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NARRATIVE

OF THE

LIFE OF GENERAL LESLIE COMBS,

OF KENTUCKY,

EMBRACING INCIDENTS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE NORTH-WESTERN TERRITORY.

untrammeled life of the backwoods, and breathing from infancy the atmosphere of unrestrained freedom and independencehence a frank, generous, hospitable race, endued with an unsophiscated and plain sense of right, with a ready disposition to uphold and protect it, as well as a keen native sense of wrong, and a impulsive instinct to repel and redress it; the men of this race have ever been foremost, whether in extending the area of civilization and of the Republic, by felling the forest and subduing the rank prairie, or in defending our national rights and avenging our national wrongs on the field of battle.

THE biography of men in the Republic and fearless race; and leading the free and who have raised themselves by their own unaided talents and energies above the level of the general mass of the community in which their lot has been cast, must be both entertaining and instructive to their fellowcountrymen. Doubly instructive and profitable, in a more extended view, are these personal histories, when they relate to the lives and fortunes of those who may be regarded as representative men-types of classes that constitute essential or important elements in our national character, and which, though somewhat heterogeneous in their origin and diverse in their features, have yet become, through the harmonizing and fostering influences of our republican institutions, consolidated and blended into a congruous whole, known and recognized throughout the world, distinctively as the American character.

Nor are these essential and characteristic elements referable solely to peculiar national origins. On the contrary, local and other circumstances, irrespective of nationalities, have formed some of the most distinctive, and, in a national point of view, important of these elements. Of this kind were the circumstances attending the early settlement of our Western country; circumstances which overbore and nearly obliterated all distinctions of national origin, blending and consolidating all such elements in the comprehensive, distinctive national one, represented by the Western hunter, pioneer and settler, as combined in the same individual.

Nurtured amidst stirring scenes, and accustomed from early childhood to a life of activity, hardship, exposure, and thrilling adventure-hence a hardy, enterprising, bold,

It was this race, represented by and speaking through a Henry Clay and others of that stamp, which aroused our Government to a declaration of war, to vindicate our violated national rights on the ocean, early in the present century; and it was this race themselves, who, at the call of their country, rushed with an unexampled unanimity and alacrity to the field, while, in some parts of the country, but too many of the more immediate neighbors and kin dred of those citizens whose rights of person or property on the sea had been outraged, not only refused to respond to this national call, but sought to thwart the purposes of the Government, by opposing its measures adopted for the purpose of obtaining redress, in some instances, by acts little short of treason. And it is to the descendants of this race, already numbering millions of hardy, unflinching republicans, to which our country must look for a patriotic and generous support of its institutions, as a united whole, whenever the violence of ultra factions in the extreme North or South,

impelled by whatever motives, shall seek to overturn the institutions established by our revolutionary forefathers. It is then that the people of the great West, the descendants of the pioneer, hunter race, will-asily. Of course their means and opportunione of her representatives declared in his place in a late Congress-have something to say on the final question of union or disu

Seven only of his children survived him; among whom was divided his hundred-acre farm in Clarke county, which had furnished his only support in raising his large fam

nion.

As being a worthy representative of this race, and also one whose early life and adventures are intimately connected with an interesting and instructive, but now almost forgotten portion of our national history, as relating to the West, we shall depart somewhat from our ordinary practice, and allow ourselves more space and latitude than usual, in detailing the personal narrative of the subject of the present memoir.

GENERAL LESLIE COMBS is descended, on the side of his mother, whose maiden name was SARAH RICHARDSON, from a respectable Quaker family of Maryland, connected by blood with the Thomases and Snowdens. His father was by birth a Virginian, and served as a subaltern officer in the revolutionary army under Washington, at the siege of Yorktown and capture of Lord Cornwallis. He soon afterwards emigrated to Kentucky, and was engaged in all those dangerous and sometimes bloody scenes which resulted in driving out the Indians, and devoting that rich and beautiful region to the cause and purposes of civilization.

ties of education were limited; but, fortunately for the subject of this memoir, when he was but ten or eleven years of age, the Rev. JOHN LYLE, a Presbyterian clergyman, opened a school of a higher order than was usual in the country in those days; and in it he was taught the Latin language, as well as English grammar, geography, and the lower branches of mathematics. progress in all his studies was rapid, and he soon became the pet of his venerable instructor, as he was the pride of his aged parents.

