[Footnote: Hamilton's "brief account," and his letter of December 18th.] Hamilton intended to undertake a formidable campaign in the spring.

He had sent messages to Stuart, the British Indian agent in the south, directing him to give war-belts to the Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Creeks, that a combined attack on the frontier might take place as soon as the weather opened.

He himself was to be joined by reinforcements from Detroit, while the Indians were to gather round him as soon as the winter broke.

He would then have had probably over a thousand men, and light cannon with which to batter down the stockades.
He rightly judged that with this force he could not only reconquer the Illinois, but also sweep Kentucky, where the outnumbered riflemen could not have met him in the field, nor the wooden forts have withstood his artillery.

Undoubtedly he would have carried out his plan, and have destroyed all the settlements west of the Alleghanies, had he been allowed to wait until the mild weather brought him his hosts of Indian allies and his reinforcements of regulars and militia from Detroit.
Panic among the Illinois French.
But in Clark he had an antagonist whose far-sighted daring and indomitable energy raised him head and shoulders above every other frontier leader.