Prologue

George Rogers Clark’s story is not understood today without some knowledge of the time and place in which he served as the military commander of the West. The time is simple to grasp—it was the American Revolution and its immediate aftermath—but because Clark chose to remain a westerner rather than join the Continental Army, the place is complicated to explain and was unknown to nearly all of Washington’s troops. The discrepancies between the revolutions carried out on the Atlantic Coast and in the Ohio River valley are so great that many supporters of either sector appear, from time to time, to forget the other even existed. In fact, the two theaters operated tangentially, one under the financial control of the Continental Congress (for they offered Washington little else, and at that, inadequately), and the other directed by the governor of Virginia. That it worked cohesively at any level was the consequence of Washington’s Virginia roots, which allowed Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to communicate freely with the commander-in-chief with little regard to Congress....