ill success of his enterprise, but the American officers considered the result as rather favorable to him than otherwise. An interval of four days occurred which was diligently improved by the American troops in strengthening their batteries, while the enemy had new accessions of two regiments.

This was the most trying period of the whole siege, for the men were daily subjected to the most fatiguing duties, and were continually, in spite of precautions, picked off by the enemy, so that the daily losses were severe. At this time General Gaines was wounded and had to retire, and General Brown resumed the command, having partially recovered from wounds received at the battle of Niagara. General Peter B. Porter was conspicuous in this siege, and planned the sortie which was one of the most brilliant achievements of the war. He, with General Miller, filed out of camp by the left and advanced upon the enemy. General Porter's column made a considerable detour through the woods, while that of Miller concealed themselves in a ravine, General Porter's column approached its des tination with such secrecy that the enemy did not discover its approach until within pistol shot. As the firing As the firing announced this to General Miller, he left his ambush and charged the enemy's third battery, which being carried, their whole line, as far as their second battery, inclusive, was in a few minutes completely in our possession.

The object of the enterprise being thus accomplished, the army retreated again within its lines. Within half an

hour after the commencement of this action, the enemy had lost more than a thousand of his number, and nearly all his artillery and military stores. Many of the British officers who were present at this affair pronounce it to have been at least equal, if not superior, to anything of the kind in military history, and the best comment on it is the practical one of General Drummond, who broke up his camp three days afterwards and retired rapidly down the river.

Generals Brown and Porter covered themselves with glory on this occasion, and in later days the young descendants of the brave general, whose family has so long been identified with Niagara Falls, have been taken to the crumbling ruins of the old fort and taught by practical description to appreciate the brave deed of their renowned ancestor.

Colonel Bird, in 1815, went over to Fort Erie and saw the batteries, with their broken guns, just as they had been left after this battle.

one of

The relief of Fort Erie was the most skillfully planned and gallantly executed sorties ever made. General Napier mentions it as one of the very few cases in which a single sortie has compelled the raising of a siege. Very high credit was given to General Porter both for his eloquence in engaging the volunteers, and his skill and valor in leading them. leading them. The press sounded his praises, the citizens of Batavia tendered him a dinner, the governor brevetted him a major-general, and congress voted him a gold medal. The guerdons were justly his due on account of the distinguished services then known to the pub

lic, which also gave him full credit for the originating and planing the sortie. In a private letter to Colonel William A. Bird, we read, that General Brown requested Porter to draw up his plans in writing, as he himself hesitated as to its practicability.

Porter's aids superintended the cutting out of the roads, and he was chosen to command the force; and while General Brown is entitled to the credit belonging to every commander under whose orders a successful movement is carried out, there is no doubt that as originator, the honor in this case belongs to General Porter. The raising of the siege of Fort Erie was substantially the closing of the war on the Niagara frontier.

Major-general Gaines, in an official letter, also pays a well-merited tribute to another brave officer. He says:

The Douglass battery-named in honor of Lieutenant David B. Douglass of the engineer corps, under whose direction it was built-and the manner in which it was defended in the battle of Fort Erie, on the morning of the fifteenth of August, are bright within my recollection. Among the many scenes which combined to disperse the clouds and darkness and light up the dawn of that memorable morning, the defence of the Douglass battery stands rivaled by few, and, according to the number of guns, sur

passed by none. The youthful commander of that

battery excited my admiration. His constancy and courage during a brisk cannonade and bombardment for several weeks-often in night as well as day-his gallantry and defense against a vigorous assault by a vast superiority of numbers, are incidents which can never cease to be cherished in my memory as among the most heroic and pleasing I have ever witnessed.

Later years has made this same point conspicuous as the rendezvous for the Fenians from this side.

nians crossed the Niagara river from the vicinity of Buffalo, and possessed themselves of an empty mill at Fort Erie, and cut the telegraph wires. As soon as the facts became known, the Canadian volunteers marched against them; they attacked them on the second of June, but were not successful in capturing any. (In fact one especial Canadian regiment became eminently ridiculous by breaking ranks and running off from the field. It was called the 'Queen's Own," and consisted mostly of young society boys.)

