We killed and took one hundred and Forty six.  Amongst the killed is Col.  Todd the Commandr Col.  Boon, Lt.  Col.  Trigg, Major Harlin who commanded their Infantry, Major Magara and a number more of their officers.  Our loss is Monsr.  La Bute killed, he died like a warrior fighting Arm to Arm, six Indians killed and ten wounded—­The Indians behaved extremely well, and no people could behave better than both Officers & men in general—­The Indians I had with me were the Wyandots and Lake Indians—­The Wyandots furnished me with what provisions I wanted, and behaved extremely well.”

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APPENDIX G—­TO CHAPTER X.

It has been so habitual among American writers to praise all the deeds, good, bad, and indifferent, of our Revolutionary ancestors, and to belittle and make light of what we have recently done, that most men seem not to know that the Union and Confederate troops in the Civil War fought far more stubbornly and skilfully than did their forefathers at the time of the Revolution.  It is impossible to estimate too highly the devoted patriotism and statesmanship of the founders of our national life; and however high we rank Washington, I am confident that we err, if any thing, in not ranking him high enough, for on the whole the world has never seen a man deserving to be placed above him; but we certainly have overestimated the actual fighting qualities of the Revolutionary troops, and have never laid enough stress on the folly and jealousy with which the States behaved during the contest.  In 1776 the Americans were still in the gristle; and the feats of arms they then performed do not bear comparison with what they did in the prime of their lusty youth, eighty or ninety years later.  The Continentals who had been long drilled by Washington and Greene were most excellent troops; but they never had a chance to show at their best, because they were always mixed in with a mass of poor soldiers, either militia or just-enlisted regulars.

The resolute determination of the Americans to win, their trust in the justice of their cause, their refusal to be cast down by defeat, the success with which they overran and conquered the west at the very time they were struggling for life or death in the east, the heroic grandeur of their great leader—­for all this they deserve full credit.  But the militia who formed the bulk of the Revolutionary armies did not generally fight well.  Sometimes, as at Bunker’s Hill and King’s Mountain, they did excellently, and they did better, as a rule, than similar European bodies—­than the Spanish and Portuguese peasants in 1807-12, for instance.  At that time it was believed that the American militia could not fight at all; this was a mistake, and the British paid dearly for making it; but the opposite belief, that militia could be generally depended upon, led to quite as bad blunders, and the politicians of the Jeffersonian