raw recruits,
unused to Indian warfare, St. Clair marched into the heart of the Indian
country and suffered an inglorious defeat, on November 4, 1791. More
than half of his command were killed, and scarcely a man escaped
unscathed. It was a most humiliating reverse for the new Government,
occurring almost under the eyes of British garrisons, and just as
opposition was coming to a head in Congress.

While two European powers were thus poised like vultures awaiting the
demise of the new republic, a third darkened the sky. France deemed the
moment auspicious for an attack upon the colonial possessions of her
late ally, the King of Spain. The South American revolutionist, Miranda,
had persuaded the French Ministry, as he had before persuaded Pitt, that
the Spanish colonial empire was tottering and would readily fall with
its rich spoil at the first resolute attack. The French Ministers were
dazzled by the prospect of reviving a colonial empire in the new world.
It seemed well within the range of possibilities to reduce Louisiana,
and from the mouth of the Mississippi to begin the conquest of Spanish
Central and Southern America. With this purpose in view, the Government
sent as Minister to the United States, Citizen Genet, an ardent apostle
of the Revolution. He was instructed to secure a treaty with the United
States--"a true family compact"--which "would conduce rapidly to freeing
Spanish America, to opening the navigation of the Mississippi to the
inhabitants of Kentucky, to delivering our ancient brothers of Louisiana
from the tyrannical yoke of Spain, and perhaps to uniting the fair star
of Canada to the American constellation." But without waiting for the
cooperation of the United States, Genet was to arouse the people of
Kentucky and Louisiana by sending among them agents who should light the
fires of revolution.

[Map: The Northwest 1785-1795]

The first news of the revolution in France had kindled the warmest
sympathy in the United States. Emotional individuals thought they saw
the events of our own revolution mirrored in the stirring drama in
France. The spectacle of the new republic confronting the allied
monarchs of Europe thrilled those who had battled with the hirelings of
George the Third. Civic feasts became the fashion; liberty caps and
French cockades were donned; "the social and soul-warming term Citizen"
was adopted by the more demonstrative. But there were those who did not
sing "Ca Ira" and who fore