His

This state of things continued about three years, when Mr. Lyle removed to a neighboring county; and for a time our young scholar was compelled to remain at home, and assisted in cultivating the farm. The great anxiety, however, of both his parents to give him as liberal an education as possible, was soon gratified by their being able to place him in the family of a French gentleman residing near Ashland, whose lady taught a few scholars, and under whose instruction he remained for a year; his time being mainly devoted to the acquisition of her native language. That admirable lady is yet alive, and still residing in her humble home, one of her daughters having married a son of Henry Clay.

Shortly after returning home, he was placed as the junior deputy in the clerk's office of Hon. S. H. Woodson, in Jessamine county, and was residing there, when the last war was declared against Great Britain. The excitement in Kentucky, on the occurrence of that event, pervaded all ages and

Both his parents have been dead for several years; and as their youngest of twelve children, he has erected over their humble graves, within a few miles of Boonesboro, appropriate tombstones. On his father's are inscribed the simple facts, that he was a "Revolutionary Officer and a Hunter of Kentucky." A simple, affecting, and sug-classes. gestive tribute to the unpretending but sterling worth of one of that class of men which has impressed its characteristic traits as honorably as it has indelibly on our national character: "a hunter of Kentucky;" one of that fearless, enterprising, self-relying, frank and generous race, which, as the hardy pioneer of civilization in our Western sayage wilds, has extended the area of the Re-interval between the close of the war of the public over those once almost illimitable forests and prairies, and, by its valor and devotion to country, has contributed so much to our national greatness and fame.

Even those who are old enough to remember the events of those times, but who were born and have always lived in the eastern portions of the country, can have little idea of the intensity of feeling aroused by this event among the hardy inhabitants of Kentucky and the frontier portions of the north-western country. In that region, the

Revolution and the declaration of the second war with the same power, had witnessed an almost uninterrupted struggle between the Western pioneer settlers and the native

It cannot therefore be wondered at, that the son of an old soldier and hunter, who had often listened of a winter evening to his father's thrilling details of Indian fights, and ambuscades, and hairbreadth escapes, should be infected with the contagion, and long, boy as he was, to throw away his pen and

tribes of those regions, who, as was well known, were continually instigated and paid by British agents to harass and devastate our infant settlements. Hence the national animosity against the mother country excited by the War of Independence, so far from having been allayed or effaced in those parts, as was the case to a considerable ex-seize some implement of war. tent in the East, by the lapse of thirty years Young Leslie Combs had just passed his of peace, nominal as regarded the Western eighteenth birthday, and was, by law, subject frontier, had, on the contrary, been gradually to militia duty, although he had not been inincreasing and becoming intensified down to scribed on any muster-roll. Kentucky was the very moment of the declaration of war called upon for several thousand troops, and in 1812. This feeling reached its acme he hoped to be one of the soldiers enlisted when that same power whose agents had so in the great cause of "sailors' rights and free long been inciting the savages to ruthless trade with all the world," in defiance of Briforays on the defenseless and peaceful set-tain's proud, insulting claim, as mistress of tlements, now entered into alliances with the seas, to insult our flag and seize our seathem, and, by offering premiums for the scalps of men, women, and children, incited them to redoubled zeal in the prosecution of their instinctive and inhuman mode of warfare.

men. He accordingly borrowed a fowlingpiece, and set himself to work to acquire the manual exercise as taught by Baron Steuben, then the only approved master in such matters. It was supposed that a draft would be neA series of revolting atrocities perpetrated cessary, but, instead of that, there were more early in the war by the savages, many of volunteers than were required to fill the them under the very eye, and with the ap- quota of Kentucky, and young Leslie's paproval or connivance of the commanders of rents objected to his going, inasmuch as two their British allies, especially of the noto- of his elder brothers had previously joined rious Colonel, and for these his acts pro- the troops ordered to the northern frontier, moted or brevetted General Proctor, whose under General Winchester. It was not long memory the voice of outraged humanity will after they marched, however, before his conconsign to eternal infamy, aroused the whole tinued and earnest importunities, sometimes Western country to a pitch of intense excite-urged with tears in his eyes, prevailed upon ment, which manifested itself in a universal cry for revenge, and a spontaneous rush to the field.*

