The reputation of the government was now committed in the fortunes of the war.  Three additional regiments were directed to be raised.  On the motion in congress for raising these regiments, there was an animated, and even a bitter debate.  It was urged on one hand, that the expense of such a force would involve the necessity of severe taxation; that too much power was thrown into the hands of the president; that the war had been badly managed, and ought to have been entrusted to the militia of the west, under their own officers; and with more force they urged that no success could be of any avail, so long as the British held those posts within our acknowledged limits, from which the savages were supplied with protection, shelter, arms, advice, and instigation to the war.

On the other hand, the justice of the cause, as a war of defence, and not of conquest, was unquestionable.  It was proved, that between 1783 and 1790, no less than one thousand five hundred people of Kentucky had been massacred by the savages, or dragged into a horrid captivity; and that the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia had suffered a loss not much less.  It was proved that every effort had been made to pacify the savages without effect.  They showed that in 1790, when a treaty was proposed to the savages at the Miami, they first refused to treat, and then asked thirty days for deliberation.  It was granted.  In the interim, they stated that not less than one hundred and twenty persons had been killed and captured, and several prisoners roasted alive; at the term of which horrors, they refused any answer at all to the proposition to treat.  Various other remarks were made in defence of the bill.  It tried the strength of parties in congress, and was finally carried.

General St. Clair resigned, and Major General Anthony Wayne was appointed to succeed him.  This officer commanded the confidence of the western people, who confided in that reckless bravery, which had long before procured him the appellation of “Mad Anthony.”  There was a powerful party who still affected to consider this war unnecessary, and every impediment was placed in the way of its success, which that party could devise.  To prove to them that the government was still disposed to peace, two excellent officers and valuable men, Col.  Hardin, and Major Truman, were severally despatched with propositions of peace.  They were both murdered by the savages.  These unsuccessful attempts at negotiation, and the difficulties and delays naturally incident to the preparation of such a force, together with the attempts that had been made in congress, to render the war unpopular, had worn away so much time that the season for operations for the year had almost elapsed.  But as soon as the negotiations had wholly failed, the campaign was opened with as much vigor as the nature of the case would admit.  The general was able, however, to do no more this autumn, than to advance into the forest towards the country of the savages, six miles in advance of fort Jefferson.  He took possession of the ground on which the fatal defeat of St. Clair had taken place, in 1792.  He here erected a fortification, with the appropriate name of Fort Recovery.  His principal camp was called Greenville.