HISTORY - Lyons 14489 - General Anthony Wayne

History - Lyons

General Anthony Wayne

General Anthony Wayne, for whom Wayne County is named, was a hero of the American Revolution. He was a contemporary of Franklin and Washington and knew them both well. His public life spanned scarcely twenty years, yet in those twenty years he distinguished himself time and time again and became such a hero that nearly thirty years after his death our county's founders honored his memory by giving his name to the new county of Wayne.

Anthony Wayne was not one to which learning came easily, but he did have an acute interest in Mathematics that enabled him to take up surveying. By the time he was eighteen he had opened a surveyor's office of his own. When he was twenty-one upon Benjamin Franklin's recommendation he was put in charge of colonization of lands owned by U.S. speculators in Nova Scotia.

Wayne's honor did not come to him because of his surveying skills, however. It was upon the Revolutionary Battlefield that Wayne came to be known as a national hero. Anthony Wayne was thirty-one at the out break of the Revolution. Upon outbreak of the Revolutionary War, he collected a company of volunteers at once, trained them and was sent to the Canadian border under General Sullivan. At one point he was in command of Fort Ticonderaga. In 1777, he was active in the campaign against Britain's Lord Howe under George Washington. Wayne's service to Washington was of great note, but Wayne's most daring exploit came at Stoney Point.

In 1778, Anthony Wayne was sent by Washington to dislodge the British from Stony Point on the Hudson River. As a natural bastion Stony Point was formidable. The fort was located at the top of a very steep, rocky hill, surrounded on three sides by water and accessible by land only through a marsh which overflowed daily with the tide. The fort was considered to be impregnable, but Wayne eagerly took on Washington's command to attack Stony Point.

There is a tradition of longstanding that when Washington divulged to Wayne that the purpose of summoning him was to have him storm Stony Point, Wayne impulsively replied: "General, if you will only plan it, I'll storm hell!" To this a comment from Washington has sometimes been added: "Perhaps, General Wayne, we had better try Stony Point first." It is maintained that Anthony Wayne earned, the title of "Mad" when a soldier hearing Wayne say the above, said: "The man is mad!"

Wayne made his assault upon Stony Point shortly after midnight on July 16, 1779. Previous to the attack, Wayne had taken security precautions so that the British would not be forewarned of the attack. Their precautions allowed Wayne to attack Stony Point in complete surprise of the British. One precaution he took was his order that all his men unload their weapons and rely on bayonets, so that an inadvertant shot would not warn the British of the Americans' approach.

The battle to gain the fort was fierce and Wayne was wounded in the action. A musketball hit him at the center of his forehead during the attack. Anyone at first glance would have pronounced Wayne dead from the blow. Wayne was only stunned by the heavy ball, however, and he continued to direct his men in hand to hand combat. Because of Wayne's dedication and urgings to continue, the siege of Stony Point was successful. The impregnable fort had been penetrated and won over by Wayne and his men.

For the victory, Wayne and his men received great praise. For Anthony Wayne, a gold medal and the thanks of Congress were granted. Anthony Wayne had served his cause well. For the rest of the Revolution Wayne continued to serve the United States.

He had been eight years in the military service when the Revolutionary War ended. He had served in some of the hottest battles of the Revolution alongside Washington and had led the attack in person in a host of lesser but nevertheles bloody affairs. When independence had been achieved, Wayne had not yet turned forty.

From the battlefield, it appeared that Wayne would resume life much like he had left it before the war. He was elected to his seat in the Pennsylvania Legislature, but all was not well with Wayne. He was heavily in debt as a result of his sizeable expenditures during his long military service and mismanagement of his property while he had served in the millitary. With his debts mounting, Wayne moved to Georgia to make his fortune in growing rice. Anthony Wayne failed as a southern planter, but was elected to serve in the House of Representatives. Short was the time he spent as a representative, however, and he returned to Pennsylvania in retirement.

In 1792, he was summoned from his Pennsylvania farm by then President Washington to command a force against the Western Indians. On April 13, 1792, Anthony Wayne accepted the command of the United States Army which was then engaged in bloody affairs with the indians of the northwest territory. The Indian Wars were an aftermath of the Revolution and essentially a part of it. Great Britain had refrained from surrendering the forts held by her troops in the northwest, maintaining principally that claims of Royalists had not been met by the Americans as had been agreed in the Peace Treaty, that ended the Revolutionary War. It was thought that the British were encouraging the Indians to conduct raids against American settlers in the Ohio Valley. The Indians were indeed hostile to the coming tide of white immigration.

