Within two or three weeks after the war had broken out, the older towns and settlements of Pennsylvania were crowded with refugees from the deserted frontier, reduced, in many cases, to the extremity of destitution.[335] Sermons were preached in their behalf at Philadelphia; the religious societies united for their relief, and liberal contributions were added by individuals. While private aid was thus generously bestowed upon the sufferers, the government showed no such promptness in arresting the public calamity. Early in July, Governor Hamilton had convoked the Assembly, and, representing the distress of the borders, had urged them to take measures of defence.[336] But the provincial government of Pennsylvania was more conducive to prosperity in time of peace than to efficiency in time of war. The Quakers, who held a majority in the Assembly, were from principle and practice the reverse of warlike, and, regarding the Indians with a blind partiality, were reluctant to take measures against them. Proud, and with some reason, of the justice and humanity which had marked their conduct towards the Indian race, they had learned to regard themselves as its advocates and patrons, and their zeal was greatly sharpened by opposition and political prejudice. They now pretended that the accounts from the frontier were grossly exaggerated; and, finding this ground untenable, they alleged, with better show of reason, that the Indians were driven into hostility by the ill-treatment of the proprietaries and their partisans. They recognized, however, the necessity of defensive measures, and accordingly passed a bill for raising and equipping a force of seven hundred men, to be composed of frontier farmers, and to be kept in pay only during the time of harvest. They were not to leave the settled parts of the province to engage in offensive operations of any kind, nor even to perform garrison duty; their sole object being to enable the people to gather in their crops unmolested.
This force was divided into numerous small detached parties, who were stationed here and there at farm-houses and hamlets on both sides of the Susquehanna, with orders to range the woods daily from post to post, thus forming a feeble chain of defence across the whole frontier. The two companies assigned to Lancaster County were placed under the command of a clergyman, John Elder, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Paxton; a man of worth and education, and held in great respect upon the borders. He discharged his military functions with address and judgment, drawing a cordon of troops across the front of the county, and preserving the inhabitants free from attack for a considerable time.[337]
The feeble measures adopted by the Pennsylvania Assembly highly excited the wrath of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and he did not hesitate to give his feelings an emphatic expression. “The conduct of the Pennsylvania legislature,” he writes, “is altogether so infatuated and stupidly obstinate, that I want words to express my indignation thereat; but the colony of Virginia, I hope, will have the honor of not only driving the enemy from its own settlements, but that of protecting those of its neighbors who have not spirit to defend themselves.”
Virginia did, in truth, exhibit a vigor and activity not unworthy of praise. Unlike Pennsylvania, she had the advantage of an existing militia law; and the House of Burgesses was neither embarrassed by scruples against the shedding of blood, nor by any peculiar tenderness towards the Indian race. The House, however, was not immediately summoned together; and the governor and council, without waiting to consult the Burgesses, called out a thousand of the militia, five hundred of whom were assigned to the command of Colonel Stephen, and an equal number to that of Major Lewis.[338] The presence of these men, most of whom were woodsmen and hunters, restored order and confidence to the distracted borders; and the inhabitants, before pent up in their forts, or flying before the enemy, now took the field, in conjunction with the militia. Many severe actions were fought, but it seldom happened that the Indians could stand their ground against the border riflemen. The latter were uniformly victorious until the end of the summer; when Captains Moffat and Phillips, with sixty men, were lured into an ambuscade, and routed, with the loss of half their number. A few weeks after, they took an ample revenge. Learning by their scouts that more than a hundred warriors were encamped near Jackson’s River, preparing to attack the settlements, they advanced secretly to the spot, and set upon them with such fury that the whole party broke away and fled; leaving weapons, provisions, articles of dress, and implements of magic, in the hands of the victors.
Meanwhile the frontier people of Pennsylvania, finding that they could hope for little aid from government, bestirred themselves with admirable spirit in their own defence. The march of Bouquet, and the victory of Bushy Run, caused a temporary lull in the storm, thus enabling some of the bolder inhabitants, who had fled to Shippensburg, Carlisle, and other places of refuge, to return to their farms, where they determined, if possible, to remain. With this resolution, the people of the Great Cove, and the adjacent valleys beyond Shippensburg, raised among themselves a small body of riflemen, which they placed under the command of James Smith; a man whose resolute and daring character, no less than the native vigor of his intellect, gave him great popularity and influence with the borderers. Having been, for several years, a prisoner among the Indians, he was thoroughly acquainted with their mode of fighting. He trained his men in the Indian tactics and discipline, and directed them to assume the dress of warriors, and paint their faces red and black, so that, in appearance, they were hardly distinguishable from the enemy.[339] Thus equipped, they scoured the woods in front of the settlements, had various skirmishes with the enemy, and discharged their difficult task with such success that the inhabitants of the neighborhood were not again driven from their homes.
