CHAPTER doned; but they offered, if the Indians would confirm VI. the limits established by the treaties of Forts M'Intosh 1793. and Harmer, a larger present, in money and goods, than ever had been given at any one time since the white men sat foot in the country. They were authorized, in fact, to offer $50,000 down, and, in addition, annual presents forever to the amount of $10,000 a year. This answer of the commissioners having been reported to the Indian council, the question of accepting it was debated with a great deal of vehemence. The result was exAug. 13. pressed in a written document sent to the commissioners, in which it was contended that the treaties of Forts M'Intosh and Harmer, having been made by a few unauthorized chiefs, could not be considered as valid. As to confirming those treaties for money, that was of no value to them, while the land would afford means of subsistence to themselves and their children. This same money might better be employed in persuading the settlers north of the Ohio to remove. Since it was refused to concede the Ohio as a boundary, the negotiation was declared to be at an end.

The commissioners, much chagrined at this abrupt termination of their mission, without their having been admitted into the presence of the Indian council, ascribed the result to British influence. Very probably the inclination of the Indians was seconded by the advice of the Canadian traders and the British agents. Simcoe, however, had expressly denied having advised the Indians not to surrender any of their lands. He had also offered to act as mediator, but this offer the instructions of the commissioners would not allow them to accept.

Pending this negotiation, Wayne's troops had remained encamped in the vicinity of Cincinnati, where they suf fered not a little from an epidemic influenza. Appre

VI.

Oct.

hending that the failure of the negotiation would be fol- CHAPTER lowed by an immediate attack upon the frontiers, Wayne marched with his army, and, leaving garrisons behind 1793. him at the intermediate posts, established himself, with twenty-six hundred regulars, in a fortified camp at Greenville, six miles in advance of Fort Jefferson. Here he was promptly joined by a thousand Kentucky volunteers, under General Scott, raised by dint of great exertions, but who arrived too late to be of any essential aid. These volunteers were soon dismissed; but, to serve as a protection to the frontier, and to be ready for ulterior operations in the spring, the army remained encamped at Greenville during the winter. As all the supplies had to be carried some seventy miles through the woods on packhorses, the support of the troops in that position was an expensive affair. A part of the legionary cavalry, stationed for the winter in Kentucky, was placed at the disposal of Governor Shelby, for the suppression of any attempts, should such be made, to raise men, under French commissions, for an expedition against Louisiana-a subject as to which information and orders had been sent to General Wayne and Governor St. Clair, as well as to Governor Shelby.

While a sort of truce had prevailed during the summer with the Northwestern Indians, war, meanwhile, had been again kindled on the southern frontier. Just as Governor Blount was on the point of negotiating an arrangement with the five hostile towns of the Cherokees, a militia captain, called into service for the purpose of guarding the settlements, crossed the Tennessee in defiance of orders, and killed a number of the most friendly June Indians, engaged at that very moment in an interview with Blount's messengers. In consequence of this and several other like aggressions, the territory south of the

CHAPTER Ohio had become involved in a new war with the Chero

VI.

kees, which Knox characterized as highly unjust, and to 1793. guard against the consequences of which, bodies of mili tia had to be called into service at a heavy expense. Nearly the same thing had happened in Georgia, where Governor Telfair persisted, in spite of the remonstrances of the War Department, in leading a body of militia against certain of the Creeks, alleged by him to be unfriendly an expedition which ended in killing a number of warriors, and in the capture of several women and children belonging to a town of whose friendship there was no question. Telfair declared that the State of Georgia would recognize no treaty with the Indians, in the making of which her commissioners had not been consulted. But this did not deter Seagrove, the Indian agent, from negotiating a new arrangement with the Creeks.

In

While the authority of the federal executive was thus opposed or called in question in various directions, the federal judiciary was exposed to a similar danger. consequence of the recent decision by the Supreme Court that states were liable to be sued by individuals, citizens of other states, a process of that sort had been commenced against the State of Massachusetts. As soon as the writ was served, Governor Hancock called the Legislature together. They resolved to take no notice of the suit, at the same time agreeing to a resolution in favor of amending the Constitution in that particular, which the governor was requested to transmit to the Legislatures of the other states. Hancock did not live to fulfill this request. He died shortly after, when that duty devolved on Samuel Adams, then lieutenant governor, and for the next three years governor of the state. The Legislature of Georgia, much less moderate in its method of dealing

VI.

with this matter, assumed a posture of savage defiance, CHAPTER too much in accordance with other incidents in her history. An act was passed subjecting to death, without 1793. benefit of clergy, any marshal or other person who should presume to serve any process issued against that state at the suit of any individual. The proposition of Massachusetts for an amendment of the Constitution was favorably responded to, and ultimately prevailed.

A decision of the Circuit Court of the United States, sitting at Richmond, had declared null and void, by virtue of the treaty of peace with Great Britain, all the numerous acts of Virginia obstructing the collection of British debts, even those which had discharged the debtor on his making certain payments into the treasury. This decision added to the excitement against what were called the usurpations of the federal judiciary, and served to brighten up the anti-Federal flame throughout the entire Union.

Such was the condition of public affairs, and such the agitated state of the public mind, when the third Congress came together. During the months of autumn, in Dec. 2. the midst of the high political excitement of which it was the center, Philadelphia had been visited by the yellow fever in a very malignant form. So great was the panic that all business had been suspended, the city, at one time, having been almost deserted by all those able. to leave it. But with the first frosts the disorder disappeared, and before the period appointed for the meeting of Congress the health of the city was re-established. To that body all eyes were now turned, and with no little interest.

Langdon of New Hampshire, Cabot and Strong of Massachusetts, Ellsworth of Connecticut, King and Burr of New York, Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, Monroe

CHAPTER and John Taylor of Virginia (the latter of whom had VI. succeeded, during the preceding session, to the seat re1793. signed by Lee), Hawkins of North Carolina, and Butler

and Izard of South Carolina, continued to retain their seats in the Senate, either by holding over or by reelection. Among the new members, Livermore of New Hampshire, Vining of Delaware, and Jackson of Georgia, had already distinguished themselves as former members of the House. A sectional dispute in Pennsylvania, the western portion insisting upon its right to be represented, had kept that state with only one senator during the whole of the last Congress. That dispute had been settled, but the result was by no means agreeable to the friends of the administration. The choice had fallen on Albert Gallatin, who added to his violent opposition to the excise laws, of which the execution still continued to be effectually prevented in Western Pennsylvania, a very strong sympathy for France. An objection, started in the Pennsylvania Legislature, was brought by petition before the Senate, that Gallatin had not been sufficiently long a citizen of the United States to qualify him to sit in that body. A Swiss by birth, he had landed in America, then just entering upon early manhood, in 1780, and, after two or three years passed in Massachusetts, where he acted for a while as teacher of French at Harvard College, had settled in Western Pennsylvania, where he had become a landed proprietor, and in 1785 had taken the oath of allegiance to the state. His superior education and talents soon brought him into political notice, and he had been elected first to the Constitutional Convention, then to the Pennsylvania Assembly, and now to the United States Senate. It was contended by Gallatin and his friends that the nine years citizenship required of senators had