The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 4, January, 1885
TekstThe adroitness with which Rogers sometimes extricated himself from extreme peril is illustrated by his conduct on one occasion, when pursued by an overwhelming number of savages up the mountain, near the south end of Lake George, which now bears his name. Upon reaching the summit he advanced to the very verge of the precipice, on the east side, which descends 550 feet to the lake. Having here reversed his snow shoes he fled down the side opposite to that by which he had come up. Arriving soon after the Indians, upon seeing the tracks of two men, apparently, instead of one, and Rogers far below upon the ice, hastening towards Fort Edward, concluded that he had slid down the precipice aided by the Great Spirit, and that farther pursuit was vain.
Mr. Pitt proposed in the campaign of 1759 the entire conquest of Canada. Bold as was the undertaking it was substantially accomplished. Ticonderoga and Crown Point were abandoned in July, Fort Niagara capitulated the same month, and Quebec was surrendered in September.
Their violation of a flag of truce in this last month now called attention to the St. Francis Indians, who had been for a century the terror of the New England frontiers, swooping down upon them when least expected, burning their buildings, destroying their cattle, mercilessly murdering their men, women, and children, or cruelly hurrying them away into captivity. The time had now come for returning these bloody visits. The proffering of this delicate attention was assigned by Major General Amherst to Rogers. In his order, dated September 13, he says: "You are this night to set out with the detachment, as ordered yesterday, viz., of 200 men, which you will take under your command and proceed to Misisquey Bay, from whence you will march and attack the enemy’s settlements on the south side of the river St. Lawrence in such a manner as you shall judge most effectual to disgrace the enemy, and for the success and honour of his majesty’s arms.
* * * * *
"Take your revenge, but don’t forget that tho’ those villains have dastardly and promiscuously murdered the women and children of all ages, it is my orders that no women or children are killed or hurt."
In pursuance of these orders Major Rogers started the same day at evening. On the tenth day after he reached Missisquoi Bay. On the twenty-third, with one hundred and forty-two Rangers, he came, without being discovered, to the environs of the village of St. Francis. The Indians had a dance the evening following his arrival and slept heavily afterwards. The next morning, half an hour before sunrise, Rogers and his men fell upon them on all sides, and in a few minutes, ere they had time to arouse themselves and seize their arms, the warriors of that village were dead. A few, attempting to escape by the river, were shot in their canoes. The women and children were not molested.
When light came it revealed to the Rangers lines of scalps, mostly English, to the number of six hundred, strung upon poles above the door-ways. Thereupon, every house except three containing supplies was fired, and their destruction brought death to a few who had before escaped it by concealing themselves in the cellars. Ere noon two hundred Indian braves had perished and their accursed village had been obliterated.
The operations of the next year (1760) ended this long and fierce struggle. The attempted re-capture of Quebec by the French was their final effort. The army of the Lakes embarked from Crown Point for Montreal on the sixteenth day of August. "Six hundred Rangers and seventy Indians in whale-boats, commanded by Major Rogers, all in a line abreast, formed the advance guard." He and his men encountered some fighting on the way from Isle a Mot to Montreal, but no serious obstacle retarded their progress. The day of their arrival Monsieur de Vaudveuil proposed to Major General Amherst a capitulation, which soon after terminated the French dominion in North America.
The English troops, as will be remembered, entered Montreal on the evening of the eighth of September. On the morning of the twelfth Major Rogers was ordered by General Amherst to proceed westward with two companies of Rangers and take possession of the western forts, still held by the French, which, by the terms of the capitulation, were to be surrendered.
He embarked about noon the next day with some two hundred Rangers in fifteen whale-boats, and advanced to the west by the St. Lawrence and the Lakes. On the seventh of November they reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga, where the beautiful city of Cleveland now stands. The cross of St. George had never penetrated the wilderness so far before. Here they encamped and were soon after waited upon by messengers from the great chieftain Pontiac, asking by what right they entered upon his territory and the object of their visit. Rogers informed them of the downfall of the French in America, and that he had been sent to take possession of the French forts surrendered to the English by the terms of the capitulation. Pontiac received his message remarking that he should stand in his path until morning, when he would return to him his answer.
The next morning Pontiac came to the camp and the great chief of the Ottawas, haughty, shrewd, politic, ambitious, met face to face the bold, self-possessed, clear-headed Major of the British Rangers. It is interesting to note how calmly the astute ally of the French accepted the new order of things and prepared for an alliance with his former enemies. He and Rogers had several interviews and in the end smoked the pipe of peace. With dignified courtesy the politic Indian gave to his new friend free transit through his territory, provisions for his journey and an escort of Indian braves. Rogers broke camp on the twelfth and pushed onward towards Detroit. By messenger sent forward in advance he apprized Monsieur Belletre, Commandant of the fort, of his near approach and the object of it. The astonished officer received him Cautiously. Soon satisfied, however, of the truth of the unwelcome news thus brought, he surrendered his garrison. On the twenty-ninth of November the British flag floated from the staff which ever before had borne only the lillies of France.
