Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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.
Published in History
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!
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.
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. ClairWayne 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.
And traitor who was taking money from the Spanish.
My father’s name is Anthony Wayne. I’m not sure if there’s a connection.
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.
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
IndiansNative AmericansFirst Nations…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.
We have a Fort Wayne here near Detroit, too.
Historic Fort Wayne—Out through the Sally Port
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:
Sorry, most of this is off topic, but significant for the history buffs visiting this thread.