Unlikely General: “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America

 

They called him “Mad” Anthony Wayne. The book Unlikely General: Mad Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America by Mary Stockwell tells his story. A flawed, often-despised man, Wayne rose above his weaknesses to save the United States.

Stockwell frames Wayne’s biography around Wayne’s greatest achievement: his 1794 victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. It permitted the United States to grow into a nation, which spanned the North American continent. Fought at rapids on the Maumee River, Wayne’s Legion of the United States defeated a coalition of Indian tribes battling to keep settlers out of today’s state of Ohio.

The stakes could not have been higher. The Indians got support from the British (then still occupying forts in the Old Northwest Territory the British had ceded to the United States at the end of the American Revolution). The Native Americans had defeated two previous United States armies, including a massacre of the last army sent into the Ohio Territory in 1791. Had Wayne’s army lost, the United States would likely have been constrained east of the Appalachians, with British-sponsored Indian nations controlling the lands between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

Stockwell shows how Anthony Wayne built the army, which defeated the Native Americans and did so despite inadequate supplies, inadequate numbers of troops, and a second in command who actively undermined Wayne.

Stockwell starts with the announcement in the nation’s capitol (then-Philadelphia) of the massacre of General Arthur St. Clair’s army at the Wabash. Stockwell then alternates between telling of Wayne’s appointment and conduct as St. Clair’s military successor, with a biography of Wayne’s life. By using this technique, she shows the links between how Wayne rebuilt the U.S. Army in the northwest and his experiences as a farmer and general earlier in his life.

She demonstrates how Wayne may have been the only general officer in the 1790s U.S. Army capable of developing a force to defeat the Native Americans. “Unlikely General” is a book that captures the complexity of the political and military situation in the 1790s, presenting it in terms that make it clear and understandable.

“Unlikely General: “Mad” Anthony Wayne and the Battle for America,” by Mary Stockwell, Yale University Press, 2018, 376 pages, $35


I write a weekly book review for the Daily News of Galveston County. (It is not the biggest daily newspaper in Texas, but it is the oldest.) My review normally appears Wednesdays. When it appears, I post the review here on the following Sunday.

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  1. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    Fascinating, @seawriter. We have a handful of generals who served this country during times of controversy and challenges that I know so little about. I suppose I’ve been reticent about reading their stories (since it’s been difficult to find my way through death and destruction), but after reading about Washington, and now Grant, Anthony Wayne sounds like a worthwhile read. Thanks!

    • #1
  2. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    They were all of them unlikely. Nathanael Greene (“We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again”) was a pacifist Quaker who organized Rhode Island’s militia and enlisted in it as a private. When the news of the Siege of Boston reached Rhode Island, he was promoted — to major general. (The Quakers threw him out.) He was appointed to replace Horatio Gates in the South after the debacle at Camden. The army never won a battle where Greene was on the field. Every time Cornwallis won a “victory,” he was further from his base with fewer men and supplies, and he chased Greene — all the way to Yorktown.

    Henry Knox was a bookseller who bought books on consignment from London. He pulled out and read all the books on military subjects. He kept the ones about artillery, and thus became Washington’s chief of that branch. Washington needed more guns. The artillery at Fort Ticonderoga had been captured. Since none of the books that Knox had read had mentioned that one couldn’t move fifty nine cannon and mortars across 300 miles of mostly unimproved territory in the dead of winter in fifty six days, he went ahead and did it. Washington got his guns.

    The list goes on.

    • #2
  3. AUMom Member
    AUMom
    @AUMom

    This is the second time in a week I’ve seen this book reviewed. I’ll take that as a sign.

    • #3
  4. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    AUMom (View Comment):

    This is the second time in a week I’ve seen this book reviewed. I’ll take that as a sign.

    The previous review that I read (in the WSJ?) damned it with faint praise, it seemed to me, saying that it was based too much on Wayne’s papers.  I’ve visited (by bicycle) a lot of the sites of George Washington’s Indian wars of the 1790s, including Harmar’s defeats and St. Clair’s defeat. I highly recommend the museum at Fort Recovery, Ohio (but Fort Recovery is a small town and there is no place to stay there). I’ve read ethno-histories of the Native American groups that were involved (some of whose descendants live near me now) and have read that St. Clair Wayne did a lot to unprivatize and reform the procurement system for military supplies, which did a lot to make his expedition successful where the previous two had failed. If the book has more detail on that aspect of his expedition I would read it for that reason alone, regardless of any other deficiencies.

