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- Herausgeber: Madison & Adams Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
The War of 1812 is perhaps the United States' least known conflict. Other than Andrew Jackson's 1815 victory at New Orleans and Francis Scott Key's poem "The Star-Spangled Banner" written in 1814 during the British attack on Baltimore, most Americans know little about the country's second major war. This book will give you a full insight into the second largest military conflict that took place on the soil of North America. Contents: Defending a New Nation 1783-1811 The Campaign of 1812 The Canadian Theater, 1813 The Creek War of 1813–1814 The Chesapeake Campaign, 1813–1814 The Canadian Theater, 1814 The Gulf Theater, 1813-1815
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The U.S. Army Campaigns of the War of 1812 (Illustrated Edition)
Table of Contents
Introduction
The War of 1812 is perhaps the United States’ least known conflict. Other than Andrew Jackson’s 1815 victory at New Orleans and Francis Scott Key’s poem “The Star-Spangled Banner” written in 1814 during the British attack on Baltimore, most Americans know little about the country’s second major war. Its causes are still debated by historians today. Great Britain’s impressment of American sailors, its seizure of American ships on the high seas, and suspected British encouragement of Indian opposition to further American settlement on the western frontier all contributed to America’s decision to declare war against Great Britain in June 1812.
None of these factors, however, adequately explain why President James Madison called for a war the country was ill-prepared to wage. Moreover, the war was quite unpopular from the start. Many Federalists—chiefly in the New England states—opposed an armed conflict with Great Britain, continued to trade with the British, and even met in convention to propose secession from the Union. Some members of the president’s own Republican Party objected to the war’s inevitable costs and questionable objectives, such as the conquest of Canada.
To declare war was one thing, but to prosecute it successfully was a different matter. Much of the story of the War of 1812 is about the unpreparedness of America’s Army and Navy at the conflict’s outset, and the enormous difficulties the new nation faced in raising troops, finding competent officers, and supplying its forces. Most of America’s military leaders were inexperienced and performed poorly, particularly in the first two years of war. Only gradually did better leaders rise to the top to command the more disciplined and well-trained units that America eventually fielded. But despite costly initial setbacks, by the time the fighting stopped American arms had won key victories at Chippewa, Lundy’s Lane, and New Orleans under excellent officers such as Winfield Scott, Jacob Brown, and Andrew Jackson. Although the United States achieved few of its political objectives in the War of 1812, its Regular Army emerged more professional, better led, and fit to take its place as the foundation of America’s national defenses.
I encourage all Army leaders and soldiers to read this pamphlet and the others in our series of campaign pamphlets in commemoration of the bicentennial of the War of 1812. We can all profit from greater knowledge about the beginnings of our Army: an Army forged in victory and defeat during what has often been called the second war of American independence.
RICHARD W. STEWARTChief Historian
Defending a New Nation 1783-1811
From the closing days of the Revolutionary War in 1783 to the beginning of the War of 1812, the United States Army faced one of its most challenging periods. During this era, American soldiers confronted threats from Great Britain, France, and Spain. On the western frontier, hostile warriors from American Indian nations battled U.S. Army and militia troops north of the Ohio River, as white settlers’ insatiable demands for land provoked conflict with Indian communities. The Army suppressed civil unrest, built roads, and conducted explorations, including the transcontinental expedition led by Army officers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The post-revolutionary years also saw the Army in a process of frequent reorganization, from the disbanding of the Continental Army at the end of the Revolutionary War to the establishment of Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne’s Legion of the United States, followed by President Thomas Jefferson’s efforts at reforming the Army into a Republican institution. These structural changes increased during James Madison’s first presidential term, as Americans prepared for war with Great Britain over maritime rights, free trade, and territorial expansion in a conflict that became known as the War of 1812.
Building on Washington’s legacy, 1783–1790
By early 1783, active campaigning by the British and Continental armies had ceased, and besides a small garrison of redcoats in New York, few enemy soldiers remained on U.S. soil. The American army, consisting of about seven thousand to eight thousand men, camped along the Hudson River at New Windsor, near Newburgh, New York, where General George Washington had moved them following the surrender of British troops at Yorktown, Virginia. Ill-clad, underfed, and rarely paid, the soldiers’ morale was unsurprisingly low. Word of a forthcoming peace settlement negotiated at Paris had reached the United States months before American and British representatives signed the treaty on 3 September 1783. With the anticipated withdrawal of enemy forces from America, the Confederation Congress on 24 September 1783 ordered Washington to discharge the Continental Army, keeping only those troops he deemed necessary for the good of the service. After the British evacuated New York City in November, Washington disbanded the Army except for one infantry regiment and a battalion of artillery, six hundred men in total, to guard military property at West Point, New York, and Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania.
Although most American leaders recognized the necessity for a postwar army, few agreed on the size and type of force best suited to the needs and ideals of the young nation. With the end of hostilities and the British evacuation of New York in November 1783, the key military question facing the United States was the kind of military establishment it required. Congress recognized that some troops were needed to counter Indian threats and to occupy America’s western forts. Adequate armed forces would also be needed to guard arsenals and other important sites.
Some congressmen, notably Elbridge T. Gerry of Massachusetts, objected to the creation of any standing army. He and others warned of the dangers and costs of a permanent army and preferred to rely on state militias to safeguard American independence and liberty. Professional armies and despotism went hand in hand, they argued, as ambitious or corrupt rulers could use an army to amass power and oppress the people. Other critics pointed to the several battlefield successes of militia forces during the Revolutionary War to demonstrate that American liberties could be defended by citizens in arms. More moderate political leaders argued instead that external threats and domestic disorders required a competent, regular military establishment in order to survive. Among them was General Washington, who advised in 1783 that “a few [regular] Troops, under certain circumstances, are not only safe, but indisputably necessary.”
