Gibson had ceased to command it. It was composed entirely of sharp-shooters, and did good service on the 25th of Octo ber, 1775, at the attack on the town of Hampton, by a naval force under lord Dunmore; where having arrived along with another company, by a forced march from Williamsburg, during the preceding night, it was posted in the houses fronting the water, whence the soldiers so galled the enemy with small arms, as to drive him from his position, with the loss of a number of men, and a tender, which fell into their possession. About this time, the scarcity of gunpowder in the army became alarming, and urgent applications were made by general Washington to Congress, and the respective states, for a supply. As the article was not generally manufactured in the colonies, it was necessary to procure it from abroad; and for this purpose the attention of government was turned towards New Orleans. As Spain, however, could not furnish munitions of war to a belligerent, without a manifest breach of her neutrality, it was evident that the success of a negociation with one of her dependencies, would depend on the degree of secrecy. and address with which it should be conducted; and captain Gibson was selected as a person possessing, in an eminent degree, the qualifications required to manage it with the best prospect of success. Having received his credentials, he repaired to Pittsburg, with twenty-five picked men of his company, and descended the river with a cargo of flour, ostensibly as a trader. The voyage was pregnant with adventures which possess all the freshness of the incidents of a romance; but of these, the limits of a rapid sketch like the present, precludes the insertion of all but one. The Indians immediately on the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi, were hostile; and parties of them in canoes frequently evinced an intention to attack the boat; but were deterred by the alacrity and determined countenance of the crew. Captain Gibson arrived at the falls of the Ohio, in the evening about dusk, after having observed no indications of Indians for some days, and being without a pilot, he determined to land and pass the falls on the ensuing morning. But just as the men were fastening the boat to the shore, a strong party of Indians appeared on the bank above, and ordered them to come ashore. Resistance would have been useless, as it was plain that the lives of the crew were in their power; and captain Gibson was led between two warriors with cocked rifles up the ascent to the Indian camp, where he was interrogated by the chief. He told the most plausible story he was able suddenly to invent, of his being an American deserter, on his way to join the British in Florida; but just as he seemed to have made a favourable impression on the chief, his surprise may more easily be conceiv

ed than described, at being interrupted by a laugh from an Índian who had before appeared inattentive to every thing that was passing, and who exclaimed in very good English, "Well done, George Gibson! And you think nobody here knows you!" But observing captain Gibson's consternation, who expected nothing less than to be shot down on the spot by his two attendants with the cocked rifles, he added, "But shew no signs of fear. None of the party but myself understands a word of English: only keep your own secret and leave the rest to me, and I shall contrive to bring you off,” which he very handsomely did. On being asked by captain Gibson how he had discovered his name, he answered that he had lived a long time about the house of his brother, the late general Gibson, at Fort Pitt, where he often heard the family speak of George; that he knew Thomas, his other brother, and as he at once had discovered captain Gibson to be a brother of John's, he knew that he could be no other than George. He had received kindnesses from general Gibson, and in this way determined to shew his gratitude for them.

Next morning they were permitted to depart, after being pilotted by an Indian over the falls. They were, however, pursued by the Indians, who either suspected, or had found out their true character, shortly after their departure, and who came up with them, in canoes, at a place called Henderson's Bend. They were suffered to approach pretty close, when a galling fire was opened on them by the crew of the boat, particularly from swivels with which it was armed; in consequence of which the Indians were thrown into such confusion that some of their canoes were overturned, and they desisted. They however, landed, and crossing the tongue of land which formed the bend, attacked the boat from both sides of the river, at a point lower down; but without effect, the crew having suffered no loss, except that of two men wounded.

On arriving at New Orleans, he entered on his negociation with the government, in which he was successful, being assisted by the influence of Oliver Pollock, Esq. an American gentleman resident there, and in favour with Don Galvos, the governor, and to whose correspondent, the gunpowder was afterwards consigned. But as suspicions of the object were excited in the minds of the British merchants and commercial agents in the place, the governor deemed it prudent to have captain Gibson arrested. In a few days, however, he was permitted to escape, being first provided with horses for himself and his servant. Having ascended the river as far as the first high land, he struck off into the wilderness; shortly after which his horses were stolen by Indians, and the rest of the journey (about eighteen hundred miles) was performed on foot through regions

before unvisited by a white man, and among tribes of Indians whose language he frequently did not understand, but by whom he was invariably treated with kindness. Arriving at Pittsburg in the garb of an Indian, and with a complexion whose native brown had received the deepest tint which the rays of the sun could impart, he successfully passed himself for an Indian, on the officers of the garrison, many of whom had long been his intimate acquaintances.

At his return to Williamsburg, he was appointed to the command of a state regiment, furnished by Virginia to make up a deficiency in her contingent of continental troops, and received by the United States on the continental establishment. With this regiment he joined the army under general Washington, shortly before the evacuation of York Island, and was arranged to the division of general Lee. This division followed the retreat of the grand army with lingering marches, and by a separate route, till the seizure of Lee's per son by the enemy, near Morristown, when it quickened its pace under Sullivan, and formed a junction with Washington's army, at the cantonment, on the right bank of the Delaware. At the battle of Trenton, which soon followed, colonel Gibson served under the immediate command of general Washington, and participated in all the perils and toils of that gallant little army, whose subsequent achievements contributed so much to reanimate the drooping spirits of their country.

