IV. of inhabitants. Many persons from different parts of CHAPTER the Union entered with great zeal into the speculation for building it up, to most of whom, however, the enter- 1791. prise proved sufficiently disastrous. The owners of the land, confident of growing rich by the enhancement of its value, transferred to the United States not only the ground necessary for streets, and the spaces reserved for public purposes, but one half the lots into which the city plot was laid out, the proceeds to be applied toward the completion of the public buildings. Of all the speculations of the day, and they were numerous, none met with greater favor than the new national bank. Within a few hours after opening the books, the whole amount of the stock was subscribed, July. with a surplus. In addition to the mother bank, for whose use near half the capital was reserved, branches were established in the principal commercial towns of the Union, thus affording to the government, at the points where the revenue was principally collected, convenient and secure places of deposit, and greatly facilitating transfers from one point to another. The strength and dignity added to the American government under its new organization was not without its effect on foreign nations. Great Britain at last condescended to appoint a minister in the person of George Hammond, who delivered his letters of credence not long Avs after Washington's return, and with whom Jefferson, as Secretary of State, presently entered into an elaborate correspondence on the unsettled questions between the two governments the slaves carried off by the departing British troops, the detention of the Western posts, and the disputed Eastern boundary on the one hand, and, on the other, the stipulations in favor of British creditors, and American adherents to the British cause. СНАРТЕК IV. A new minister was also received from France, the Count de Moustier being superseded by M. de Ternant, 1791. one of whose first applications was to request a supply of money, arms, and ammunition for the relief of the unfortunate island of St. Domingo. The political enthu siasm then prevailing in the mother country, added to the vacillating and conflicting decrees of the French National Assembly on the subject of citizenship, had given rise in that island to a warm controversy, not without bloodshed, as to the political rights of the free mulattoes, a class quite considerable in point of numbers, and containing some persons not without property and education. Nor was this claim of equal rights long confined to the mulattoes alone. The slaves in the neighborhood of Cape Français, the northern district of the island, ten times more numerous than the whites and mulattoes united, had suddenly risen in insurrection, destroying all the sugar plantations in the fertile plain of the cape, and threatening the city itself with destruction. Fugitives from this scene of desolation already began to arrive in the United States. The supplies Sept. asked for by Ternant toward the suppression of this rebellion were readily granted, in expectation of a reimbursement out of the sums due to France. Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, was presently Dec. appointed minister to England. commissioned at the same time as minister to France. Short, who had acted as chargé des affaires at that court, was sent to Holland as resident minister, and appointed also, about the same time, joint commissioner with Carmichael to negotiate with Spain respecting the navigation of the Mississippi. Early in the year Humphreys had been commissioned as resident minister at the court of Portugal, and Barclay as consul to Morocco, to obtain IV. a recognition from the new emperor of the treaty formerly CHAPTER negotiated with his father. A confidential agent had also been sent to Florida, to negotiate with the Spanish 1791. governor on the subject of fugitive slaves. To the generally promising state of affairs there was one serious drawback. The unsettled condition of Indian relations on the Western frontier had been not a little aggravated by Harmer's repulse, and by events of subsequent occurrence. Immediately after the passage of the act for increasing the army, St. Clair, governor of the Northwestern Territory, had been commissioned as major general, and steps had been taken for raising the new regiment and the levies, the command of which was given to General Butler. As some delay would occur before these new troops could be ready, an expedition was organized in the mean time, consisting of five hundred mounted volunteers from Kentucky, led by General Scott. Having crossed the Ohio near the mouth of the May 17 Kentucky River, Scott proceeded northwardly through the wilderness, and crossing on his march the branches of the White River, reached at length the villages on the June 1 Wabash. Fifty-eight prisoners were taken, and several warriors were killed, but the greater part of the Indians succeeded in escaping. A detachment under Wilkinson, who was second in command, was sent against the Kickapoo village, eighteen miles distant; but there, too, most of the inhabitants escaped. The village, consisting of about seventy houses, was burned, and with it a quantity of corn, peltry, and other goods. Many of the houses, which were well finished, seemed to be inhabited by Frenchmen, and the books and papers found in them evidently showed a close connection with Detroit. While preparations were making to subdue the Indians by force, negotiation was not neglected. Corn IV. CHAPTER planter, a friendly chief of the Senecas, who had visited Philadelphia during the winter, undertook to act as a 1791. mediator with the hostile tribes. But this project encountered many obstacles on the part of Brant and Red Jacket, two other leading chiefs of the Six Nations, who, though pretending to be friendly, were believed to be acting under British influence. The British commander at Fort Erie, unwilling, apparently, that peace should be made except by British interference, would not allow the charter of a schooner in which to proceed to Sandusky to open a communication with the hostile tribes; and so Cornplanter's mediation became unavailable. There was, indeed, reason to fear that even the Senecas themselves might be led to take part in the pending hostilities. Already they repented of the vast cessions made to Phelps and other purchasers of pre-emption rights under Massachusetts, upon which settlements were beginning to be formed. Attempts by Morris and Ogden to obtain additional cessions aggravated these discontents; and uneasiness was still further increased by the leases which they had been induced to make of parts of their reservations. Timothy Pickering, appointed commissioner for that purpose, met the Senecas and other tribes June. of the Six Nations at Painted Post, now Corning, on the Chemung, a northwest branch of the Susquehanna; and this interview had a good effect toward appeasing the discontents of those tribes, and preventing them from co-operating with the hostile Indians. A new attempt at mediation was even promised by Hendricks, a chief of the Stockbridge Indians, who were now settled among the Six Nations; but this, too, failed, like the for mer one. Fears were even entertained that the Southern tribes might be led to take part in the war. Projects were on IV. foot, based on the late purchases made from Georgia, for CHAPTER two settlements, one near the Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee, the other further west, on the lands of the Choc- 1791. taws, both of which were likely to give great offense to the Indians. The Cherokees still complained of encroach- July. ments on their lands, but were quieted for the present by a treaty negotiated by Blount, the governor of the Territory south of the Ohio, by which an annuity was secured to them of $1000 as a compensation for the lands occupied by white intruders. In his private correspondence, Washington expressed the opinion that there was little hope of settled peace with the Indians so long as the spirit of land-jobbing prevailed, and the frontier inhabitants entertained the opinion that it was a less crime to kill an Indian than a white man, or, rather, no crime at all. A second expedition of Kentucky mounted volunteers, Aug. led by Wilkinson against the tribes on the Wabash, had nearly the same results as the former one. Another village was burned, a few warriors were killed, some thirty prisoners were taken, and several hundred acres of growing corn were destroyed. But it was not by such desultory efforts that the Indians could be brought to submission. The season was already advanced before St. Clair's army was ready to take the field. The whole force of regulars and levies able to march from Fort Washington Sept 17 did not much exceed two thousand men; but some re-enforcements of Kentucky militia were expected to join. The object of the campaign was to establish a line of posts sufficient to maintain a communication from the Ohio to the Maumee, the intention being to build a strong fort on that river, and to leave in it a garrison of a thousand men, large enough to send out detachments and to |