[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
BICENTENNIAL OF THE BATTLE OF FALLEN TIMBERS
Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, tomorrow, August 20, is the 200th
anniversity of Gen. Mad Anthony Wayne's victory over a confederation of
Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers along the Maumee River near
Toledo, OH. For many the battle and its general have slipped from
memory. But the names remain all across the landscape of western Ohio
and southern Michigan. This year many Ohioans remember the significance
of this important event.
President George Washington directed General Wayne and the Nation's
first professional army to deal with the western Indian trouble; 200
years ago places such as Fort Defiance, Fort Recovery, and Fallen
Timbers became legend. The battle and the subsequent Treaty of Greene
Ville, ended the Indian wars in Ohio and opened the Northwest
territories to settlement.
The Battle of Fallen Timbers took place on August 20, 1794, and
actually lasted only about an hour. Wayne with his 1,500 regular troops
and 2,000 Kentucky militia outnumbered the confederated Indian forces.
Wayne was tempestuous and knew success in the Revolutionary War as a
fighting military officer. He was a strict disciplinarian and looked
out for his men. Wayne had his flaws but he was merciless on himself.
Three weeks before the battle, a tree fell on him and nearly killed
him. Despite internal injuries and gout, he was on the frontlines of
the battle, urging his men to fight.
Mr. President, on this anniversary of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, I
note the significance of this historical event and I ask that an
article entitled Mad Anthony's Battle by Randy McNutt that was
published in the August 1994 issue of Ohio magazine appear in the
Congressional Record.
[From Ohio Magazine, August 1994]
Mad Anthony's Battle
(By Randy McNutt)
Once, Anthony Wayne's fame hung over Hamilton like a
crescent moon. As a boy I thought Wayne had been president.
We passed signs for Wayne Trace Road; Fort Wayne, Indiana;
Waynesville, Ohio; Wayne Township and the Anthony Wayne
Parkway, better known as U.S. Route 127. Once, my father took
us through two Wayne counties, in central Ohio and southern
Michigan, and every year my family shopped at Hamilton's Mad
Anthony Day Sale. While downtown, I admired the Anthony Wayne
Hotel, the architectural tribute to Wayne's good name and for
years Hamilton's social focal point. Today, I'm sorry to say,
the elegant 1920s hotel sits empty, facing resurrection or
the wrecking ball, and Wayne's memory isn't much different.
Two hundred years after his greatest victory, Anthony Wayne
is still Ohio's most ubiquitous name. No other pioneer is so
easily recognized, no other so equally forgotten. On August
20, 1794, his army defeated a coalition of Indian tribes in
the Battle of Fallen Timbers. He was born to win this battle,
although once he was more famous for other ones. Probably the
bicentennial will come and go without much reflection,
despite its significance: Fallen Timbers opened the Ohio
country to settlers and led to statehood in 1803.
History is anything that happened before Vietnam, thereby
making Gen. Anthony Wayne prehistoric. Before television
clouded our historic depth perception, people in Hamilton, my
hometown, remembered him as a hero. What they may not have
realized, however, was that without Wayne's victory, their
town--and many others--might not exist. Already the Indians
had defeated undisciplined volunteer armies under Gen. Josiah
Harmar in 1790 and territorial Gov. Arthur St. Clair in 1791.
St. Clair's defeat--he lost almost half his 2,000 men--
presented an enormous setback. It's still one of America's
worst defeats. A slaughter. If Wayne had lost, the young
nation might have signed a treaty with the Indians, cutting
off the flow of settlers to the West at a critical time and
changing American history. Northern Ohio might be an Indian
buffer zone or a part of Canada.
Ironically the biggest battle ever fought on Ohio soil--and
possibly the era's most important one--was an anti-climax.
Both sides had anticipated the battle for months, but when
the shooting stopped, fewer than 50 soldiers lay dead. Troops
complained more about ague than Indians that week, yet Fallen
Timbers veterans became mythical heroes. Today, the battle
site is a pleasant park with an understated monument. You
wouldn't know that the place is a famous old battleground, or
that Wayne, whose name adorns many public buildings and
political subdivisions in Ohio, spent less than four years in
the area.
