The boundary agreed upon in the treaty of peace with England gave to the United States all that part of the northwest which lay south of a line drawn through the Great Lakes and through a chain of watercourses to the Lake of the Woods, and eastward of the Mississippi, together with the right to navigate that great river.
The fine country which was thus accorded to us was an object of great consideration to the British people of Canada. It was the source of an excellent fur supply, and the rich traders of Quebec and Detroit did not relish having to surrender it to a power which would divert the fur-trade to the Ohio. It was also the key to the upper tributaries of the Mississippi; and Canadian officials believed that, if a certain western part of it were retained permanently under the flag of their nation, it would be a stepping-stone to large territorial developments beyond the great river. Canadian interests, therefore, were against the formal surrender of this region, and a way was found to impress their ideals rather strongly on the government in London.
This region was chiefly unsettled in 1789, but it was held in a military sense by the posts of Michilimackinac, Detroit, Fort Erie, Niagara, Oswego, Oswegatchie (on the St. Lawrence), and Point-au-Fer and Dutchman's Point (on Lake Champlain). England still refused to surrender these posts, hoping, no doubt, that the chaotic government under the Confederation would never be able to demand them. In fact, there was a good pretence for holding them: the treaty of peace stipulated that the states should not interfere with the collection of debts which Americans had owed to British subjects at the outbreak of the Revolution, and that Congress should recommend to the states the repeal of certain severe laws against the Loyalists. The recommendations were duly made, but the states paid very little attention to them. The English claimed that they had agreed to the treaty because they were assured that such a recommendation would have a compelling moral force on the states. The Americans replied that the English must be supposed to know the powers of the Confederation, and that they could not have deluded themselves as to the exact value of the promise.
Another cause of disagreement was the provision that the British would carry away no slaves from the places they then held; but it was alleged that in contravention of this they had taken away some thousands of negroes from New York and the southern ports, and no compensation had been paid. The Americans alleged that the failure to make restitution justified the states in disregarding the recommendations of Congress as to the Loyalists. Thus it hiappened that when the national government began we had a dispute with England over the execution of the treaty, each side charging the other with having first failed to keep its obligations. The truth of the matter was that each side had been wrong, and that each desired to put the blame on the other.
Two other matters served to vex our relations with the mother-country when Washington entered the presidency. First, never since our independence was acknowledged had England sent us a minister, though John Adams had been duly commissioned in 1785; and, secondly, England steadily refused to make a treaty of commerce. As coming from a foreign country, American trade was submitted to all the inconveniences of the British navigation laws, which seriously crippled the former trade with the West Indies, and complaint from New England was loud and insistent. It was believed by many that the purpose of this course was to make the states feel as much as possible the inconveniences of separation, so that they might be the more willing to come back to their old allegiance.
Washington early turned his thoughts to these affairs. In the autumn of 1789 he authorized Gouverneur Morris to go to London as an informal agent to ascertain if the treaty would be executed, and if a treaty of commerce would be made or a minister sent. Morris waited patiently at the court from March till December, with no other answer to his inquiries than soft words and the assurance that a minister would be sent. He was convinced that a majority of the ministry were in favor of continuing the existing policy; and the best suggestion he could make was that we should threaten retaliation against England and come closer to France, in order to reach the British merchants, who really controlled the situation.
Before this report was made. Great Britain had reason to think very carefully about her course in America. In the autumn of 1789 a controversy arose with Spain over trade on the northwest coast of America. It lasted till the treaty of Nootka Sound in 1790, and for some months it seemed that war must begin. Some persons in England and some in America hoped that in such an event the two nations might be found acting together in mutual support. Whatever England may have thought of these plans, it was certainly good policy, in view of possible developments, to have a minister in Philadelphia.
This controversy gave Washington much concern of another kind: if war should come between England and Spain, it could not be doubted that England would attack Louisiana from Canada. What ought to be our course if England should march through our territory to the upper Mississippi? To the inquiries of the president, Hamilton replied by suggesting that we cooperate with England against Spain; he was doubtful whether we should ever need the west bank of the great river. Jefferson argued that we ought to make an alliance with Spain and if possible draw France into it. Fortunately, England and Spain settled their difficulty amicably, and it was not necessary for Washington to press the matter to a decision.