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In the meanwhile the United States government gave instructions to General Grant to employ military force to prevent reinforcements from crossing the river, as it was known that large numbers of Fenians had assembled on the United States frontier. The Canadian force having now been strengthened, again advanced on Fort Erie, which the Fenians abandoned, leaving behind thirty-two men as a picket. These were captured, six of them were tried by a drum-head court martial and shot. The main body of about four hundred men, in attempting to recross the Niagara river, were seized by the Federal gunboats, disarmed, and after a few days' confinement discharged on recognizances to appear when called for. On the seventh of June, President Johnson issued a proclamation against Fenians, forbiding any assistance to be given them. On the day previous General Sweeney, the organizer of the raid, had been arrested at St. Albans, and General Roberts, the civil chief, was also arrested

There was a second raid in May, 1870, when four Fenian regiments marched into Canada, but were driven out on the twenty-seventh, with a loss of eight killed and twenty wounded.

Thus closes a brief record of a memorable spot, which, though at present presenting only a few crumbling ruins. and totally destitute of any military importance, still is eloquent in suggestions of energy and activity in the past. The broken walls group themselves picturesquely on the banks of the grand, swiftly-flowing river, which bears on the waters of the great lakes as of old into the quiet slumber of the sea. Nature

has shed over the rough wounds made by time, or the vandalism of man, its lovely curtain of soft verdure, where the winds may play and the birds sing their sweetest songs, undisturbed by the proud or mournful memories which may haunt the visitor. No red man's feathered head now peers round its angles, or looks from the shore with curious eye on the ships which go by laden with the commerce of a great population, and the dead who here fought so bravely sleep well beneath the blue sky which canopies the great free land which they shed their blood to gain. "Requiescat in pace."

MARL E. MIXER.

We print in this number an interesting paper by Mr. Ethelbert D. Warfield on the authorship of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799. Mr. Warfield maintains that the logic of all the known facts furnishes very strong reason for believing Mr. Breckinridge to have been the author, and not Mr. Jefferson, as has been almost universally believed a belief founded on Mr. Jefferson's claim in a letter written after Mr. Breckinridge's death to the latter's son, elsewhere published. Mr. R. T. Durrett, in The Southern Bivouac for March, this year, holds to the opinion that, while there is little doubt that Mr. Jefferson did rame the resolutions, he nevertheless drafted them in harmony with the previously expressed views of Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Breckinridge, Wilson C. Nicholas, and possibly James Madison. Mr. Durrett says:

The letter shows that, in this meeting at Monticello, it was agreed between these distinguished gentlemen that the best way to counteract the alien and sedition laws was to array the state legislatures against them. To this end a series of resolutions were to be prepared for the Kentucky legislature, which should make this state, in co-operation with Virginia, put forth a solemn protest against the constitutionality of these laws; and Mr. Breckinridge, then a member of the Kentucky legislature, was to undertake to have them adopted by that body. This conclusion having been reached in the conference, it was but natural and courteous that Mr. Jefferson should have been invited to draft the resolutions. He was vice-president of the United States and the acknowledged leader of the political organization then gaining strength for its impending conflict with the Federalists, and destined in its triumph to make him the successor of Mr. Adams, in the presidential chair. The conference, moreover, was at the home of Mr. Jefferson, and it would have been scarcely less than rude for his guests not to have urged their host to sketch the contemplated resolutions. When the promise, therefore, of secrecy as to his connection with them was made, Mr. Jefferson did draw a series of nine resolutions and deliver them to Mr. Breckinridge.

The resolutions thus drawn by Mr. Jefferson were not, however, identical with those which Mr. Breckinridge

afterwards presented to the Kentucky legislature, and which were adopted by that body. The first seven of the Breckinridge or Kentucky resolutions are the same as these numbers of the Jefferson draft, except as to a few unimportant verbal changes; but the eighth and ninth of the Breckinridge or Kentucky set are radically different from these numbers in the Jefferson series. Mr. Breckinridge, after receiving the Jefferson draft, evidently exercised his right to so alter the text as to make the resolutions meet his own views, and conform to his understanding of their tenor and import, as agreed in the conference.

JAMES BUCHANAN, afterwards President of the United States, but at the time referred to in the following narration United States senator from Pennsylvania, related the accompanying bit of interesting history at a dinner party in western Pennsylvania in 1843. The source from which it came to the hands of the editor is in every way trustworthy. In connection with what else is published in this number of this Magazine relating to the Mormons, it has an added interest to that with which it is invested by reason of the light it throws upon the characters of two men who have been Presidents of the United States. Mr. Buchanan spoke substantially as follows:

In the month of February, 1839 or 1840, the Mormon prophet, Joe Smith, with several of his elders, came to Washington to present their wrongs in Missouri to the con sideration of congress.

