Ethan Yazel
32 Cal
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2019
- Messages
- 45
- Reaction score
- 54
This week we dive into the Muzzle Blasts Archives and bring you this article on the Battle of Fallen Timbers by Joshua Shepherd.
For the new administration of President George Washington, the first few years of national governance had proved disagreeable. Mounting tensions abroad threatened to entangle the young republic in foreign disputes for which Washington had little stomach; domestically, financial instability endangered the nation with economic calamity. Worse yet, antagonistic ideological factions - pitting those who opposed a strong central government against those who favored increased Federal power -were laying the seeds of partisan political parties.
But perhaps the greatest threat to the new nation lay beyond the western frontier, where a confederacy of Indian tribes had repeatedly bested American forces. The day after Christmas, 1791, Secretary of War Henry Knox presented Congress with the president's plans for pacifying the hinterlands of the Ohio Country. Because the region's hostiles had refused "offers of peace on reasonable terms", Knox requested an unprecedented expansion of the Army. The tribes were flushed with "the pride of victory'', claimed Knox, and "a strong coercive force" was needed to secure peace. Despite the horrors of an all-out conflict on the frontier, as well as the tremendous cost of blood and treasure it would entail, Knox advised Congress that there was little choice. ''. An Indian war of considerable extent," he warned, "has been excited."
