Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/131

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ST. CLAIR'S CAMPAIGN
127

transformed into a manufacturing city, and there was almost no kind of work that was not done—though often the necessary tools had first to be made. Two traveling forges had been sent west of which only the anvils were missing!

It is not to be wondered that St. Clair, as General Harmar afterward said, was often the first up in the morning and went the rounds of the shops and laboratories greatly disturbed over the vast amount of work to be done, the difficulty in the doing of it, and the ominous delay. For, with the heat of the summer's end, the grass was fast withering, which meant that feed for the horses must be transported—an item of great magnitude.

The failure of the quartermaster-general to come forward, even when ordered to do so, compelled St. Clair to bear the brunt of all the results of mismanagement and delay. As noted, the delay of the quartermaster was never explained. His very appointment occasioned an outcry among officers who had known him; the soldiers laughed many of his measures to scorn. One of his employees who arrived at Fort