But to return to the drama particularly devoted to war. _The Battle of Tippecanoe_ related to the Indian wars, as _The Battle of New Orleans_ was founded on the War of 1812, and _The Battle of Mexico_ on our Mexican difficulties some years later. The contemporaneous literature of the stage inspired by the War of the Rebellion was not extensive or worthy of particular notice. It was confined generally to productions like _The Federal Spy; or, Pauline of the Potomac_, at the New Bowery Theatre, New York, and _The Union Prisoners; or, The Patriot's Daughter_, at Barnum's Museum. During the struggle for national existence war on both sides of the Potomac was too serious a business, and too near home, to attract people to its mimic representations on the stage, and it was not until _Held by the Enemy_ and _Shenandoah_ were produced, a quarter of a century after the establishment of peace, that American play-goers began to find any pleasure in theatrical representations of a subject which had previously been so full of unpleasantness. These later war dramas, however, are so much superior in plot, dialogue, and construction to any of the plays founded upon our earlier wars, so far as these earlier plays have come down to us, that they may encourage the optimist in theatrical novelties to believe that there is some hope for the future of that branch of dramatic literature at least. SCENE III. THE FRONTIER DRAMA. "Here in the skirts of the forest." _As You Like It_, Act iii. Sc. 2. The drama of frontier life in this country may be described as the Indian drama which is not all Indian; and even this variety of stage play is fast disappearing with the scalp-hunter, and with the Indian himself, going farther and farther to the westward every year. It may be said to have been inaugurated by James K. Paulding, a native of the State of New York, who wrote the part of Colonel Nimrod Wildfire, in _The Lion of the West_, for J. H. Hackett, in 1831. Wildfire, afterwards put into a drama called _The Kentuckian_, by Bayle Bernard, wore buckskin clothes, deer-skin shoes, and a coon-skin hat; and he had many contemporary imitators, who copied his dress, his speech, and his gait, and stalked through the deep tangled wild woods of east-side stages for many years; to the delight of city-bred pits and galleries, who were perfectly assured that _Kit, the Arkansas Traveller_--and one of the best of his class--was the real thing, until they saw Buffalo Bill with actual cowboys and _bona fide_ Indians in his train, and lost all further interest in _The Scouts of the Prairies_, or in _Nick of the Woods_, which hitherto had filled their idea of a life on the plains. [Illustration: J. H. HACKETT.]