ontiers, and facilitated the
opening of the ensuing campaign.

Seeing only the dark side of every measure adopted by the government,
and not disinclined to militia expeditions made at the expense of the
United States, the people of Kentucky loudly charged the President
with a total disregard of their safety, pronounced the continental
troops entirely useless, declared that the Indians were to be kept in
awe alone by militia, and insisted that the power should be deposited
with some person in their state, to call them out at his discretion,
at the charge of the United States.

Meanwhile, some steps were taken by the governor of Upper Canada which
were well calculated to increase suspicions respecting the
dispositions of Great Britain.

It was believed by the President, not without cause,[24] that the
cabinet of London was disposed to avail itself of the non-execution of
that article of the treaty of peace, which stipulates for the payment
of debts, to justify a permanent detention of the posts on the
southern side of the great lakes, and to establish a new boundary
line, whereby those lakes should be entirely comprehended in Upper
Canada. Early in the spring, a detachment from the garrison of Detroit
repossessed and fortified a position near fifty miles south of that
station, on the Miamis of the lakes, a river which empties into Lake
Erie at its westernmost point.

[Footnote 24: See note No. IX. at the end of the volume.]

This movement, the speech of Lord Dorchester, and other facts which
strengthened the belief that the hostile Indians were at least
countenanced by the English, were the subjects of a correspondence
between the secretary of state and Mr. Hammond, in which crimination
was answered by recrimination, in which a considerable degree of
mutual irritation was displayed, and in which each supported his
charges against the nation of the other, much better than he defended
his own. It did not, however, in any manner, affect the operations of
the army.

The delays inseparable from the transportation of necessary supplies
through an uninhabited country, infested by an active enemy peculiarly
skilled in partisan war, unavoidably protracted the opening of the
campaign until near midsummer. Meanwhile, several sharp skirmishes
took place, in one of which a few white men were stated to be mingled
with the Indians.

On the 8th of August, General Wayne reached the confluence of the Au
Glaize and the Miamis