The settlers demanded Boone's promotion for their own security.
"The land it is good, it is just to our mind,
Each will have his part if his Lordship be kind,
The Ohio once ours, we'll live at our ease,
With a bottle and glass to drink when we please."
So sang the army poet, thus giving voice, as bards should ever
do, to the theme nearest the hearts of his hearers--in this case,
Land! Presumably his ditty was composed on the eve of the march
from Lewisburg, for it is found in a soldier's diary.
On the evening of October 9,1774, Andrew Lewis with his force of
eleven hundred frontiersmen was encamped on Point Pleasant at the
junction of the Great Kanawha with the Ohio. Dunmore in the
meantime had led his forces into Ohio and had erected Fort Gower
at the mouth of the Hockhocking River, where he waited for word
from Andrew Lewis.*
* It has been customary to ascribe to Lord Dunmore motives of
treachery in failing to make connections with Lewis; but no real
evidence has been advanced to support any of the charges made
against him by local historians. The charges were, as Theodore
Roosevelt says, "an afterthought." Dunmore was a King's man in
the Revolution; and yet in March, 1775, the Convention of the
Colony of Virginia, assembled in opposition to the royal party,
resolved: "The most cordial thanks of the people of this colony
are a tribute justly due to our worthy Governor Lord Dunmore, for
his truly noble, wise, and spirited conduct which at once evinces
his Excellency's attention to the true interests of this colony,
and a real in the executive department which no dangers can
divert, or difficulties hinder, from achieving the most important
services to the people who have the happiness to live under his
administration.
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