The attacks on the Pennsylvania frontier were known to proceed, in great measure, from several Indian villages, situated high up the west branch of the Susquehanna, and inhabited by a debauched rabble composed of various tribes, of whom the most conspicuous were Delawares. To root out this nest of banditti would be the most effectual means of protecting the settlements, and a hundred and ten men offered themselves for the enterprise. They marched about the end of August; but on their way along the banks of the Susquehanna, they encountered fifty warriors, advancing against the borders. The Indians had the first fire, and drove in the vanguard of the white men. A hot fight ensued. The warriors fought naked, painted black from head to foot; so that, as they leaped among the trees, they seemed to their opponents like demons of the forest. They were driven back with heavy loss; and the volunteers returned in triumph, though without accomplishing the object of the expedition; for which, indeed, their numbers were scarcely adequate.[340]
Within a few weeks after their return, Colonel Armstrong, a veteran partisan of the French war, raised three hundred men, the best in Cumberland County, with a view to the effectual destruction of the Susquehanna villages. Leaving their rendezvous at the crossings of the Juniata, about the first of October, they arrived on the sixth at the Great Island, high up the west branch. On or near this island were situated the principal villages of the enemy. But the Indians had vanished, abandoning their houses, their cornfields, their stolen horses and cattle, and the accumulated spoil of the settlements. Leaving a detachment to burn the towns and lay waste the fields, Armstrong, with the main body of his men, followed close on the trail of the fugitives; and, pursuing them through a rugged and difficult country, soon arrived at another village, thirty miles above the former. His scouts informed him that the place was full of Indians; and his men, forming a circle around it, rushed in upon the cabins at a given signal. The Indians were gone, having stolen away in such haste that the hominy and bear’s meat, prepared for their meal, were found smoking upon their dishes of birch-bark. Having burned the place to the ground, the party returned to the Great Island; and, rejoining their companions, descended the Susquehanna, reaching Fort Augusta in a wretched condition, fatigued, half famished, and quarrelling among themselves.[341]
Scarcely were they returned, when another expedition was set on foot, in which a portion of them were persuaded to take part. During the previous year, a body of settlers from Connecticut had possessed themselves of the valley of Wyoming, on the east branch of the Susquehanna, in defiance of the government of Pennsylvania, and to the great displeasure of the Indians. The object of the expedition was to remove these settlers, and destroy their corn and provisions, which might otherwise fall into the hands of the enemy. The party, composed chiefly of volunteers from Lancaster County, set out from Harris’s Ferry, under the command of Major Clayton, and reached Wyoming on the seventeenth of October. They were too late. Two days before their arrival, a massacre had been perpetrated, the fitting precursor of that subsequent scene of blood which, embalmed in the poetic romance of Campbell, has made the name of Wyoming a household word. The settlement was a pile of ashes and cinders, and the bodies of its miserable inhabitants offered frightful proof of the cruelties inflicted upon them.[342] A large war-party had fallen upon the place, killed and carried off more than twenty of the people, and driven the rest, men, women, and children, in terror to the mountains. Gaining a point which commanded the whole expanse of the valley below, the fugitives looked back, and saw the smoke rolling up in volumes from their burning homes; while the Indians could be discerned roaming about in quest of plunder, or feasting in groups upon the slaughtered cattle. One of the principal settlers, a man named Hopkins, was separated from the rest, and driven into the woods. Finding himself closely pursued, he crept into the hollow trunk of a fallen tree, while the Indians passed without observing him. They soon returned to the spot, and ranged the surrounding woods like hounds at fault; two of them approaching so near, that, as Hopkins declared, he could hear the bullets rattle in their pouches. The search was unavailing; but the fugitive did not venture from his place of concealment until extreme hunger forced him to return to the ruined settlement in search of food. The Indians had abandoned it some time before; and, having found means to restore his exhausted strength, he directed his course towards the settlements of the Delaware, which he reached after many days of wandering.[343]
Having buried the dead bodies of those who had fallen in the massacre, Clayton and his party returned to the settlements. The Quakers, who seemed resolved that they would neither defend the people of the frontier nor allow them to defend themselves, vehemently inveighed against the several expeditions up the Susquehanna, and denounced them as seditious and murderous. Urged by their blind prejudice in favor of the Indians, they insisted that the bands of the Upper Susquehanna were friendly to the English; whereas, with the single exception of a few Moravian converts near Wyoming, who had not been molested by the whites, there could be no rational doubt that these savages nourished a rancorous and malignant hatred against the province. But the Quakers, removed by their situation from all fear of the tomahawk, securely vented their spite against the borderers, and doggedly closed their ears to the truth.[344] Meanwhile, the people of the frontier besieged the Assembly with petitions for relief; but little heed was given to their complaints.
Sir Jeffrey Amherst had recently resigned his office of commander-in-chief; and General Gage, a man of less efficiency than his predecessor, was appointed to succeed him. Immediately before his departure for England, Amherst had reluctantly condescended to ask the several provinces for troops to march against the Indians early in the spring, and the first act of Gage was to confirm this requisition. New York was called upon to furnish fourteen hundred men, and New Jersey six hundred.[345] The demand was granted, on condition that the New England provinces should also contribute a just proportion to the general defence. This condition was complied with, and the troops were raised.
Pennsylvania had been required to furnish a thousand men; but in this quarter many difficulties intervened. The Assembly of the province, never prompt to vote supplies for military purposes, was now embroiled in that obstinate quarrel with the proprietors, which for years past had clogged all the wheels of government. The proprietors insisted on certain pretended rights, which the Assembly strenuously opposed; and the governors, who represented the proprietary interest, were bound by imperative instructions to assert these claims, in spite of all opposition. On the present occasion, the chief point of dispute related to the taxation of the proprietary estates; the governor, in conformity with his instructions, demanding that they should be assessed at a lower rate than other lands of equal value in the province. The Assembly stood their ground, and refused to remove the obnoxious clauses in the supply bill. Message after message passed between the House and the governor; mutual recrimination ensued, and ill blood was engendered. The frontiers might have been left to their misery but for certain events which, during the winter, threw the whole province into disorder, and acted like magic on the minds of the stubborn legislators.
These events may be ascribed, in some degree, to the renewed activity of the enemy; who, during a great part of the autumn, had left the borders in comparative quiet. As the winter closed in, their attacks became more frequent; and districts, repeopled during the interval of calm, were again made desolate. Again the valleys were illumined by the flames of burning houses, and families fled shivering through the biting air of the winter night, while the fires behind them shed a ruddy glow upon the snow-covered mountains. The scouts, who on snowshoes explored the track of the marauders, found the bodies of their victims lying in the forest, stripped naked, and frozen to marble hardness. The distress, wrath, and terror of the borderers produced results sufficiently remarkable to deserve a separate examination.
I return to the long-forgotten garrison of Detroit, which was left still beleaguered by an increasing multitude of savages, and disheartened by the defeat of Captain Dalzell’s detachment. The schooner, so boldly defended by her crew against a force of more than twenty times their number, brought to the fort a much-needed supply of provisions. It was not, however, adequate to the wants of the garrison; and the whole were put upon the shortest possible allowance.
It was now the end of September. The Indians, with unexampled pertinacity, had pressed the siege since the beginning of May; but at length their constancy began to fail. The tidings had reached them that Major Wilkins, with a strong force, was on his way to Detroit. They feared the consequences of an attack, especially as their ammunition was almost exhausted; and, by this time, most of them were inclined to sue for peace, as the easiest mode of gaining safety for themselves, and at the same time lulling the English into security.[346] They thought that by this means they might retire unmolested to their wintering grounds, and renew the war with good hope of success in the spring.
