General St. Clair left Philadelphia March 28 for the Ohio, to superintend affairs at the point of rendezvous. With "a degree of pain and difficulty that cannot well be imagined," St. Clair, already a sick man, pushed on to Pittsburg and Lexington, Kentucky, reaching Fort Washington on the fifteenth of May. One week later (May 22) General Butler reached Pittsburg, to receive the army and the stores and ammunition and hurry all on to Fort Washington. But every rod became a mile and every hundredweight a ton. It was not until the fifth of June that the troops from the East reached Fort Pitt—eight hundred and forty-two soldiers of the twelve hundred Secretary Knox had promised May 19. And yet, few as they were, no boats had been prepared to carry them south, and indeed very few in which to transport the slowly accumulating stores and ammunition. Contractor Duer and Quartermaster Samuel Hodgdon seemingly believed that barges grew on the rich banks of the Ohio and flat-boats were to be picked from the trees. The congestion of troops and stores which now resulted at Pittsburg was quite
