The Winning of the West, Volume 4: Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 4: Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
Towards the end of the summer of '92 he established his camp on the Ohio
about twenty-seven miles below Pittsburgh. He drilled both officers and
men with unwearied patience, and gradually the officers became able to
do the drilling themselves, while the men acquired the soldierly
self-confidence of veterans. As the new recruits came in they found
themselves with an army which was rapidly learning how to manoeuvre with
precision, to obey orders unhesitatingly, and to look forward eagerly to
a battle with the foe. Throughout the winter Wayne kept at work, and by
the spring he had under him twenty-five hundred regular soldiers who
were already worthy to be trusted in a campaign. He never relaxed his
efforts to improve them; though a man of weaker stuff might well have
been discouraged by the timid and hesitating policy of the National
Government. The Secretary of War, in writing to him, laid stress chiefly
on the fact that the American people desired at every hazard to avert an
Indian war, and that on no account should offensive operations be
undertaken against the tribes. Such orders tied Wayne's hands, for
offensive operations offered the only means of ending the war; but he
patiently bided his time, and made ready his army against the day when
his superiors should allow him to use the weapon he had tempered.
In Spring He Shifts His Camp to Near Cincinnati.
His Second Winter Camp at Greeneville.
In May, '93, he brought his army down the Ohio to Fort Washington, and
near it established a camp which he christened Hobson's Choice. Here he
was forced to wait the results of the fruitless negotiations carried on
by the United States Peace Commissioners, and it was not until about the
1st of October that he was given permission to begin the campaign. Even
when he was allowed to move his army forward he was fettered by
injunctions not to run any risks--and of course a really good fighting
general ought to be prepared to run risks. The Secretary of War wrote
him that above all things he was to remember to hazard nothing, for a
defeat would be fraught with ruinous consequences to the country. Wayne
knew very well that if such was the temper of the country and the
Government, it behooved him to be cautious, and he answered that, though
he would at once advance towards the Indian towns, to threaten the
tribes, he would not run the least unnecessary risk. Accordingly he
shifted his army to a place some eighty miles north of Cincinnati,
where he encamped for the winter, building a place of strength which he
named Greeneville in honor of his old comrade in arms, General Greene.
He sent forward a strong detachment of his troops to the site of St.
Clair's defeat, where they built a post which was named Fort Recovery.
The discipline of the army steadily improved, though now and then a
soldier deserted, usually fleeing to Kentucky, but in one or two cases
striking through the woods to Detroit. The bands of auxiliary militia
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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