miserable. Each private received two
dollars and ten cents a month; the sergeants three dollars and sixty
cents. Being recruited at various times and places, their terms of
enlistment were expiring daily, and they wanted to go home. As they were
reckless and intemperate, St. Clair, in order to preserve some
semblance of order, removed them to Ludlow's Station, about six miles
from Fort Washington. Major Ebenezer Denny, aide to St. Clair, says that
they were "far inferior to the militia." On the morning of October
twenty-ninth, when St. Clair's army was penetrating the heart of the
Indian country, this disorderly element was keeping up a constant firing
about the camp, contrary to the positive orders of the day.

In the quartermaster's department everything "went on slowly and badly;
tents, pack-saddles, kettles, knapsacks and cartridge boxes, were all
'deficient in quantity and quality.'" The army contractors were
positively dishonest, and the war department seems to have been
fearfully negligent in all of its work. Judge Jacob Burnet records that
"it is a well authenticated fact, that boxes and packages were so
carelessly put up and marked, that during the action a box was opened
marked 'flints,' which was found to contain gun-locks. Several mistakes
of the same character were discovered, as for example, a keg of powder
marked 'for the infantry,' was found to contain damaged cannon-powder,
that could scarcely be ignited."

St. Clair was sick, and so afflicted with the gout that he was unable to
mount or dismount a horse without assistance. On the night before his
great disaster he was confined to his camp bed and unable to get up.
Born in Edinburgh, in Scotland, in 1734, he was now fifty-seven years of
age, and too old and infirm to take command of an army in a hazardous
Indian campaign. Besides, he had had no experience in such a contest. He
was, however, a man of sterling courage. He had been a lieutenant in
the army of General Wolfe at Quebec. He espoused the cause of the
colonies, and had fought with distinguished valor at Trenton and
Princeton. Under him, and second in command, was General Richard Butler,
of Pennsylvania. Butler was a man of jealous and irritable temperament
and had had a bitter controversy with Harmar over the campaign of the
year before. A coolness now sprang up between him and St. Clair, which,
as we shall see, led to lamentable results. The mind of General Harmar
was filled with gloomy forebo