Accordingly, on the twelfth of October, Wapocomoguth, great chief of the Mississaugas, a branch of the Ojibwas, living within the present limits of Upper Canada, came to the fort with a pipe of peace. He began his speech to Major Gladwyn, with the glaring falsehood that he and his people had always been friends of the English. They were now, he added, anxious to conclude a formal treaty of lasting peace and amity. He next declared that he had been sent as deputy by the Pottawattamies, Ojibwas, and Wyandots, who had instructed him to say that they sincerely repented of their bad conduct, asked forgiveness, and humbly begged for peace. Gladwyn perfectly understood the hollowness of these professions, but the circumstances in which he was placed made it expedient to listen to their overtures. His garrison was threatened with famine, and it was impossible to procure provisions while completely surrounded by hostile Indians. He therefore replied, that, though he was not empowered to grant peace, he would still consent to a truce. The Mississauga deputy left the fort with this reply, and Gladwyn immediately took advantage of this lull in the storm to collect provisions among the Canadians; an attempt in which he succeeded so well that the fort was soon furnished with a tolerable supply for the winter.
The Ottawas alone, animated by Pontiac, had refused to ask for peace, and still persisted in a course of petty hostilities. They fired at intervals on the English foraging parties, until, on the thirty-first of October, an unexpected blow was given to the hopes of their great chief. French messengers came to Detroit with a letter from M. Neyon, commandant of Fort Chartres, the principal post in the Illinois country. This letter was one of those which, on demand of General Amherst, Neyon, with a very bad grace, had sent to the different Indian tribes. It assured Pontiac that he could expect no assistance from the French; that they and the English were now at peace, and regarded each other as brothers; and that the Indians had better abandon hostilities which could lead to no good result.[347] The emotions of Pontiac at receiving this message may be conceived. His long-cherished hopes of assistance from the French were swept away at once, and he saw himself and his people thrown back upon their own slender resources. His cause was lost. At least, there was no present hope for him but in dissimulation. True to his Indian nature, he would put on a mask of peace, and bide his time. On the day after the arrival of the message from Neyon, Gladwyn wrote as follows to Amherst: “This moment I received a message from Pondiac, telling me that he should send to all the nations concerned in the war to bury the hatchet; and he hopes your Excellency will forget what has passed.”[348]
Having soothed the English commander with these hollow overtures, Pontiac withdrew with some of his chiefs to the Maumee, to stir up the Indians in that quarter, and renew the war in the spring.
About the middle of November, not many days after Pontiac’s departure, two friendly Wyandot Indians from the ancient settlement at Lorette, near Quebec, crossed the river, and asked admittance into the fort. One of them then unslung his powder-horn, and, taking out a false bottom, disclosed a closely folded letter, which he gave to Major Gladwyn. The letter was from Major Wilkins, and contained the disastrous news that the detachment under his command had been overtaken by a storm, that many of the boats had been wrecked, that seventy men had perished, that all the stores and ammunition had been destroyed, and the detachment forced to return to Niagara. This intelligence had an effect upon the garrison which rendered the prospect of the cold and cheerless winter yet more dreary and forlorn.
The summer had long since drawn to a close, and the verdant landscape around Detroit had undergone an ominous transformation. Touched by the first October frosts, the forest glowed like a bed of tulips; and, all along the river bank, the painted foliage, brightened by the autumnal sun, reflected its mingled colors upon the dark water below. The western wind was fraught with life and exhilaration; and in the clear, sharp air, the form of the fish-hawk, sailing over the distant headland, seemed almost within range of the sportsman’s gun.
A week or two elapsed, and then succeeded that gentler season which bears among us the name of the Indian summer; when a light haze rests upon the morning landscape, and the many-colored woods seem wrapped in the thin drapery of a veil; when the air is mild and calm as that of early June, and at evening the sun goes down amid a warm, voluptuous beauty, that may well outrival the softest tints of Italy. But through all the still and breathless afternoon the leaves have fallen fast in the woods, like flakes of snow; and every thing betokens that the last melancholy change is at hand. And, in truth, on the morrow the sky is overspread with cold and stormy clouds; and a raw, piercing wind blows angrily from the north-east. The shivering sentinel quickens his step along the rampart, and the half-naked Indian folds his tattered blanket close around him. The shrivelled leaves are blown from the trees, and soon the gusts are whistling and howling amid gray, naked twigs and mossy branches. Here and there, indeed, the beech-tree, as the wind sweeps among its rigid boughs, shakes its pale assemblage of crisp and rustling leaves. The pines and firs, with their rough tops of dark evergreen, bend and moan in the wind; and the crow caws sullenly, as, struggling against the gusts, he flaps his black wings above the denuded woods.
The vicinity of Detroit was now almost abandoned by its besiegers, who had scattered among the forests to seek sustenance through the winter for themselves and their families. Unlike the buffalo-hunting tribes of the western plains, they could not at this season remain together in large bodies. The comparative scarcity of game forced them to separate into small bands, or even into single families. Some steered their canoes far northward, across Lake Huron; while others turned westward, and struck into the great wilderness of Michigan. Wandering among forests, bleak, cheerless, and choked with snow, now famishing with want, now cloyed with repletion, they passed the dull, cold winter. The chase yielded their only subsistence; and the slender lodges, borne on the backs of the squaws, were their only shelter. Encamped at intervals by the margin of some frozen lake, surrounded by all that is most stern and dreary in the aspects of nature, they were subjected to every hardship, and endured all with stubborn stoicism. Sometimes, during the frosty night, they were gathered in groups about the flickering lodge-fire, listening to traditions of their forefathers, and wild tales of magic and incantation. Perhaps, before the season was past, some bloody feud broke out among them; perhaps they were assailed by their ancient enemies the Dahcotah; or perhaps some sinister omen or evil dream spread more terror through the camp than the presence of an actual danger would have awakened. With the return of spring, the scattered parties once more united, and moved towards Detroit, to indulge their unforgotten hatred against the English.