As this debate was unfolding, three events occurred that gave credence to the arguments of those who opposed a standing army. The first occurred at the encampment around Newburgh, where many Continental officers were disgruntled. Having gone without pay for years, they feared that if Congress did not pay them or provide for their annuities they would face a bleak future of poverty. They had agreed in 1781 to a pension of half-pay for life, but as Congress grappled with a shortage of funds, the prospect for receiving any money seemed remote. In December 1782, a delegation of these discontented officers delivered a petition to Congress in Philadelphia, demanding overdue pay and “a one-time lump-sum payment.” The officers warned of a general mutiny against civilian authority if a satisfactory resolution to the financial issues did not emerge. Congress considered the petition in January 1783, but failed to act. In March, a group of officers called for a meeting of the Army’s leaders, to consider threatening Congress with force to redress their grievances. Upon learning of the intrigues, Washington confronted the officers and urged them to remain loyal. Two weeks later, the arrival of news that a peace treaty had been negotiated in Paris reduced some of the tension, but the disturbing incident vexed many Confederation delegates in Philadelphia.
Shortly after Washington defused the crisis at Newburgh, numerous Continental officers took a more subtle tack by forming the Society of the Cincinnati. Founded by General Henry Knox and other senior Army leaders in May 1783, the society was a fraternal organization, intended to preserve the bonds of shared wartime service and sacrifice, and to preserve the memory of the struggle for independence. The officer corps’ desperate financial predicament and its pronounced feeling of resentment against Congress also formed a compelling impetus for the society’s creation. Citing the sacrifices they had made while leading the Army to victory, the society’s members advocated financial relief and postwar pensions for Continental officers. Some government officials came to regard the new organization as a dangerous political threat to the nascent American government. Moreover, the organization allowed for inclusion into the society of the eldest male children of officers who served during the Revolutionary War, with membership to pass to the “eldest male posterity.” This provision appeared to many Americans as a conspiratorial threat to Republican principals for which the struggle for independence had been waged.
A final potential danger arose in June 1783, when several hundred unpaid Pennsylvania troops rioted in Philadelphia. They surrounded and threatened legislators meeting at the Pennsylvania state house, demanding to be paid. Although unharmed, the anxious delegates relocated to Princeton, New Jersey, without taking action to mollify the rebellious troops. The experience provided the delegates with a firsthand insight of the potential dangers of an irate army.
While these developments alarmed the Confederation government, Congress proceeded to study the matter of a future military establishment. In June 1783, a congressional committee led by Alexander Hamilton of New York and advised by George Washington recommended reliance on a trained force of professional soldiers to provide for the common defense, with the state militias playing an auxiliary role. By this time, however, sentiments within the Confederation government seemed to be leaning away from maintaining a permanent army, and the recent soldier riots in Pennsylvania did little to recommend it. Congress rejected the plan as being too expensive and complex. When Congress moved to Annapolis, Maryland, in November, efforts to provide for military defense ceased altogether.
On 2 June 1784, Congress directed General Knox, the senior officer in the Army, to disband the last remaining infantry regiment and artillery battalion, except for eighty soldiers to guard military stores at West Point and Fort Pitt. No officers above the rank of captain were to be retained in the service. Nevertheless, congressmen recognized that some type of military establishment had to be fashioned to counter Britain’s continued presence in North America and Indian threats against settlements in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area. Spain also appeared as a potential enemy in the South. Consequently, on 3 June Congress passed a measure to recruit eight new companies of infantry and two companies of artillery, seven hundred men in total, for one year’s service. Congress asked Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey to provide the new troops from their militias. This force was not a national establishment of regulars dreaded by many congressmen, nor was it solely a militia or state formation. Josiah Harmar of Pennsylvania, a Revolutionary War veteran, received the appointment to command the hybrid force, known as the Regiment of Infantry, and later, as the First American Regiment, with the rank of lieutenant colonel commandant. He reported to both Congress and the state of Pennsylvania, and when Henry Knox resigned from the service later that year, Harmar became the senior officer in the Army. Recruitment for the unit was slow, so that by the early fall, only New Jersey and Pennsylvania had provided their quota of men. Harmar stationed these troops in northern New York and in the lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Each of the small detachments was led by a junior officer, many of whom were Revolutionary War veterans.
In April 1785, when the enlistments of the First American Regiment’s soldiers were about to expire, Congress called for seven hundred recruits for three-year terms of enlistment. These new men were not to be detached from state militias but enlisted directly into national service, so that the regiment would be strictly a regular formation of the Confederation government. Congress directed that the regiment “show the flag” to the British still occupying forts in western territory ceded by Britain to America in the Treaty of Paris, and to protect settlers and American peace negotiators from Indian attacks on the northwestern frontiers. The troops were also expected to drive off white squatters from land in Indian country, destroying their homes and farms in the process, as some of this territory was intended by the Confederation government to reward Revolutionary veterans and to raise much-needed revenue through land sales. Despite these objectives, the regiment never effectively carried out its mission against Indians, squatters, or British troops, primarily due to its small size.
Josiah Harmar,by Raphaelle Peale(U.S. Department of State)
While frontier duties occupied the First American Regiment in the years following its formation, a disquieting event in the eastern United States came to have a profound effect on the American military establishment. Just as the Newburgh intrigues and the Philadelphia soldiers’ riots alerted congressmen to the dangers of a standing army, a New England revolt led many American leaders to conclude that a permanent force of regulars was required to guard against violent political unrest. The uprising, known as Shays’ Rebellion, had a significant impact on the men who would meet in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a new system of government, including its military institutions.
Shays’ Rebellion was an armed uprising of Massachusetts back-country farmers over debts, burdensome taxes, a lack of circulating currency, and oppressive court practices during the economic depression that followed the end of the Revolutionary War. Many of the rebels had served in the Revolution, including one of their leaders, Daniel Shays. They disrupted courts, assaulted lawyers and state officials, and threatened the national arsenal at Springfield. Local militia companies called up to disperse the rioters were often sympathetic to their fellow farmers’ cause, and could not be relied upon to quell the disturbances. These chaotic events alarmed conservatives in all the states and frustrated those who looked for a swift, effective military response. Lacking troops, in late October 1786, Congress asked New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia to raise a force of 1,340 men for three years to put down the Massachusetts rebels, although the announced purpose for the mobilization was to send more troops to the frontier to thwart Indian hostilities. Only two companies of artillery were raised, but before any of these men could reach Massachusetts, local volunteers successfully defended the Springfield Arsenal from an attack in February 1787. The rebellion ended in defeat, but it demonstrated that the Confederation government could not act effectively to put down internal unrest.