Early in 1790 there arrived in New York from Quebec a Major Beckwith, who announced that he was authorized to speak in an informal way for Lord Dorchester, the governor of Canada. His business was really to keep his superior informed of the progress of affairs in relation to the northwest and to act in other matters as an unrecognized diplomatic agent. Arriving before Jefferson entered office, he never transacted business with the secretary of state, but estabhshed relations with the secretary of the treasury. In the autumn of 1791 he was superseded by Hammond, the regular minister from England; and thereupon the United States sent Thomas Pinckney to represent them in London.
Hammond and Jefferson at once fell into a profitless discussion as to the execution of the treaty. Each charged the nation of the other with first violating it, but still no steps were taken to put it into execution. On the question of a commercial treaty, Hammond had received no instructions, though he professed himself ready to discuss proposals to that effect subject to the approval of his government. It was evident that he came to continue the old policy of delay.
While these dilatory negotiations were going on, affairs on the northwestern boundary were assuming an aspect which threatened to produce serious relations with England. The Indians on the Maumee and Wabash rivers were in a state of ferment because of the advance of the white settlers across the Ohio. By a treaty at Fort Harmar in 1789, a certain large strip of land beyond this river was ceded; but the Indians claimed that it was secured by fraud from a few of the tribes, and that it was not binding on all, and the treaty was the subject of prolonged discussion.
The British in Canada could not observe this dispute without taking a part in it. They had two reasons for desiring that the Indians be not disturbed in their lands: there was a rich fur-trade from this region to the St. Lawrence, and all those who were concerned in it feared that they would be undone if the Indians should come under the influence of the people who lived on the Ohio; moreover, the Canadian officials were deeply convinced that the western posts should never be given up, and the attacks which were threatened by the United States against the Indians they always construed into disguised attacks on the posts. Traders and officials, therefore, gave constant countenance to the grievances of the Indians, and distributed presents of ammunition and supplies among them. They claimed that their presents were only the supplies which they were accustomed to give in times of peace; but it is certain that they did not try to induce the Indians to use them peaceably. The assistance the savages were wont to receive in an unofficial way from the officials of Canada was little short of the aid given ordinarily to an open ally.
General Arthur St. Clair was appointed governor of the Northwest Territory in 1789. He was a man of good impulses, a successful subordinate, but not fitted to have supreme control in a delicate situation.
When he arrived on the Ohio he found that all indications pointed to an Indian war. His first act was to send General Harmar with about fifteen hundred men against the Indians on the Maumee. In this expedition a large number of huts were destroyed and a quantity of corn was burned; but the permanent effect on the savages was not great. Hard on Harmar's rear they followed as he returned to the south, and the scalping-parties infested the settlements as before.
Preparations were now made on a larger scale to chastise the Indians into obedience. In 1791 Congress voted two thousand troops to serve six months, and authorized the calling out of mounted militia. St. Clair proceeded to prepare for a stroke, but he was much delayed; the recruits sent him were levied from the idlers of the eastern cities, and the supplies came slowly and in scant quantities. Not till October 3, 1791, could he march with two thousand men out of Fort Washington at Cincinnati on the proposed campaign. By slow stages and with little caution he penetrated the northern forest, till on November 4 he found himself suddenly surrounded by the enemy. He had marched so carelessly that he was taken at complete disadvantage, and his scattered troops could not form a battle-line. Falling on every side, they fired with little effect at the concealed foe, till in desperation St. Clair ordered them to break through the circle which surrounded them and regain the road by which they had approached.
The command was obeyed; and the enemy gave up the chase in order to secure the plunder which had been left on the field. Only fifty of the fourteen hundred Americans in the fight were uninjured.
In Philadelphia the tidings caused consternation. It was the first war the new government had fought, and the result was inglorious. Washington, usually a man of much equanimity, gave himself up to a fit of violent rage when he heard of it. The opponents of the administration were inclined to carp, but both parties united in asking for an investigation. It was duly granted, and St. Clair was held guiltless of wrong-doing; but he resigned his military command, although he retained his civil governorship.