Detroit had been the central point of the Indian operations; its capture had been their favorite project; around it they had concentrated their greatest force, and the failure of the attempt proved disastrous to their cause. Upon the Six Nations, more especially, it produced a marked effect. The friendly tribes of this confederacy were confirmed in their friendship, while the hostile Senecas began to lose heart. Availing himself of this state of things, Sir William Johnson, about the middle of the winter, persuaded a number of Six Nation warriors, by dint of gifts and promises, to go out against the enemy. He stimulated their zeal by offering rewards of fifty dollars for the heads of the two principal Delaware chiefs.[349] Two hundred of them, accompanied by a few provincials, left the Oneida country during the month of February, and directed their course southward. They had been out but a few days, when they found an encampment of forty Delawares, commanded by a formidable chief, known as Captain Bull, who, with his warriors, was on his way to attack the settlements. They surrounded the camp undiscovered, during the night, and at dawn of day raised the war-whoop and rushed in. The astonished Delawares had no time to snatch their arms. They were all made prisoners, taken to Albany, and thence sent down to New York, where they were conducted, under a strong guard, to the common jail; the mob crowding round them as they passed, and admiring the sullen ferocity of their countenances. Not long after this success, Captain Montour, with a party of provincials and Six Nation warriors, destroyed the town of Kanestio, and other hostile villages, on the upper branches of the Susquehanna. This blow, inflicted by supposed friends, produced more effect upon the enemy than greater reverses would have done, if encountered at the hands of the English alone.[350]
The calamities which overwhelmed the borders of the middle provinces were not unfelt at the south. It was happy for the people of the Carolinas that the Cherokees, who had broken out against them three years before, had at that time received a chastisement which they could never forget, and from which they had not yet begun to recover. They were thus compelled to remain comparatively quiet; while the ancient feud between them and the northern tribes would, under any circumstances, have prevented their uniting with the latter. The contagion of the war reached them, however, and they perpetrated numerous murders; while the neighboring nation of the Creeks rose in open hostility, and committed formidable ravages. Towards the north, the Indian tribes were compelled, by their position, to remain tranquil, yet they showed many signs of uneasiness; and those of Nova Scotia caused great alarm, by mustering in large bodies in the neighborhood of Halifax. The excitement among them was temporary, and they dispersed without attempting mischief.
Along the thinly settled borders, two thousand persons had been killed, or carried off, and nearly an equal number of families driven from their homes.[351] The frontier people of Pennsylvania, goaded to desperation by long-continued suffering, were divided between rage against the Indians, and resentment against the Quakers, who had yielded them cold sympathy and inefficient aid. The horror and fear, grief and fury, with which these men looked upon the mangled remains of friends and relatives, set language at defiance. They were of a rude and hardy stamp, hunters, scouts, rangers, Indian traders, and backwoods farmers, who had grown up with arms in their hands, and been trained under all the influences of the warlike frontier. They fiercely complained that they were interposed as a barrier between the rest of the province and a ferocious enemy; and that they were sacrificed to the safety of men who looked with indifference on their miseries, and lost no opportunity to extenuate and smooth away the cruelties of their destroyers.[352] They declared that the Quakers would go farther to befriend a murdering Delaware than to succor a fellow-countryman; that they loved red blood better than white, and a pagan better than a Presbyterian. The Pennsylvania borderers were, as we have seen, chiefly the descendants of Presbyterian emigrants from the north of Ireland. They had inherited some portion of their forefathers’ sectarian zeal, which, while it did nothing to soften the barbarity of their manners, served to inflame their animosity against the Quakers, and added bitterness to their just complaints. It supplied, moreover, a convenient sanction for the indulgence of their hatred and vengeance; for, in the general turmoil of their passions, fanaticism too was awakened, and they interpreted the command that Joshua should destroy the heathen[353] into an injunction that they should exterminate the Indians.
The prevailing excitement was not confined to the vulgar. Even the clergy and the chief magistrates shared it; and while they lamented the excess of the popular resentment, they maintained that the general complaints were founded in justice. Viewing all the circumstances, it is not greatly to be wondered at that some of the more violent class were inflamed to the commission of atrocities which bear no very favorable comparison with those of the Indians themselves.
It is not easy for those living in the tranquillity of polished life fully to conceive the depth and force of that unquenchable, indiscriminate hate, which Indian outrages can awaken in those who have suffered them. The chronicles of the American borders are filled with the deeds of men, who, having lost all by the merciless tomahawk, have lived for vengeance alone; and such men will never cease to exist so long as a hostile tribe remains within striking distance of an American settlement.[354] Never was this hatred more deep or more general than on the Pennsylvania frontier at this period; and never, perhaps, did so many collateral causes unite to inflame it to madness. It was not long in finding a vent.
Near the Susquehanna, and at no great distance from the town of Lancaster, was a spot known as the Manor of Conestoga; where a small band of Indians, speaking the Iroquois tongue, had been seated since the first settlement of the province. William Penn had visited and made a treaty with them, which had been confirmed by several succeeding governors, so that the band had always remained on terms of friendship with the English. Yet, like other Indian communities in the neighborhood of the whites, they had dwindled in numbers and prosperity, until they were reduced to twenty persons; who inhabited a cluster of squalid cabins, and lived by beggary and the sale of brooms, baskets, and wooden ladles, made by the women. The men spent a small part of their time in hunting, and lounged away the rest in idleness. In the immediate neighborhood, they were commonly regarded as harmless vagabonds; but elsewhere a more unfavorable opinion was entertained, and they were looked upon as secretly abetting the enemy, acting as spies, giving shelter to scalping-parties, and even aiding them in their depredations. That these suspicions were not wholly unfounded is shown by a conclusive mass of evidence, though it is probable that the treachery was confined to one or two individuals.[355] The exasperated frontiersmen were not in a mood to discriminate, and the innocent were destined to share the fate of the guilty.[356]
On the east bank of the Susquehanna, at some distance above Conestoga, stood the little town of Paxton; a place which, since the French war, had occupied a position of extreme exposure. In the year 1755 the Indians had burned it to the ground, killing many of the inhabitants, and reducing the rest to poverty. It had since been rebuilt; but its tenants were the relatives of those who had perished, and the bitterness of the recollection was enhanced by the sense of their own more recent sufferings. Mention has before been made of John Elder, the Presbyterian minister of this place; a man whose worth, good sense, and superior education gave him the character of counsellor and director throughout the neighborhood, and caused him to be known and esteemed even in Philadelphia. His position was a peculiar one. From the rough pulpit of his little church, he had often preached to an assembly of armed men, while scouts and sentinels were stationed without, to give warning of the enemy’s approach.[357] The men of Paxton, under the auspices of their pastor, formed themselves into a body of rangers, who became noted for their zeal and efficiency in defending the borders. One of their principal leaders was Matthew Smith, a man who had influence and popularity among his associates, and was not without pretensions to education; while he shared a full proportion of the general hatred against Indians, and suspicion against the band of Conestoga.
