of the
British army, as a spy, who had been actively implicated in the treason
of Benedict Arnold, and soon after was placed in command of West Point.
He assisted in quelling the mutiny of the Pennsylvania line, and shared
in the crowning glory of the Revolution, the capture of the British army
under lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. Soon afterwards General St. Clair
retired to private life, but his fellow-citizens soon determined
otherwise. In 1783 he was on the board of censors for Pennsylvania, and
afterwards chosen vendue-master of Philadelphia; in 1786 was elected a
member of Congress, and in 1787 was president of that body, which at
that time, was the highest office in America. In 1788 he was elected
governor of the North West Territory, which imposed upon him the duty of
governing, organizing, and bringing order out of chaos, over that region
of country. In 1791, Washington made him commander-in-chief of the army,
and in the autumn, with an ill-appointed force, set out, under the
direct orders from Henry Knox, then Secretary of War, on an expedition
against the Indians, but met with an overwhelming defeat on November
4th. The disaster was investigated by Congress, and the general was
justly exonerated from all blame. He resigned his commission as general
in 1792, but continued in office as governor until 1802, when he was
summarily dismissed by Thomas Jefferson, then president. In poverty he
retired to a log-house which overlooked the valley he had once owned. In
vain he pressed his claims against the government for the expenditures
he had made during the Revolution, in aid of the cause. In 1812 he
published his "Narrative." In 1813 the legislature of Pennsylvania
granted him an annuity of $400, and finally the general government gave
him a pension of $60 per month. He died at Laural Hill, Pennsylvania,
August 31, 1818, from injuries received by being thrown from a wagon.

Years afterwards Judge Burnet wrote, declaring him to have been
"unquestionably a man of superior talents, of extensive information, and
of great uprightness of purpose, as well as suavity of manners. * * * He
had been accustomed from infancy to mingle in the circles of taste and
refinement, and had acquired a polish of manners, and a habitual respect
for the feelings of others, which might be cited as a specimen of
genuine politeness."[183]

In 1870 the State of Ohio purchased the papers of General St. Clair, and
in 1882 these were published in tw