bed, word was brought to the island that a party of
the Wood County militia, made up of the lowest and most
brutal men in the community, would land on the island that
very night, seize the boats, arrest all the men they found,
and probably burn the house.

The danger was imminent. Blennerhasset and all the men with
him took to the boats to escape arrest and possibly murder
from these exasperated frontiersmen. Mrs. Blennerhasset and
her children were left in the mansion, with the expectation
that their presence would restrain the brutality of the
militia, and preserve the house and its valuable contents
from destruction. It proved a fallacious hope. Colonel
Phelps, the commander of the militia, pursued Blennerhasset.
In his absence his men behaved like savages. They took
possession of the house, became brutally drunk from the
liquors they found in the cellar, rioted through its
elegantly furnished rooms, burned its fences for bonfires,
and for seven days made life a pandemonium of horrors for
the helpless woman and frightened children who had been left
in their midst.

The experience of those seven days was frightful. There was
no escape. Mrs. Blennerhasset was compelled to witness the
ruthless destruction of all she held most dear, and to
listen to the brutal ribaldry and insults of the rioting
savages. Not until the end of the time named did relief
come. Then Mr. Putnam, a friend from the neighboring town of
Belpr['e], ventured on the island. He provided a boat in which
the unhappy lady was enabled to save a few articles of
furniture and some choice books. In this boat, with her two
sons, six and eight years old, and with two young men from
Belpr['e], she started down the river to join her husband. Two
or three negro servants accompanied her.

It was a journey of great hardships. The weather was cold,
the river filled with floating ice, the boat devoid of any
comforts. A rude cabin, open in the front, afforded the only
shelter from wind and rain. Half frozen in her flight, the
poor woman made her way down the stream, and at length
joined her husband at the mouth of the Cumberland River,
which he had reached with his companions, having distanced
pursuit. Their flight was continued down the Mississippi as
far as Natchez.

No sooner had Mrs. Blennerhasset left the island than the
slight restraint which her presence had exercised upon the
militia disappeared. The mansion was ransacked. Whatever
they did not care