On the tenth of December, after disposing of the French force found in the fort, and having taken possession of the forts Miamie and Gatanois, with characteristic ardor Rogers pushed still farther westward for Michilimackinac. But it was a vain attempt. The season was far advanced. Indeed, the winter had already come, and while the ice prevented his progress by water, the snows rendered impracticable his advance by land. With reluctance he relinquished for the first time the completion of his mission. Turning eastward, after a tedious journey, he reached New York on the fourteenth of February, 1761.
From New York, there is reason to suppose, that he went this same year as Captain of one of the His Majesty’s Independent Companies of Foot to South Carolina, and there aided Colonel Grant in subduing the Cherokees, who had for a year or two been committing depredations upon the Carolinian frontiers.
From this time onward for the next two years we lose sight of Major Rogers, but he re-appears at the siege of Detroit in 1763. Hither he went with twenty Rangers as part of a body of soldiers sent from Fort Niagara under the command of Captain Dalzell for the re-inforcement of the beleagured fort. He arrived on the twenty-ninth of July, and on the thirty-first took an active part in the fierce battle of Bloody Bridge. His valor was as useful as it was conspicuous on that occasion, and but for his daring efforts the retreat of the British troops would have been more disastrous even than it was. Having, for a time, in the house of the Frenchman, Campean, held at bay a throng of savages which surrounded it, his escape with a few followers at one door was hardly achieved ere these burst in at another.
The next glimpse we get of Major Rogers is at Rumford (now Concord) where he had a landed estate of some four or five hundred acres. Good old Parson Walker, who here kept open house, and for more than fifty years watched with solicitude the interests of his parish and his country, says, in his diary for 1764, against date of February 24: "Major Rogers dined with us" and again December 22:—"Major Rogers and Mr. Scales, Jr., dined with me."
It is probable that his private affairs now occupied his attention. A year or so after the surrender of Montreal he was married to Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. Arthur Brown, Rector of St. John’s Church, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He considered this town his residence, and in papers executed this very year (1764) sometimes designates himself "as of Portsmouth," and at others, as "now residing at Portsmouth."
For three or four years, between 1762 and 1765, he trafficked a good deal in lands, buying and selling numerous and some quite extensive tracts. Some twenty-five different conveyances to him are on record in the Recorder’s office of Rockingham County, and half as many from him to other parties.
Some of these lands he seems to have purchased and some to have received in consideration of military services. In 1764 Benning Wentworth, as Governor of New Hampshire, conveyed to him as "a reduced officer" a tract of three thousand acres, lying in the southern part of Vermont.
One14 conveyance made by him and bearing date December 20, 1762, arrests our attention. By it he transferred to his father-in-law, Rev. Arthur Brown, before mentioned, some five hundred acres of land in Rumford (now Concord, New Hampshire) together with "one negro man, named Castro Dickerson, aged about twenty-eight; one negro woman, named Sylvia; one negro boy named Pomp, aged about twelve and one Indian boy, named Billy, aged about thirteen." For what reason this property was thus transferred I have no means of knowing. If the object of the conveyance was to secure it as a home to his wife and children against any liabilites he might incur in his irregular life, the end sought was subsequently attained, as the land descended even to his grand-children.15
And I may as well, perhaps, just here and now anticipate a little by saying that Major Rogers did not prove a good husband, and that seventeen years after their marriage his wife felt constrained, February 12, 1778, to petition the General Assembly of New Hampshire for a divorce from him on the ground of desertion and infidelity. An act granting the same passed the Assembly on the twenty-eighth day of February and the Council on the fourth of March following.16
"Whereas, Elizabeth Rogers of Portsmouth, in the County of Rockingham, and State aforesaid, hath petitioned the General Assembly for said State, setting forth that she was married to the said Robert Rogers about seventeen years ago; for the greater part of which time he had absented himself from and totally neglected to support and maintain her—and had, in the most flagrant manner, in a variety of ways, violated the marriage contract—but especially by infidelity to her Bed; For which reasons praying that a divorce from said Rogers, a vinculo matrimonii, might be granted. The principal facts contained in said petition being made to appear, upon a full hearing thereof. Therefore,
"Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives for said State in General Assembly convened, That the Bonds of Matrimony between the said Robert and Elizabeth be and hereby are dissolved."—[New Hampshire State Papers, vol. 8, p. 776.]
