Col. Clark and his 'long knives': with fewer than 200 men, Col. George Rogers Clark conquered much of the American West during the War for Independence. And he did it without losing a single man.

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Col. Clark and his 'long knives': with fewer than 200 men, Col. George Rogers Clark conquered much of the American West during the War for Independence. And he did it without losing a single man.

Colonel George Rogers Clark had led his Kentucky riflemen 170 miles across the marshes of southern Illinois toward a planned assault on the British Fort of Sackville in the village of Vincennes, on the banks of the Wabash River in present-day Indiana. Now, on the morning of February 22, 1779, his rag-tag army of just 172 arose from sleep after four days without food rations. "My object now was to keep the men in spirits through incredible difficulties," Clark reported in his journal, "far surpassing anything that any of us had ever experienced." Earlier in the march he had done so by giving them leave to hunt bison and deer for meals. But the days of wild game had long gone as...

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