eeded by Colonel Pickering.]

[Sidenote: Colonel McHenry appointed secretary of war.]

On the 19th of August, the secretary of state had resigned[38] his
place in the administration, and some time elapsed before a successor
was appointed.[39] At length, Colonel Pickering was removed to the
department of state, and Mr. M'Henry, a gentleman who had served in
the family of General Washington, and in the congress prior to the
establishment of the existing constitution, was appointed to the
department of war. By the death of Mr. Bradford, a vacancy was also
produced in the office of attorney general, which was filled by Mr.
Lee, a gentleman of considerable eminence at the bar, and in the
legislature of Virginia.

[Footnote 38: See note No. XII. at the end of the volume.]

[Footnote 39: See note No. XIII. at the end of the volume.]

Many of those embarrassments in which the government, from its
institution, had been involved, were now ended, or approaching their
termination.

The opposition to the laws, which had so long been made in the western
counties of Pennsylvania, existed no longer.

[Sidenote: Treaty with the Indians north-west of the Ohio.]

On the third of August, a definitive treaty was concluded by General
Wayne with the hostile Indians north-west of the Ohio, by which the
destructive and expensive war which had long desolated that frontier,
was ended in a manner perfectly agreeable to the United States. An
accommodation had taken place with the powerful tribes of the south
also; and to preserve peace in that quarter, it was only necessary to
invest the executive with the means of restraining the incursions
which the disorderly inhabitants of the southern frontier frequently
made into the Indian territory; incursions, of which murder was often
the consequence.

Few subjects had excited more feeling among the people, or in the
government of the United States, than the captivity of their fellow
citizens in Algiers. Even this calamity had been seized as a weapon
which might be wielded with some effect against the President.
Overlooking the exertions he had made for the attainment of peace, and
the liberation of the American captives; and regardless of his
inability to aid negotiation by the exhibition of force, the
discontented ascribed the long and painful imprisonment of their
unfortunate brethren to a carelessness in the administration
respecting their sufferings, and to that inexhaustible sou