While Massachusetts dispersed the rebels in early 1787, recruiting for the new congressional force was slow, so that by April, only 550 men had enlisted. With the rebellion quelled, Congress directed that the troops be dismissed, in part due to the expense of keeping them in the field. Only the soldiers in two artillery companies were retained to guard the Springfield Arsenal and West Point. In October 1787, Congress renewed the authorization for seven hundred men for the First American Regiment that had initially been made in 1785, and organized the troops into an infantry regiment of eight companies and an artillery battalion of four companies. These troops were intended to protect settlers and public land surveyors on the frontier from Indian attacks. At the same time, national and state political leaders began to reconsider not only the kind of military establishment needed, but also whether the government itself needed to be restructured. This movement eventually led to the meeting of the Constitutional Convention in May 1787.
Just as the Confederation government had struggled in the Revolution’s wake with differing views about a standing army, so too did the delegates to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. On this issue, the representatives were polarized along philosophical lines. Many who favored a new governmental structure—known as Federalists—argued in favor of a permanent force, denying that standing armies represented a threat to the public. They argued that an established regular force was needed to defend the country against a foreign invasion since militia troops could not be prepared in time to counter such a threat. They also pointed to the need to protect “against the ravages and depredations of the Indians.”
On the other side of the debate, traditional Whig fears of standing armies, their costs, and the potential threat they posed to liberty were arrayed. To radical Whigs (later called Anti-Federalists), it was axiomatic that standing armies were dangerous to the liberties of the people, typical of monarchies and not republics. Patrick Henry of Virginia warned that “Congress by the power of taxation, by that of raising an army, and by their control of the militia, have sword in one hand and the purse in the other. Shall we be safe without either?” Others noted that the power given the new national government over the army was at the expense of the states, which only retained their prerogative in appointing militia officers. Congress, in the proposed Constitution, would have the power to raise an army even in peacetime, and could also control the state militia organizations. Although such concerns were heard frequently during the debates, the convention delegates did not seriously consider rejecting provisions for creating and maintaining a standing army within the framework of the new constitution. The Constitution was ratified on 21 June 1788 and replaced the Articles of Confederation.
Within the new constitutional system, the central government was responsible for raising and maintaining the Army, not the states, and the power to tax (previously denied to the Confederation government) meant that Congress could now do so. The Constitution gave the president the role of commander in chief, with the right to take command of the military in the field. Congress reserved for itself the power to declare war and to appropriate money for military spending. Army appropriations were limited to two years, so that the maintenance of a standing army could be reviewed—and controlled, if need be—by a watchful Congress. Congress could call out the states’ militias to execute federal laws, to suppress insurrections, and to defend the country against foreign invasions. The national legislature also had the power to organize, arm, and discipline the states’ militias, although as a compromise to federalism, the states retained the right to appoint officers and train the militias.
The initial army under the Constitution hardly seemed to pose a serious military threat to liberty. Congress authorized a strength of 840 men, but only 672 were actually in service, in addition to artillery detachments at Springfield and West Point. Harmar, a brigadier general since 1787, retained his command. Not until 1790 would Congress authorize an expansion, adding four infantry companies to the Army’s authorized strength, which brought it to 1,273 officers and men, with soldiers to serve three-year enlistments. By early the next year, the force actually numbered eight hundred men, most of whom garrisoned several newly constructed western forts in the Ohio River Valley.
Meanwhile, in August 1789, Congress created the Department of War under the executive branch to oversee the administration of the nascent force. The secretary at war (soon changed to secretary of war) also assumed responsibility for supervising federal Indian affairs. Former Continental Army general Henry Knox led the new department, with only a handful of clerks and one messenger to assist with his routine duties. The administration of the Army included a civilian-controlled military supply system under the secretary of war, responsible for keeping and distributing supplies, while a board of the Treasury Department looked after procurement of military necessities, including uniforms and food. In 1794, Congress created the Office of the Purveyor of Public Supplies within the Treasury Department and a Superintendant of Military Stores, part of the War Department. Most of the procurement process was handled through a contract system for reasons of economy and efficiency, but this method failed to live up to congressional expectations or meet the soldiers’ needs. For its weapons, the War Department maintained several armories and magazines for storing and repairing arms, many of which were left over from the Revolutionary War. Although Congress established national armories at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in the mid-1790s to produce and repair weapons, the Army relied on foreign suppliers for most of its armaments.
Most of the recruits who enlisted during the years following the American Revolution served on the frontier, in log forts built in the Ohio country. These were typically isolated posts, where the soldiers’ duties were dull and laborious. Due to the logistical difficulties the Army and its contractors faced, and the challenges inherent in organizing and running a new organization, soldiers were often unpaid, poorly supplied, and ill-fed. Discipline was rigid and punishments severe, especially in light of the soldiers’ frequent abuse of alcohol. In these conditions, morale was low and desertion rampant. Soldiers had a poor reputation among the general populace of America, particularly in places where posts were located. Many recruits were of foreign birth, primarily Irish, since native-born Americans were not usually drawn to the military’s low pay. Given the costs associated with a permanent army and the small size of the force Congress authorized, frontier military operations also involved militia troops. It was with this mixed force of regulars and militiamen that the new government would confront the military challenges of the early 1790s.
Securing The Frontier
During the decades that followed the American independence, the new federal Army found itself confronted with an array of diverse challenges. Warfare with Native Americans in the trans–Appalachian West was the Army’s first major concern, and it severely tested the new nation’s ability to wage war successfully.
Challenges in the Northwest Territory
The lure of fertile lands, opportunities for land speculation, and the lucrative Indian trade drew thousands of Americans across the Appalachian Mountains after the American Revolution. Congress also had a financial interest in developing the West, both to reduce its wartime debt through land sales and to reward military veterans for their past service. Establishing a buffer between the eastern states and the British and Spanish in the west also had the benefit of securing the territory for Congress. By the mid-1780s, a flood of settlers had entered the area north of the Ohio River to claim property, including many squatters who cared little for government titles or the Indians they displaced.
