had many dealings with the Indians since 1790, and it is of some comfort to rest assured that our first Indian war was eminently just and right. 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." [Illustration: A PART OF ARROWSMITH'S MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, 1796] [_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.