I may, perhaps, here venture the irrelevant remark that "women sometimes do strange things," and cite the subsequent conduct of Mrs. Rogers in evidence of the declaration. After her divorce she married Captain John Roach, master of an English vessel in the fur trade. The tradition is that, having sailed from Quebec for London, he most unaccountably lost his reckoning and found himself in Portsmouth (New Hampshire) harbor. Here for reasons satisfactory to himself, he sold the cargo on his own account and quit sea life.17 After his marriage he lived with his wife and her son by the former marriage on the estate in Concord, previously mentioned as having been conveyed by Rogers to her father. Captain Roach is said to have been most famous for his unholy expletives and his excessive potations. The venerable Colonel William Kent, now living at Concord in his nineties, says that Captain Roach one day brought into the store where he was a clerk a friend who had offered to treat him and called for spirit. Having drawn from a barrel the usual quantity of two drinks the clerk set the measure containing it upon the counter, expecting the contents to be poured into two tumblers, as was then the custom. Without waiting for this division the thirsty Captain immediately seized the gill cup and drained it. Then, gracefully returning it to the board, he courteously remarked to his astonished friend that when one gentleman asks another to take refreshment the guest should be helped first, and should there be found lacking a sufficiency for both, the host should call for more.
Whether Mrs. Rogers gained by her exchange of husbands it would be hard to say. That in 1812 she went willing from this to a land where "they neither marry nor are given in marriage," it is easy to believe.18
In returning to Major Rogers, we must not forget that he was an author as well as soldier. He seems to have been in England in 1765, and to have there published two respectable volumes of his writings. One is entitled "Journals of Major Robert Rogers; containing an account of the several excursions he made under the Generals who commanded upon the continent of North America, during the late War," and embraces the period from September 24, 1755, to February 14, 1761. It is doubtless quite reliable and valuable as a contribution to the history of our Army of the Lakes during the old French war.19
An American edition of Roger’s Journal, ably edited by Dr. F.B. Hough, was published at Albany in 1883, by J. Munsell’s Sons. Besides a valuable introduction, it contains the whole text of the Journals, an appendix consisting largely of important official papers relating to Rogers, and a good index. It is by far the best edition of the Journals ever published.]
The other is called "a concise view of North America," and contains much interesting information relative to the country at the time of its publication.20
It is less reliable than the former, but is a readable book, and, when the author keeps within the bounds of his personal knowledge, is doubtless authentic. Both works are a credit to Major Rogers. To the charge that he was an illiterate person and that these works were written by another’s hand, it may be urged, as to the "journals," that the correspondence of their matter to the written reports of his expeditions made to his superior officers and now preserved in the New York State Library, convincingly show that this work is undoubtedly his. If revised before publication by a should not deprive him of the credit of their authorship.
Rogers laid no claims to fine writing, but his own manuscript reports, written mostly in camp and hastily, attest his possession of a fair chirography, a pretty good knowledge of grammar and spelling, together with a style of expression both lucid and simple; in short, these are such compositions as come naturally from a man, who, favored in youth with but a limited common school education, has in mature life mingled much with superiors and been often called upon to draft such writings as fall to the lot of a soldier or man of business. Mr. Parkman also attributes to Rogers a part authorship of a tragedy long forgotten, entitled "Ponteach, or the Savages in America," published in London in 1766. It is a work of little merit and very few copies of it have been preserved.21
On the tenth of June, 1766, at the King’s command, General Gage appointed Major Rogers Captain Commandant of the garrison of Michilimackinac.22 Sir William Johnson, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs, when apprized of it was filled with astonishment and disgust. He regarded Rogers as a vain man, spoiled by flattery, and inordinately ambitious, dishonest, untruthful, and incompetent to discharge properly the duties of this office.23 But as the appointment had been made and could not be revoked, it was determined to accept the inevitable and restrict his power, thereby rendering him as little capable of mismanagement as possible. He was ordered by General Gage to act in all matters pertaining to the Indians under instructions of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and to report upon all other matters to the Commandant at Detroit, to whom he was made subordinate.24
Commander Rogers probably reached Michilimackinac in August, 1766. He soon after demonstrated his entire unfitness for his position by clandestinely engaging in the Indian trade,25 and by involving the government in unnecessary expenses, which he sought to meet by drafts upon the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, which that officer was obliged to dishonor. To still further curtail his power, a Commissary was appointed to reside at the post and regulate the Indian trade. To this Rogers sullenly submitted, but quarrelled with the officer. As time went on matters grew worse. He engaged in foolish speculations; got deeply into debt to the Indian traders; chafed under his limitations; grew first discontented, and then desperate; entered into treasonable correspondence with a French officer;26 and finally conceived a plan of seeking of the home government an independent governorship of Michilimackinac, and in case of failure to rob his post and the traders thereabout, and then desert to the French on the lower Mississippi.27
His mismanagement and plottings having grown insufferable he was arrested and conveyed in irons to Montreal in September, 1768, to be there tried by court-martial for high treason.28 On some ground, probably a technical one, he escaped conviction, and at some date between May, 1769, and February, 1770, he sailed for England.
