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The emigrants from Plymouth protested, but were finally glad to accept a compromise, though, as Bradford remarks, "the unkindness was not soon forgotten." The Massachusetts settlers held on to fifteen-sixteenths of the land, while they magnanimously conceded to the Plymouth people one-sixteenth, in addition to their block-houses.
As Odalie turned, the interior of the fort was before her; the broad parade, the lines of barracks, the heavy, looming block-houses, the great red-clay wall encircling all, and the high, strong palisades that even surmounted the rampart. It gave her momentarily the sensation, as she stood in its shadow, of being down in a populous and very secure well.
The people fled into the already existing forts, or hastily built others; where there were but two or three families in a place, they merely gathered into block-houses stout log-cabins two stories high, with loop-holed walls, and the upper story projecting a little over the lower.
The douce mignonne was in high elation, now walking the palisades, now peeping in at a loop-hole in the upper story of one of the block-houses where a sentinel was regularly on guard, being able to scan from the jutting outlook not only the exterior of the fort on two sides, but a vast extent of darkling country.
And a noble city it is, that has grown out of the two block-houses which George Rogers Clark planted here in 1780, on his raid against the Indians of Chillicothe. In 1788, John Cleves Symmes, the first United States judge of the Northwest Territory, purchased from Congress a million acres of land, lying on the Ohio between the two Miami Rivers.
In these cases I threw up an earth-work, and protected it with abatis. The Confederate forces soon learned to respect a block-house. I found it to be an absolute defense against musketry. During the Atlanta campaign our block-houses were constantly attacked by raiding parties; small and great trains would be thrown from the track and burned, and small sections of the track destroyed.
All along the frontier the people on the outlying farms were ever in danger, and there was risk for the small hamlets and block-houses.
The buildings of the fort consisted chiefly of block-houses, the internal accommodations of which were fully in keeping with their rude exterior, being but indifferently provided with the most ordinary articles of comfort, and fitted up as the limited resources of that wild and remote district could supply.
The face of the upper story had an angle of forty-five degrees to the face of the first story, thus concentrating a direct fire upon an enemy approaching from any point of the compass. The first block-houses in the West that I know of were built by my command in July and August, 1862, when it rebuilt the Mobile & Ohio Railroad from Columbus to Humbolt.
Colonel David Shepherd was lieutenant in charge of the pan-handle which at that time included a slice of Pennsylvania on the east. He had under him a number of small block-houses. From these and the settlements he summoned eleven companies of militia. He also worked hard to put Fort Henry in good repair.
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