When the American colonies declared their independence from England, they had a war on their hands, and men were called to serve all along the East Coast to fight the British. But George Rogers Clark knew that the British weren’t only along the Eastern Seaboard; they occupied the old French forts in the Illinois Country as well. So while the colonists’ attention was in the East, George turned his attention west, and with a group of intrepid frontiersmen, he outsmarted the enemy and won the heartland of America for the United States.