Towards the middle of December, a scout came to the house of Smith, and reported that an Indian, known to have committed depredations in the neighborhood, had been traced to Conestoga. Smith’s resolution was taken at once. He called five of his companions; and, having armed and mounted, they set out for the Indian settlement. They reached it early in the night; and Smith, leaving his horse in charge of the others, crawled forward, rifle in hand, to reconnoitre; when he saw, or fancied he saw, a number of armed warriors in the cabins. Upon this discovery he withdrew, and rejoined his associates. Believing themselves too weak for an attack, the party returned to Paxton. Their blood was up, and they determined to extirpate the Conestogas. Messengers went abroad through the neighborhood; and, on the following day, about fifty armed and mounted men, chiefly from the towns of Paxton and Donegal, assembled at the place agreed upon. Led by Matthew Smith, they took the road to Conestoga, where they arrived a little before daybreak, on the morning of the fourteenth. As they drew near, they discerned the light of a fire in one of the cabins, gleaming across the snow. Leaving their horses in the forest, they separated into small parties, and advanced on several sides at once. Though they moved with some caution, the sound of their footsteps or their voices caught the ear of an Indian; and they saw him issue from one of the cabins, and walk forward in the direction of the noise. He came so near that one of the men fancied that he recognized him. “He is the one that killed my mother,” he exclaimed with an oath; and, firing his rifle, brought the Indian down. With a general shout, the furious ruffians burst into the cabins, and shot, stabbed, and hacked to death all whom they found there. It happened that only six Indians were in the place; the rest, in accordance with their vagrant habits, being scattered about the neighborhood. Thus baulked of their complete vengeance, the murderers seized upon what little booty they could find, set the cabins on fire, and departed at dawn of day.[358]
The morning was cold and murky. Snow was falling, and already lay deep upon the ground; and, as they urged their horses through the drifts, they were met by one Thomas Wright, who, struck by their appearance, stopped to converse with them. They freely told him what they had done; and, on his expressing surprise and horror, one of them demanded if he believed in the Bible, and if the Scripture did not command that the heathen should be destroyed.
They soon after separated, dispersing among the farmhouses, to procure food for themselves and their horses. Several rode to the house of Robert Barber, a prominent settler in the neighborhood; who, seeing the strangers stamping their feet and shaking the snow from their blanket coats, invited them to enter, and offered them refreshment. Having remained for a short time seated before his fire, they remounted and rode off through the snowstorm. A boy of the family, who had gone to look at the horses of the visitors, came in and declared that he had seen a tomahawk, covered with blood, hanging from each man’s saddle; and that a small gun, belonging to one of the Indian children, had been leaning against the fence.[359] Barber at once guessed the truth, and, with several of his neighbors, proceeded to the Indian settlement, where they found the solid log cabins still on fire. They buried the remains of the victims, which Barber compared in appearance to half-burnt logs. While they were thus engaged, the sheriff of Lancaster, with a party of men, arrived on the spot; and the first care of the officer was to send through the neighborhood to collect the Indians, fourteen in number, who had escaped the massacre. This was soon accomplished. The unhappy survivors, learning the fate of their friends and relatives, were in great terror for their own lives, and earnestly begged protection. They were conducted to Lancaster, where, amid great excitement, they were lodged in the county jail, a strong stone building, which it was thought would afford the surest refuge.
An express was despatched to Philadelphia with news of the massacre; on hearing which, the governor issued a proclamation denouncing the act, and offering a reward for the discovery of the perpetrators. Undaunted by this measure, and enraged that any of their victims should have escaped, the Paxton men determined to continue the work they had begun. In this resolution they were confirmed by the prevailing impression, that an Indian known to have murdered the relatives of one of their number was among those who had received the protection of the magistrates at Lancaster. They sent forward a spy to gain intelligence, and, on his return, once more met at their rendezvous. On this occasion, their nominal leader was Lazarus Stewart, who was esteemed upon the borders as a brave and active young man; and who, there is strong reason to believe, entertained no worse design than that of seizing the obnoxious Indian, carrying him to Carlisle, and there putting him to death, in case he should be identified as the murderer.[360] Most of his followers, however, hardened amidst war and bloodshed, were bent on indiscriminate slaughter; a purpose which they concealed from their more moderate associates.
Early on the twenty-seventh of December, the party, about fifty in number, left Paxton on their desperate errand. Elder had used all his influence to divert them from their design; and now, seeing them depart, he mounted his horse, overtook them, and addressed them with the most earnest remonstrance. Finding his words unheeded, he drew up his horse across the narrow road in front, and charged them, on his authority as their pastor, to return. Upon this, Matthew Smith rode forward, and, pointing his rifle at the breast of Elder’s horse, threatened to fire unless he drew him aside, and gave room to pass. The clergyman was forced to comply, and the party proceeded.[361]
At about three o’clock in the afternoon, the rioters, armed with rifle, knife, and tomahawk, rode at a gallop into Lancaster; turned their horses into the yard of the public house, ran to the jail, burst open the door, and rushed tumultuously in. The fourteen Indians were in a small yard adjacent to the building, surrounded by high stone walls. Hearing the shouts of the mob, and startled by the apparition of armed men in the doorway, two or three of them snatched up billets of wood in self-defence. Whatever may have been the purpose of the Paxton men, this show of resistance banished every thought of forbearance; and the foremost, rushing forward, fired their rifles among the crowd of Indians. In a moment more, the yard was filled with ruffians, shouting, cursing, and firing upon the cowering wretches; holding the muzzles of their pieces, in some instances, so near their victims’ heads that the brains were scattered by the explosion. The work was soon finished. The bodies of men, women, and children, mangled with outrageous brutality, lay scattered about the yard; and the murderers were gone.[362]
When the first alarm was given, the magistrates were in the church, attending the Christmas service, which had been postponed on the twenty-fifth. The door was flung open, and the voice of a man half breathless was heard in broken exclamations, “Murder—the jail—the Paxton Boys—the Indians.”
The assembly broke up in disorder, and Shippen, the principal magistrate, hastened towards the scene of riot; but, before he could reach it, all was finished, and the murderers were galloping in a body from the town.[363] The sheriff and the coroner had mingled among the rioters, aiding and abetting them, as their enemies affirm, but, according to their own statement, vainly risking their lives to restore order.[364] A company of Highland soldiers, on their way from Fort Pitt to Philadelphia, were encamped near the town. Their commander, Captain Robertson, afterwards declared that he put himself in the way of the magistrates, expecting that they would call upon him to aid the civil authority; while, on the contrary, several of the inhabitants testify, that, when they urged him to interfere, he replied with an oath that his men had suffered enough from Indians already, and should not stir hand or foot to save them. Be this as it may, it seems certain that neither soldiers nor magistrates, with their best exertions, could have availed to prevent the massacre; for so well was the plan concerted, that, within ten or twelve minutes after the alarm, the Indians were dead, and the murderers mounted to depart.
