Ohio History Journal

BOOK REVIEWS

The Beginnings of the U. S. Army 1783-1812. By James Ripley

Jacobs. (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1947.

497p. including bibliography and index. $5.00.)

This handsomely bound, beautifully printed, and heavily foot-

noted volume relates in considerable detail and in extremely read-

able form the military history of the United States from the end of

hostilities with Britain in 1783 to their outbreak again in 1812. It

is the first of several volumes that will carry the story down to at

least 1846.

In fourteen well-organized chapters Major Jacobs depicts a

period of our military history never hitherto covered so well. His

interesting narrative, shot through with picturesque phraseology

and salty details, makes the period live in a manner which may

rouse the jealousy of professional historians. The bibliography is

good and the index adequate.

Jacobs' first two chapters are devoted to picturing the demobi-

lization of the young nation's army following the Treaty of Paris in

1783, when congress retained but eighty soldiers on the payroll, and

to depicting the enormous task facing this corporal's guard in pro-

tecting and advancing the frontier. He pushes rapidly ahead, then,

to discuss the tragic expeditions of Generals Harmar and St. Clair

against the Indians of the Old Northwest and the more successful

one of Anthony Wayne. Ohioans will particularly enjoy the in-

teresting and detailed account of these three campaigns, told with

all the enthusiasm of a participant. In this connection it may be

mentioned that so much of the volume deals with the Ohio Valley

that its readers in that area should be legion. The omission of a map

showing the routes followed by Clark, Harmar, St. Clair, Wayne,

and Harrison is partly compensated for by three battle maps.

The second half of the volume is built around James Wilkinson,

the commander of the army in 1797. Since Wilkinson was a partici-

pant in the Revolution and in the whole of the period covered by

this book, it is natural for Major Jacobs to utilize the same canvas,

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l04 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

colors, and characters which he used so effectively in his Tarnished

Warrior, supplementing and broadening his perspective to include

the whole cyclorama of the military establishment and its activities

during the period.

With Wilkinson, then, as the major military figure the reader

is given interesting short accounts of the naval war with France in

1798, the purchase, occupation, and policing of Louisiana, the Burr

conspiracy, the exploration of the Missouri by Lewis and Clark, the

travels of Pike up the Mississippi and into Mexico, the history of

the founding of the military academy at West Point, and finally the

drift into war as grievances against the British, French, and Indians

accumulate.

Major Jacobs appears to have examined the principal sources

for his study in all their diverse and devious repositories. He is

familiar with the best general works and monographs covering the

period. It is regrettable, though perhaps inevitable, that he has not

been able to live up to the promise in his preface to make "speeches,

letters, and diaries . . . the fabric of this book." Too often a single

biography, monograph, or diary seems to have been the only source

utilized in telling his story to the length of several pages. If judged

by the footnotes, it is astonishing how little of his material is

drawn from the twenty newspapers he lists, from the mass of un-

published manuscript collections in his bibliography, or from the

Territorial Papers of the United States (Clarence E. Carter, editor).

The McHenry papers are not even listed. In this connection it may

be mentioned that his use of Callan's abridgment of the military

legislation of congress (published in 1863), instead of the readily

accessible Statutes at Large, seems unfortunate.

The author excels when it comes to characterization, for in-

stance in picturing the army leadership on the eve of war in 1812

(chap. 14), or in depicting the incapacity and inefficiency of Secre-

tary of War Eustis in providing for Wilkinson's troops at New

Orleans in 1809-10 (chap. 13).

Events and episodes are interestingly related and enhance

the narrative even if the interpretation is sometimes subject to

question: how Wayne's relatives removed his body from Presque

Isle, where it was first buried, "to a Pennsylvania church yard so

that they might lie beside him in adjacent glory" (p. 188); how

BOOK REVIEWS

"when [in 1786] officers [from Fort Finney] visited Louisville . . .

they carried a pistol or dirk under their coat [sic], for there were

many bullies who gloated on their prowess. One of them boasted that

he had gouged out five eyes, that he had bitten off two or three noses

and spat them back in the faces of the beaten. Once the very same

ruffian attacked an officer and, though knocked down three or four

times, did succeed in leaving on his nose a permanent scar" (p. 15).

Yet despite the interesting style, the descriptive power, and the

excellent organization of Major Jacobs' book, this volume does not

promise to make him the Fortescue of the American army. The

reader sees portions of the American army, but he never sees it as

an organization, or as an institution, or as a whole; there is no

marshalling of its total strength or no account of how it was dis-

posed or equipped at various times. Certainly a military history

should at no time leave these features in doubt.

