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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

TO HENRY KNOX, SECRETARY OF WAR. - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. XII (1790-1794) [1891]

Edition used:

The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1890). Vol. XII (1790-1794).

Part of: The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols.

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TO HENRY KNOX, SECRETARY OF WAR.

Mount Vernon, 13 August, 1792.

Sir,

My last to you was dated the 5th instant, since which I have received your letters of the 4th, 5th, and 7th, and shall reply to such parts of them as appear to require it.

It is painful to find the recruiting service advancing so slowly as your last letters indicate. Endeavor to rouse the officers, who are engaged in this business, to fresh exertions. The unhappy fate of our messengers is a lamentable proof of Indian barbarity, and a strong evidence of the bad dispositions of at least some of their tribes.1 This ought to stimulate every nerve to prepare for the worst.

If the banditti, which made the successful stroke on the station at Nashville, could be come at without involving disagreeable consequences with the tribes to which they respectively belong, an attempt to cut them off ought by all means to be encouraged.2 An enterprise judiciously concerted, and spiritedly executed, would be less expensive to the government, than keeping up guards of militia, which will always be eluded in the attack, and never be overtaken in a pursuit.

No measures should be left unessayed to treat with the Wabash Indians; nor can the goods be better applied, than in effectuating this desirable purpose; but I think a person of more dignified character than Major Hamtranck should be employed in the negotiation. No idea of purchasing land from them ought to be admitted; for no treaty or other communications with the Indians have ever been satisfactory to them when this has been the subject. The principles and general outlines of all these treaties ought to be given to the negotiator, notwithstanding the right of disannulling is reserved to the government. Illiterate people are not easily made sensible of the propriety or policy of giving a power, and rejecting what is done under it. These may be contained in General Putnam’s instructions.1

General Putnam merits thanks, in my opinion, for his plan, and the sentiments he has delivered on what he conceives to be a proper mode of carrying on the war against the hostile nations of Indians; and I wish he would continue to furnish them without reserve in future. But in the present instance two reasons are so strongly opposed to the measure recommended by him, as to render it unadvisable and dangerous. One of which, the collision it might occasion, and the consequences thereof in the pending negotiation with Great Britain, he could not be acquainted with. The other, the inadequacy of our force to admit a division, and thereby running the hazard of being beaten in detail by encountering the enemy’s whole strength with part of our own, are such as not to be overcome. The other reasons assigned by you are not without weight, but less in degree; for peace and war are now in balance. Which will preponderate, remains to be known. If the latter, (which heaven avert!) we must expect to encounter a powerful confederacy, and ought not to put any thing to hazard, which can be avoided by military foresight.

I can form no judgment of the object or propriety of establishing the post on the Muskingum, mentioned in General Putnam’s letter to you of the 9th of July, as no copy of that letter has been sent to me. Equally unable am I to give any opinion on the speeches and wishes of Fish-carrier, as I know not the contents of them; twenty copies having accompanied the letter of General Chapin.

General Wilkinson has displayed great zeal and ability for the public weal since he came into service. His conduct carries strong marks of attention, activity, and spirit, and I wish him to know the favorable light in which it is viewed. With esteem, I am, Sir, &c.

[1 ]Alluding to the case of Major Trueman; and also to that of Colonel Hardin, who had been sent as a messenger to the Indians, and was murdered by them.—Marshall’s History of Kentucky, vol. ii., p. 41. Butler’s History of Kentucky, p. 219.

[2 ]“I wish Governor Blount may have been able to terminate the conferences, which he was to have had at Nashville about the 25th of last month with the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws, to the mutual advantage and satisfaction of all the parties concerned; but the difficulty of deciding between lawless settlers and greedy land speculators on one side, and the jealousy of the Indian nations and their banditti on the other, becomes more and more obvious every day; and these, from the interference of the Spaniards, if the reports we have be true, and other causes, which are too evident to require specification, add not a little to our embarrassments.”—Washington to Knox, 5 August, 1792.

[1 ]General Rufus Putnam.