    • #4
  5. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    I’ve read ethno-histories of the Native American groups that were involved (some of whose descendants live near me now) and have read that St. Clair did a lot to unprivatize and reform the procurement system for military supplies, which did a lot to make his expedition successful where the previous two had failed. If the book has more detail on that aspect of his expedition I would read it for that reason alone, regardless of any other deficiencies.

    There is some of that. Wayne did have better logistics, although that was being undercut by his chief subordinate (two guesses who – James Wilkinson, a general involved with virtually every sketchy thing relating to the US Army between 1790 and 1810). The main thing is Wayne trained his army rigorously – a real illustration of the aphorism more sweat equals less blood.

    • #5
  6. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Seawriter (View Comment):
    (two guesses who – James Wilkinson, a general involved with virtually every sketchy thing relating to the US Army between 1790 and 1810)

    And traitor who was taking money from the Spanish.

    • #6
  7. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    My father’s name is Anthony Wayne.  I’m not sure if there’s a connection.

    • #7
  8. Chris O. Coolidge
    Chris O.
    @ChrisO

    I grew up in Wayne County, Indiana and there was (is?) a memorial plaque to Anthony Wayne in our downtown. He had a small section in our Indiana History unit in 5th grade. Okay, so we’re not Ohio, but back then everything was part of the Northwest Territory. About the same time, I learned more about Wayne in his namesake city, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where a replica of the fort settlement (as it was in 1815) still exists as a living museum. He’s still pretty big in these parts.

    Thank you, @thereticulator for the Fort Recovery recommendation, and thank you @seawriter for sharing this.

    • #8
  9. Joseph Stanko Coolidge
    Joseph Stanko
    @JosephStanko

    Seawriter: Fought at rapids on the Maumee River, Wayne’s Legion of the United States defeated a coalition of Indian tribes battling to keep settlers out of today’s state of Ohio.

    Frankly I’m impressed such a book could be published in this day and age without utterly condemning General Wayne as a war criminal for his role in the genocide of the entirely peaceful, environmentalist Indians Native Americans First Nations…

     

    • #9
  10. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Chris O. (View Comment):

    I grew up in Wayne County, Indiana and there was (is?) a memorial plaque to Anthony Wayne in our downtown. He had a small section in our Indiana History unit in 5th grade. Okay, so we’re not Ohio, but back then everything was part of the Northwest Territory. About the same time, I learned more about Wayne in his namesake city, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where a replica of the fort settlement (as it was in 1815) still exists as a living museum. He’s still pretty big in these parts.

    Thank you, @thereticulator for the Fort Recovery recommendation, and thank you @seawriter for sharing this.

    Do you know if the Fort Wayne fort has anything for visitors other than the re-enactment events listed on its web page?  I.e. is there anything to explain where the nearby events of Harmar’s expedition took place?   I’ve been to the battle sites to the northwest of the city, but back when I was interested it didn’t seem that there was anything at the site of the fort that was accessible to the public.

    I visited Fort Recovery in 2000 and again in 2007. In between the museum had changed. The earlier museum was good, but amateurish, and probably reflected an earlier generation’s sensibilities. By 2007 it had been professionalized. The displays were based on better scholarship, and also more politically correct. I enjoy either type of museum when well done with a lot of information at different levels, and hope the amateurish ones never go away entirely. There was a book signing/lecture at the museum sometime in the past year or so that I would have liked to have gone to, but it didn’t work with our schedule.

     

     

    • #10
  11. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    We have a Fort Wayne here near Detroit, too.

    Historic Fort Wayne—Out through the Sally Port

    • #11
  12. Chris O. Coolidge
    Chris O.
    @ChrisO

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    Do you know if the Fort Wayne fort has anything for visitors other than the re-enactment events listed on its web page?

    I do not know. Here is a listing through the Fort Wayne Parks.

    The only other thing I recall is that there was a significant museum with one of the best collections of Abraham Lincoln photographs and other material via the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company in Fort Wayne. It was the best collection outside of D. C.. Part of the collection appears to now be part of the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis, and some of it continues to reside in Fort Wayne. I do not know if the museum also addressed the city’s namesake, and I guess it is moot at this point. Here is what the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne held:

    According to Jane Gastineau, Lincoln Librarian, the entire collection is valued at approximately $20 million. “There are the 18,000 books and pamphlets and 7000 prints and engravings. We have over 6000 described photos, mostly 19th-century. There are 26 known surviving copies of the Leland Boker printing of the 13th Amendment signed by Lincoln—LFFC has one. We have 160 signed documents, plus 270 letters written to Lincoln after his election in 1860.

    Sorry, most of this is off topic, but significant for the history buffs visiting this thread.

    • #12
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