The people crowded into the jail-yard to gaze upon the miserable spectacle; and, when their curiosity was sated, the bodies were gathered together, and buried not far from the town, where they reposed three quarters of a century; until, at length, the bones were disinterred in preparing the foundation for a railroad.
The tidings of this massacre threw the country into a ferment. Various opinions were expressed; but, in the border counties, even the most sober and moderate regarded it, not as a wilful and deliberate crime, but as the mistaken act of rash men, fevered to desperation by wrongs and sufferings.[365]
When the news reached Philadelphia, a clamorous outcry rose from the Quakers, who could find no words to express their horror and detestation. They assailed not the rioters only, but the whole Presbyterian sect, with a tempest of abuse, not the less virulent for being vented in the name of philanthropy and religion. The governor again issued a proclamation, offering rewards for the detection and arrest of the murderers; but the latter, far from shrinking into concealment, proclaimed their deed in the face of day, boasted the achievement, and defended it by reason and Scripture. So great was the excitement in the frontier counties, and so deep the sympathy with the rioters, that to arrest them would have required the employment of a strong military force, an experiment far too dangerous to be tried. Nothing of the kind was attempted until nearly eight years afterwards, when Lazarus Stewart was apprehended on the charge of murdering the Indians of Conestoga. Learning that his trial was to take place, not in the county where the act was committed, but in Philadelphia, and thence judging that his condemnation was certain, he broke jail and escaped. Having written a declaration to justify his conduct, he called his old associates around him, set the provincial government of Pennsylvania at defiance, and withdrew to Wyoming with his band. Here he joined the settlers recently arrived from Connecticut, and thenceforth played a conspicuous part in the eventful history of that remarkable spot.[366]
After the massacre at Conestoga, the excitement in the frontier counties, far from subsiding, increased in violence daily; and various circumstances conspired to inflame it. The principal of these was the course pursued by the provincial government towards the Christian Indians attached to the Moravian missions. Many years had elapsed since the Moravians began the task of converting the Indians of Pennsylvania, and their steadfast energy and regulated zeal had been crowned with success. Several thriving settlements of their converts had sprung up in the valley of the Lehigh, when the opening of the French war, in 1755, involved them in unlooked-for calamities. These unhappy neutrals, between the French and Indians on the one side, and the English on the other, excited the enmity of both; and while from the west they were threatened by the hatchets of their own countrymen, they were menaced on the east by the no less formidable vengeance of the white settlers, who, in their distress and terror, never doubted that the Moravian converts were in league with the enemy. The popular rage against them at length grew so furious, that their destruction was resolved upon. The settlers assembled and advanced against the Moravian community of Gnadenhutten; but the French and Indians gained the first blow, and, descending upon the doomed settlement, utterly destroyed it. This disaster, deplorable as it was in itself, proved the safety of the other Moravian settlements, by making it fully apparent that their inhabitants were not in league with the enemy. They were suffered to remain unmolested for several years; but with the murders that ushered in Pontiac’s war, in 1763, the former suspicion revived, and the expediency of destroying the Moravian Indians was openly debated. Towards the end of the summer, several outrages were committed upon the settlers in the neighborhood, and the Moravian Indians were loudly accused of taking part in them. These charges were never fully confuted; and, taking into view the harsh treatment which the converts had always experienced from the whites, it is highly probable that some of them were disposed to sympathize with their heathen countrymen, who are known to have courted their alliance. The Moravians had, however, excited in their converts a high degree of religious enthusiasm; which, directed as it was by the teachings of the missionaries, went farther than any thing else could have done to soften their national prejudices, and wean them from their warlike habits.
About three months before the massacre at Conestoga, a party of drunken Rangers, fired by the general resentment against the Moravian Indians, murdered several of them, both men and women, whom they found sleeping in a barn. Not long after, the same party of Rangers were, in their turn, surprised and killed, some peaceful settlers of the neighborhood sharing their fate. This act was at once ascribed, justly or unjustly, to the vengeance of the converted Indians, relatives of the murdered; and the frontier people, who, like the Paxton men, were chiefly Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, resolved that the objects of their suspicion should live no longer. At this time, the Moravian converts consisted of two communities, those of Nain and Wecquetank, near the Lehigh; and to these may be added a third, at Wyalusing, near Wyoming. The latter, from its distant situation, was, for the present, safe; but the two former were in imminent peril, and the inhabitants, in mortal terror for their lives, stood day and night on the watch.
At length, about the tenth of October, a gang of armed men approached Wecquetank, and encamped in the woods, at no great distance. They intended to make their attack under favor of the darkness; but before evening a storm, which to the missionaries seemed providential, descended with such violence, that the fires of the hostile camp were extinguished in a moment, the ammunition of the men wet, and the plan defeated.[367]
After so narrow an escape, it was apparent that flight was the only resource. The terrified congregation of Wecquetank broke up on the following day; and, under the charge of their missionary, Bernard Grube, removed to the Moravian town of Nazareth, where it was hoped they might remain in safety.[368]
In the mean time, the charges against the Moravian converts had been laid before the provincial Assembly; and, to secure the safety of the frontier people, it was judged expedient to disarm the suspected Indians, and remove them to a part of the province where it would be beyond their power to do mischief.[369] The motion was passed in the Assembly with little dissent; the Quakers supporting it from regard to the safety of the Indians, and their opponents from regard to the safety of the whites. The order for removal reached its destination on the sixth of November; and the Indians, reluctantly yielding up their arms, prepared for departure. When a sermon had been preached before the united congregations, and a hymn sung in which all took part, the unfortunate exiles set out on their forlorn pilgrimage; the aged, the young, the sick, and the blind, borne in wagons, while the rest journeyed on foot.[370] Their total number, including the band from Wyalusing, which joined them after they reached Philadelphia, was about a hundred and forty. At every village and hamlet which they passed on their way, they were greeted with threats and curses; nor did the temper of the people improve as they advanced, for, when they came to Germantown, the mob could scarcely be restrained from attacking them. On reaching Philadelphia, they were conducted, amidst the yells and hootings of the rabble, to the barracks, which had been intended to receive them; but the soldiers, who outdid the mob in their hatred of Indians, refused to admit them, and set the orders of the governor at defiance. From ten o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon, the persecuted exiles remained drawn up in the square before the barracks, surrounded by a multitude who never ceased to abuse and threaten them; but wherever the broad hat of a Quaker was seen in the crowd, there they felt the assurance of a friend,—a friend, who, both out of love for them, and aversion to their enemies, would spare no efforts in their behalf. The soldiers continued refractory, and the Indians were at length ordered to proceed. As they moved down the street, shrinking together in their terror, the mob about them grew so angry and clamorous, that to their missionaries they seemed like a flock of sheep in the midst of howling wolves.[371] A body-guard of Quakers gathered around, protecting them from the crowd, and speaking words of sympathy and encouragement. Thus they proceeded to Province Island, below the city, where they were lodged in waste buildings, prepared in haste for their reception, and where the Quakers still attended them, with every office of kindness and friendship.
