Toward the close of its last session, the First Congress was induced to pass an act “for raising and adding another regiment to the military establishment of the United States and for making further provision for the protection of the frontiers.”  The further provision authorized the President to employ “troops enlisted under the denomination of levies” for a term not exceeding six months and in number not exceeding two thousand.  The law thus made it compulsory that the troops should move while still raw and untrained.  Congress had fixed the pay of the privates at three dollars a month, from which ninety cents were deducted, and it had been necessary to scrape the streets and even the prisons of the seaboard cities for men willing to enlist upon such terms.  Washington gave the command to General Arthur St. Clair, whose military experience should have made him a capable commander, but he was then in bad health and unable to handle the situation under the conditions imposed upon him.  General Harmar, enlightened by his own experience, predicted that such an army would certainly be defeated.

The campaign was intended as an expedition to chastise the Indians so that they would be deterred from molesting the settlers, but it resulted in a disaster that greatly encouraged Indian depredations.  As the army approached the Indian towns, a body of the militia deserted, and it was reported to St. Clair that they intended to plunder the supplies.  He sent one of his regular regiments after them, thus reducing his available force to about fourteen hundred men.  On November 3, 1791, this force camped on the eastern fork of Wabash.  Before daybreak the next morning the Indians made a sudden attack, taking the troops by surprise and throwing them into disorder.  It was the story of Braddock’s defeat over again.  The troops were surrounded by foes that they could not see and could not reach.  Indian marksmen picked off the gunners until the artillery was silenced; then the Indians rushed in and seized the guns.  In the combat there were both conspicuous exploits of valor and disgraceful scenes of cowardice.  In that dark hour St. Clair showed undaunted courage.  He was in the front of the fight, and several times he headed charges.  He seemed to have a charmed life, for although eight bullets pierced his clothes, one cutting away a lock of the thick gray hair that flowed from under his three-cornered hat, he escaped without a wound.  Finally defeat became a rout which St. Clair was powerless to check.  Pushed aside in the rush of fugitives, he was left in a position of great peril.  If the Indian pursuit had been persistent, few might have escaped, but the Indians stopped to plunder the camp.  Nevertheless six hundred and thirty men were killed and over two hundred and eighty wounded, with small loss to the Indians.