of November, which
reached Philadelphia in the following March, public feeling veered
strongly toward war. At the same time with tales of new outrages at sea
came a not very well authenticated but commonly accepted report of Lord
Dorchester's speech to the Indians of the Northwest, in which he
assured his dusky hearers that war was imminent between his country and
the United States. Congress now began to prepare for the inevitable.
Appropriations were made for the fortification of harbors and the
collection of military stores. The depredations of the Algerine pirates
in the Mediterranean gave excuse for the building of six frigates. An
embargo was laid upon commerce for thirty days and then extended over
another thirty days. Dayton, of New Jersey, alarmed the administration
party by proposing the sequestration of all British debts as an
indemnity for the vessels which had been seized by British cruisers.

A rift now appeared in the war cloud. Early in April, Washington
received intelligence of a new order in council dated January 8, 1794,
which only forbade trade between the French colonies and Europe, leaving
American vessels to trade freely with the French West Indies. Washington
seized the opportune moment to test the resources of diplomacy. On April
16, he sent to the Senate the nomination of Chief Justice John Jay as
Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of St. James. Three days later the
nomination was confirmed, and by the middle of May, Jay was on his way
to England upon the most difficult mission of his diplomatic career.

While Jay was pressing American grievances upon Lord Grenville, not the
least of which was the retention of the Western posts by British
garrisons, events occurred near one of the unsurrendered posts which
might easily have brought on war. The humiliating defeat of St. Clair
in 1791 had left the settlers beyond the Ohio at the mercy of the
Indians. British authorities in Canada encouraged the Indians to believe
that by combination they could check the advance of the whites. An
Indian territory under British protection would have served the purposes
of Great Britain admirably. To forestall these designs President
Washington appointed to command in the Northwest Anthony Wayne--"Mad
Anthony" of Revolutionary days. With a caution and thoroughness which
belied his reputation, Wayne spent nearly two years in recruiting and
drilling an army. Every effort in the mean time to conciliate the
Indians was m