The Conestoga murders did not take place until some weeks after the removal of the Moravian converts to Philadelphia; and the rioters, as they rode, flushed with success, out of Lancaster, after the achievement of their exploit, were heard to boast that they would soon visit the city and finish their work, by killing the Indians whom it had taken under its protection. It was soon but too apparent that this design was seriously entertained by the people of the frontier. They had tasted blood, and they craved more. It seemed to them intolerable, that, while their sufferings were unheeded, and their wounded and destitute friends uncared for, they should be taxed to support those whom they regarded as authors of their calamities, or, in their own angry words, “to maintain them through the winter, that they may scalp and butcher us in the spring.”[372] In their blind rage, they would not see that the Moravian Indians had been removed to Philadelphia, in part, at least, with a view to the safety of the borders. To their enmity against Indians was added a resentment, scarcely less vehement, against the Quakers, whose sectarian principles they hated and despised. They complained, too, of political grievances, alleging that the five frontier counties were inadequately represented in the Assembly, and that from thence arose the undue influence of the Quakers in the councils of the province.
The excited people soon began to assemble at taverns and other places of resort, recounting their grievances, real or imaginary; relating frightful stories of Indian atrocities, and launching fierce invectives against the Quakers.[373] Political agitators harangued them on their violated rights; self-constituted preachers urged the duty of destroying the heathen, forgetting that the Moravian Indians were Christians, and their exasperated hearers were soon ripe for any rash attempt. They resolved to assemble and march in arms to Philadelphia. On a former occasion, they had sent thither a wagon laden with the mangled corpses of their friends and relatives, who had fallen by Indian butchery; but the hideous spectacle had failed of the intended effect, and the Assembly had still turned a deaf ear to their entreaties for more effective aid.[374] Appeals to sympathy had been thrown away, and they now resolved to try the efficacy of their rifles.
They mustered under their popular leaders, prominent among whom was Matthew Smith, who had led the murderers at Conestoga; and, towards the end of January, took the road to Philadelphia, in force variously estimated at from five hundred to fifteen hundred men. Their avowed purpose was to kill the Moravian Indians; but what vague designs they may have entertained to change the government, and eject the Quakers from a share in it, must remain a matter of uncertainty. Feeble as they were in numbers, their enterprise was not so hopeless as might at first appear, for they counted on aid from the mob of the city, while a numerous party, comprising the members of the Presbyterian sect, were expected to give them secret support, or at least to stand neutral in the quarrel. The Quakers, who were their most determined enemies, could not take arms against them without glaring violation of the principles which they had so often and loudly professed; and even should they thus fly in the face of conscience, the warlike borderers would stand in little fear of such unpractised warriors. They pursued their march in high confidence, applauded by the inhabitants, and hourly increasing in numbers.
Startling rumors of the danger soon reached Philadelphia, spreading alarm among the citizens. The Quakers, especially, had reason to fear, both for themselves and for the Indians, of whom it was their pride to be esteemed the champions. These pacific sectaries found themselves in a new and embarrassing position, for hitherto they had been able to assert their principles at no great risk to person or property. The appalling tempest, which, during the French war, had desolated the rest of the province, had been unfelt near Philadelphia; and while the inhabitants to the westward had been slaughtered by hundreds, scarcely a Quaker had been hurt. Under these circumstances, the aversion of the sect to warlike measures had been a fruitful source of difficulty. It is true that, on several occasions, they had voted supplies for the public defence; but unwilling to place on record such a testimony of inconsistency, they had granted the money, not for the avowed purpose of raising and arming soldiers, but under the title of a gift to the crown.[375] They were now to be deprived of even this poor subterfuge, and subjected to the dilemma of suffering their friends to be slain and themselves to be plundered, or openly appealing to arms.
Their embarrassment was increased by the exaggerated ideas which prevailed among the ignorant and timorous respecting the size and strength of the borderers, their ferocity of temper, and their wonderful skill as marksmen. Quiet citizens, whose knowledge was confined to the narrow limits of their firesides and shops, listened horror-stricken to these reports; the prevalence of which is somewhat surprising, when it is considered that, at the present day, the district whence the dreaded rioters came may be reached from Philadelphia within a few hours.