them to let him go. Equipping himself as a private of cavalry as speedily as possible, about a month after the army marched from Georgetown, Kentucky, he started alone on their track, hoping to overtake them in time "Exasperated to madness by the failure of to partake of their glorious triumphs in Catheir attempt, September 4, 1812, on Fort Har-nada, for, like the rest, he never dreamed of rison, [defended by Captain Zachary Taylor,] a considerable party of Indians now made an irrup disaster and defeat. "I shall never forget," tion into the settlements on the Pigeon Roost fork to quote his words in after years, "the partof White river, where they barbarously massacred ing scene with my beloved and venerated twenty-one of the inhabitants, many of them wo mother, in which she reminded me of my men and children. The children had their brains father's history, and her own trials and danknocked out against trees; and one woman, who was pregnant, was ripped open, and her unborn infant gers in the early settlement of Kentucky, and taken from her, and its brains knocked out. How closed by saying to me, as I had resolved to ever, this was but a small matter; it amounted to become a soldier, I must never disgrace my no essential injury; it was all for the best, as it was done by the disciples of the Wabash Prophet, Parents by running from danger;-to die who was in a close and holy alliance with George rather than fail to do my duty. This inthe Third, defender of the faith, and legitimate junction was ever present to me afterwards, sovereign of the Bible Society nation, which is in the midst of dangers and difficulties of the bulwark of our most holy religion. Yet it ex- which I had then formed no idea, and stimcited the indignation of the uncivilized republicanulated me to deeds that I might otherwise, infidels in the neighboring settlements of Indiana and Kentucky."-McAfee. History of the Late perhaps, have hesitated to undertake and War in the Western Country," pp. 154–5.

perform."

Here properly closes what may be termed the first chapter of his personal history; because from this time he threw off boyhood, and entered upon a career more befitting manhood.

a month earlier, and Chicago had been abandoned on the 15th of August, and its garrison murdered or captured by a large force of Indians who had received news of Hull's retreat from Canada, and thereupon resolved to unite with the British against us, as they had been previously urged to do by Tecumseh, then rising into power among the northern tribes on this side of the American and British boundary line.

Thus our whole frontier from Lake Erie to the Mississippi river was left utterly undefended except by two small forts-Wayne and Harrison-one at the junction of the St. Joseph and St. Mary rivers, forming the Maumee of the Lake, the other on the far-distant Wabash. Both were defended by

attacked by the Indians at about the same time, and Captain Zack Taylor, defending Fort Harrison, as we have before intimated, with most unflinching heroism, laid the foundation of that subsequent career of military glory and self-devotion, which finally elevated him to the Presidential office.

Before proceeding with the personal narrative of our subject, and in order to enable the reader the better to understand the scenes of danger and suffering through which he passed during the unfortunate campaigns of 1812-13, we will briefly sketch the situation of the great North-western Territory, now composing some six or seven sovereign States of this great republican confederacy. From just beyond Urbana and Dayton, in western Ohio, to the northern lakes in one direction, and the Mississippi river in another, was one unbroken wilderness, inhabited only by In-block-houses and wooden pickets, both were dians and wild beasts, with the exception of a few scattering settlements on some of the principal rivers, at great distances from each other. There was a small fort at Detroit, one at Mackinac, and one at Chicago, besides Forts Wayne and Harrison, each garrisoned by a few regular troops. William Hull was Governor of the Territory of Michigan, and William Henry Harrison of Indiana. In view of the growing difficulties with Great Britain in the spring of 1812, Governor Hull received the appointment of Brigadier General in the army of the United States, and was sent to Ohio to take command of the forces ordered to Detroit to protect that frontier in case of war. These consisted of the fourth regiment of regulars, under Colonel Miller, and three regiments of Ohio volunteers, under Colonels Duncan McArthur, Lewis Cass, and James Findlay. War was declared on the 18th June, 1812, while General Hull was on his tardy march through the northern swamps of Ohio towards Detroit. His baggage, which had been sent by way of the lake, was captured in attempting to pass Malden, at the mouth of the Detroit river. He himself soon afterwards reached Detroit, issued his famous proclamation, and talked largely of overrunning Upper Canada, for effecting which object he had ample forces under his command; instead of doing which, however, he very soon retreated back to the American shore, and on the 16th August disgracefully surrendered his army and the whole of Michigan Territory to General Brock, commanding the British forces on that frontier.