And there, strange as it may seem, the stalwart, cheeky, fine-looking, wily ex-Commandant was lionized. His acquittal had vindicated his innocence and established his claim to martyrdom. His books had advertised him as a hero. His creditors, to whom he owed considerable amounts, supported his claims in hopes thereby of getting their dues. He was gazed at by the commonalty. He was feted by the nobility. He was received by the king and allowed to kiss his hand. He claimed payment for arrears of salary and other expenses previously disallowed in England and at home, which was made. Encouraged by his successes he pushed boldly on and asked to be made an English Baronet, with £600 a year, and in addition to that, a Major in the army.29 One is in doubt which to wonder at the most, the audacity of the bold adventurer, or the stupidity of the British public. But vaulting ambition had at length overleaped itself. He failed of the coveted knighthood, and sank by degrees to his true level.
We see nothing more of Major Rogers until July, 1775, when he again appears in America as a Major of the British Army retired on half pay. The object of his visit to his native land just at the beginning of our Revolutionary war was not satisfactorily apparent. Some considered him a military adventurer, anxious to sell his services to the highest bidder. Others regarded him as a British spy. He wandered over the country all the way from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire with very little ostensible business. His improbable statements, his associations with persons hostile to the American cause, his visits to places of bad reputation, as well as his whole general conduct, rendered him a suspected person.
He was arrested on the twenty-second of September following his arrival by the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, but was afterwards paroled upon his solemn declaration and promise that "on the honor of a soldier and a gentleman he would not bear arms against the American United Colonies, in any manner whatever, during the present contest between them and Great-Britain;"30 yet, on the twenty-sixth of the next November, he makes a tender of his services to the British government, in a letter addressed to General Gage, and was encouraged to communicate more definitely his proposals.31
On the second day of December, a little more than a month later, in shabby garb he calls upon President Wheelock, at Hanover, New Hampshire. After speaking of his absence in Europe, during which, he said, he had fought two battles in Algiers, under the Dey, he officiously tendered his aid in a proposed effort to obtain a grant of land for Dartmouth College. The President distrusted him, but treated him civilly. At the close of the interview he returned to the tavern where he passed the night, and left the next morning without paying his reckoning.32
Again, on the nineteenth of the same month, at Medford, Massachusetts, he addresses a letter to General Washington, soliciting an interview, but his reputation was such that the Commander-in-Chief declined to see him.33
Even this did not discourage him. With an effrontery truly wonderful, on the twenty-fifth of June, 1776, after he had been arrested in South Amboy and brought to New York, he expressed to the Commander-in-Chief his desire to pass on to Philadelphia, that he might there make a secret tender of his services to the American Congress.34
However, by this time, his duplicity had become so manifest that a few days after this interview (July 2, 1776) the New Hampshire House of Representatives passed a formal vote recommending his arrest,35 which was supplemented two years later (November 19, 1778) by a decree of proscription.
Finding hypocrisy no longer available, sometime in August, 1776, he accepted a commission of Lieutenant Colonel Commandant, signed by General Howe and empowering him to raise a battalion of Rangers for the British Army. To this work he now applied himself and with success.36
On the twenty-first of October, 1776, Rogers fought his last battle, so far as I have been able to discover, on American soil. His Regiment was attacked at Mamaronec, New York, and routed by a body of American troops. Contemporary accounts state that he did not display his usual valor in this action and personally withdrew before it was over.
The next year he returned to England,37 where, after a disreputable life of some twenty-two or twenty-three years, of which little is known, he is said to have died in the year 1800.
Such are some of the more salient points in the career of Major Robert Rogers, the Ranger. When another century shall have buried in oblivion his frailties, the valor of the partizan commander will shine in undimmed lustre. When the historian gives place to the novelist and the poet, his desperate achievements portrayed by their pens will render as romantic the borders of Lake George, as have the daring deeds of Rob Roy McGregor, rehearsed by Walter Scott, made enchanting the Shores of Lock Lomond.