The Indian tribes looked on this encroachment with alarm. Although they had sided with Great Britain during the American Revolution, the Indians of the Ohio country were largely undefeated by the time of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. They naturally did not believe that they needed to surrender their territory to the new American nation—a sentiment the British openly encouraged. Not only did the British refuse to evacuate posts in land they had ceded to America in the Treaty of Paris, most notably at Detroit, Michilimackinac, and Niagara, but they supplied Indian warriors with weapons, ammunition, and supplies in order, Washington wrote, to “inflame the Indian mind, with a view to keep it at variance with these States, for the purpose of retarding our settlements to the Westward.” The situation was ripe for conflict.
In response to settler demands and numerous reports of growing violence on the frontier, American authorities looked to the Army. Initially, the American government sought to restrain white settlers from occupying Indian lands, both to avoid hostilities and to permit the territory to be properly surveyed prior to sale. Secretary Knox prohibited the Army’s senior officer, Lt. Col. Josiah Harmar, from engaging in offensive operations with his small command, which he moved in late 1784 to Fort McIntosh, Pennsylvania, on the north bank of the Ohio River. The Army thus tried to maintain peace along the frontier during the 1780s, although many military officers had little sympathy for the Indians. In addition to defending government surveyors as they marked off land in the Ohio wilderness, the Army evicted hundreds of squatters from land they illegally occupied. Beginning in 1785, Harmar sent troops to remove unlawful settlers, tear down their cabins, and destroy their crops. These draconian measures, executed in hopes of avoiding a war between whites and Indians, did little to endear the Army to western settlers. In order to increase the Army’s military presence in the northwest and to keep an eye on Indians and settlers alike, soldiers built several log forts along the Ohio River and its tributaries in the mid-1780s. Ironically, the construction of these forts encouraged rather than deterred white settlement since the garrisons offered at least some protection from Indian attacks (Map 1).
Map 1
Desirous of avoiding a full-scale war with the Indians in the northwest for which the Army was ill-prepared, the United States attempted to negotiate with native tribes in the 1780s. Government authorities reckoned that it was more advantageous and cheaper to purchase land from the Indians than to fight them. Despite these aims, most of these diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful. Attempts at peace were doomed by the American position that the Indians had forfeited the lands of the Ohio country by their alliance with the British during the Revolutionary War. Negotiations went nowhere with the Indians, primarily the Miami, Shawnee, and Kickapoo, who refused to sell or trade away their lands and declined to recognize the legitimacy of prior treaties with the Americans. They insisted that the boundary between Indian and white territory was the Ohio River, despite treaties signed at Fort McIntosh in 1785 and Fort Finney in 1786, where Indians unauthorized to negotiate for all tribes relinquished tens of thousands of acres north of the river.
By 1786, backcountry warfare had broken out in the northwest between aggressive settlers and enraged Indians, especially those on the Wabash, Miami, and Maumee Rivers. There was much unity among the Indians of the Ohio country due to shared opposition to the encroaching Americans. Attacks on settlers and isolated detachments of American soldiers increased. In July 1788, for instance, Indians attacked a detachment of thirty troops near the mouth of the Wabash in a skirmish that left eight soldiers dead and ten wounded. That same month, a small party of soldiers preparing a treaty council site at the Falls of the Muskingum suffered an unexpected attack by a Chippewa war party and withdrew to Fort Harmar after the sharp skirmish. After significant violence between Indians and Kentucky militia forces, particularly in the Wabash River area around Fort Knox, a small contingent of regulars led by Maj. John F. Hamtramck occupied the old French settlement at Vincennes in 1787, to keep the peace and to establish civil authority in the region. There were, however, too few soldiers in Hamtramck’s force to do more than watch the escalating violence. Much of the bloodshed stemmed from periodic raids north of the Ohio River launched by mounted Kentucky militiamen, who took matters into their own hands rather than rely on the small national Army.
In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance to establish a workable process for governing these unruly territories. By August 1789, the first president of the United States of America under the Constitution, George Washington, determined that frontier violence required the “immediate intervention of the General Government,” and in September Congress empowered him to call on state militia forces to help protect the frontier. Peace efforts during 1789 and 1790 by Arthur St. Clair, the first governor of the Northwest Territory, were unsuccessful, which led the former Revolutionary War general to advise Washington that a punitive expedition against the Indians would likely be needed. Under additional pressure from Harmar (since 1787, a brevet brigadier general), frightened settlers, land speculators, and militia authorities in Kentucky and Ohio, Secretary of War Knox ordered a foray against the hostile Indians on the upper Wabash in June 1790, to “extirpate, utterly, if possible,” the Indian “banditti.”
Harmar’s Expedition, 1790
Governor St. Clair and General Harmar met in July 1790 at Fort Washington on the Ohio River (present site of Cincinnati) to plan the campaign. This post was garrisoned by seventy-five soldiers, soon to be joined by almost three hundred men of the First American Regiment. St. Clair and Harmar decided on a twopronged advance against the Indian villages on the upper reaches of the Wabash and Maumee Rivers, the location of several hostile tribes unwilling to negotiate with American representatives. Harmar was to lead a march to Kekionga on the headwaters of the Maumee River, where over one thousand warriors were supposed to have gathered. Kekionga was a major fur trading post, where British agents supplied Indians with muskets and ammunition. Harmar intended to destroy the enemy’s villages, corn stocks, and Indian traders’ supplies, to reduce the Indians to poverty, and prevent their continued war-making capabilities.
