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Subject: [Q-R] Excerpt of History
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 21:43:50 EDT
.........." The Sullivan Expedition in 1779 was no minor border foray. It was
one of the most extensive and expensive campaigns of the war. It engaged
5,000 American troops, most of them veterans,and it cost the impoverished colonies
a million dollars
It was split into three divisions. The main force, led by Sullivan,
was to come up the Susquehanna, another under General James Clinton was to
approach by the Mohawk Valley and the third under Colonel Brodhead was to march
from Fort Pitt(Pittsburgh). Sullivan and Clinton finally effected a union in
July at Tioga but Brodhead never reached the main body. He did some effective
raiding, however, on Indian towns along the Allegheny.
The path of Sullivan's destroying army met 1,500 Indians and
Tories in battle at the bend of the Chemung River at Newtown, near Elmira(N.Y.) ,
and put them to flight through superior numbers and fire power, thereafter ,
unopposed, he marched through the land of the Senecas, around the Finger
Lakes,over the hills, past the smaller upland lakes to the banks of the Genesee.
Sullivan destroyed ever town along his route, burned the crops
and hacked down the orchards. The smoke of their burning villages rose high that
early autumn of 1779 as the beaten Senecas retreated before the dogged
advance of the weary, hungry and ragged colonists.".................................
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