He continued to serve in the army immediately commanded by general Washington, till the close of the campaign of 1778, and was in nearly all the principal battles which were fought during that time; but the period for which his men had been enlisted, having expired, and the regiment not being recruited, he was ordered to the command of the depot of prisoners near York, Pennsylvania, which he retained till the end of the war.

At the peace he retired to his farm in Cumberland county, and shortly afterwards received from the supreme executive council of the state, the commission of county lieutenant, the duties of which he performed till the beginning of 1791. At this time, being in Philadelphia, the seat of the federal government, the command of one of the regiments, then raising for general St. Clair's expedition, was offered to him by president Washington, in terms that precluded its rejection. The particulars of this disastrous campaign are too well remembered to be narrated here. The troops were led from the recruiting rendezvous into the presence of the enemy without discipline, and destitute of many of the appointments and munitions of war, which are essential to the efficiency of an ar my. But more than any other cause, a want of harmony be

tween the first and second in command, contributed to pro duce the catastrophe with which the campaign ended. Colonel Gibson was the intimate friend of the latter, and this naturally produced a want of cordiality towards him on the part of the former, which was so markedly evinced the day pre-ceding the action, as to induce him to express a determination to retire from the service as soon as he could do so with-out disgrace. Next morning he was at the head of his regiment, which was literally cut to pieces, exhibiting a loss of eighteen commissioned officers, and more than half of its noncommissioned officers and privates. At the close of the action, and in the last of several charges which were executed by this regiment with the bayonet, he received a wound in the groin, which was immediately perceived to be mortal. He was brought off the field by his nephew, captain Slough, and one or two others of his surviving officers, and languished at Fort Jefferson till the 11th of December following, bearing the most excruciating pain, in a wretched hovel, without surgical attendance, and almost without common necessaries, with an equanimity of temper for which he had all his life been remarkable.

It is not intended to speak harshly of general St. Clair, or to attribute to him an intention to do injustice to the memory of an unfortunate brother officer. He has himself paid the debt of nature, and it would now be dastardly to assail his reputation, even if there were a desire to do so. He was a man of integrity, and a general of undoubted talent; and the country owes much to his memory: still, however, justice is equally due to the memory of the subject of this notice. His regiment composed the right wing, which was under the command of general Butler; but as a corps, it was under the immediate command of its colonel. This may be a satisfactory reason why, in speaking of the incidents of the battle, he was not mentioned in the official report. But the particular designation of this regiment as "Butler's, Patterson's and Clarke's battalions," might lead to an inference that the name of its colonel was studiously kept out of view. The omission of the name of colonel Gibson may have been, and probably was, accidental; but it was unjust. That his personal exertions during the action fell under the immediate observation of the commanding general, is proved by the testimony of captain Denny (one of the general's aids) in the investigation which took place by a committee of congress; an account of which was afterwards published by the general himself. By this it appears, (see St. Clair's Narrative, page 224, 5) that the general frequently gave orders to colonel Gibson in person; and that the latter, who after the fall of general Butler, com

manded the right wing, by direction and under the eye of general St. Clair, charged a body of Indians who had broken into the camp and retook the part of it of which they had taken possession. There is no point in which an officer is so sensitive as in this; yet there is no criterion of merit more fallacious than the official report of a battle. It is these reports, however, which, for the most part. settle the question with the historian. It is needless to mention, that the account of this battle, given ia Marshal's life of Washington, is taken exclusively from general St. Clair's report; and this renders it the more necessary to attempt an act of justice to the merits of colonel Gibson, even at this late day.

Perhaps no man had a wider circle of acquaintance or warmer friends among the principal actors in our great political drama, than the subject of this memoir. With his talents and capacity for business, and with the influence of those who had not only the power but the inclination to serve him; a man with a single eye to his own advancement, would at once have made his way to office and distinction; but, of this, he was culpably negligent. He never sought preferment, and when it came, it was at the solicitation of his friends, not of himself. Nature had endowed him with talents of the first order. He had a peculiar talent for acquiring languages, on account of which, his schoolmates gave him the name of Latin George. He spoke French, Spanish and German, the latter vernacularly and with the purity of a Saxon. He read Italian, and during his residence on the frontier, he picked up enough of the Delaware tongue to enable him to converse in it indifferently well. Without being profound, his acquirements as a scholar were respectable. Perhaps no man, with the same stock of information, conversed so well. Wit be undoubtedly possessed in an eminent degree, which he used with such discretion as never to make an enemy or lose a friend. In broad humor he was confessedly without a rival. He was the author of several humorous songs, mostly connected with the politics of the revolution, which he sang with incredible effect, but which, as they were never committed to paper, have passed away along with him, and are now forgotten.

GREENE, NATHANIEL, a major general in the army of the United States, and one of the most distinguished officers in the revolutionary war, was born in the town of Warwick, in Rhode Island, in the year 1741. His parents were Quakers. His father was a respectable anchor-smith. Being intended for the business his father pursued, young Greene received nothing but a common English education. But, to himself, an acquisition so humble and limited, was unsatisfactory and mortifying. While he was a boy he learned the