While General Harmar would lead the main thrust of the Army’s campaign against Kekionga, a second force led by Major Hamtramck would provide a diversion farther west with a simultaneous march against the Indian towns via the Wabash River. Hamtramck, a former Continental Army officer, set out northward on 30 September from Fort Knox at Vincennes with about three hundred troops, of which only sixty were regulars, including several artillerymen and a brass 3-pounder cannon. The remainder of his command consisted of Kentucky militiamen of poor quality and low morale. Upon reaching Vermillion eleven days later, Hamtramck found the Indian village there evacuated. On 14 October, Hamtramck returned to Vincennes due to the unwillingness of the disgruntled militia to proceed farther and to supply deficiencies. While Hamtramck’s diversion may have drawn hundreds of enemy warriors away from Harmar’s larger operation to the east, the Fort Knox soldiers accomplished little else during their brief foray and returned to their post on 26 October.
Fort Washington(Library of Congress)
Meanwhile, Harmar organized the main thrust of the campaign from Fort Washington, from which he intended to march directly northward to reach the Maumee towns. Given the paucity of trained soldiers, Congress authorized calling militia and volunteers to increase Harmar’s force. In the end, the 37-year-old general was able to gather approximately three hundred regulars and one thousand militiamen. The army also brought along two 6-pounder guns.
At Fort Washington and during the campaign, the Army struggled with the two primary challenges that characterized all frontier operations during the era: logistical difficulties and undisciplined soldiery. Due to the vast distances from eastern supply sources and problems with military contractors, Harmar’s forces were poorly fed, supplied, and equipped. The Army had difficulty procuring required munitions too, especially musket cartridges for the troops. Much of what did reach the posts on the Ohio River was of poor quality, or had been spoiled or damaged during water transportation to the frontier. A congressional report of 1792 noted “fatal mismanagements and neglects” in supplying Harmar’s command, “particularly as to tents, knapsacks, camp kettles, cartridge boxes, packsaddles, etc., all of which were deficient in quantity and bad in quality.” While supplies and provisions trickled into Fort Washington during the summer, militiamen began to arrive in September. About eight hundred men came from Kentucky, with an additional three hundred from Pennsylvania. Most of these troops were inadequately armed, and many had little or no experience with firearms or frontier campaigning. A number of these recruits were too old or infirm for the rigors of war, and some were young boys or paid substitutes with little desire to fight. Harmar despaired at the untested troops with which he had to conduct the campaign, but he had no time to train them before the army set off.
The militia, led by Col. John Hardin of Kentucky, began the northward advance on 26 September 1790. As they proceeded, they cleared a military road through the wilderness for the artillery and wagons. The regulars left Fort Washington on 30 September, accompanied by the wagon trains, and by 3 October they joined the militia at Turkey Creek (near modern Xenia, Ohio). The combined force numbered 320 regulars and 1,133 militiamen. As the army moved toward the Maumee towns, scouts ranged on the flanks and in the van of the column to guard against surprise, while militia units protected the rear. At night when the army camped, the troops cautiously formed a protective square for defense, with artillery, wagons, packhorses, cattle, and baggage positioned in the center. Initially there was little sign of enemy Indians, but by 10 October when the army reached the Big Miami River, scouts sensed that the column was being observed. On 13 October, they approached within two days’ march of the Miami towns and captured an Indian warrior who informed the Americans that the Indians intended to burn their towns and avoid the approaching American army. With this intelligence, Harmar ordered a mounted column to strike the Indians before they could escape. This detachment included six hundred Kentucky militiamen under Colonel Hardin, supported by fifty regulars led by Capt. David Ziegler. These horsemen set out the next morning, many of the men excited to finally strike a blow at the elusive enemy. The rest of the army followed in their path.
The intelligence garnered from the captured Indian was correct. About six hundred warriors had gathered at Kekionga under the leadership of chiefs Little Turtle of the Miamis and Blue Jacket of the Shawnees. After deciding they could not defend their villages against the approaching Americans, the warriors set fire to the towns on 15 October, buried their supplies of corn nearby, and removed as much of their trade goods as possible. That same afternoon, Hardin’s mounted detachment rode into Kekionga without opposition. The men plundered what structures had not been burned by the Indians, as well as those in other nearby villages. The main army arrived on 17 October and spent three days destroying cabins, crops, and stores. During this destruction, the militia became unruly, as they searched around the vicinity for additional caches of hidden Indian goods and provisions to loot. Harmar considered pushing on to other villages along the Wabash, but on the night of 17 October, Indians drove off dozens of the army’s packhorses, which placed Harmar’s command in danger of being short of supplies.
On 18 October, Harmar sent out a reconnaissance of three hundred militiamen and federal troops, “to make some discovery of the enemy” nearby. This detachment, commanded by Lt. Col. James Trotter of the Kentucky militia, planned to scout for three days, but soon after leaving camp, the militia soldiers killed two Indians, and later that day a few of Trotter’s men encountered a force of fifty mounted warriors. With his militia unnerved by these encounters, Trotter returned to the main army camp with his detachment that day. His early return and his failure to secure much information about the Indians’ whereabouts angered and annoyed both Hardin and Harmar. Hardin asked to lead a second reconnaissance himself the next day, to which Harmar assented.
Hardin set out with one hundred eighty militiamen early on the morning of 19 October, heading northwest, accompanied by thirty regulars under Capt. John Armstrong, a veteran of the Revolutionary War. The militia was unenthusiastic about scouring the woods for the enemy, since the column expected to make contact with Indian warriors. Dozens of Hardin’s men dropped out of the column to return to camp. As the Kentuckians found signs along the trail of what looked to be Indians in full retreat, Hardin ordered a rapid pursuit. In their haste, the militia became strung out along the trail and disorganized. Hardin and part of his force, including Armstrong’s regulars, arrived at an open meadow near an Indian town on the Eel River. Once most of the militia was in the open, Indians fired from a half-moon formation in the surrounding woods, probably led by Little Turtle of the Miami. “When our troops were completely between the lines of the enemy they commenced the fire with their usual yells,” recorded a Kentuckian. Quickly routed, the militia ran in panic through the line of Captain Armstrong’s regulars. Many Kentuckians threw down their loaded arms in their haste to escape, while the regulars stood and returned fire. After fierce fighting, Armstrong and another officer fled into a nearby swamp. “They fought and died hard,” Armstrong later wrote of his doomed soldiers. Some militia did form a defensive line among the trees on the trail back to Harmar’s encampment, which managed to stop the pursuing Indians. Meanwhile, Hardin and what remained of his terrified militia force reached Harmar’s new camp near the Indian town of Chillicothe after sunset. One hundred militiamen were missing, along with the regulars, most of whom who had died in the clearing.
