each company, the
officers of your Battalion when commissioned will stand on a footing
with the officers of the other State Battns. The state of
the public finances obliged the late assembly to reduce very much
their military establishment from what they had proposed at
their session in May. They discontinued raising both the additional
eastern Battalions and one of the Western, so that there will
be one Battalion only to send to you, to which is to be annexed
Major Slaughter's hundred men who have already marched as
I expect for the falls of the Ohio. I wish that one Battalion
may be raised in time to join you in the Spring, very few
returns having been made to me I cannot say what number
is raised probably not more than halve. However whatsoever
number may be raised by that time shall march as soon as
the season will admit. By then we will send such stores as to
us occur to be necessary such as powder, lead, flints, hoes, axes,
saws, gimblets, nails, hammers, augers, drawing knives, froes and
Camp-Kettles. If there be any other articles necessary I must
get you to write me on the subject, also to settle the best route
of sending those articles hereafter there being no guards to be
had but militia for conveying them from the frontiers and no
dependence on collecting militia. cannot you point out to us
some place on the frontiers where they may be safely lodged from
time to time and from whence you can send for them with a
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proper escort. I would wish you also to inform me to what post
I shall order the Battalion which is to join you.
We received letters from Mr. Pollock in the fall informing us
of our debts at New Orleans Maps:
and his distresses. We had just taken
measures by shipping tobacco to France to procure necessaries
for our army; having no other means of relieving Mr. Pollock we
were obliged to give him draughts on France which took the whole
of that fund and has distressed us exceedingly. The demands
of Colo. Legras and Capt. Lintot coming on us now and it being
impossible to raise hard money to discharge them we are
utterly at a loss what to do with them, indeed we shall
not be able to determine them absolutely as to the sum we shall pay
them till we know from you what proportion of the dollars for
which they have draughts, were expended at the depreciated
price or in other words till we know from you what sum in
hard money would reimburse their advances for which your
draughts on us were made. Which we should be glad you would
inform us of by the first opportunity and send a duplicate by
some second conveyance. the difficulty of answering demands of
hard money renders it necessary for us to contract no debts where
our paper is not current. It throws on us the tedious and perplexing operation of investing paper money in tobacco & finding
transportation for the tobacco to France, repeating this as often
as the dangers of capture render necessary to ensure the safe
arrival of some part, and negociating Bills, besides the expensive
train of agents to do all this and the delay it occasions to the
creditor. we must therefore recommend to you to purchase
nothing beyond the Ohio Maps:
, which you can do without or which
may be obtained form the East side where our paper is current.
I am exceedingly glad you are making such timely provisions
of your next year's subsistence. A Commissary for the Western
department was appointed in the fall with orders provisions on the
frontiers for one Battalion. his instructions shall be enlarged and a
notification sent to him to comply with your requisitions. besides
this we leave to yourself to commission Mr. Shannon to act as
commissary of purchases, issues, stores, Quarter Master or whatever
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else you may find him useful in. I suppose you will employ him
principally about the posts, while the one acting in the frontiers will
be providing thereabouts. We shall use all our endeavours to furnish
your men with necessary clothing but long experience renders it
proper to warn you that our supplies will be precarious. You
cannot therefore be too attentive to the providing them in your own
quarter as far as skins will enable you to do it, in short I must
confide in you to take such care of the men under you as an
economical householder would of his own family, doing everything within himself as far as he can, and calling for as few supplies
as possible. the less you depend for supplies from this quarter, the less
you will be disappointed in those impediments which distances and a
precarious foreign commerce throw in the way. For these reasons it will
be eligible to withdraw as many of your man as you can from the
West side of the Ohio Maps:
, leaving only so many as may be necessary for
keeping the Illinois settlements in spirits, and for their real defence.
we must faithfully attend to their protection, but we must accommodate our measures for doing this to our means. Perhaps this idea
may render doubtful the expediency of employing your men in building a fort at Kaskaskia. such fort might perhaps be necessary for
the settlers to withdraw into in time of danger, but might it not
also render a surprize the more dangerous by giving the enemy a
means of holding a settlement which otherwise they could only
distress by a sudden visit and be obliged to abandon. of this you
must ultimately be the judge. we approve very much of a mild
conduct toward the inhabitants of the French villages. it would be
well to be introducing our laws to their knowlege, and to impress
them strongly with the advantages of a free government. the training
their militia, and getting it into subordination to proper officers
should be particularly attended to. we wish them to consider us
as brothers, and to participate with us the benefits our rights & Laws.
We would have you cultivate peace and cordial friendship with the
several tribes of Indians (the Shawanese excepted). endeavor that
those who are in friendhip with us live in peace also with one another
against those who are our enemies let loose the friendly tribes. the Kickapous should be encouraged against the hostile tribes of Chickasaws
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and Choctaus and the others against the Shawanese with the latter
be cautious of the terms of peace you admit, an evacuation of their
country and removal utterly out of interference with us would be the
most satisfactory. ammunition should be furnished gratis to those
warriors who go actually on expeditions against the hostile tribes.
as to the English, notwithstanding their base examples, we wish
not to expose them to the inhumanities of a savage enemy. Let
this reproach remain on them, but for ourselves we would not
have our national character tarnished with such a practice.
If indeed they strike the Indians, these will have a natural
right to punish the aggressors and we none to hinder them. it
will then be no act of ours, but to invite them to a participation of the war is what we would avoid by all possible means.
If the English would admit them to trade and by that means
get those wants supplied which we cannot satisfy, I should
think it right, provided they require from them no terms of departing from their neutrality. if they will not permit this I think
the Indians might be urged to break off all correspondence with
them, to forbid their emissaries from coming among them and to
send them to you if they disregarded the prohibition. it would
be well to communicate honestly to them our present want
of those articles necessary for them and our inability to get
them. to encourage them to struggle with the difficulties
as we do 'till peace, when they may be confidently assured we will spare nothing to put their trade on a comfortable and just footing. in the meantime we must endeavour to furnish them with ammunition to provide skins
to clothe themselves, with a disposition to do them every
friendly office, and to gain their love. we would yet
wish to avoid their visits except those who came with
Capt. Lintot we have found them very hard to please,
expensive and troublesome and they are moreover exposed to danger in passing our western countries. it will be
well therefore (especially during the war) to waive their
visits in as inoffensive a way as possible.
In a letter of the 1st instant I supposed
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you would in the ensuing summer engage either in the Shaw
-anese War, or against Detroit, leaving the choices of these and
all other objects to yourself. I must also refer to you whether
it will be best to build the fort at the mouth of Ohio Maps:
before
you begin your campaign or after you shall have ended
it. perhaps indeed the delays of obtaining leave from the
Cherokees or of making a purchase from them, may
oblige you to postpone it till the fall.
I have received letters from Capts. Shelby and Wother— ington, the former acquainting me he had received your instructions to raise a troop of horse, the latter that he had raised one. from the date of your letter to Shelby, I knew you could not have been apprized that the Assembly had authorized us to raise a troop for you and that we had given a commission to Rogers by whom you sent us information of the capture of St. Vincinnes Maps: . Rogers accordingly raised his men, got all accoutrements and marched to join you in the fall. as to Captain Wotherington who sais he has raised his men, you must state to us the necessity for your having two troops that we may lay it before the assembly who alone have a power of giving sanction to the measure. the distress of the public treasury will be a great obstacle, so that it will be well for you to take measures for reserving to yourself the benefit of Captain Wotherington's men in some other capacity if they should be disapproved of as horsemen.
August 5th 1843
Banner image: From the Collection of The New-York Historical Society. Accession number 1867.306.
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