Perhaps the most serious criticisms of Major Jacobs are his

credulity and his extravagance of statement. These two faults mar

the usefulness of his book for the serious scholar and necessitate

a careful check to validate his representations. A few examples

will suffice to illustrate these points: It is difficult to see how Wil-

kinson's expedition of January 1792 to the site of St. Clair's defeat

was able to find and bury the bones of the dead when they were

covered by twenty inches of snow; or to recognize the "distorted

faces of former friends" after twelve weeks of exposure to the

weather and the beasts of the forest (p. 144).

Thirty-three camp followers--washerwomen, by Sargent's first-

hand account--accompanied St. Clair's army, but the author accepts

the dubious figures of Caleb Atwater's secondary account and swells

this number into "two-hundred or more," some carrying babies and

others pregnant. "Drunkenness and carnal sin were their frequent

diversions" but, he hastens to add, not by habit or profession. They

were brave and loyal, "well knowing that, if captured, roasting or

crucifixion might be their fate" (p. 89-90). When, the reader may

ask, did the Ohio Indians roast women or crucify anyone?

These passages are extravagances: "Natchez [in 1798] was a

lawless place . . . where frontier riff-raff concentrated . . . [and]

filled with taffia or corn whiskey, men, roaring drunk, cut and

gouged each other over snaggle-toothed whores covered with sores

106 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

and vermin" (p. 214). "Some [of General Harmar's militia] were

so stricken with terror that they did not halt their flight until they

reached Kentucky" (p. 57). As early as 1793 Ohio river towns are

very wicked--"the Sodom and Gomorah of Cincinnati" (p. 156); at

the same city to heighten the effect, Major Jacobs fills the New

Light Presbyterians--failing to mention the Methodists-with

"grunts and groans," and has them "raving and roaring like so

many bulls," a full ten years too soon (p. 75). When Wayne's men

were at Pittsburgh, "the inhabitants found profit in pandering to

the lowest wants of the soldier. Liquor and women became the

most important articles. . . . Everybody knew that squaws were

cheap and that other women were only passably high. . . . Even

Wayne was erroneously reputed to have a mistress who lived in a

neighboring orchard" (p. 129).

Such extravagances make good reading but they are not good

history. Nor are these; Fugitives from justice "escaped into Rhode

Island and found asylum among the pothouse dotards who were

constantly proposing noxious methods of economic reform" (p. 14).

The Continental Congress "was rent by selfish interest" (p. 34);

"even on great occasions no more than a mere handful huddled

forelornly together to legislate" (p. 13).

Author Jacobs seems to approve of St. Clair's and Winthrop

Sargent's aristocratic disdain for the dirty frontier democrat. He

feels Harmar's campaign was doomed from the start, for he had but

320 regulars plus 1,133 stupid "riff-raff." Harmar's subsequent

exoneration by a court martial he, therefore, heartily approves

(p. 53-65). Jacobs speaks of St. Clair's militia as "aimless drifters

at best-ignorant, shiftless, and with little sense of responsibility. . .

dregs of the population . . . Irish immigrants . . . sailors who had

missed their ships by lying too long with their doxies . . . farmer

boys or apprentices already broken on the wheel of toil . . .

[habitues of] noisome inns and . . . whorehouses" (p. 78-79).

Wayne's men "were mostly waifs of misfortune that had been little

used to the cleanliness and neatness Wayne demanded" (p. 131);

"chronic thieves" and other "undesirables" were "branded" and

"drummed out of camp . . . to find their way back to the dunghills

from which they had been recently recruited. There or in prison

they soon rotted away" (p. 138).

BOOK REVIEWS 107

A few errors of fact have been noticed-there may be others.

Casualties at Fallen Timbers among the Indians were certainly

more than nineteen killed and two wounded (p. 175); in fact

Jacobs sites Wayne's estimate of 266 Indian casualties in his

Tarnished Warrior (p. 142). To accept Alexander McKee's report

of the smaller number without qualification is misleading to the

reader, especially when Wayne reported 133 casualties among his

own men and yet claimed an important victory.

The population of Canada was nearer 315,000 in 1812 than the

author's figure of 500,000 (p. 373). The Giles bill of January 11,

1812, authorized 25,000 regulars, not 35,000 (p. 380). It is at

least misleading to speak of the Indians of the Old Northwest

as having surrendered their claims to lands west of the Ohio by the

1784 treaty of Fort Stanwix (p. 24). St. Clair's troops reached

the banks of the Great Miami on September 15, not the 19th (p. 87).

Some glaring typographical errors in footnotes should have

been caught. "Mississippi Historical Review" should be Missis-

sippi Valley Historical Review (p. 176, n. 48); Freeman Cleaves's

name is repeatedly spelled Cleves (chap. 13); "Smith, op. cit., p.