After the defeated troops made it back to camp, the rest of the militia became demoralized, and their officers feared a mutiny. Having achieved his primary objective, Harmar decided to return with his command back to Fort Washington. On 20 October, his men razed Chillicothe and destroyed all the food his army could not consume or transport on their return march to the Ohio River. In order to restore discipline in his command, the general ordered that any signs of desertion, looting, or improper conduct on the trek back be dealt with severely.
While General Harmar made ready to return to Fort Washington with his command, Colonel Hardin wished for another opportunity to attack the Indians nearby, despite the setback of the nineteenth. Army scouts reported that over a hundred Indians had reoccupied several of the ruined villages of Kekionga to look for buried provisions. At the suggestion of Hardin, the general agreed to send a detachment back to the village and surprise these warriors, whom he assumed expected no further strikes from the Americans. A sudden assault on the Indians, Harmar reasoned, might also check attacks on his column as it marched back to the Ohio River. The expedition, the command of which Harmar gave to an Army regular, Maj. John P. Wyllys, included sixty soldiers and about three hundred picked militiamen under Hardin. Wyllys and the militia officers planned to surround the Indians, and divided into three groups to affect the complicated scheme, to commence on the morning of 22 October. Before the American troops could execute the plan, however, the Indians became aware of their presence by careless musket fire among the militia. A wild, confusing fight ensued, in which the regulars and the militia were unable to support each other for much of the battle. Indians attacked the regulars and some mounted troops as the soldiers crossed the shallow Maumee River in the morning. After a sharp fight there and at a second ford on the St. Joseph River, the Indians fled, although “the savages fought desperately,” Harmar later reported. While the Indians suffered significant casualties during the battle, the American force had also been mauled, especially the regulars, who suffered approximately 80 percent casualties, including Major Wyllys, who was killed. The panic-stricken survivors, primarily militia, returned to Harmar’s camp in disorder by the afternoon, having been “terribly cut up.” Survivors reported that the fighting was “obstinate and many fell on both sides,” including sixty-eight of the militia who were killed and another twenty-eight wounded. Word of the costly fighting alarmed the men back in Harmar’s main camp, where the anxious troops continued to make preparations to leave.
Without attempting to bury the dead back at Kekionga, Harmar marched his dispirited men to Fort Washington, which they reached on 3 November, their provisions nearly exhausted. Nevertheless, General Harmar considered the campaign to have been a success, due to the destruction of the Indian villages. “Our loss was heavy,” Harmar reported to Henry Knox, “but the head of iniquity were broken up.” He could also point to the fact that Indians never attacked or surprised his main column, nor had it suffered a catastrophic defeat. Others took a dimmer view of the campaign. Those on the frontier, in particular, concluded that the expedition had been a disaster. The regulars had lost 75 men killed out of 320 who began the march, and militia losses had been high as well. Others claimed that Harmar had risked too much in sending the militia on independent excursions, and that Harmar had never left the camp or faced enemy fire directly. Accusations flew between regulars and militia, and Harmar was accused of being a drunk. President Washington deplored the “disgraceful termination” to the campaign, which he called an “expence without honor or profit.” Knox too called it “unsuccessful,” and recommended that Harmar ask for a court of inquiry to clear his name in the face of such harsh criticism. Harmar complied, and a court of inquiry consequently convened in September 1791, at Fort Washington. The court exonerated Harmar, but he failed to retain the confidence of Washington or Knox. He resigned from the Army in January 1792.
St. Clair’s Defeat, 1791
The inconclusive nature of Harmar’s 1790 autumn campaign all but guaranteed that a subsequent military effort to defeat the Indians in the Northwest Territory would be launched. In the months after Harmar’s return to the Ohio River, Indian attacks on settlers and military outposts continued. In March 1791, the Washington administration appointed Arthur St. Clair, then serving as the governor of the Northwest Territory, to command the Army on the frontier, with the rank of major general, making him the Army’s senior officer. Knox ordered St. Clair, an experienced veteran of both the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War, to lead a force to the Kekionga villages and establish “a strong post and garrison” there, “for the purpose of awing and curbing the Indians in that quarter.” A new fort would also disrupt British trade with the tribes as well. Until the campaign could be commenced, the United States tried a combination of diplomatic overtures and militia forays against the tribes, none of which were successful.
Arthur St. Clair, by Charles Willson Peale, (Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia)
Despite the intentions of President Washington and Secretary Knox to muster a powerful forces, St. Clair soon discovered army of regulars supplemented by short-term recruits and militia forces, St. Clair soon discovered that the army was “ill prepared in every respect to take the field.” In the spring of 1791, St. Clair had gathered 299 regulars at Fort Washington, which left few soldiers to guard the other forts in the region. Even the men he had present were hastily recruited, with little training, discipline, or pay. In order to strengthen the frontier army, Congress authorized Secretary Knox to raise a second regiment of regulars to be commanded by Lt. Col. John Doughty, who had been on continuous military duty since 1775. An additional 2,000 six-month levies were to be raised for the campaign under federally appointed officers, all of whom would be discharged upon the conclusion of St. Clair’s operations. The new general also had the authority to call out the militia of Virginia and Pennsylvania for federal service should he find it necessary for the success of his endeavors. By the time the campaign began in September 1791, St. Clair had approximately twenty-four hundred men, of which about eleven hundred were Kentucky militiamen. Most of the troops were on foot, as the general regarded mounted troops to be too expensive.
St. Clair encountered logistical difficulties like those faced by Harmar during the previous year. The distances involved in getting supplies to the theater and the inefficiencies of the Army’s contract system created shortages of food, ammunition, muskets, camp equipage, and other necessities. Men in the ranks began to desert as discontent grew, and drunkenness among the recruits was a significant problem. Knox and Washington put enormous pressure on St. Clair to commence his movement, but “the means were inadequate,” as St. Clair would later explain. Nevertheless, the commanding general appeared to be optimistic of success and began his move northward on 17 September.