Wayne had been summoned to end the hostilities that were directed against the settlers of the Ohio Valley, who were pouring into the area at a rate of 10,000 a year. Others before Wayne had failed in their efforts to do the same. When efforts at peace with the Indians failed, Wayne began his campaign against the Indians on May 5, 1793. For a long while, Wayne intensively drilled his men in the art of war before advancing against the Indians.

While Wayne's men drilled, the Indians debated whether they should go to war with Wayne. The Indians had as their military leader a chief by the name of Little Turtle, but when discussions on whether to go to war occured, Little Turtle did not call for war. Little Turtle recognized the threat that Wayne presented to the Indians. Little Turtle called for peace: "We have beaten the enemy twice under different commanders. We cannot expect the same good fortune to attend us always. The Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. The nights and days are alike to him, and during all the time he has been marching on our villages, not withstanding the watchfulness of our young men, we have never been able to surprise him. Think well of it. There is something whispers me, it would be prudent to listen to his offers of peace."

Little Turtle's advice went unheeded, it was roundly denounced by some of the other chiefs. Wayne's invitation to peace went unanswered by the Indians. It is thought that the Indians did not accept the call for peace for they had backing them the British. As has been noted, the British, retained possession of forts south of the Great Lakes, in violation of the treaty that had ended the Revolutionary War. It is thought the British desired to have dominion over the Northwest Territory.

With his call for peace unanswered by the Indians, Wayne began his advance against the Indians in 1794. Never did Roman legion move with greater circumspection than Wayne's in its penetration of the Indian heartland. The Indians abandoned their towns in surprise as Wayne advanced upon them. Prior to the battle that was to end the Indian wars, Wayne issued a final invitation for peace to the Indians. The answer returned was that if Wayne remained in place for ten days, they would talk peace after ten days. Ten days was too long and Wayne advanced slowly against the Indians. It was on August 20, 1794, that the final battle to end raids upon white settlers was fought.

Wayne's army advanced in two lines with fixed bayonets. The main line of Indians was discovered in an area along the riverbank through which a tornado had apparently went a few years before, leaving the ground strewn with the trunks of great trees. These formed a defensive position for the Indians near the British Fort Miami.

Wayne had practiced a minor strategem before the battle. The custom of the Algonquin warriors was not to eat food on the morning of battle. Consequently, Wayne sent the Indians a warning that he meant to fight, but did not name the day, so for three days many of the Indians ate sparingly or not at all, and were weakened at the hour of combat.

Always the Indians of that era fought as individuals and were not amenable to battle formations. They arranged themselves in a battle line for this battle, however. Their lines extended for over two miles at a right angle to the nearby river. Though three ranks deep it was grievously thin everywhere.

Wayne perceived this fact soon after the battle had begun with the indians. He adjusted his battle plan accordingly and handily was able to beat back the Indian line. The Indians fled to the British Fort Miami where they thought shelter would be theirs. Such was not to be the case, however, for the gates of the fort were shut to the Indians. The gates had been closed for the British surely realized that if the Indians were allowed inside the fort, Mad Anthony Wayne would storm the weakly garrisoned fort and capture it. With the gates of the fort closed to the Indians, they felt abandoned by the British. The British no longer could rely upon the Indians for aid in claiming the Ohio Valley and other western lands.

The Battle of Fallen Timbers as it came to be known broke the Indian power in the northwestern territory. The Battle of Fallen Timbers also shattered all hopes of the British to gain the Ohio Valley and western lands. The Battle of Fallen Timbers had insured the safety of the frontier territory including the territory south of Lake Ontario which has borned Mad Anthony's last name for over 150 years.

With his mission to stop the Indian raids upon American settlers in the Ohio valley complete, Wayne turned to home. He never made it home, however. On the morning of December 15, 1796, sixteen days before he would be fifty-two years old, Anthony Wayne breathed his last. The "Chief who never sleeps" was asleep at last.

Among the intrepid leaders of America's fight for independence, Anthony Wayne was the spirited combat general who stood foremost for daring enterprise and hard fighting. From the deep forests of Canada to the suptropical swamplands and burning sands of Georgia summer, he was dauntless, skillful, prudent. Though affectionately called "Mad Anthony Wayne", diligence and prudence were the hallmarks of his leadership. Wayne was known to the British as "Hotspur." To the Indians of the northwest territory he was known as the "Chief who never sleeps."

Whatever else may have led to the bestowal of his name upon our county at its organization on April 11, 1823, it was at least a just tribute of respect to his memory for the distinguished services he provided his country.

Mad Anthony Wayne and the New Nation, Glenn Tucker, 1973, excerpts.

Clark's Military History of Wayne County.

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