d at the
expense, and said that money needlessly raised by taxation was
squandered in Indian wars, while the great body of the people, living
safely along the eastern coast, thought but little about the frontier.
Some persons took the sentimental view and considered the government
barbarous to make causeless war. Others believed that altogether
too much of the public time and money were wasted in looking after
outlying settlements. The borderers themselves, on the other hand,
thought that the general government was in league with the savages,
and broke through treaties, and destroyed so far as they could the
national policy. St. Clair was hissed and jeered as he traveled home,
but a wakeful opposition turned from the unsuccessful general to a
vain attempt to prove that ambushed savages and sleeping sentries were
due to a weak war department and a corrupt and inefficient treasury.
The mass of moderate people, no doubt, desired tranquillity on the
frontier, and sustained the President's labors for that end, but for
the most part they were silent. The voices that Washington heard most
loudly joined in a discordant chorus of disapproval around his Indian
policy. No one understood that here was an important part of a scheme
to build up a nation, to make all the movements of the United States
broad and national, and to open the vast west to the people who were
to make it theirs. Washington heard all the criticism and saw all the
opposition, and still pressed forward to his goal, not attaining all
he wished, but fighting in a very clear and manful spirit, and not
laboring in vain.

The Indian question in its management touched, as has been seen, at
various points our financial policy and our foreign relations, on
which the history of the country really turned in those years. The
latter had not risen to their later importance when the government
began, but the former was knocking importunately at the door of
Congress when it first assembled. The condition of affairs is soon
told. The Revolution narrowly escaped shipwreck on the financial
reefs, and the shaky government of the confederation had there gone to
pieces. The country, as a political organism, was bankrupt. It owed
sums of money, which were vast in amount for those days, both at
home and abroad, and it could not pay these debts, nor was there any
provision for them. All interest was in arrears, there were no means
provided for meeting it, and the national credit every