The devastation of the country has been spoken of with some degree of disapprobation; but this sentiment is the result rather of an amiable disposition in the human mind to condemn whatever may have the appearance of tending to aggravate the miseries of war, than of reflection. Circumstances existed which reconciled to humanity this seeming departure from it. Great Britain possessed advantages which ensured a controlling influence over the Indians, and kept them in almost continual war with the United States. Their habitual ferocity seemed to have derived increased virulence from the malignity of the whites who had taken refuge among them; and there was real foundation for the opinion that an annual repetition of the horrors of Wyoming could be prevented only by disabling the savages from perpetrating them. No means in the power of the United States promised so certainly to effect this desirable object, as the removal of neighbours whose hostility could be diminished only by terror, and whose resentments were to be assuaged only by fear. While Sullivan laid waste the country on the Susquehanna, another expedition under Colonel Brodhead, was carried on from Pittsburg up the Alleghany, against the Mingo, Munscy, and Seneca tribes. At the head of between six and seven hundred men, he advanced two hundred miles up the river, and destroyed the villages and corn-fields on its head branches. Here too the Indians were unable to resist the invading army. After one unsuccessful skirmish, they abandoned their villages to a destruction which was inevitable, and sought for personal safety in their woods. On receiving the communications of General Sullivan, congress passed a vote approving his conduct, and that of his army. That approbation, however, seems not to have extended beyond his conduct in the Indian country. His demands for military stores for the expedition had been so high; in his conversations with his officers, he had so freely censured the government for its failure to comply with those demands; in general orders, he had so openly complained of inattention to the preparations necessary to secure the success of the enterprise; that considerable offence was given to several members of congress, and still more to the board of war. From the operation of these causes, when Sullivan, at the close of the campaign, complained of ill health, and offered, on that account, to resign his commission, the endeavours of his friends to obtain a vote requesting him to continue in the service, and permitting him to retire from actual duty until his health should be restored, were overruled; and his resignation was accepted. The resolution permitting him to resign was, however, accompanied with one thanking him for his past services.