At once Colonel Benton and Dr. Sinn, senators from that state, were up in arms against even a hearing by the senate, and the delegation could make no headway in the appeal for a fair examination of their side of the desperate struggle on the border. Before leaving, they solicited a hearing by the senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Buchanan, who was so strongly impressed by the statements they made to him, supported by proofs, that he interceded personally with the Missouri senators to give the Latter Day Saints a fair chance for simple justice; but they were indignant that Mr. Bshould listen to them, when he told them he (Mr. B.) believed in fair play to any American citizen, and would himself present them to Mr. Van Buren, the President, and ask him to consider what the Mormons would state. But

Then Mr. Buchanan told us that he thought of another influence, and aside reminded Mr. Van Buren that the following year was to see him the candidate of the Democratic party again, and that the state of Illinois was somewhat doubtful, and that the vote of Nauvoo, which he understood would be full three thousand, might decide that of the state, etc.. etc. But the President declared that if they were to defeat his election, so be it-they should not come into his presence.

This was told by Mr. Buchanan in reply to a depreciatory estimate of Mr. Van Buren by a gentleman present, to show that Mr. Van Buren was not what he had been supposed, etc., etc.; but also, I distinctly remember, that Mr. Buchanan characterized the statements of the Mormons with the proofs of their truthfulness, as the most painful picture of border ruffianism he had encountered. He had no word of extenuation for Mormon leaders, but felt the outrages committed on their deluded followers were a stain on the fair name of the country.

The narration gave the company an impression of the character of Mr. Buchanan, which his opponents had not allowed him.

THE following memorial from Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other Mormon leaders, to the congress of the United States, presented no doubt in the early part of the year 1844, we deem worthy of publication, not merely as a document of historical interest and value, but also as presenting a story of a series of barbarous cruelties inflicted by citizens of the United States upon the Mormon people, many of them women and children innocent of any wrong. The paper gives proof of the ability of the writer. After reciting their grievances the petitioners ask congress to adopt for their protection an act introduced into the Illinois legislature in 1840, incorporating the city of Nauvoo. Below this document is appended the signature of Stephen A. Douglas, who, as secretary of state, certified to the accuracy of the copy of

the enrolled law. The memorial itself is entitled to a careful perusal:

TO THE HONORABLE SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:

We, the undersigned, members of the city council of the City of Nauvoo, citizens of Hancock county, Illinois, and exiles from the state of Missouri, being in council assembled, unanimously and respectfully, for ourselves, and in behalf of many thousands of other exiles, memorialize the honorable senators and representatives of our nation upon the subject of the unparalleled persecution and cruelties inflicted upon us and upon our constituents by the constituted authorities of the state of Missouri, and likewise upon the subject of the present unfortunate circumstances in which we are placed in the land of our exile. As a history of the Missouri outrages has been extensively published, both in this country and in Europe, it is deemed unnecessary to particularize all of the wrongs and grievances inflicted upon us, in this memorial. As there is an abundance of well attested documents to which your honorable body can at any time refer, hence we only embody the following important items for your consideration:

First.-Your memorialists, as free-born citizens of this great republic, relying with the utmost confidence upon the sacred "articles of the constitution" by which the several states are bound together, and considering ourselves entitled to all the privileges and immunities of free citizens in what state soever we desired to locate ourselves, commenced a settlement in the county of Jackson, on the western frontiers of the state of Missouri, in the summer of 1831. There we purchased land from government, erected several hundred houses, made extensive improvements, and shortly the wild and lonely prairies and stately forests were converted into well cultivated and fruitful fields. There we expected to spend our days in the enjoyment of all our rights and liberties bequeathed to us by the sufferings and blood of our noble ancestors. But alas! our expectations were vain. Two years had scarcely elapsed before we were unlawfully and unconstitutionally assaulted by an organized mob consisting of the highest officers in the county, both civil and military, who boldly avowed their determination in a written circular to drive us from said county. As a specimen of their treasonable and cruel designs your honorable body are referred to said circular, of which the following is a short extract, namely: