After generals Hamar and Clair suffered resounding defeats at the hands of the Indians, it appeared that the campaign wasn’t going well for the new republic, and President George Washington was in desperate need of leadership.
Although General Anthony Wayne’s military career was somewhat checkered and after the war he was ousted from Congress because he failed to take up residence in the Georgia district that had given him a farm for his effort in chasing away the natives and elected him as a representative, Washington’s other options were scarcely any better. After St. Clair’s resignation, command of the Northwest Army fell to General James Wilkinson, whom history generally remembers as a “despicable character,” probably guilty of treason, and Captain Rudolph, who was in charge of Fort Hamilton was conspicuously cruel if not incompetent as an officer.
So Washington appointed Wilkinson’s chief rival General Anthony Wayne as commander-in-chief and ordered him to raise an army of 5,000 men to put an end to the conflicts with the Indians once and for all.
General Wayne had been given the moniker “Mad Anthony” by one of his spies who was also a chronic deserter and deemed the general “mad” when he refused to get him out of a disorderly conduct charge. The nickname was popularized by the novelist Washington Irving after the Revolutionary War had ended.
General Wayne, born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1745, was the son of an Irishman, who served as officer in the various military expeditions which were fitted out against the Indians after he came here in 1722. Originally a surveyor by trade and working as a tanner with his father, Anthony Wayne joined the Continental Army in 1776 and rose to the rank of Brigadier General so quickly that he suffered the resentment of fellow officers, but was one of Washington’s favorites and helped foil Benedict Arnold’s treasonous plot. At Stony Point, he received a head wound that was deemed mortal, but he recovered quickly enough to help drive the British from Georgia.
Rocky as his military career had been, he fared even less well in civilian life. Between 1783 and 1792, he failed as a rice farmer, and personal debts forced foreclosure on his property in Georgia.
In the summer of 1792, Wayne began raising the 5,000 men that Washington asked for, and on April 30, 1793, Wayne arrived at Fort Washington.
While he set about the arduous task of drilling and training his new troops, General Wayne directed that Fort Hamilton focus on the production of hay for the army’s horses, as important then as gasoline and diesel fuel are today, and Wayne felt that the downfall of his predecessors could be blamed, at least in part, on the lack of fuel.
The haymaking took place on the large prairie to the south of the fort, the part of Hamilton known today as Peck’s Addition.
In the fall of 1793, Wayne and his army set out for the north to meet the enemy in the fall.
When General Wayne arrived at Fort Hamilton with his Army on its way to the Battle of Fallen Timbers, he was so much displeased with the cruelty of Major Rudolph, that he he make Wilkinson commandant and gave Rudolph his choice to resign or be cashiered.
Rudolph chose the former, returned to Virginia, found that his wife had been unfaithful. So he purchased a ship and went on a trading voyage to Europe. It is said they were captured by an Algerine cruiser, and Rudolph was hung at the yardarm of his own vessel.
But desertion remained a problem at Fort Hamilton. While General Wilkinson commanded the fort, three soldiers were tried, found guilty and sentenced to be shot. According to the 1882 county history says Mrs. Wilkinson, then residing at the fort, convinced her husband to pardon the doomed men. He set out to do so, but General Wayne ordered preparations for the executions and the deserters before the troops.
“But, while the sentence of the court martial was being read by the adjutant, General Wayne rode up and stopped the proceedings.” Then Wayne added a stem warning “in a loud, clear and emphatic manner… But the first man, and every man, who shall hereafter be found guilty of the crime of desertion shall surely die, so help me God.”
To further reduce the stress of desertion, Wayne also established a $40 reward for the return of deserters, a respectable incentive for soldiers earning a meager $3 a month.
That summer General Wayne ordered addition to be made to Fort Hamilton, by inclosing with pickets an area of ground on the north of the fort for shops, stables, and barracks for the men.
On leaving Fort Hamilton, General Wayne detailed a body of men for its defense and gave command to Major Jonathan Cass, another “brave officer of the Revolution.”
Major Cass was born in 1753 near Newburyport, New Hampshire. When the news reached there of the battle of Lexington, he and a half-dozen friends set off at once, musket in hand, to join the army. He fought at Bunker Hill, Trenton, Princeton, Germantown, Monmouth, and Saratoga, remaining in the army until the close of the Revolution, then resigned his commission and engaged in the West India trade. After St. Clair’s defeat, he recommissioned into the army.
According to the 1882 history, “The personal presence of Major Cass was most striking and commanding; he had the look of one born to command. In height he was nearly or quite six feet, of perfect form, without superfluous flesh, black hair and piercing black eyes, and commanding brow.”
After stints in Virginia and Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1793, and brought his family with him.
While at Fort Hamilton and out on a reconnoitering mission, his horse tripped while jumping over a fallen tree and the Major’s leg broke just below the knee. “In consequence of bad surgery, the wounded leg never healed, and required daily dressing for about 35 years, and was painful all that period.”
Major Cass remained in command of Fort Hamilton until after the treaty of Greenville, August 3, 1795. By that time, Israel Ludlow had laid out the town of Fairfield outside the walls of the fort and the settlement started taking shape, was re-named Hamilton.