Tidings of the massacre in Lancaster jail had arrived at Philadelphia on the twenty-ninth of December, and with them came the rumor that numerous armed mobs were already on their march to the city. Terror and confusion were universal; and, as the place was defenceless, no other expedient suggested itself than the pitiful one of removing the objects of popular resentment beyond reach of danger. Boats were sent to Province Island, and the Indians ordered to embark and proceed with all haste down the river; but, the rumor proving groundless, a messenger was despatched to recall the fugitives.[376] The assurance that, for a time at least, the city was safe, restored some measure of tranquillity; but, as intelligence of an alarming kind came in daily from the country, Governor Penn sent to General Gage an earnest request for a detachment of regulars to repel the rioters;[377] and, in the interval, means to avert the threatened danger were eagerly sought. A proposal was laid before the Assembly to embark the Indians and send them to England;[378] but the scheme was judged inexpedient, and another, of equal weakness, adopted in its place. It was determined to send the refugees to New York, and place them under the protection of the Indian Superintendent, Sir William Johnson; a plan as hastily executed as timidly conceived.[379] At midnight, on the fourth of January, no measures having been taken to gain the consent of either the government of New York or Johnson himself, the Indians were ordered to leave the island and proceed to the city; where they arrived a little before daybreak, passing in mournful procession, thinly clad and shivering with cold, through the silent streets. The Moravian Brethren supplied them with food; and Fox, the commissary, with great humanity, distributed blankets among them. Before they could resume their progress, the city was astir; and as they passed the suburbs, they were pelted and hooted at by the mob. Captain Robertson’s Highlanders, who had just arrived from Lancaster, were ordered to escort them. These soldiers, who had their own reasons for hating Indians, treated them at first with no less insolence and rudeness than the populace; but at length, overcome by the meekness and patience of the sufferers, they changed their conduct, and assumed a tone of sympathy and kindness.[380]
Thus escorted, the refugees pursued their dreary progress through the country, greeted on all sides by the threats and curses of the people. When they reached Trenton, they were received by Apty, the commissary at that place, under whose charge they continued their journey towards Amboy, where several small vessels had been provided to carry them to New York. Arriving at Amboy, however, Apty, to his great surprise, received a letter from Governor Colden of New York, forbidding him to bring the Indians within the limits of that province. A second letter, from General Gage to Captain Robertson, conveyed orders to prevent their advance; and a third, to the owners of the vessels, threatened heavy penalties if they should bring the Indians to the city.[381] The charges of treachery against the Moravian Indians, the burden their presence would occasion, and the danger of popular disturbance, were the chief causes which induced the government of New York to adopt this course; a course that might have been foreseen from the beginning.[382]
Thus disappointed in their hopes of escape, the hapless Indians remained several days lodged in the barracks at Amboy, where they passed much of their time in religious services. A message, however, soon came from the Governor of New Jersey, requiring them to leave that province; and they were compelled reluctantly to retrace their steps to Philadelphia. A detachment of a hundred and seventy soldiers had arrived, sent by General Gage in compliance with the request of Governor Penn; and under the protection of these troops, the exiles began their backward journey. On the twenty-fourth of January, they reached Philadelphia, where they were lodged at the barracks within the city; the soldiers, forgetful of former prejudice, no longer refusing them entrance.
The return of the Indians, banishing the hope of repose with which the citizens had flattered themselves, and the tidings of danger coming in quick succession from the country, made it apparent that no time must be lost; and the Assembly, laying aside their scruples, unanimously passed a bill providing means for the public defence. The pacific city displayed a scene of unwonted bustle. All who held property, or regarded the public order, might, it should seem, have felt a deep interest in the issue; yet a numerous and highly respectable class stood idle spectators, or showed at best but a lukewarm zeal. These were the Presbyterians, who had naturally felt a strong sympathy with their suffering brethren of the frontier. To this they added a deep bitterness against the Quaker, greatly increased by a charge, most uncharitably brought by the latter against the whole Presbyterian sect, of conniving at and abetting the murders at Conestoga and Lancaster. They regarded the Paxton men as victims of Quaker neglect and injustice, and showed a strong disposition to palliate, or excuse altogether, the violence of which they had been guilty. Many of them, indeed, were secretly inclined to favor the designs of the advancing rioters; hoping that by their means the public grievances would be redressed, the Quaker faction put down, and the social and political balance of the state restored.[383]
Whatever may have been the sentiments of the Presbyterians and of the city mob, the rest of the inhabitants bestirred themselves for defence with all the alacrity of fright. The Quakers were especially conspicuous for their zeal. Nothing more was heard of the duty of non-resistance. The city was ransacked for arms, and the Assembly passed a vote, extending the English riot act to the province, the Quaker members heartily concurring in the measure. Franklin, whose energy and practical talents made his services invaluable, was the moving spirit of the day; and under his auspices the citizens were formed into military companies, six of which were of infantry, one of artillery, and two of horse. Besides this force, several thousands of the inhabitants, including many Quakers, held themselves ready to appear in arms at a moment’s notice.[384]
These preparations were yet incomplete, when, on the fourth of February, couriers came in with the announcement that the Paxton men, horse and foot, were already within a short distance of the city. Proclamation was made through the streets, and the people were called to arms. A mob of citizen soldiers repaired in great excitement to the barracks, where the Indians were lodged, under protection of the handful of regulars. Here the crowd remained all night, drenched with the rain, and in a dismal condition.[385]
On the following day, Sunday, a barricade was thrown up across the great square enclosed by the barracks; and eight cannon, to which four more were afterwards added, were planted to sweep the adjacent streets. These pieces were discharged, to convey to the rioters an idea of the reception prepared for them; but whatever effect the explosion may have produced on the ears for which it was intended, the new and appalling sounds struck the Indians in the barracks with speechless terror.[386] While the city assumed this martial attitude, its rulers thought proper to adopt the safer though less glorious course of conciliation; and a deputation of clergymen was sent out to meet the rioters, and pacify them by reason and Scripture. Towards night, as all remained quiet and nothing was heard from the enemy, the turmoil began to subside, the citizen soldiers dispersed, the regulars withdrew into quarters, and the city recovered something of the ordinary repose of a Sabbath evening.
Through the early part of the night, the quiet was undisturbed; but at about two o’clock in the morning, the clang of bells and the rolling of drums startled the people from their slumbers, and countless voices from the street echoed the alarm. Immediately, in obedience to the previous day’s orders, lighted candles were placed in every window, till the streets seemed illuminated for a festival. The citizen soldiers, with more zeal than order, mustered under their officers. The governor, dreading an irruption of the mob, repaired to the house of Franklin; and the city was filled with the jangling of bells, and the no less vehement clamor of tongues. A great multitude gathered before the barracks, where it was supposed the attack would be made; and among them was seen many a Quaker, with musket in hand. Some of the more consistent of the sect, unwilling to take arms with their less scrupulous brethren, went into the barracks to console and reassure the Indians; who, however, showed much more composure than their comforters, and sat waiting the result with invincible calmness. Several hours of suspense and excitement passed, when it was recollected, that, though the other ferries of the Schuylkill had been secured, a crossing place, known as the Swedes’ Ford, had been left open; and a party at once set out to correct this unlucky oversight.[387] Scarcely were they gone, when a cry rose among the crowd before the barracks, and a general exclamation was heard that the Paxton Boys were coming. In fact, a band of horsemen was seen advancing up Second Street. The people crowded to get out of the way; the troops fell into such order as they could; a cannon was pointed full at the horsemen, and the gunner was about to apply the match, when a man ran out from the crowd, and covered the touch-hole with his hat. The cry of a false alarm was heard, and it was soon apparent to all that the supposed Paxton Boys were a troop of German butchers and carters, who had come to aid in defence of the city, and had nearly paid dear for their patriotic zeal.[388]