But here he trained the nation's first professional army,
opened the Northeast Territory to settlers, won the long
Indian war and signed a treaty with the tribes that ceded
much of what would become Ohio to the United States.
Naturally, his popularity haunted the region; states and
communities honored him. Besides George Washington, Wayne was
the old Northwest Territory's most praiseworthy figure.
Some people in my town have heard his name so often that
they assume he built Fort Hamilton. Actually he took it over
from St. Clair, who named it for Alexander Hamilton,
secretary of the treasury. The fort grew into the town of
Hamilton, complete with paintings and other reminders of
Wayne. I have never seen a portrait of St. Clair in town.
About 1900 the community built a fancy Memorial Building to
honor its soldiers and pioneers. To mark the location of the
fort, builders erected limestone stockades and blockhouses
near the Great Miami. These days, only visitors stop long
enough to notice the stone oddities, and rarely does anybody
invoke the name of Wayne. Yet somehow his aura faintly
shines, as though he were an ancient god.
Anthony Wayne, Ohio icon, was born not in the Northwest
Territory but in Easttown Township, Pennsylvania in 1745. He
studied surveying as a young man, grew bored, entered
politics, ran off to war as a colonel in Pennsylvania's
Revolutionary militia, slept on the ground when he had to,
ignored his wife for years, paid too much attention to
another woman, took command of his unit and captured
Ticonderoga, told George Washington he'd storm Hell itself
for him, was appointed major general, was grazed on the head
by a musket ball but continued to fight, went to Congress but
was defeated for re-election, headed west as commander of the
first U.S. Army, wrapped himself in flannel bandages when the
pain of gout became unbearable, longed to leave the field to
become Secretary of War, tried various investments without
much success, argued bitterly with some of his generals and
died disappointed and in pain.
All his life, he acted confidently--too cocky for his
colleagues' tastes. One general called Wayne a blockhead.
Friends and enemies alike agreed that he sought to attract
attention to himself by boasting and posturing, but he backed
up his talk with his prowess on the battlefield. For example,
he incorporated centuries of European military tactics into
his strategies, but on the frontier he realized that man-to-
man fighting--not walls of soliders--worked better. What
didn't change with the territory was his love for front-line
action, and the thrill of a righteous fight. ``He may at
times have seemed eager, even lustful, for combat,''
biographer Glenn Tucker wrote.'' He was frankly a tradesman
in slaughter, a devotee of inflicting death.''
Sent west in 1794 to salvage the new republic's battered
military position, Wayne had to fight two wars
simultaneously--on the frontier and on the bureaucratic front
back east, where anti-Federalist politicians and high-ranking
officers tried to discredit him at every bend. Their
criticism, though intense, didn't diminish his reputation as
a commander. As Theodore Roosevelt pointed out, Wayne was
America's best fighting general. Like Patton, however, Wayne
could thrive only in the turbulent years of war. If he hadn't
become a soldier, he would have ended up a politician, for
both occupations require the killer instinct.
As an early proponent of quick and concentrated force--a
bayonet blitzkrieg--Wayne's theory of fighting was: When in
doubt, attack. ``The enemy,'' he explained, ``are taught to
dread--and our soldiery to believe--in the Bayonet.'' During
the Revolution, on the night before the Battle of Monmouth,
Washington asked his generals if he should hit Sir Henry
Clinton's forces as they crossed New Jersey. Most of them
said no. ``Fight, sir!'' said Wayne. At the war's end, he had
established a dual reputation--one of the Revolution's most
respected generals, behind Washington, Lafayette and
Nathanael Greene, and also a tempestuous dandy who swore
compulsively, dressed in full military regalia and enjoyed
playing the general's role. He acquired the nickname ``Mad''
Anthony from an angry scout who had been lashed, some
historians think, or after he made some brash move at the
Battle of Green Spring Farm in 1781. Despite the nickname,
Wayne's madness always had method. No detail escaped his
scrutiny.