Cutting a road through the wilderness, the army reached the Miami River, where St. Clair built Fort Hamilton as a depot for the expedition and as protection for his lines of communications. After two weeks, the soldiers set out again, and ten days later St. Clair ordered the construction of a second stockade, Fort Jefferson, forty-five miles north of Fort Hamilton. By this time, the army was only thirty miles from the Indian villages, but with worsening weather, scanty food, and no pay, men continued to disappear from the ranks. On the last day of October, several dozen disgruntled Kentucky militiamen left the army in a body, with the claim that on their way to the Ohio River, they would pillage the army’s supply wagons coming from Fort Hamilton. In response, St. Clair ordered three hundred regulars of the 1st Infantry regiment to march south along the road to apprehend them and to ensure the safety of the supply convoy. This decision left the army deep in hostile country with few experienced soldiers, since the 2d Infantry regiment of federal troops was largely made up of recent recruits, “a great part of which had never been in the woods in their lives, and many had never fired a gun,” St. Clair noted.
By 3 November, the reduced column reached the Wabash River, where signs of Indians became more numerous, and stragglers were occasionally killed. That night, the weary main body camped on the eastern bluff of the Wabash River, while most of the Kentucky militia camped on a wide plain on the western bank, three hundred yards ahead of St. Clair’s main force. Although alerted several times to the presence of the enemy nearby, St. Clair and his officers did not order the construction of any defenses, other than to have the army camp in a rectangular formation with the supply wagons and artillery inside it for protection. Sporadic firing by sentinels and reports of enemy scouts lurking about did not seem to alarm St. Clair and his lieutenants. Moreover, few security patrols operated around the army’s perimeter to discern the location and strength of nearby Indian forces, which consisted of over one thousand warriors led by Blue Jacket of the Shawnees and Little Turtle of the Miamis.
Just before sunrise, shortly after the troops had been dismissed from their morning formations in preparation for continuing the army’s movement, the militia on the west bank of the Wabash received a powerful attack from front and rear. Only a few of the Kentuckians fired their weapons before the bulk of them broke in “ignominious flight” toward St. Clair’s main camp. The Indians attacked in a crescent formation, with the main part of their assault falling upon the left front of the American camp, once the militia took flight. Alerted by the shouts of the Indians in the forest, the American artillery opened fire on the attacking natives, but with little effect. The main camp on the east bank of the river quickly came under attack as well, resulting in great confusion and panic within St. Clair’s ranks as enemy warriors surrounded them. Several units charged the Indians with their bayonets, including some regulars of the 2d Infantry, while others maintained enough order to fire volleys at their attackers. The fight around the artillery was desperate, as the Indians rushed up “to the very Mouths of our Cannon.” As Lt. Col. William Darke of the Kentucky militia reported, “the artilery Men . . . [were] all Killd and Lying in heaps about the peases.” Losses among the officers were particularly high, including the commander of the army’s six-month men, Maj. Gen. Richard Butler, who, after receiving two bullet wounds, was tomahawked in the head and scalped while being treated by a surgeon.
After capturing the cannon, “the Indians got into our camp,” a soldier noted, “and Scalped I supose a hundred men or more.” Now convinced that the army’s position was untenable, St. Clair ordered a retreat at about 0900. His command had almost been annihilated. A few officers managed to form a body of troops, break through the enemy encirclement, and gain the road. They began a retreat to Fort Jefferson, almost thirty miles away, while those wounded and cut off from the retiring column were left to a fate of certain death. St. Clair reported that the retreat was “in fact, a flight.” The men threw away all that encumbered their precipitous withdrawal, including their muskets, and “the whole Army Ran together like a mob at a fair.” “The Indians . . . tomahawked all that came within their reach,” wrote one soldier. Most survivors reached Fort Jefferson on the evening of 4 November, where they met the 1st Infantry. Due to overcrowding and lack of supplies at the small post, St. Clair decided to keep his column of survivors moving until they arrived at Fort Hamilton on the eighth.
The three-hour debacle on the Wabash was the worst military disaster ever suffered by American arms against a Native American enemy. About 55 percent of St. Clair’s troops were casualties, with the dead and missing numbering 630 out of 1,400 men engaged. The 2d Infantry regiment lost three-quarters of its strength, and of the army’s 124 officers involved in the 4 November battle, 69 were killed, wounded, or missing. Additionally, the expedition lost all of its artillery and most of its baggage, arms, and equipment in its headlong flight from the battleground. The Indians lost only thirty-five men at the battle. As a result of St. Clair’s defeat, the American frontier became further exposed to Indian attacks, with the Army largely unable to prevent the depredations. St. Clair resigned his military commission in April 1792, although he continued to serve as governor of the Northwest Territory. A congressional inquiry in 1792 exonerated him for the expedition’s failure.
The Legion of the United States and Fallen Timbers
News of the Wabash disaster reached President Washington and Congress in Philadelphia in December. Although these reports produced much consternation and political wrangling within the U.S. government, President Washington and Secretary Knox were able to put together a comprehensive strategy of peace feelers and military preparations beginning in early 1792. Negotiations with the Indians over the next few years proved unsuccessful, and Congress showed itself in no mood to make concessions. Additionally, the influence of Indian militants made compromise all but impossible on the Native American side. Meanwhile the federal government prepared a third military campaign north of the Ohio River.
The combined experience of Harmar and St. Clair’s campaigns led to a reorganization of the Army in 1792, in which the U.S. government recognized both that it needed more troops and that the militia was unreliable. With the advice of Washington, Knox, and Revolutionary War veteran Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, Congress created the Legion of the United States, with an authorized strength of 5,190 men, to be organized into four sublegions. Each sublegion included a troop of dragoons, a company of artillery, two battalions of infantry, and one battalion of riflemen. These sublegions would be well suited for wilderness warfare against the Indians and could fight independently of each other. The costs projected for the maintenance of this force was over $1 million, a huge sum for the day. To command this new Army, Congress (at Washington’s recommendation) appointed Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne, a Revolutionary War hero known for his courage, audacity, and stern discipline. At the same time, Congress passed the first national law to regulate the militia.
