The Unpopular History of the United States by Uncle Sam Himself/Chapter 11

by Harris Dickson

XI

LO, THE IMPOLITE INDIAN

While investigating the preventable tragedy of Harmar, everybody did a lot of talking—according to Congressional precedent. The evidence showed that on attacking the village the “militia behaved badly, disobeyed orders, and left the regular troops to be sacrificed.” The Investigating Committee after weighing all testimony finally and solemnly concluded “that the conduct of the said Brigadier General Joseph A. Harmar merits our approbation.” I wonder what the 183 dead men thought about it.

It would seem that foresights and hindsights, working together would sidetrack any future chance for such a catastrophe. Not a bit. One year later the same thing happened, only worse. General St. Clair, with 1,400 regulars and militia, was attacked by a nearly equal force of Indians, and routed. Think of that, by a nearly equal force. They were not overpowered, not outnumbered. Man to man the Indians beat the militia. St. Clair’s army was destroyed, with a loss of 632 killed and 264 wounded, which exceeds the total killed at the battles of Long Island and Camden, the two bloodiest affairs of the Revolutionary War. This wasn’t a fight, it was a massacre.

The House of Representatives immediately appointed another committee for another investigation. Foreseeing the future after it had occurred, this Committee reported that “the militia appeared to have been composed principally of substitutes, totally ungovernable, regardless of military duty and subordination.”

That was no news. Our militia bad rarely been anything else. They were individual Americans. But Congress added an apology which explained everything: “The attack was unexpected, the troops having just been dismissed from morning parade. The militia were in advance and fled through the main army without firing a gun. This circumstance threw the troops into some disorder, from which it appears that they never recovered.” Under such plainly mitigating circumstances the militiamen pleaded that the Indians had attacked unexpectedly, as Indians had no legal right to do. Indians are not submarines. Nobody was looking for Indians. Nobody was thinking of Indians. Nobody was meddling with Indians. A perfectly nice Indian should never jump on a mob of substitutes just after they had been dismissed from morning parade. And the militia, strictly according to Hoyle, turned tail without firing, and ran backward through the regulars. The Congressional Report concludes with: “In justice to the Commander-in-Chief we say that the failure of the late expedition can in no respect be imputed to his conduct, either at any time before, or during the action.” It became quite a conventional phrase to speak of any militia expedition as “the late expedition.”

Now it was squarely up to Congress to do something, and Congress did.

My son, did you ever observe a dominecker hen setting on a china doorknob? Ever try to argue with her? It’s no use. She will get off the nest, scratch gravel backwards, turn over the doorknob, investigate—investigate, and go to setting some more. Isn’t she the perforated pattern of undiscouraged optimism! Well, Congress was just that stubborn about trying to hatch a brood of winners from this volunteer militia egg. Having officially settled the fact that the militia was an insubordinate, undisciplined, and ineffective force, they immediately set to work—to break it up? Oh dear, no. They built it up. They made it bigger and clumsier and worse. As the militia method was so bad to begin with, they went the limit, and converted everybody into militiamen. By Act of May 8, 1792, every free, able-bodied white male citizen between the ages of 18 and 45, was required to be enrolled in the militia of the United States, and served with notice of his enrollment. After that, every citizen should, within six months, provide himself with a good musket, or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two soft flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than 24 cartridges suited to the bore of his musket, etc., etc. Ah ha! Congress is learning; they specify by law that the cartridge should fit the gun. It now becomes the citizen’s duty to appear for exercise or duty when called upon. However cumbersome this legal contraption, it was the first step ever taken by the United States Government towards universal military service.

One glaring defect of the law—if your Uncle Samuel may be respectfully permitted to select any particular defect—was that it left the militia at the command of the state governments. This statute remained dead on the statute books, there being no penalties provided for its violation.

Instead of creating one efficient national army, we became possessed of thirteen independent and disconnected state mobs. But it was a beautifully free mob of freeborn citizens. They could either get together and act as mob if they chose, or they could remain at home. There was no method of forcing them.

On this occasion I rise to remark: We must not forget that certain provision in the first section of the act which laid down the truly democratic doctrine that every able-bodied male citizen owes military service to his country.

It further provided for a system of enrollment and territorial recruiting. All the rest of the law was bad, hopelessly bad.

As a balm laid upon the soreness of Harmar’s and St. Clair’s defeats, in June, 1795, General Wayne attacked and dispersed the Miami Indians. But in his force there was a very large preponderance of disciplined regulars, and it was their attack with the bayonet which scattered the savages.