made the first
displays of your character."

Referring in the same letter to the treaty which had been concluded with
the Creeks, he said: "This event will leave us at peace from one end of
our borders to the other, except when it may be interrupted by a small
refugee banditti of Cherokees and Shawnees, who can be easily chastised,
or even extirpated, if it shall become necessary." He then added:--

"Gradually recovering from the distress in which the war left us,
patiently advancing in our task of civil government, unentangled in the
crooked politics of Europe, wanting scarcely anything but the free
navigation of the Mississippi (which we must have, and as certainly
shall have as we remain a nation), I have supposed that, with the
undeviating exercise of a just, steady, and prudent national policy, we
shall be the gainers, whether the powers of the old world may be in
peace or war, but more especially in the latter case. In that case, our
importance will certainly increase, and our friendship will be coveted."
The last clause foreshadows that neutral policy which Washington assumed
for the government of the United States at a little later period, when
great efforts were made to involve it in the meshes of European
politics, by active sympathy with the democratic movements in France.

Rest at Mount Vernon was grateful to the wearied chief of the republic.
Yet it was not absolute repose. As a conscientious public servant; as
the chief officer of a government yet in a comparatively formative
state, and charged with the highest trusts that can be committed to
mortal man, he felt most sensibly the care of state, even in his quiet
home on the banks of the Potomac. One subject, in particular, filled him
with anxiety. He had ordered the chastisement of the Indians in the Ohio
country, and troops had gone thither for the purpose. He had deprecated
a war with the deluded savages, but good policy appeared to demand it;
and on the thirtieth of September an expedition set out from Fort
Washington, where the city of Cincinnati now stands, under General
Harmer, a veteran of the Revolution. But from that time until his
arrival in Philadelphia, at the close of November, Washington remained
in profound ignorance of the operations or the fate of the expedition.
On the second of November he wrote to General Knox, the secretary of
war, expressing his surprise that no information of the expedition had
been received, and saying: "This, in