and opinions; they were not led by powerful families, or by great officers in church or state....  Every inhabitant was, or easily might be, a freeholder.  Settled on lands of his own, he was both farmer and landlord.  Having no superior to whom he was obliged to look up, and producing all the necessaries of life from his own grounds, he soon became independent.  His mind was equally free from all the restraints of superstition.  No ecclesiastical establishment invaded the rights of conscience, or lettered the free-born mind.  At liberty to act and think as his inclination prompted, he disdained the ideas of dependence and subjection.

* * * * *

=_Henry Lee,[34] 1736-1818._=

From “Memoirs” of the War in the South.

=_115._= CLARKE’S SERVICES AGAINST THE INDIANS.

JOHN RODGERS CLARKE, colonel in the service of Virginia, against our neighbors the Indians in the revolutionary war, was among our best soldiers, and better acquainted with the Indian warfare than any officer in our army.  This gentleman, after one of his campaigns, met in Richmond several of our cavalry officers, and devoted all his leisure in ascertaining from them the various uses to which horse were applied, as well as the manner of such application.  The information he acquired determined him to introduce this species of force against the Indians, as that of all others the most effectual.

By himself, by Pickens, and lately by Wayne, was the accuracy of
Clarke’s opinion justified....

The Indians, when fighting with infantry, are very daring.  This temper of mind results from his consciousness of his superior fleetness; which, together with his better knowledge of woods, assures to him extrication out of difficulties, though desperate.  This is extinguished when he finds that, he is to save himself from the pursuit of horse, and with its extinction falls that habitual boldness.

[Footnote 34:  In the revolutionary war he was distinguished as a cavalry officer, and subsequently, in political life, as a writer and speaker.]

* * * * *

=_116._= THE CAREER OF CAPTAIN KIRKWOOD.

The State of Delaware furnished one regiment only; and certainly no regiment in the army surpassed it in soldiership.  The remnant of that corps, less thaw two companies, from the battle of Camden, was commanded by Captain Kirkwood, who passed through the war with high reputation; and yet, as the line of Delaware consisted of but one regiment, and that regiment was reduced to a captain’s command.  Kirkwood never could be promoted in regular routine—­a very glaring defect in the organization of the army, as it gave advantages to parts of the same army denied to other portions of it.  The sequel is singularly hard.  Kirkwood retired, upon peace, as a captain; and when the army under St. Clair was raised to defend the west from the Indian enemy, this veteran resumed his sword as the eldest captain in the oldest regiment.