Wayne Appointed to Command Western Army.
Major General Anthony Wayne, a Pennsylvanian, had been chosen to succeed St. Clair in the command of the army; and on him devolved the task of wresting victory from the formidable forest tribes, fighting as the latter were in the almost impenetrable wilderness of their own country. The tribes were aided by the support covertly, and often openly, yielded them by the British. They had even more effective allies in the suspicion with which the backwoodsmen regarded the regular army, and the supine indifference of the people at large, which forced the administration to try every means to obtain peace before adopting the only manly and honorable course, a vigorous war.
Wayne's Character and History.
Of all men, Wayne was the best fitted for the work. In the Revolutionary War no other general, American, British, or French, won such a reputation for hard fighting, and for daring energy and dogged courage. He felt very keenly that delight in the actual shock of battle which the most famous fighting generals have possessed. He gloried in the excitement and danger, and shone at his best when the stress was sorest; and because of his magnificent courage his soldiers had affectionately christened him "Mad Anthony." But his head was as cool as his heart was stout. He was taught in a rough school; for the early campaigns in which he took part were waged against the gallant generals and splendid soldiery of the British King. By experience he had grown to add caution to his dauntless energy. Once, after the battle of Brandywine, when he had pushed close to the enemy, with his usual fearless self-confidence, he was surprised in a night attack by the equally daring British general Grey, and his brigade was severely punished with the bayonet. It was a lesson he never forgot; it did not in any way abate his self-reliance or his fiery ardor, but it taught him the necessity of forethought, of thorough preparation, and of ceaseless watchfulness. A few days later he led the assault at Germantown, driving the Hessians before him with the bayonet. This was always his favorite weapon; he had the utmost faith in coming to close quarters, and he trained his soldiers to trust the steel. At Monmouth he turned the fortunes of the day by his stubborn and successful resistance to the repeated bayonet charges of the Guards and Grenadiers. His greatest stroke was the storming of Stony Point, where in person he led the midnight rush of his troops over the walls of the British fort. He fought with his usual hardihood against Cornwallis; and at the close of the Revolutionary War he made a successful campaign against the Creeks in Georgia. During this campaign the Creeks one night tried to surprise his camp, and attacked with resolute ferocity, putting to flight some of the troops; but Wayne rallied them and sword in hand he led them against the savages, who were overthrown and driven from the field. In one of the charges he cut down an Indian chief; and the dying man, as he fell, killed Wayne's horse with a pistol shot.
Wayne Reorganizes the Army
As soon as Wayne reached the Ohio, in June, 1792, he set about reorganizing the army. He had as a nucleus the remnant of St. Clair's beaten forces; and to this were speedily added hundreds of recruits enlisted under new legislation by Congress, and shipped to him as fast as the recruiting officers could send them. The men were of precisely the same general character as those who had failed so dismally under St. Clair, and it was even more difficult to turn them into good soldiers, for the repeated disasters, crowned by the final crushing horror, had unnerved them and made them feel that their task was hopeless, and that they were foredoomed to defeat. [Footnote: Bradley MSS. Letters and Journal of Captain Daniel Bradley; see entry of May 7, 1793, etc.] The mortality among the officers had been great, and the new officers, though full of zeal, needed careful training. Among the men desertions were very common; and on the occasion of a sudden alarm Wayne found that many of his sentries left their posts and fled. [Footnote: "Major General Anthony Wayne," by Charles J. Stillé, p. 323.] Only rigorous and long continued discipline and exercise under a commander both stern and capable, could turn such men into soldiers fit for the work Wayne had before him. He saw this at once, and realized that a premature movement meant nothing but another defeat; and he began by careful and patient labor to turn his horde of raw recruits into a compact and efficient army, which he might use with his customary energy and decision. When he took command of the army—or "Legion," as he preferred to call it—the one stipulation he made was that the campaign should not begin until his ranks were full and his men thoroughly disciplined.
He Makes a Winter Camp on the Ohio.
Towards the end of the summer of '92 he established his camp on the Ohio about twenty-seven miles below Pittsburgh. He drilled both officers and men with unwearied patience, and gradually the officers became able to do the drilling themselves, while the men acquired the soldierly self-confidence of veterans. As the new recruits came in they found themselves with an army which was rapidly learning how to manoeuvre with precision, to obey orders unhesitatingly, and to look forward eagerly to a battle with the foe. Throughout the winter Wayne kept at work, and by the spring he had under him twenty-five hundred regular soldiers who were already worthy to be trusted in a campaign. He never relaxed his efforts to improve them; though a man of weaker stuff might well have been discouraged by the timid and hesitating policy of the National Government. The Secretary of War, in writing to him, laid stress chiefly on the fact that the American people desired at every hazard to avert an Indian war, and that on no account should offensive operations be undertaken against the tribes. Such orders tied Wayne's hands, for offensive operations offered the only means of ending the war; but he patiently bided his time, and made ready his army against the day when his superiors should allow him to use the weapon he had tempered.
In Spring He Shifts His Camp to Near Cincinnati.
His Second Winter Camp at Greeneville.
In May, '93, he brought his army down the Ohio to Fort Washington, and near it established a camp which he christened Hobson's Choice. Here he was forced to wait the results of the fruitless negotiations carried on by the United States Peace Commissioners, and it was not until about the 1st of October that he was given permission to begin the campaign. Even when he was allowed to move his army forward he was fettered by injunctions not to run any risks—and of course a really good fighting general ought to be prepared to run risks. The Secretary of War wrote him that above all things he was to remember to hazard nothing, for a defeat would be fraught with ruinous consequences to the country. Wayne knew very well that if such was the temper of the country and the Government, it behooved him to be cautious, and he answered that, though he would at once advance towards the Indian towns, to threaten the tribes, he would not run the least unnecessary risk. Accordingly he shifted his army to a place some eighty miles north of Cincinnati, where he encamped for the winter, building a place of strength which he named Greeneville in honor of his old comrade in arms, General Greene. He sent forward a strong detachment of his troops to the site of St. Clair's defeat, where they built a post which was named Fort Recovery. The discipline of the army steadily improved, though now and then a soldier deserted, usually fleeing to Kentucky, but in one or two cases striking through the woods to Detroit. The bands of auxiliary militia that served now and then for short periods with the regulars, were of course much less well trained and less dependable.