conquer or die. The terrible voice of Tecumseh was heard encouraging his warriors; although beset on every side, they fought with determined courage. Col. Johnson now rushed towards the spot, where the savage warriors were gathering around their undaunted chieftain. In a moment a hundred rifles were aimed at the American, the balls pierced his dress and accoutrements, and himself and his horse received a number of wounds. At the instant his horse was about to fall under him, he was discovered by Tecumseh; having discharged his rifle, he sprang forward with his tomahawk; but, struck with the appearance of the brave man before him, he hesitated for a moment, and that moment was his last. Col. Johnson levelled a pistol at his breast, and they both, almost at the same instant, fell to the ground. Col. Johnson's men now rushed forward to his rescue, and the Indians, hearing no longer the voice of their chief, soon fled.

"Thus fell Tecumseh, and with him fell the last hope of our Indian enemies." Since the year 1790, he had been in almost every engagement with the whites; he was a determined enemy to the attempts to civilize the Indians, and had for years endeavoured to unite the tribes in opposing the progress of the settlements of the whites, any farther to the westward. On the opening of the last war he visited many tribes, and by his uncommon eloquence and address, roused his countrymen to arms against the United States. Tecumseh had received the stamp of greatness from the hand of nature, and had his lot been cast in a different state of society, he would have shone as one of the most distinguished of men. He was endowed

with a powerful mind, and with the soul of a hero. There was an uncommon dignity in his countenance and manners, and by the former he could be easily distinguished, even after death, among the slain, for he wore no insignia of distinction."

113 Barbarities of the British at Hampton, Va., in 1813.

The troops under Sir Sidney Beckwith, and the sailors under Admiral Cockburn, no sooner found themselves in possession of the town of Hampton, than they indulged in a system of pillage not less indiscriminate than that which had attended the visit of most of the same men to Havre de Grace. To these acts of cruelty and op pression upon the unresisting and innocent inhabitants, they added others of the most atrocious and lawless nature, the occurrence of which has been proved by the solemn affirmation of the most respectable people of that country. Age, innocence, nor sex, could protect the inhabitants whose inability to escape obliged them to throw themselves upon the mercy of the conquerors. The persons of the women were indiscriminately violated. The brutal desires of an abandoned and profligate soldiery, were gratified, within the view of those who alone possessed the power and authority to restrain them; and many of the unfortunate females, who had extricated themselves from one party, were pursued, overtaken, and possessed by another. Wives torn from the sides of their wounded husbands; mothers and daughters stripped of their clothing in the presence of each other; and, those who had fled to the river side, and as a last refuge had plunged into the water, with their infant children in their arms, were driven again at the point of the bayonet, upon the shore, where neither their own entreaties and exertions, nor the cries of their offspring, could restrain the remorseless cruelty of the insatiable enemy, who paraded the victim of his lust through the public streets of that town. An old man, whose infirmities had drawn him to the very brink of the grave, was murdered in the arms of his wife, almost as infirm as himself, and her remonstrance was followed by the discharge of a pistol into her breast. The wounded militia who had crawled from the field of battle to the military hospital, were treated with no kind of tenderness, even by the enemy's officers, and the common wants of nature were rigorously denied to

them. To these transcendent enormities, were added the wanton and profligate destruction not only of the medical stores, but of the physician's drug rooms and laboratories; from which only those who had been wounded in battle, and those upon whose persons these outrages had been committed, could obtain that assistance, without which, they must inevitably suffer the severest privations. Two days and nights were thus consumed by the British soldiers, sailors, and marines; and, their separate commanders, were all that time quartered in the only house the furniture of which escaped destruction. On the morning of the 27th, at sunrise, apprehensions being entertained of an attack from the neighbouring militia, whom, it was reasonably conjectured, the recital of these transactions. would arouse into immediate action, the British forces were ordered to embark; and in the course of that morning, they departed from the devoted town, which will immemorially testify to the unprovoked and unrelenting cruelty of the British troops. They had previously carried off the ordnance which had been employed in the defence of the town, as trophies of their victory; but, when they determined on withdrawing from the place, they moved away with such precipitation, that several hundred weight of provisions, a quantity of muskets and ammunition, and some of their men, were left behind, and captured on the following day by Captain Cooper's Cavalry. Having abandoned their intentions of proceeding to another at tempt on the defences of Norfolk, the whole fleet stood down to a position at New-Point Comfort, where they proposed watering, previously to their departure from the bay, on an expedition against a town in one of the eastern States.

Such was the agitation of the public mind throughout Virginia, which succeeded the circulation of the account of the assault on Hampton, that representations were made to General Robert R. Taylor, the commandant of the district, of the necessity of learning from the commanders of the British fleet and army, whether the outrage would be avowed, or the perpetrators punished.That able officer immediately despatched his aid to Admi