On 4 November 1791, warriors of the Miami, Shawnee, Delaware and their allies under Little Turtle and Blue Jacket destroyed Major General Arthur St. Clair's U.S. Army on the upper Wabash, near today's Fort Recovery, Ohio; over 900 Americans were killed or wounded. In 1918 the poet Wilfred Owen fell, and in 1956 Soviet troops crushed Hungary's revolution.
St. Clair's defeat
4 November 1791 · 234 years ago
A road to Kekionga
After the Revolution the Miami, Shawnee, Delaware and their neighbors resisted American settlement north of the Ohio River, and British garrisons that still held posts around the Great Lakes backed them. In 1790 a first American expedition under Brigadier General Josiah Harmar was beaten near the Miami town of Kekionga, today's Fort Wayne, Indiana, by a confederation led by the Miami war chief Little Turtle.1
In 1791 President George Washington gave the command of a second expedition to Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory and a general of the Revolution. Its target was Kekionga, and its men were young regulars of two small regiments, six-month levies and militia.2
Five miles a day
The army marched north from the Cincinnati area in September 1791 with no more than about 2,000 men. The troops had to cut a road through the forest and managed only five to eight miles a day. Frost destroyed the forage, the six-month men began to go home as their enlistments ran out, and others deserted.3
When some sixty militiamen deserted on 31 October, St. Clair sent his one veteran regiment, the 1st Infantry, about 300 men, back down the road after them to protect the supply convoys, and it missed the battle. St. Clair himself was so ill, with gout according to the Army's account, that he could not mount a horse without help.4
Camp on the Wabash, 3 November
By 3 November discharges, desertions and the absent regiment had cut the army to about 1,400 effective men. That afternoon it camped by a creek that the officers took for a headwater of the Maumee, which flows to Lake Erie. It was in fact a branch of the upper Wabash.5
The troops camped on high ground in two lines with the creek in front, and the militia were sent across the creek to camp a few hundred yards ahead. It was late and the men were worn out, so no defenses were dug: St. Clair meant to begin a light earthwork the next morning.6
Half an hour before sunrise
On 4 November, about half an hour before sunrise and just after the men had been dismissed from morning parade, the warriors struck the militia camp. They came from the Miami, Shawnee, Delaware and other nations, under Little Turtle of the Miami and Blue Jacket of the Shawnee.7
The militia broke almost at once and ran back into the main camp, throwing the front line into disorder. Within minutes the attack had spread to both lines. The heaviest fire fell on the artillery in the center of each line, and the gunners were cut down until every artillery officer but one was dead. Bayonet charges drove the warriors back again and again, but each time they returned, and they broke into the camp on the left.8
Ebenezer Denny, St. Clair's aide, wrote that the warriors could skip out of reach of the bayonet and return as they pleased, and that "the ground was literally covered with the dead." It seemed to him "as if the officers had been singled out". Major General Richard Butler, St. Clair's second in command, fell with dozens of other officers that morning.9
"It was in fact a flight"
After nine o'clock, with the artillery silenced and more than half the army down, St. Clair ordered a charge toward the road to open a way out. It broke through, and the survivors poured down the road.10
St. Clair wrote that the retreat "was, in fact, a flight." The warriors pursued for four or five miles and then turned back to the camp, but the men threw away muskets and cartridge boxes for miles along the road. The column reached Fort Jefferson, 29 miles away, in the evening.11
St. Clair's report to Secretary of War Henry Knox closed: "I have now, sir, finished my melancholy tale".12
The cost
The returns printed in Denny's journal count 37 officers and 593 privates killed and missing, and 31 officers and 252 privates wounded. The U.S. Army's account gives over 900 killed or wounded, soldiers, women and children together, and the Ohio History Connection's marker nearly three quarters of the force. The camp and the guns were abandoned.13
It was one of the worst defeats in the history of the U.S. Army. In the words of EBSCO's summary, never before or since has such a high proportion of the total United States military establishment been defeated.14
Congress's first inquiry
On 27 March 1792 William Branch Giles moved to ask the president to investigate, and when that failed the House voted to appoint a committee of its own, remembered as the first congressional investigation. The committee blamed "the gross and various mismanagements and neglects in the quartermaster's and contractor's departments" and found that St. Clair had done his duty "with ability, activity, and zeal".15
From Fort Recovery to Greenville
Washington gave the command to Major General Anthony Wayne, who from 1792 rebuilt the army as the Legion of the United States, a force trained and drilled to defeat the confederation. In December 1793 Wayne's men built Fort Recovery on the field of St. Clair's defeat. On 20 August 1794 the Legion won the Battle of Fallen Timbers, near today's Maumee, Ohio.16
At Greenville on 3 August 1795 the confederation nations, led by Little Turtle, signed a treaty that gave up most of present-day Ohio. The next chapter of the struggle for the Northwest is told in our article on the Battle of Tippecanoe.17
Also on this day
Battle of Oltenița
4 November 1853 · 172 years ago
Ottoman troops under Omar Pasha, dug in near Oltenița on the Danube, were attacked by Russian forces in the opening clash of the Crimean War. The Russians fell back with heavy losses, but the Ottomans did not pursue and later withdrew across the Danube.
In 1918 the poet Wilfred Owen, who had won the Military Cross near Joncourt in October, was killed while leading his men across the Sambre-Oise canal near Ors, one week before the Armistice.18
In 1956 Soviet troops attacked Budapest in Operation Whirlwind and crushed the Hungarian Revolution. The story is told on our 23 October page and in our article on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.19
