NARRATIVE

OF THE

LIFE OF GENERAL LESLIE COMBS,

OF KENTUCKY,

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

THE biography of men in the Republic 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.

and fearless race; and leading the free and 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.

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 obtain

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, rep-ing redress, in some instances, by acts little resented 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,

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 Seven only of his children survived him; overturn the institutions established by our among whom was divided his hundred-acre revolutionary forefathers. It is then that farm in Clarke county, which had furnished the people of the great West, the descend-his only support in raising his large famants 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 disunion.

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, As being a worthy representative of this opened a school of a higher order than was race, and also one whose early life and ad- usual in the country in those days; and in ventures are intimately connected with an it he was taught the Latin language, as interesting and instructive, but now almost well as English grammar, geography, and forgotten portion of our national history, as the lower branches of mathematics. His relating to the West, we shall depart some-progress in all his studies was rapid, and what from our ordinary practice, and allow he soon became the pet of his venerable inourselves more space and latitude than usual, structor, as he was the pride of his aged in detailing the personal narrative of the sub-parents. ject 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.

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 Even those who are old enough to resterling worth of one of that class of men member the events of those times, but who which has impressed its characteristic traits were born and have always lived in the as honorably as it has indelibly on our na-eastern portions of the country, can have tional character: "a hunter of Kentucky;" little idea of the intensity of feeling aroused one of that fearless, enterprising, self-relying, by this event among the hardy inhabitants frank and generous race, which, as the hardy of Kentucky and the frontier portions of the pioneer of civilization in our Western sav- north-western country. In that region, the age wilds, has extended the area of the Re-interval between the close of the war of the public over those once almost illimitable Revolution and the declaration of the secforests and prairies, and, by its valor and ond war with the same power, had witnessed devotion to country, has contributed so much an almost uninterrupted struggle between to our national greatness and fame. the Western pioneer settlers and the native

tribes of those regions, who, as was well] It cannot therefore be wondered at, that known, were continually instigated and paid the son of an old soldier and hunter, who by British agents to harass and devastate had often listened of a winter evening to his our infant settlements. Hence the nation- father's thrilling details of Indian fights, and al animosity against the mother country ambuscades, and hairbreadth escapes, should excited by the War of Independence, so far be infected with the contagion, and long, from having been allayed or effaced in those boy as he was, to throw away his pen and parts, as was the case to a considerable ex- seize some implement of war. tent in the East, by the lapse of thirty years of peace, nominal as regarded the Western frontier, had, on the contrary, been gradually increasing and becoming intensified down to the very moment of the declaration of war in 1812. This feeling reached its acme when that same power whose agents had so long been inciting the savages to ruthless forays on the defenseless and peaceful set-tain's proud, insulting claim, as mistress of tlements, now entered into alliances with them, 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.

Young Leslie Combs had just passed his eighteenth birthday, and was, by law, subject to militia duty, although he had not been inscribed on any muster-roll. Kentucky was called upon for several thousand troops, and he hoped to be one of the soldiers enlisted in the great cause of "sailors' rights and free trade with all the world," in defiance of Bri

the seas, to insult our flag and seize our seamen. 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 necessary, but, instead of that, there were more volunteers than were required to fill the

A series of revolting atrocities perpetrated early in the war by the savages, many of them under the very eye, and with the ap-quota of Kentucky, and young Leslie's paproval or connivance of the commanders of their British allies, especially of the notorious Colonel, and for these his acts promoted or brevetted General Proctor, whose memory the voice of outraged humanity will consigu to eternal infamy, aroused the whole Western country to a pitch of intense excitement, which manifested itself in a universal cry for revenge, and a spontaneous rush to the field.*

rents objected to his going, inasmuch as two of his elder brothers had previously joined the troops ordered to the northern frontier, under General Winchester. It was not long after they marched, however, before his continued and earnest importunities, sometimes urged with tears in his eyes, prevailed upon 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

Lit

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. The 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. tle 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