Unless otherwise ordered, Brigadier-general Scott of Kentucky was to make a dash at the Indian villages on the upper Wabash in the early summer. A little later General Wilkinson was scheduled to lead another raiding band to the populous settlement on the Eel River, a northern tributary of the Wabash. These swift strokes, it was hoped, would compel the Indians to confer concerning peace. No rift in the dark war-clouds occurred, despite the efforts of Knox and St. Clair to establish an armistice, and Scott marched northward in May and Wilkinson in August. Like similar raids, these two were successful failures. Villages and crops were ruined and captives were taken. Many squaws “looked behind them and turned pale” perhaps, but in effect they had an opposite influence from that hoped: they undid whatever little good the efforts to secure peace had accomplished. There was now utmost need for the final “grand campaign.”

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[Showing the region in which Wilkinson, Scott, Harmar, St. Clair, and Wayne operated]

The army of the United States now consisted of three or four hundred soldiers—the First Regiment—distributed among the frontier forts on the Ohio River. It was ordered that the depleted ranks of this regiment be filled by recruits to be raised “from Maryland to New York inclusive,” and that a full Second Regiment be raised, one company from South Carolina and one from Delaware and the remainder in the four New England states.[89] The troops were to be mustered by companies, to rendezvous at Fort Pitt. Governor Arthur St. Clair was created Major-general and placed in command of the new army. Brigadier-general Richard Butler was appointed second in command. The object of the campaign was to establish a line of military posts from Fort Washington on the Ohio to the Maumee, where, at the Miami village at the junction of the St. Mary and St. Joseph, a strong fort was to be built, “for the purpose of awing and curbing the Indians in that quarter, and as the only preventative of future hostilities.”[90] In present day terms the army was to march from Cincinnati, Ohio, and erect a fort on the site of Fort Wayne, Indiana. In every order the underlying theory of the Government is plain—the one end sought was peace. “This [peace] is of more value than millions of uncultivated acres,” were the words of the Secretary of War in St. Clair’s instructions.[91] It was a war of self-defense, not a war of conquest.

The business dragged at every point. In the hope that the Indians would come to reason, Scott’s raid was delayed a week at the start. Wilkinson, who was to move northward June 10, did not march until August 1. The continued anticipation of good results from these expeditions, which would render the grand campaign unnecessary, tended to lessen the energies of the preparations. General Butler was assigned the duty of raising the recruits in the East—a discouraging task. The pay offered did not equal an average day’s wage. The campaign was not entirely popular and promised innumerable hardships. Enlistments came in slowly, and, in many instances, only the unfit and unworthy offered. As late as April 28 the Secretary of War wrote General Butler: “None of the companies of the Eastern States are yet nearly completed.” As early as May 12 he wrote St. Clair: “It will at least be the latter end of July, or the beginning of August before your force shall be assembled.” Originally the army was to march from Fort Washington on July 10.

General St. Clair left Philadelphia March 28 for the Ohio, to superintend affairs at the point of rendezvous. With “a degree of pain and difficulty that cannot well be imagined,” St. Clair, already a sick man, pushed on to Pittsburg and Lexington, Kentucky, reaching Fort Washington on the fifteenth of May. One week later (May 22) General Butler reached Pittsburg, to receive the army and the stores and ammunition and hurry all on to Fort Washington. But every rod became a mile and every hundredweight a ton. It was not until the fifth of June that the troops from the East reached Fort Pitt—eight hundred and forty-two soldiers of the twelve hundred Secretary Knox had promised May 19. And yet, few as they were, no boats had been prepared to carry them south, and indeed very few in which to transport the slowly accumulating stores and ammunition. Contractor Duer and Quartermaster Samuel Hodgdon seemingly believed that barges grew on the rich banks of the Ohio and flat-boats were to be picked from the trees. The congestion of troops and stores which now resulted at Pittsburg was quite as appalling as the former scarcity of every needful thing. As rapidly as conditions permitted, General Butler wrought a certain kind of order out of the chaos, but not a kind that augured well for the future. That could hardly have been expected. In one way or another various craft were knocked together, filled, and set afloat in good hope of reaching Fort Washington. June dragged by, and July. August found Butler and Quartermaster-general Hodgdon still at Pittsburg, and it was not until the twenty-sixth of that month that the last of the army began the voyage southward—sixty precious days late.

On July 21 Secretary Knox wrote St. Clair at Fort Washington: “The president is greatly anxious that the campaign be distinguished by decisive measures.” A letter of August 4 reads: “The president still continues anxious that you should, at the earliest moment, commence your operations;” and another under the date of September 1 reads: “[The president] therefore enjoins you, by every principle that is sacred, to stimulate your operations in the highest degree, and to move as rapidly as the lateness of the season, and the nature of the case will possibly admit.” It is a matter of record that at the time this letter was written neither General Butler or Quartermaster-general Hodgdon had so much as reached the rendezvous. The latter’s delay was never explained and General Butler was utterly dependent upon quartermaster and contractor. Butler was at last ordered to Fort Washington by Secretary Knox in the following peremptory words, which implied neglect and carelessness—a rebuke which was, perhaps, as undeserved as it was sharp: “I have received your letter of the 18th instant, which has been submitted to the President of the United States, and I am commanded to inform you that he is by no means satisfied with the long detention of the troops on the upper parts of the Ohio, which he considers unnecessary and improper. And it is his opinion, unless the highest exertions be made by all parts of the army, to repair the loss of the season, that the expenses which have been made for the campaign, will be altogether lost, and that the measures, from which so much has been expected, will issue in disgrace.”[92] However the quartermaster-general had been ordered as early as June 9 to “consult Major General Butler upon all objects of the preparations and as soon as possible repair to headquarters.”[93]

Yet, had the army been assembled at Fort Washington July 15 instead of September 5, there would have been no such thing as moving northward for weeks. No sooner had the first of the troops reached St. Clair than it was clear that he had made no mistake in hurrying to the point of rendezvous. For instance the carriages of the guns used in Harmar’s campaign were ruined and had not been replaced. There was no corps of artificers and drafting was resorted to in order to secure smiths, carpenters, harness-makers, wheelwrights, etc. With the arrival of Major Ferguson, June 20, it became clear that nearly all the ammunition had yet to be properly prepared; a laboratory had to be built; the shells had to be filled with powder, likewise the artillery cartridges, the shells for howitzers and musket cartridges. Not only did enough of this work have to be done for the immediate use of the army, but a sufficient supply had to be prepared for each of the posts to be erected between Fort Washington and the Maumee, and to supply the main fort on the Maumee and its defenders until spring. The carriages of the guns that arrived from Philadelphia were rendered useless and new ones had to be made. Almost all arms which the troops brought to Fort Washington were out of repair. An armory had to be built, and, says General St. Clair, “so fast did the work of that kind increase upon our hands, that at one time it appeared as if it would never be got through with.”[94]