Everything considered, the young government responded nobly to the call of its western citizens. This was its first war, and one has to know only a little of the struggles for mere equipoise and maintenance since the close of the Revolution to realize that a war at this time, of any proportions, was a most trying and exhausting undertaking. This has never been sufficiently emphasized. His first inauguration now two years past, the labors of his new honors were already bearing heavily upon the first president. If greater trials had ever been his portion, even in the struggle for independence, they had in a measure been anticipated and borne with a patience commensurate with the great interests at stake. He had been able to manoeuver his armies from red-coat generals' grasp, and the fretful complainings of the "times that tried men's souls" were alternately hushed in the presence of gloom and scattered in the hour of victory. But now the clash of personal interest and state pride rose loud about the chief executive, and advisers, who had once lost all thought of self in the common danger, now became uncertain quantities in the struggle for personal advancement, and bickered spitefully over matters of preferment and policy. The country which Washington loved never needed his services more than now when these untried problems of currency, debt, and policy--and now of war--came rapidly to the front. The President's call for militia was answered with too great alacrity. A motley collection of Kentucky militia was assembling by the middle of September, and those from Pennsylvania reached Fort Washington on the twenty-fourth. The Kentuckians were formed into three battalions under Majors Hall, M'Mullen, and Bay, commanded by Lieutenant-colonel Trotter--under whom they were anxious to serve. The Pennsylvanians were formed in one battalion under Lieutenant-colonel Trubley and Major Pond, the whole commanded by Colonel John Hardin, subject to General Harmar's orders. The regulars were formed in two battalions under Major John P. Wyllys and Major John Doughty. The company of artillery, having three pieces of ordnance, was under the command of Captain William Ferguson. A battalion of flying militia or light mounted troops was commanded by Major James Fontaine. The entire army numbered one thousand four hundred and fifty-three, of which three hundred and twenty were regulars. The "army" had assembled quickly; the stores had been forwarded to the place of rendezvous with exceeding despatch and faithfulness. The army was fatally weak in two particulars: many undisciplined old men and boys had volunteered as substitutes; and the arms, furnished by the volunteers themselves, were in lamentably poor condition. Taken all in all, with the exception of armament, which was somewhat bettered at Fort Washington, this first little American army that now began an invasion of the Maumee Valley was in no better or no worse condition than the