St. Clair and Wayne 53 



that the troops did not make the final move from 

 Fort Washington until mid-September. 24 



St. Clair himself was broken in health; he was 

 a sick, weak, elderly man, high minded, and zeal- 

 ous to do his duty, but totally unfit for the terrible 

 responsibilities of such an expedition against such 

 foes. The troops were of wretched stuff. There 

 were two small regiments of regular infantry, the 

 rest of the army being composed of six months' 

 levies and of militia ordered out for this particular 

 campaign. The pay was contemptible. Each pri- 

 vate was given three dollars a month, from which 

 ninety cents was deducted, leaving a net payment 

 of two dollars and ten cents a month. 23 Sergeants 

 netted three dollars and sixty cents; while the lieu- 

 tenants received twenty-two, the captains thirty, and 

 the colonels sixty dollars. The mean parsimony of 

 the nation in paying such low wages to men about 

 to be sent on duties at once very arduous and very 

 dangerous met its fit and natural reward. Men of 

 good bodily powers, and in the prime of life, and 

 especially men able to do the rough work of frontier 

 farmers, could not be hired to fight Indians in un- 

 known forests for two dollars a month. Most of 

 the recruits were from the streets and prisons of 

 the seaboard cities. They were hurried into a cam- 

 paign against peculiarly formidable foes before they 



24 St. Clair Papers, II, 286, Report of Special Committee of 

 Congress, March 27, 1792. 



55 American State Papers, IV, 118, Report of Secy, of War. 

 January 22, 1791. 