At the same time, he often made rash statements that riled
his troops and enemies. He once said, ``A bloody track will
mark my setting sun,'' and soldiers took it literally. They
wondered if it was their blood. His comments received so much
attention in the newspapers that not even his admirers could
separate the words of Mad Anthony from those of Gen. Wayne.
In exasperation, Washington said Wayne could ``fight as well
as brag,'' but admitted that Wayne was ``more active and
enterprising than judicious and cautious.'' Henry ``Light
Horse Harry'' Lee, who sensed Wayne's special need for war,
put it more candidly: ``Wayne had a constitutional attachment
to the sword.''
His soldiers, of course, did not always share his views of
battle. Many admired his courage and attention to detail, but
just as many thought he lacked compassion for them. ``Wayne
brutally overrode his subordinates,'' observes Larry Nelson,
manager of Fort Meigs State Memorial in Lucas County. ``Some
people romanticize this aspect of his personality and say
such stern treatment was good for discipline. The truth is,
his men and the Indians found Wayne hard to cope with. He was
not well-liked by any means. A definite camp supported him,
but another did not. At Fort Adams, a tree fell and almost
crushed him while he was in his tent one night--possibily an
assassination attempt. It is believed that Gen. Wilkinson,
Wayne's second in command, was responsible.'' Tough exterior
notwithstanding, Wayne was no more vicious than other
generals of the period, maintains Floyd Barmann, director of
the Clark County Historical Society and commander of the
First American Regiment re-enactment group. ``He wanted to
make sure his men did what they were supposed to do,''
Barmann says. ``It was a difficult period''
During the Revolution, Wayne once challenged a group of
angry soldiers to shoot him. They declined, mostly because he
acted so arrogantly. Another time, 12 soldiers were convicted
of refusing to march. They were shot by a firing squad, but
one lay wounded. Wayne ordered a soldier to kill the man with
a bayonet, but the soldier refused, saying he was a friend.
Wayne held a pistol against the squad member's head,
threatened to shoot and the order was obeyed. Wayne didn't
change his harsh disciplinary practices in 1792, when
Congress voted to raise a professional army and President
Washington asked Wayne to lead it. If anything, he became
more authoritarian. Wayne called his army the Legion of the
United States, and of it he demanded professionalism. ``When
he speaks Heaven shrieks,'' one officer wrote, ``and all
stand in awe.''
Wayne thought American troops should look like soldiers--no
beards, no sloppy uniforms, no drinking on duty. ``I have an
inseparable bias of an elegant uniform and soldierly
appearance,'' he said. ``I would rather risk my life and
reputation at the head of the same men in an attack, merely
with bayonets and single charge of ammunition, than to take
them as they appear in common with 60 rounds of cartridges.''
Trained by the spring of 1793, Wayne's army left its
Pennsylvania camp for a new one near Cincinnati. Soldiers
were restless; the weather was harsh. Pay suddenly stopped
when a yellow fever epidemic hit Washington, forcing
government workers to temporarily flee the city. Enraged by
an increasing number of desertions, Wayne ordered his
blacksmiths to forge branding irons marked ``deserter.''
Before Wayne could test them, Secretary of War Henry Knox
forbade their use. Knox, a Wayne supporter, knew Wayne's
enemies would use such an incident against him.
Wayne marched north from Cincinnati in the fall of 1793
with more than 3,600 regulars, to build a series of forts
between the Ohio and the Maumee rivers. They included Fort
Greene Ville, Fort Defiance, Fort Jefferson, Fort St. Clair
and, on the site of Arthur St. Clair's defeat, Fort Recovery.
Watching this ominous advance, Little Turtle, the tribes' top
strategist in the Northwest, warned that Wayne was too
formidable. ``We have beaten the enemy twice under different
commanders,'' he told them. ``We cannot expect the same good
fortune to attend us always. The Americans are now led by a
chief who never sleeps. The nights and days are alike to him,
and during all the time he has been marching on our villages,
notwithstanding the watchfulness of our young men, we have
never been able to surprise him. It would be prudent to
listen to his offers of peace.''
