The Capture of Old Vincennes: The Original Narratives of George Rogers Clark and of his opponent Gov. Henry Hamilton

Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1927. Presumed first edition/first printing thus. Hardcover. Fair./No DJ present. xxii, 23-231 p. 2 port. (incl. front. ) maps, facsimiles. 23 cm. Index. Cover has significant wear and soiling, edges worn through cloth in places. Spine label removed (personal library? ) Small holes in cloth at spine. Name of Robert Corsser on front cover. This may have been the copy of Robert Crosser, Member of Congress from Ohio from 1915 to 1919, and again from 1923 to 1955. Quaife was born in Nashua, Iowa. He received his education at Grinnell College, the University of Missouri and the University of Chicago. He was head of the Wisconsin Historical Society and later secretary-editor at the Detroit Public Library's Burton Collection. He was also a lecturer at Wayne State University and the University of Detroit. He served as editor of the Lakeside Classics historical series from 1916 to 1957. The siege of Fort Vincennes (also known as the siege of Fort Sackville or the Battle of Vincennes) was a Revolutionary War frontier battle fought in present-day Vincennes, Indiana won by a militia led by American commander George Rogers Clark over a British garrison led by Lieutenant Governor Henry Hamilton. Roughly half of Clark's militia were Canadien volunteers sympathetic to the American cause. After a daring wintertime march, the small American force was able to force the British to surrender the fort and in a larger frame the Illinois territory. Hamilton had kept a journal from 1778-1779 as Lieutenant Governor at Fort Detroit during the American Revolution; this was published posthumously and addressed his and George Rogers Clark's roles in the war. George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 - February 13, 1818) was an American surveyor, soldier, and militia officer from Virginia who became the highest-ranking American patriot military officer on the northwestern frontier during the American Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the militia in Kentucky (then part of Virginia) throughout much of the war. He is best known for his captures of Kaskaskia (1778) and Vincennes (1779) during the Illinois Campaign, which greatly weakened British influence in the Northwest Territory. The British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and Clark has often been hailed as the "Conqueror of the Old Northwest". Clark's major military achievements occurred before his thirtieth birthday. Afterward, he led militia in the opening engagements of the Northwest Indian War. He was involved in two failed attempts to open the Spanish-controlled Mississippi River to American traffic. He was aided in his final years by family members, including his younger brother William, one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Henry Hamilton (c. 1734 - 29 September 1796) was an Anglo-Irish military officer and later government official of the British Empire. He served in North America as Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Quebec and later as Deputy Governor after the American Revolutionary War. He later served as Governor of Bermuda and lastly, as Governor of Dominica. In 1779, Hamilton was captured during the Revolutionary War by rebel forces at Fort Sackville in present-day Indiana, while serving as the Lieutenant Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs, at the British outpost of Fort Detroit. He was transported to Virginia, where he was held by Governor Thomas Jefferson's rebel government until October 1780. He was sent to New York and gained freedom in a prisoner exchange in 1781, being allowed to depart for London, England. In 1778, Patriot Colonel George Rogers Clark, commanding Virginia state forces, captured several undermanned British posts in the Illinois Country, including Fort Sackville at Vincennes (then in Virginia-claimed land, now in present-day Indiana). Hamilton led an armed party from Detroit on 7 October 1778 to recapture the British post, 600 miles away. His small force gathered Indian warriors along the way, and entered Vincennes on 17 December 1778. They captured Fort Sackville and the American commandant, Captain Leonard Helm. In February 1779, however, Colonel Clark returned to Vincennes in a surprise march, recapturing the outpost and taking Hamilton prisoner.