The Indians now became more active and daring than ever. They continued their raids into the settlements, and they boldly demanded that all the land north of the Ohio and west of the Muskingum should be left to them. Brant, the famous Mohawk, was acting in their behalf, visiting many tribes throughout the northwest, and urging that it was now time to stand together in behalf of their hunting-grounds. The British gave countenance to them and hinted rather broadly that it would be right to create a neutral zone running from Lake Ontario through the upper northwest to the Mississippi, to be surrendered to the savages in sovereignty and safeguarded as a buffer state. The manifest result of such a plan would be to put this buffer state into the hands of the British.
Anthony Wayne was next appointed to succeed to the command on the Ohio. He was ordered to prepare a sufficient force and subdue the hostiles. From the autumn of 1792 till late in 1793 he gave himself up to drilling the new army which he collected at Fort Washington. In the summer of 1793 an effort was made at negotiation, through the good offices of the Senecas. The only result was that the Maumees and the Wabash Indians agreed that they would hold a general council in the following year, and that in the mean time each side would confine itself to defensive measures. A great council was accordingly held at Sandusky in the summer of 1793. Washington sent commissioners to it, although few of his friends thought that any good could come of it. There were, however, many indications that the Indians would accept a compromise. But at the last moment the sentiment for conciliation was dissipated through the efforts of the British traders and of Simcoe, governor of lower Canada. The council broke up, and on October 7 Wayne moved with twenty-six hundred troops into the Indian country. He built Fort Greenville, about seventy-five miles north of Cincinnati, and took his forces into winter quarters there. The long and hard drill he was giving them was transforming them into veterans.
In the mean time, relations with the British were dangerously near the point of hostilities. The officials on the Canadian frontier expected that Wayne would surely attack the retained posts. Detroit seemed to them to be his real objective. To protect it they sent a detachment to the rapids of the Maumee, sixty miles to the southward, where a fort was built and occupied. This action was entirely a violation of the treaty of 1783, for the spot was in no sense British territory. The excuse that it was a part of the defences of Detroit had but a semblance of truth. In America the effect was decided, and Washington, who was always for peace, ordered Wayne to reduce it if it stood in his way.
A still more aggravating circumstance was a speech which Dorchester, the governor of Canada, made in February, 1794, to a delegation of the hostile Indians. He told them that the United States had not kept their treaty, that the settlements in the disputed Northwest Territory were unauthorized, and that it was probable that the British and the Americans would be at war within a year, when the Indians might recover their lands with the improvements. This speech was widely circulated among the savages, where it made a deep impression. In Philadelphia it also caused much excitement. The partisans of England said that it was too absurd to be true, and the British minister tried to parry the effects of it by saying that if it had been uttered it was only a private speech; but the administration responded that the effects on the Indians were the same whether it was private or official. The English government was not so war-like as that of Canada, and rebuked Dorchester in private for his ill-advised words.
In June, 1794, Wayne was joined in his camp at Greenville by sixteen hundred mounted militia from Kentucky, and soon afterwards he began his advance. At the point where the Auglaise joins the Maimiee he erected works which he called Fort Defiance. Proceeding down the Maumee, he came, on August 18, upon a band of thirteen hundred Indians assembled within two miles of the new British fort. They attacked him from a body of fallen timber which was overgrown with grass. His troops behaved excellently, charging with spirit, and the enemy retreated. The Indians seemed to have expected to be received into the forts, but its gates were not opened to them. They thereupon disappeared into the forest, and thus ended the battle of Fallen Timber.
Wayne remained in the vicinity destroying crops, huts, and other Indian property. He did not spare the effects of the traders, but he left the fort untouched. To assail it would have meant the outbreak of war with England. He soon began to receive advances from the Indians. To settle matters with them, he appointed a great council for making a permanent peace in the summer of 1795. At that meeting he was able to tell them that a treaty was about to be signed by which the posts were to be surrendered, and this made his negotiation easier. The treaty of Greenville, agreed to on August 4, established a boundary between the Indians and whites, beginning on the Ohio at a point opposite the mouth of the Kentucky River, running thence to Fort Recovery, thence eastward to the Muskingum, and following that river and the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie. The region south and east of it, together with sixteen small reservations on the other side of it, was ceded to the United States. With this treaty and with the surrender of the posts in 1796 the northwest became peaceful and secure.