Anthony Wayne,by Peter Frederick Rothermel (Philadelphia History along the Maumee River and its Museum)
General Wayne refused to be rushed into a campaign before his forces were prepared. He trained his men thoroughly, instituted rigorous discipline, and tried to build morale by his attention to the soldiers’ clothing, rations, pay, and esprit de corps. In early 1793, Wayne moved his men to Fort Washington from their camps at Legionville, near Pittsburgh. For most of the year, he continued to train his troops, gather supplies, and begin construction of additional forts and roads north of Fort Washington as he waited the outcome of ongoing diplomatic efforts with the Indians. Once diplomacy failed, Wayne was free to begin his campaign to extinguish the threat from hostile tribes tributaries. Although he would experience logistical problems and difficulties associated with the militia as had Harmar and St. Clair, Wayne’s command was in better shape than those of his predecessors.
On 7 October 1793, Wayne led his regulars and militia forces northward to Fort Hamilton, and after a brief stay there, on to Fort Jefferson. During the march, the American army sent out numerous scouts and guards to prevent a surprise attack by Indians, but they encountered few enemy warriors along the way. By this time, Wayne began to face supply shortages and militia discontent, and hundreds of the Kentuckians deserted en mass. At the end of the month, Wayne decided to winter near Fort Jefferson and dismissed all the remaining militia until spring, in part to save from having to clothe and feed them. While encamped, the army constructed a permanent stockade called Fort Greenville. In March 1794, a small detachment of legionnaires completed a fort on the site of St. Clair’s defeat, which Wayne named Fort Recovery, to signal that the area was no longer dominated by Indian forces. Wayne planned to proceed farther northward to the Indian towns on the Maumee, where the British were providing native warriors with arms and ammunition from nearby Fort Miamis.
The Legion moved out of Fort Greenville on 28 July 1794, with 2,169 men, accompanied by about 1,500 mounted Kentucky volunteers and over 100 Chickasaw and Choctaw scouts. The column advanced to the northeast after passing Fort Recovery, with scouts on all sides and the Kentuckians in the rear to guard communications. Determined to avoid St. Clair’s mistakes, the army fortified its campsites each evening and sent out strong patrols to detect enemy parties. On 1 August, the soldiers reached a major ford of the St. Marys River and halted briefly to erect two blockhouses surrounded by a stockade, which they named Fort Adams. From there, Wayne decided not to descend the St. Marys to reach the Maumee (which Harmar had done in 1790), but instead to follow the Auglaize River directly north to reach the Maumee at Grand Glaize, an Indian town Wayne deemed “the Grand Emporium of the hostile Indians of the West,” which the Americans reached on 8 August. This unanticipated movement confused the Indians and the British, and placed Wayne’s forces between them. Here his troops built Fort Defiance, a major post with four blockhouses, to guard the army’s rear as it marched down the Maumee toward Fort Miamis. After a week of gathering food and supplies nearby, the army proceeded eastward on the Maumee’s northern side, and on the eighteenth, began building a primitive stockade called Fort Deposit, where the troops left all excess baggage and supplies with a small guard prior to their final march toward Fort Miamis.
While Wayne’s command marched from Fort Greenville to the Maumee, the Indians had collected a sizable force to contest the army’s further progress. Approximately fifteen hundred Mingo, Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Chippewa Indians under the leadership of Blue Jacket and Little Turtle waited upstream from Fort Miamis for Wayne to advance, with the intention of ambushing the army along the river. On 20 August, many of the warriors took positions in an arc from the river through a section of forest blown down by a tornado years before, known as Fallen Timbers. Within the felled trees they met Wayne’s advancing army. Since the Indian leaders were not expecting Wayne’s attack that morning, only about five hundred warriors were in position when the battle commenced. An initial blast of Indian gunfire routed many of the Kentuckians at the head of the column, and seeing their early success, the warriors unwisely left the protection of the tangled forest and pursued the fleeing militia. Wayne brought up his regular infantry and ordered a bayonet charge against the Indian center after firing a well-directed volley into the swarming warriors. The troops performed “with spirit and promptitude,” and drove the Indians from the protection of the timber. At the same time, mounted Kentuckians under Brig. Gen. Robert Todd attacked the Indian right flank but could not cut off the warriors now fleeing that side of the field. The Legion’s cavalry on the army’s right flank made better progress against the enemy warriors in the open ground along the river, and put them to flight. Soon, all the warriors began streaming north for the protection of the British fort. The hour-long engagement produced relatively light casualties on both sides, although losses among the Indian leadership were particularly high. More importantly, the defeat ended the Indians’ cohesiveness and will to continue the war, and when the British at Fort Miamis refused to come to their aid as they fled the battleground, the Indians recognized that they no longer had an ally. The Legion proceeded to destroy the nearby crops and Indian towns with impunity.
The Road to Fallen Timbers, by H. Charles McBarron Jr.(U.S. Army Art Collection)
The army returned to Fort Defiance a few days after the battle. The troops continued to destroy Indian crops and towns along their way while enduring sporadic attacks. In mid-September, Wayne moved to the Miami villages at the head of the Maumee and St. Marys Rivers. Here the troops constructed Fort Wayne, in the heart of hostile country, left it garrisoned by one sublegion, and marched for Fort Greenville, where the army arrived on 2 November. At this post in August 1795, a coalition of Indian tribes met with General Wayne “to put an end to a destructive war, to settle all controversies, and to restore harmony and a friendly intercourse between the said United States, and Indian tribes.” Having endured the devastation of the Maumee Valley after Fallen Timbers, the tribes could no longer wage war, or even survive. Instead, they agreed to a treaty in which they gave up land that would be admitted to the Union in 1803 as the state of Ohio, along with sixteen other strategic tracts in the Northwest. After five years of bloody war, the Indian conflict in the Northwest was effectively over.
