To George Washington from James McHenry, 10 October 1796
From James McHenry
War Office 10th October 1796
Sir,
Packet, No. 1. which is enclosed contains the last dispatches from General Wayne. The private letter included therein, is a duplicate of one not yet come to hand, which it would seem contains the papers to which it refers.1
Packet, No. 2. The last letters from Tennessee.2
Packet, No. 3. The proceedings of a Court Martial on a soldier who attempted to desert.3 With the greatest respect I have the honor to be Your obedt Servant
James McHenry
LS, DLC:GW; LB, DLC:GW. GW replied to McHenry on 17 October.
1. On 7 Oct., McHenry wrote Gen. Anthony Wayne that he had received his letter of 5 Sept. with duplicates of Wayne’s letters of 28 and 29 August. In his letter to McHenry of 28 Aug., Wayne related the number of desertions that had taken place among the troops at Detroit and the lack of “exemplary & prompt punishments” for deserters, and recommended increasing the bounty paid for apprehending deserters. Wayne also reported on arrearages due to soldiers and commented on the condition of western posts vacated by the British and the state of the Native American groups involved in the Treaty of Greenville.
In his first letter to McHenry of 29 Aug., Wayne indicated that he had sent an officer to the commandant of Fort Knox, near Vincennes in the Northwest Territory, with instructions “respecting certain Catiff emissaries.” The officer had returned with a packet of letters. One of the letters, of “a questionable Complexion” and suspected to be from French minister Pierre-Auguste Adet, had been intercepted at Vincennes. Wayne also reported on the suspicious activities of Georges-Henri-Victor Collot on the frontier. For more on Collot’s secret mission to the frontier as an agent of Adet, see Richard Kidder Meade to GW, 21 Dec., n.7.
In his letter to McHenry of 5 Sept., Wayne commented on the “wretched State Condition & Number” of the U.S. cavalry, which would soon depart for the Georgia frontier. He also noted that some Native American “Kings Sechams & Chiefs will be transfer’d to your charge which I am confident will have a good effect—from the impression that will naturally be made upon their minds—in passing thro the Country;—of the power wealth & Numbers of the Union” (all in , 512–18, 522–23).
2. These letters have not been identified.
3. These court-martial proceedings have not been identified.