He commanded the army.
He was ill.
He had camped without strong fortifications.
His force had failed to scout effectively.
The militia position was dangerously separated.
The expedition had marched late into the year.
All of those facts deserved examination.
St. Clair himself wanted an inquiry.
He believed his reputation required it.
Washington accepted his resignation from military command in March 1792 but expressed continued respect for his character. Founders Online preserves Washington's March 28 letter telling St. Clair that the President's confidence in his military character had originally led to his appointment.
St. Clair remained governor of the Northwest Territory after leaving the Army.
Then Congress began asking its own questions.
March 27, 1792 created a precedent far beyond the battlefield
The House of Representatives authorized a select committee to investigate the failed expedition.
That act was historically significant because the House was investigating officials within the executive branch.
The committee could call for persons, papers, and records.
Washington now faced a constitutional question no President had answered before.
Did the House have the right to demand internal executive documents?
Could the President refuse?
Washington asked his Cabinet.
Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph considered the problem.
According to the House Historian, they agreed on a principle that helped form the early basis of executive privilege: the executive should provide information that the public interest allowed while retaining the right to withhold material whose disclosure would harm the public interest.
In the St. Clair case, the administration ultimately provided the requested material.
That created another precedent.
Congress could investigate the executive.
The executive could recognize legitimate grounds for confidentiality.
The two branches would have to negotiate the boundary.
A constitutional practice that now appears in arguments over presidents, wars, intelligence, and national security had one of its earliest major tests because an American army had been destroyed beside the Wabash.
The investigation did not simply blame the general
The committee studied recruiting, transportation, equipment, contracting, supplies, and the conduct of officers.
Its findings complicated the popular story that St. Clair had simply led good troops into a foolish trap.
The congressional investigation concluded that serious failures in the quartermaster and contractor systems had delayed and weakened the expedition. Army Quartermaster history states that the committee placed heavy responsibility on the “gross and various mismanagements and neglects” in those departments and largely exonerated St. Clair.
That did not mean every tactical decision had been wise.
Later Army histories remain critical of the expedition's reconnaissance, security, training, discipline, and timing.
It means the disaster was institutional.
A government that could not supply an army properly could not solve the problem merely by finding a more aggressive general.
Washington needed a better military system.
Henry Knox reached one of the most important conclusions
Secretary of War Henry Knox had already been thinking deeply about the weakness of short-term troops.
His post-defeat analysis emphasized the advantages of soldiers who were enlisted long enough to be trained and disciplined properly.
In correspondence preserved through Founders Online, Knox argued that disciplined troops possessed obedience, patience, economy, competent officers, and cohesion that short-term militia could not easily match.
The lesson was not that militia lacked courage.
Many militia members had fought bravely in the Revolution.
The problem was organization.
A force assembled for a few months might reach the battlefield just as it became useful.
Officers had little time to learn their men.
Men had little time to learn formations.
Supply systems had to support constantly changing units.
Discipline became harder to establish.
Washington and Knox decided the next campaign required a more permanent military instrument.
Congress doubled the Regular Army
The political meaning of this decision should not be underestimated.
Many Americans distrusted standing armies.
The Revolutionary generation associated permanent professional armies with European monarchy and military oppression.
The new republic expected militia to remain an important part of national defense.
St. Clair's Defeat forced policymakers to confront an uncomfortable reality.
The United States could dislike standing armies and still need one.
In 1792, Congress increased the authorized Regular Army substantially, adding new regiments and roughly doubling its authorized strength.
The decision did not create the enormous modern U.S. military.
Nothing close to that existed.
It did establish a principle.
Some national military problems required professional troops who served long enough to be trained before battle.
Washington then needed someone capable of turning congressional authorization into a functioning army.
He chose Anthony Wayne.
Wayne had a reputation for aggression, but he prepared slowly
Anthony Wayne had earned fame during the Revolutionary War.
His nickname, “Mad Anthony,” creates an image of reckless courage.
His western campaign was almost the opposite.
Wayne understood what had happened to Harmar and St. Clair.
He did not intend to move quickly into the same country with another half-trained army.
Washington nominated Wayne as major general in April 1792 after St. Clair resigned.