CHAPTER keep the neighboring Indians in awe. Twenty-four miles

IV. north of Fort Washington, under whose guns the infant 1791. city of Cincinnati was slowly rising, Fort Hamilton was built on the Miami; and forty-four miles further north, Fort Jefferson, near the present dividing line between the states of Ohio and Indiana. Several hundred KenOct. 24. tucky militia having joined the army, the march for the Maumee was presently resumed. These militia, composed mostly of substitutes, were regardless of discipline and totally ungovernable. The levies also, who had been supplied with very inferior clothing, were in a discontented state, and the term of that part of them who had been earliest enlisted was just about to expire. As a road had to be opened, and as supplies of provisions were very irregularly furnished by the contractors, the progress of the army was exceedingly slow. A week Oct. 31. after the advance from Fort Jefferson, sixty of the militia deserted in a body. Lest these deserters might plunder the approaching trains of provision wagons, and thus still further delay the march, that part of the first regiment employed in the expedition was detached to meet the wagons and escort them to the camp. Piamingo, the Mountain Leader, with a band of Chickasaw warriors, had hitherto attended the army; but these auxiliaries now withdrew, as if foreseeing the probable result. Reduced by garrisons and detachments to fourteen hundred effective men, after two weeks spent in an advance of twenty-nine miles from Fort Jefferson, the expedition reached at length the southwesternmost head waters of the Wabash, which St. Clair seems to have mistaken for those of the St. Mary's, a tributary of the Maumee. few Indians were seen, but they fled with precipitation, and the day being nearly spent, the troops encamped, the regulars and levies in two lines, covered by the stream,

A

the militia about a quarter of other side of it.

mile in advance on the CHAPTER

IV.

Early the next morning, about sunrise, just as the 1791. troops were dismissed from parade, the camp of the mi- Nov. 4. litia was suddenly attacked. The regulars who composed the first line on the other side of the stream formed at the first alarm; but the flying militia, rushing pellmell upon them, threw them into disorder. Closely following up the fugitives, and taking advantage of this confusion, firing from the ground or the shelter afforded by the scattered trees and bushes, and scarcely seen except when springing from one covert to another, the Indians advanced in front and on either flank close upon the American lines, and up to the very mouths of the field-pieces, from which the men were repeatedly driven with slaughter. The front line of regulars never recovered from its first confusion. The second line made several charges with the bayonet, before which the Indians gave way; but they soon rallied, and renewed the attack as fiercely as ever. In these charges many officers fellGeneral Butler, among the rest, with a mortal wound. The Indians had gained the left flank of the encampment. Half the force had already been killed or disabled. The survivors flocked together in crowded confusion, and were shot down almost without resistance. The artillery was left without a man to work the guns. St. Clair lay helpless in his tent, suffering from severe disease, and not able to mount his horse without assistance. A large proportion of the officers had already fallen in their attempts to rally and lead on their men. It was apparent that nothing but instant retreat could save the remnant of the army from total destruction.

The shattered troops

were collected toward the right of the encampment; a charge was made, as if to turn the right flank of the en

IV.

CHAPTER emy; the road was gained; the militia took the lead; and Major Clarke, with his battalion of regulars, cov1791. ered the rear. The retreat was most disorderly; in fact, a precipitate flight. Not only were the baggage and artillery abandoned, but the greater part of the men threw away their arms and accouterments. The Indians soon gave over the pursuit; but the flying troops did not stop till they reached Fort Jefferson, where they arrived about sunset completely exhausted, one day's flight having carried them over the space of a fortnight's advance. Here the first regiment was found about three hundred strong. Its presence in the field, in St. Clair's opinion, would not have altered the fortune of the day, as the troops possessed too little discipline to recover from their first confusion, while its destruction would have completed the triumph of the enemy, and left the frontier without any organized defense. There was no sufficient supply of provisions at Fort Jefferson, and, leaving the wounded there, the army fell back to Fort Washington, its point of departure. The loss in this disastrous enterprise amounted to upward of nine hundred men, including fifty-nine officers. The killed reached the unusual proportion of six hundred. Of the force and loss of the Indians no very distinct account was ever obtained. They were supposed to have numbered from a thousand to fifteen hundred, including a proportion of half-breeds and refugees, among them the notorious Simon Girty, active, for many years past, in the war against Kentucky. The principal leader was said to have been Little Turtle, a chief of the Miamis, who had led in the attack on Harmer the year before.

The repulse of St. Clair produced the greatest alarm on the whole northwestern frontier, extending even to Pittsburg; but the Indians failed to follow up their ad

vantage.

IV.

About two months after the battle, Wilkin- CHAPTER son, who had meanwhile been appointed to command the second regiment, marched from Fort Jefferson, with two 1791. companies of regulars and a hundred and fifty mounted volunteers, to visit the field. Though covered with snow a foot deep, it presented a horrid spectacle. The dead were buried; one piece of cannon was brought off; the carriages of the other pieces remained, but the guns themselves were not to be found. There was not a tree or bush in the neighborhood not marked by musket-balls. No Indians any where appeared. Yet, during Wilkinson's absence from Fort Jefferson, a party of the garrison, having wandered a mile or two from the fort, had been set upon, and several of them killed.

On the very day that St. Clair set out on his unfor- Oct. 24. tunate march from Fort Jefferson, the second Congress, in conformity to an act of the last session, anticipating the usual day of meeting, had assembled at Philadelphia. Though the greater part of the retiring senators had been re-elected, some changes had taken place in that body. Preferring to confine himself to his duties as President of Columbia College, Johnson had resigned, and his seat as senator from Connecticut was filled by the venerable Sherman. Another new member was George Cabot, of Massachusetts, since Bowdoin's recent death the most distinguished merchant of New England. Bred originally a ship-master, by sagacity in mercantile matters he had acquired an ample fortune, and being much more than a mere merchant, endowed with a vigorous and comprehensive understanding, at the same time a reader of books and an observer of men, few persons were better qualified for the difficult task of judicious legislation. Moses Robinson, once governor and repeatedly chief justice of Vermont, appeared as one of the senators for that

IV.

CHAPTER new state; the other was Stephen W. Bradley, long a very active politician. But the most remarkable of the 1791. new senators was Aaron Burr, of New York, successor to General Schuyler. There was a majority of Federalists in the New York Assembly sufficient to have secured the re-election of Schuyler; but the plain, downright, and not very ceremonious manners of the old general placed him at decided disadvantage when compared with the artful, affable, and fascinating Burr. In the late gubernatorial contest Burr had supported the anti-Clintonian candidate, and he doubtless succeeded in satisfying the Federalists that he, as well as Schuyler, was on their side. Burr's grandfather was a German, who had settled originally in Fairfield, in Connecticut; his father, minister of Newark, in New Jersey, was the first President of Princeton College; his mother was a daughter of the celebrated Jonathan Edwards. After graduating at Princeton at an early age, he had commenced the study of the law; but the war of the Revolution breaking out, he had joined the camp before Boston, and had followed Arnold in his expedition to Canada. Montgomery appointed him an aid-de-camp, and he stood at that general's side when he was killed in the assault on Quebec. He was afterward an aid-de-camp to Putnam, in which capacity he served during the retreat from New York. Upon the organization of the permanent army he was so fortunate as to obtain the command of one of the New York battalions. Not thinking himself sufficiently noticed by Washington, who seems to have early penetrated his character, he conceived a bitter hostility against the commander-in-chief, and actively participated in the intrigue of Conway and Mifflin. He also sided with Lee in the difficulty growing out of the battle of Monmouth, in which engagement Burr bore a part. After