11, 253-255," should be Smith, op. cit., II, 248 (p. 95); and the cita-

tions in this whole chapter (5) are very faulty-see especially notes

11, 19, 20, 27, 41, 55, 58.

Despite the adverse criticisms herein noted, Major Jacobs' book

is an extremely interesting narrative and a contribution to the

literature of the period. He has filled out that great gap in our

military history left by Ganoe and Spaulding. Students of military

history will look forward with no little interest to his ensuing

volumes.

ALFRED B. SEARS, Chairman

Department of History

University of Oklahoma

Pontiac and the Indian Uprising. By Howard H. Peckham.

(Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1947. ³⁴⁶p.,

maps and illustrations. Cloth, $4.50.)

The author, who is director of the Indiana Historical Bureau,

was formerly curator at the William L. Clements Library at the

108 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

University of Michigan. Thus he became acquainted with many

manuscripts which were unknown to scholars of previous genera-

tions. New materials resulted in new viewpoints, and an interest in

the life and times of Pontiac stimulated a desire to write the first

book-length biography of the famed Indian chieftain.

As early as 1821 Lewis Cass had gathered material preparatory

to the writing of such a volume, but apparently it was never written.

A descendant of Pontiac was said in 1825 to have been engaged in

dictating a biography of his forbear, but seemingly it was never

completed. Prior to 1850, in fact, published accounts of Pontiac's

life were limited to brief sketches in two books of Indian biography.

Then, in 1851, Francis Parkman's famed History of the Conspiracy

of Pontiac, based on painstaking research and written in attractive

style, came from the press. Since that time other writers have

leaned heavily on Parkman for facts concerning Pontiac, though the

volume is a history rather than a biography. Historical scholars,

anthropologists, and others, moreover, have published the results

of later investigations.

The present author has not endeavored to "rewrite Parkman."

Rather, by examining the written sources used by Parkman, by

utilizing pertinent manuscript and archival materials in numerous

libraries, by studying extensive published works, and by "covering

the ground of Pontiac's activities in seven states and the province

of Ontario," he has presented in readable style what is now known

of the life and influence of Pontiac.

In facing this task the author recognized three difficulties: (1)

Pontiac could not write, hence only a few contemporary manu-

scripts, dictated by him or containing speeches delivered by him

have come down to the present generation; (2) his contemporaries

who wrote about him were invariably his enemies; (3) legends

about him grew up rapidly, requiring careful critical discrimination.

Much of our information concerning Pontiac is indeed shadowy.

The place and date of his birth, the incidents of his childhood and

early manhood (p. 18), the exact meaning of his name (p. 19), his

physical appearance (p. 27-28), the question whether--as Parkman

asserts--he led the Ottawas at Braddock's defeat (p. 44 note), the

exact place of his burial (p. 312-315), and facts concerning his

BOOK REVIEWS 109

descendants (p. 317-318) are not established beyond reasonable

doubt.

Although a long-established tradition, coming down from the

Miami Chief Richardville, places the birthplace of Pontiac at the

present site of Defiance, Ohio, the author questions this because

of the lack of documentary or archaeological evidence that Ottawas

resided along the Maumee before 1748 (p. 15-18).

A principal variation in the interpretations of Peckham from

those of Parkman is indicated in the difference between the title

of Parkman's History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac and the present

title, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising. Peckham contends that the

Ottawa chieftain, far from engineering a general and simultaneous

uprising among the western Indians in 1762-63, actually found his

abilities taxed "in uniting his immediate neighbors and devising a

surprise attack on one fort" (p. 108). The net effect however may

not have been different, for, after the initial failure at Detroit,

Pontiac "improvised a more general uprising" which nearly suc-

ceeded in loosening the British hold upon the West (p. 111).

Peckham traces with meticulous care Pontiac's part in this up-

rising, which resulted in the capture of nine British forts, the

abandonment of a tenth, and the besieging of two others. Special

attention is of course given to the unsuccessful siege of Detroit

with which Pontiac was intimately connected, Pontiac's later "re-

luctant submission," and the events that ultimately led to his assas-

sination in 1769. Peckham believes that Pontiac was killed in the

village of Cahokia (in the present state of Illinois) rather than in

the adjoining forest, as Parkman relates.

Peckham concludes that Pontiac's historical significance is

"not alone that he was a warrior of heroic proportions who set in

motion the most formidable Indian resistance the English-speaking

people had faced, or ever would face, on this continent." More im-

portant, he asserts, is the fact that Pontiac "proved that savages

could not defeat civilized men or hold back their settlement of a

rich land hunted on by aborigines" (p. 322).

The volume is worthy of the careful perusal of all students

of American history. Incidentally, it may be pointed out that the

Miami town of Pickawillany was not on the present "site" of Piqua,