instructions,’ I said, ’from the secretary of war; I had a strict eye to them, and will add but one word—­Beware of a surprise!  I repeat it—­beware of a surprise!  You know how the Indians fight us.’  He went off with that as my last solemn warning thrown into his ears.  And yet, to suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise, the very thing I guarded him against!  O God, O God, he’s worse than a murderer!  How can he answer it to his country!  The blood of the slain is upon him, the curse of widows and orphans, the curse of Heaven!”

His secretary was appalled and silent, while Washington again strode fiercely up and down the room.  Then he sat down, collected himself, and said, “This must not go beyond this room.”  Then a long silence.  Then, “General St. Clair shall have justice.  I looked hastily through the dispatches, saw the whole disaster, but not all the particulars; I will receive him without displeasure; I will hear him without prejudice; he shall have full justice.”  The description of this scene by an eye-witness has been in print for many years, and yet we find people who say that Washington was cold of heart and lacking in human sympathy.  What could be more intensely human than this?  What a warm heart is here, and what a lightning glimpse of a passionate nature bursting through silence into burning speech!  Then comes the iron will which has mastered all the problems of his life.  “He shall have full justice;” and St. Clair had justice.  He had been an unfortunate choice, but as a Revolutionary soldier and governor of the Northwest Territory his selection had been natural.  He had never been a successful general, for it was not in him to be so.  Something he lacked, energy, decision, foresight, it matters not what.  But at least he was brave.  Broken by sickness, he had displayed the utmost personal courage on that stricken field; and for this Washington would always forgive much.  He received the unfortunate general kindly.  He could not order a court martial, for there were no officers of sufficient rank to form one; but he gave St. Clair every opportunity for vindication, and a committee of Congress investigated the campaign and exculpated the leader.  His personal bravery saved him and his reputation, but nothing can alter the fact that the surprise was unpardonable and the disaster awful.

Immediate results of the St. Clair defeat were not so bad as might have been expected.  Panic, of course, ran rampant along the frontier, reaching even to Pittsburg; but the Indians failed to follow up their advantage, and did not come.  Still the alarm was there, and Pennsylvania and Virginia ordered troops to be raised, while Congress also took action.  Another increase of the army was ordered, with consequent increase of appropriation, so that this Indian victory entered at this point into the great current of the financial policy, and thus played its part in the events on which parties were dividing, and history was being made.