Mackinaw had been forced to capitulate

The

Three regiments of Kentucky volunteers, under the command of Colonels Scott, Lewis, and Allen, and one regiment of regulars, under Colonel Wells, had, in the mean time, been ordered to the north-western frontier, to reënforce General Hull. The former rendezvoused at Georgetown on the 16th of August, and after being addressed by the old veteran, General Charles Scott, then Governor of Kentucky, and by Henry Clay, were mustered into the service of the United States. best blood of Kentucky, the sons of the old hunters and Indian fighters, could be found in this little army. Two members of Congress were among the privates in the ranks. Little did they imagine, while listening to the soul-stirring appeals of the great Kentucky orator, that, instead of marching to Canada to aid in its conquest, on that very day the white flag of disgraceful surrender had been hung out by the coward or the traitor Hull from the battlements of Detroit; and that their own career of anticipated victories and glory would terminate in disaster, as it did, on the bloody battle-field of Raisin, on the following 22d day of January. General James Winchester had command of this force, and marched on the 17th by way of Cinnnati, (then a small town on the Ohio river, opposite to Newport,) towards the northwestern frontier; and it was not until they

had passed the Kentucky border that the news of Hull's surrender reached them.

Governor Harrison had acquired very considerable fame by his glorious victory at Tippecanoe the preceding November, and was in Kentucky at that time on a visit. So soon as the events just above related were communicated to the Government at Washington, three or four additional regiments of volunteers were ordered from Kentucky, and the Governor of Kentucky prevailed on Governor Harrison to accept the office of Major-General, and to hasten with the forces then in the field, and a large body of mounted Kentucky militia, to the relief of Fort Wayne.

This, it will be remembered, he accomplished, and forced the Indians and their British auxiliaries to retreat precipitately towards Canada, without daring to engage him in battle.

By selling a small piece of land (all he had on earth) devised to him by a deceased elder brother, he soon completed his outfit as a volunteer, and, armed with holsters and broadsword, with only fifteen dollars in his pocket, he started for the north-western army, which was then marching with all possible speed towards the frontiers of Ohio, in order to reënforce General Hull. Never having been forty miles from home before this time, young and inexperienced as he was, nothing but his burning zeal for the cause to which he had devoted himself could have sustained him against all the perils and hardships of his long journey. When he arrived at Piqua, beyond Dayton, he found crowds of Indians, men, women, and children, principally from the neighboring Shawanee villages, who were besieging the commissary's and quartermaster's apart ments for food, blankets, and ammunition. He had never before seen such an array of yellow skins, and was gratified to find at the same place several companies of mounted thirty-day volunteers, hastening to the frontiers after the news of Hull's surrender reached Ohio and Kentucky; in company with whom he proceeded through the wilderness to St. Mary's, distant twenty or thirty miles. At that place he met General Harrison on his return from the relief of Fort Wayne, after turning over his command to General Winchester, of the regular army. The next day and night, in company with three or four friends, he made the journey to Fort

Wayne, distant about sixty miles, through an unbroken wilderness, infested with hostile savages; and there found the troops in motion towards Old Fort Defiance, at the junction of the Maumee and Anglaise rivers, and was attached by general orders as a cadet to the first regiment of Kentucky Volunteers, under Colonel Scott. In this capacity he continued to do duty the remainder of the campaign, going out on all scouting-parties, and thus becoming well acquainted with the whole surrounding country. Some of them were attended with great hazard, and all of them with extra fatigue and hardship, even when compared with the starved and naked condition of all that wing of the army.

As these events have no doubt long since passed from the memories of those not immediately connected with them, and the principal history of them, written by Colonel McAfee, is nearly out of print, we take leave to quote from his authentic work, "The History of the late War in the Western Country," printed in 1816, the following passages, first remarking that the left wing of the north-western army, under General Winchester, (General Harrison having some weeks before received the appointment of Major-General from the President of the United States, and assumed the chief command,) was encamped six miles below Old Fort Defiance, on the Maumee:

"About the first of November they became exlence, so that sometimes three or four would die in a tremely sickly. The typhus fever raged with vioday. Upwards of three hundred were daily on the sick-list; and so discouraging was the prospect of advancing, that about the first of December they tion. Many were so entirely destitute of shoes and other clothing, that they must have frozen if they had been obliged to march any distance; and sometimes the whole army would be for many days entirely without flour." (Pp. 188-4.)

were ordered to build huts for their accommoda

"From the 10th to the 22d of this month, (De

cember,) the camp was without flour, and for some time before they had only half rations: poor beef and hickory roots were their only subsistence. At the same time, fevers and other diseases raged in almost every tent, in which the sick were exposed season. not only to hunger, but to the inclemency of the (Vide pp. 185-6.)

General Winchester had received orders from General Harrison, as soon as he had accumulated twenty days' provisions, to advance to the rapids, forty-four miles lower down the river than his present camp, and to commence building huts, to induce the enemy

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