Return to Milestones Vol. 3, No. 3
The following address was given by Dr. Bausman at the dedication of the Legionville and Logstown markers in June, 1918. Bausman evidently had a special interest in the area. The photograph accompanying this article was included in his 1907 History of Beaver County, and shows the author standing in a trench at Legionville.
The Treaty of Peace of 1783, which secured the independence of the colonies, did not relieve the western settlers from strife and suffering. In violation of her treaty engagements, Great Britain held military posts in the Northwestern Territory for still twelve years longer. At some of these posts, marauding bands of Indians were supplied with ammunition and encouraged in their depredations against the border settlements. The most troublesome of the tribes were those of the Miami Confederation. The army of General Josiah Harmar (1789) and that of General Arthur St. Clair (1791), which had been sent against this confederation, had met with frightful defeats, as a consequence of which the national government was humiliated and the whole country plunged in gloom.
Despite the continued agressions of the savages, the national government persisted in efforts to secure peace with them, but finally decided to send against them another expedition. For this task Washington selected General Anthony Wayne, who in April, 1792, had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army.
In June, 1792, Wayne arrived at Pittsburgh and began the organization of an army, which was named "The Legion of the United States.- In November of the same year, he proceeded down the Ohio River to a point seven miles above the mouth of the Big Beaver, where he went into winter quarters. Of this position he writes to Henry Knox, Secretary of War: "I am so strongly entrenched here that all the Indians in the wilderness could not drive me out." The camp was called, after the army, "Legionville." It was strongly fortified, and some of its trenches and the rernains of several of its redoubts are still plainly discernible.
Here, at Legionville, Wayne remained until
the following spring (April, 1793), when he broke camp, and with
his army, descended the river to Fort Washington, now Cincinnati,
Ohio. After a winter spent in building Fort Greenville, Fort Recovery,
and Fort Wayne (the last-named on the site of the present city
of that name in Indiana), and after fruitless efforts had been
made by
commissioners to secure an honorable peace without a conflict,
General Wayne, in July, 1794, advanced toward the enemy, and on
the 20th of August of that year, he met them on the banks of the
Maumee, or Miami-of-the-Lake, and totally routed them-in a decisive
battle. The enemy, about two thousand strong, under the lead of
Blue Jacket, the most distinguished chief of the Shawnees, were
concealed behind a "windfall'.' where an immense number of
prostrate trees presented
an almost impassable barrier to troops of any kind, especially
to Cavalry. Wayne, at the head of about three thousand men, attacked
with such skill and impetuosity that even this obstacle was powerless
to check him. Perceiving from the weight of the enemy's fire and
the extent of their line that they were in full force in front
and trying to turn his right flank, he ordered Major-General Scott,
with the whole of the mounted volunteers, to gain and turn the
enemy's right flank, and Captain Campbell, with the cavalry of
the regular army, to turn their left next to the river. With
his front line, composed of regulars, he then struck the savages
in their coverts behind the trees with a heavy fire of musketry
and with a bayonet charge, dislodging them, and driving them with
great slaughter for two miles, until their shattered remnants
reached the shelter of a neighboring British fort. This the enraged
American forces were with difficulty restrained from attacking.
The next day the British commandant, Major Camp I bell, sent a
communication to General Wayne, in which, referring to the near
approach of Wayne's men to the guns of the British post, he asked
to be informed whether "he was to consider the American army
as enemies, being ignorant of any war existing between Great Britain
and the United States." Wayne replied:
"Were you entitled to an answer, the most full and' satisfactory
one was announced to you from the muzzles of my small arms yesterday
morning, in the action against hordes of savages in the vicinity
of your post, which terminated gloriously to the American arms,
but had it continued until the Indians were driven under the influence
of the post and the guns you mention, they would not much have
impeded the progress of the victorious army under my command."
From the character of the position which was occupied by the Indians in this fight, the engagement is sometimes called the "Battle of Fallen Timbers."
This great victory of the American arms brought lasting peace to the western borders. Its effects were threefold! - First, local; up to this time all of the region west of the Allegheny River and north of the Ohio was known as the "Indian side," or the "Indian country," and was hermetically sealed against settlement by the whites. The few adventurous men who attempted settlement anywhere therein were driven out either by the Indians themselves or by the militia of the United States. Now settlement became lawful, and, as Judge Addison, in a letter to Governor Mifflin advising the speedy setting up in the newly opened region of the machinery of law, reports, "the people were going over the Ohio River in a mad flood."
Second, national, encouraged by the defeats of Harmar and St. Clair, the Indians along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, and in Georgia and Alabama, were pressing in upon the settlements. The news of Wayne's decisive victory over the Miamis overawed and quieted them.
And, lastly, it was intemutional in the. influence it had upon the British Government. Our minister, Mr. Jay, had been meeting with vexatious delays on the part of that government in settling questions hanging over the Revolutionary War; he wits now enabled speedily to close his negotiations with the Greenville ministry, and to secure the surrender of all the British posts still held, as already said, in the Northwestern Territory, a vast region out of which have since been carved several of the great commonwealths of the Union.
On the third of August, of the next year, 1795, a treaty of peace with the Indians was concluded at Fort Greenville. This may, perhaps, be said to be the actual close of the Revolutionary War.