END OF AN ARMY
George Washington received word of the disaster one evening in early November 1791 while entertaining guests at the Executive Mansion on Market Street in Philadelphia. His secretary, Tobias Lear, discreetly whispered in the president’s ear as he sat at the head of the dinner table. Although accustomed to receiving bad news during his long and tumultuous career, Washington was stunned by what he heard. The U.S. Army, under the command of Maj. Gen. Arthur St. Clair, had been annihilated by a confederation of Indian tribes along the Wabash River in the Northwest Territory.
Among the president’s many attributes was tremendous self-control. Returning to dinner that evening, he apologized for his absence and resumed his role as gracious host. Only after his guests had departed did Washington’s rage surface. “It’s all over!” he cried out to his startled secretary. “St. Clair is defeated—routed!” Pacing the room in agitation, he again exploded. “Here on this very spot I took leave of him. ‘You have your instructions,’ I said, ‘from the secretary of war. I had a strict eye to [the Indians] and will add but one word—beware of a surprise. I repeat it, beware of a surprise—you know how Indians fight us.’ He went off with that as my last solemn warning thrown into his ears.”
The warning had gone unheeded and the Army had been destroyed. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” exclaimed Washington in despair and anger at St. Clair’s folly. “He’s worse than a murderer!”
to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris at the close of the American Revolution. Engulfed in a global war with France, eager to end the drawn-out and costly conflict with its rebellious colonies, and cognizant of the near impossibility of defending the territory from French, Spanish, and American encroachment, Britain granted the new nation a quarter-million square miles of wilderness.
