inhabitants of Kaskaskia had feared the barbarian Virginians more than any savages; Clark made capital of this in securing Kaskaskia, and later, by the kindness with which he treated the inhabitants and the freedom he gave them, accomplished a moral victory as sweeping and as picturesque as his military achievement. The proposed plan to carry to reconquered Vincennes the blessings of liberty enjoyed at Kaskaskia under Virginian rule appealed strongly to the impressionable habitants; to Clark's own patriot soldiers the Vincennes campaign was the very acme of frontier adventure. Again, the young, daring Clark—quiet, resourceful, irrepressible—was a potent factor in pushing these men out on a journey of such unparalleled hardship. True, it is difficult to look beyond the later George Rogers Clark, of soiled reputation, to the cool, brave youth of twenty-seven years who led these men through the prairies of Illinois in 1779. To dim the brilliant lustre of such days as these was a heavy—if not the heaviest—price to pay for indiscretions of later years. Yet, as the records of this handful of men