The Legion's route north, roughly where Route 127 is today,
went through flat land then filled with trees and swamps. The
Indians--even his own troops--expected Wayne to follow the
path of previous American armies, but Wayne circulated rumors
that he would attack Indian tribes to his right and left.
Surprised warriors rushed to defend their homes, leaving the
Legion free to walk up the middle of western Ohio's Indian
country. On August 19, 11 days after leaving Greene Ville,
the Legion had marched 77 back-breaking miles through the
wilderness. By this time, Wayne spoke incoherently and he was
oblivious to the hardships of his troops. Privately he
predicted his death in battle soon. Near the Maumee, the
Legion waited, although Wayne still didn't think the Indians
were ready to fight. Brig. Gen. James Wilkinson, Wayne's old
nemesis and subordinate, bet him a cask of wine that the
Indians would fight. Wilkinson, who preferred traditional
methods of fighting and wrote anonymous newspaper attacks on
the commander, often questioned Wayne's competence and
credibility.
On the morning of August 20, Wayne woke in agony. Tears
moistened his face. His gout had returned in crippling force,
so he told his men to wrap bandages around his arms and legs
and to lift him onto his horse. Lt. William Henry Harrison
said, ``General, I'm afraid you'll get into the fight
yourself and give the necessary field orders.'' Wayne
replied, ``And if I do, recollect that the standing order of
the day is, `Charge the damned rascals with the bayonets!'''
By 8 a.m., a light rain ended and the sun came out. As the
soldiers pushed forward, an Indian force estimated at from
1,000 to 2,000 warriors attacked the Legion's front line,
which faltered. Ignoring his pain, Wayne rode to the front
and urged his men to fight in the tall grass and decayed
timber that had been recently blown over by a tornado.
Soldiers howled as they swept into the woods, stabbing and
firing. The bloodiest combat lasted no more than 40 minutes.
By some accounts, the Legion suffered only 28 deaths and 100
wounded. Forty Indians lay scattered in the woods, but Wayne
thought more bodies had been carried away. Shaken by the
severity of the brief attack, the Indians ran to Fort Miami,
but the British would not let them enter. Wayne walked close
to the fort to taunt the British. When they wouldn't fight,
Wayne ordered the Legion to set fire to cornfields and
prairies around the fort.
If Wayne had retired immediately after his victory, his
name still would have echoed throughout Ohio for the next two
centuries. But he continued to make history: he negotiated a
landmark treaty that allowed settlers the right to live in
territory from the Ohio to a line starting at Fort Recovery
and extending northeast to the Cuyahoga. Knowing the
countryside was secure, Wayne moved on to other duties in
Detroit. In December of 1796, on his way back to
Pennsylvania, he suffered a reoccurrence of the gout, the
disease that had plagued him for so long, and after a week of
high fever he died in the Presque Isle blockhouse. He was
only 51. Shortly before his death, he had asked to be
buried--in full uniform, of course--on Garrison Hill, by a
flagpole. He rested there until 1809, when the Society of
Cincinnati inquired about burying him with his family in a
Radnor churchyard. Wayne's son, Isaac, went to Erie in a
sulky to dig up his father. Aided by Wayne's old Legion
physician, J.G. Wallace, Isaac Wayne found the general well-
preserved. The problem: How could Isaac carry his father's
body to Radnor in a sulky? Wallace decided to boil the body,
strip flesh from bone, send the flesh back to the Erie
gravesite for reburial, and to present the bones to Isaac.
For his trouble, Wallace ended up in a major scandal, for as
he learned, one doesn't dig up icons that easily. Meanwhile,
Isaac Wayne arrived in Radnor with the skeleton, which was
buried, appropriately enough, on July 4, 1809, giving the
general the distinction of being the only American hero with
two gravesites.
Even in death, Anthony Wayne somehow managed to attract
attention.
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