The Prairie Fire Panic
many. These were not old men and weaklings and substitutes; they were Indian-fighting sons of the border—stout bodies and brave souls, but undisciplined.
The militia of Kentucky and Tennessee assembled at Louisville and Newport; those from Virginia mobilized at Urbana; and the Pennsylvania crowd gathered at Erie. They were to march in three columns with a supposed total of not less than ten thousand men. Think of it! Ten thousand Daniel Boones, Simon Kentons, and Buffalo Bills! What glory a school boy would expect from such an expedition, which trailed through the forest, registering oaths against the savage redskins, and swearing to make the British sweat for their capture of Detroit.
It ended as was foreordained, in the same old, sad old way. No sooner had the several columns began to move than they began to strike the truly American stumbling blocks of mutiny and disobedience. Raw militia stand hard work with no better grace than they will stand a steady hammering. The left
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