III. dollars were also secured to six of the principal chiefs, and CHAPTER to M'Gillivray $1200 annually, in the name of salary as agent of the United States. He was also to enjoy the 1790. privilege of importing goods for supplying the Indians duty free. The giving up to the Indians of the lands south and west of the Oconee occasioned great dissatisfaction in Georgia. An association was formed among some of the more violent for settling those lands in spite of the treaty; but this bravado does not seem to have been persisted in. The Legislature passed resolutions in which several articles of the treaty were severely criticised, preceded, however, by a declaration that the arrangement was legal and binding, and pledging the faith of the state to support it. Even among the Creeks themselves it met with some opposition, excited by one Bowles, a white man, a native of Maryland, formerly an Indian agent under the British authority, who arrived about this time from Bermuda, pretending British support, and seeking to set himself up as a sort of rival to M'Gillivray. An attempt to arrange matters with the Western Indians was less successful. Encouraged by Sir John Johnson, the former British Indian agent, and by the British authorities in Canada, where Sir Guy Carleton, now Lord Dorchester, was again governor, the Western tribes insisted on re-establishing the Ohio as the Indian boundary, nor would they listen to any other terms. The hostile warriors infested the banks of that river, waylaying the boats in which emigrants descended; and they still continued their incursions into Kentucky, attacking the more remote stations, and committing many murders. An attempt at retaliation had been made in the spring April. by a party of two hundred and thirty Kentucky volunteers, joined by a hundred regulars from Fort Washing CHAPTER ton. They marched under Harmer to the Scioto, but III. found the Indian camp deserted, and returned without 1790. accomplishing any thing. A more formidable expedition, consisting of three hundred and twenty regulars, joined by two quotas of militia, one from Pennsylvania, the other from Kentucky, amounting in the whole to eleven hundred men, called out by order of the presi Oct. dent, marched in the autumn against the Miami village on the Scioto, where now stands the town of Chilicothe. On the approach of this force the Indians fled. The village was burned, and the corn-fields ravaged. Colonel Hardin, detached in pursuit with a hundred and fifty of his Kentucky militia and thirty regulars under Captain Armstrong, fell into an ambush about six miles from the village. The militia took to flight at the first alarm, without hardly firing a gun, deserting the regulars, who stood firm till most of them were killed. The Indians remained on the field, and during the night held a dance of victory, exulting with frantic shouts and gestures over their dead and dying enemies, a ceremony of which Captain Armstrong was a constrained and wretched witness, being sunk to his neck in mud and water within a hund red yards of the scene. The Indians approached Harmer's camp, and some skirmishing ensued; but he moved off a day or two after, without attempting to bring them to action. Soon, however, he seems to have changed his mind; for on the second day's march, when about ten miles from his late. camp, he called a halt, and sent Hardin back to the ruined town with some sixty regulars and three hundred militia. The Indians found there separated themselves into small parties, and, seeming to fly, drew off the militia in pursuit, when suddenly a band not hitherto seen rose from the grass and attacked the regulars with their tomahawks. Recalled from their vain pur III. suit, the militia presently came to the aid of the regu- CHAPTER lars. But, after a hard and murderous struggle, the. whites were driven from the ground, leaving fifty of the 1790. regulars behind them, and twice as many militia. After this repulse Harmer retired without attempting any thing further, and, strangely enough, claiming a victory. Out of this unfortunate expedition grew many jealousies and discontents. Harmer and Hardin were tried by court-martial. Both were acquitted, but Har mer resigned his commission. That anti-Federal feeling which at first had vented itself in criticisms on the new Constitution and demands for amendments, began, simultaneously with the adjournment of Congress, to transform itself into an opposition to the financial policy of the government. Openly to assail the funding of the Continental debt, whatever might be the feelings of many on that subject, would hardly have been promising ground for a party to stand upon. The assumption of the state debts was, therefore, made the great subject of complaint; a new topic of political discontent, which made a considerable change in the party relations of individuals. Gerry, by his earnest advocacy of the assumption, and, indeed, by his general support of the financial system of the government, seemed to have become almost a Federalist; while Madison, regarded during the first session of Congress as the great federal champion, by his more recent course had come to identify himself very much with the opposition, and thereby to re-establish a political sympathy between himself and the ruling majority of his own state. The Virginia Assembly, as the head of the opposition, sounded the key note in a resolution, carried through Nov. 3. the House of Delegates by a vote of seventy-five to fif ty-two, declaring so much of the late act of Congress as CHAPTER provided for the assumption of the state debts "repugIII. nant to the Constitution of the United States," as be1790. ing "the exercise of a power not expressly granted to the general government." Even the funding of the Continental debt did not escape censure; so much of the act as restrained the United States from redeeming at pleasure any part of that debt being denounced as "dangerous to the rights and subversive of the interests of the people." A memorial in relation to these two subjects was ordered to be drawn up, to be presented to Congress. A resolution was also passed recommending that the doors of the Senate, while that body was engaged in legislative matters, should be open to the public-a recommendation seconded by the Legislatures of Pennsylvania, New York, and the two Carolinas. While censuring the assumption of the state debts, the Virginia Assembly evinced, however, its satisfaction at the act by means of which that assumption had been carried through the House for fixing the permanent seat of the federal government on the Potomac. They voted the sum of $110,000 toward the erection of the public buildings, and the Legislature of Maryland appropriated $70,000 to the same purpose. The Legislature of North Carolina had scornfully refused to take an oath to support the Federal Constitution, as well as to pass an act, requested by Congress of all the states, to allow to the federal government the Nov. 24. use of the state jails. At the session succeeding the adjournment of Congress, very violent resolutions were brought forward on the subject of the assumption of the state debts. But the party which had secured the ratification of the Federal Constitution having rallied to prevent their passage, the Legislature was induced to content itself with complaints of the secrecy of the sen atorial debates, and of the enormous salaries allowed to CHAPTER federal officers. In III. Meanwhile, in conformity to the late act to that ef- 1790. fect, the departments of the federal government had transferred themselves to Philadelphia. In the old court-house on Chestnut Street, convenient accommodations for the two houses of Congress had been fitted up by order of the city councils. When Congress met for Dec. 6. its third session two new members from Virginia made their appearance, the one in the House, the other in the Senate, both soon conspicuous in national affairs. the House, William B. Giles, a lawyer from the Petersburg district, supplied the seat made vacant by Bland's death. A vacancy in the Senate, occasioned by the death of Grayson, was filled by James Monroe. Descended from an ancient family of Virginia, and educated at the College of William and Mary, Monroe had entered, in his eighteenth year, the military service at the commencement of the Revolution, had served through the campaign of 1776 as lieutenant in one of the Virginia regiments, had been wounded at the battle of Trenton, and, in the two following campaigns, had acted as an aid-de-camp to Lord Stirling. Having attempted to raise a regiment in Virginia, but without success, he commenced the study of the law under Jefferson, then governor of Virginia, by whom he had been sent, after the fall of Charleston, to South Carolina, to report on the means of aiding that state. Elected in 1782 a member of the Virginia Legislature, he had shortly af terward been placed in the executive council, and in 1783 had been appointed to succeed Madison in the Continental Congress, which place he held for three years, the limit prescribed by the Articles of Confederation. In 1787 he was again elected to the state Legis |