Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/331

] most fertile and salubrious part of the country, for the payment of debts which they owed to European merchants who had traded with them. A transaction of very different character occurred at the same time in Virginia, where a war broke out with the Ohio Indians, in consequence of a series of reciprocal injuries, wherein the European colonists, if not the aggressors (which, however, there is reason to suppose they were), at least merited the reproach of exceeding their savage antagonists in the inflictions of summary, indiscriminate, and disproportioned revenge. The Virginia government despatched a strong body of militia, under the command of Colonel Lewis, to oppose the enemy; and after a bloody engagement in the woods, in which the colonial troops repulsed the Indians, but with great difficulty, and the loss of several hundred men on their own side, the quarrel was adjusted and peace again restored.

In connection with what has just been quoted from Mr. Grahame's work, we think that the speech of Logan, one of the greatest sufferers from the indiscriminate slaughter set on foot by the whites, ought to be preserved. It was made to General Gibson, and was by him to be transmitted to Lord Dunmore, the Governor of Virginia. "I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him nothing to eat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed at me as they passed and said, 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I had even thought | to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Captain Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan sparing not even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in any living creature. This called on me for revenge: I have sought it; I have killed many; I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!" War and politics had engrossed public attention quite largely since the "Great Revival," thirty years before. The stern, rugged system of Puritanism had, to a considerable extent, given way before the progress of latitudinarian ideas and sentiments. Whitfield died in Massachusetts, in 1770, and the views which he had so zealously advocated were widely spread and influential in the community. The Wesleyan branch of the Methodists, however, had not met with much success in America as yet, owing to the fact that in general they were warm loyalists. The Universalists took their rise in America about this date, and the spread of their peculiar tenets helped to produce a change in the New England people "But the armed contest with the mother country ," as Mr. Hildreth remarks,