Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/120

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116
MILITARY ROADS

cerning peace. No rift in the dark war-clouds occurred, despite the efforts of Knox and St. Clair to establish an armistice, and Scott marched northward in May and Wilkinson in August. Like similar raids, these two were successful failures. Villages and crops were ruined and captives were taken. Many squaws "looked behind them and turned pale" perhaps, but in effect they had an opposite influence from that hoped: they undid whatever little good the efforts to secure peace had accomplished. There was now utmost need for the final "grand campaign."

The army of the United States now consisted of three or four hundred soldiers—the First Regiment—distributed among the frontier forts on the Ohio River. It was ordered that the depleted ranks of this regiment be filled by recruits to be raised "from Maryland to New York inclusive," and that a full Second Regiment be raised, one company from South Carolina and one from Delaware and the remainder in the four New England states.[1] The troops were to be mustered by companies, to rendezvous

  1. Id., p. 171.