Anthony Wayne

The American soldier Anthony Wayne (1745-1796) became a hero during the American Revolution and in his later campaigns against the Indians.

Anthony Wayne was born in Easttown, Pa., on Jan. 1, 1745. He attended local schools and the Philadelphia academy. In 1763 he began a career in surveying, principally in Nova Scotia. In 1766 he and his wife settled down at Waynesborough, Pa., the family property, where Wayne helped his father in the profitable business of farming and of operating a tannery.

When the Revolution began in 1775, Wayne organized a regiment of infantry and was appointed colonel. His military career was varied and honorable. First assigned to the Army unit covering the retreat of American forces from Canada, he fought in the Battle of Three Rivers, where he was wounded. Next he joined George Washington and the main body of the Army at Morristown, N.J., in February 1777, receiving promotion to brigadier general. He distinguished himself in several battles, but his greatest exploit was the capture of Stony Point, a British stronghold on the Hudson River, in July 1779. In command of a picked corps of 1, 300 men, Wayne attacked at midnight. In a brilliant tactical maneuver, he took the garrison by surprise, killing or wounding 123 and capturing 575 men. A grateful Congress voted him a gold medal. The whole country acclaimed him, and Washington praised his "judgment and bravery."

For the remainder of the war, Wayne served with the Marquis de Lafayette in Virginia until the British surrendered at Yorktown. When peace came in 1783, he retired as brevet major general. In 1792 President Washington recalled him to serve as commander in chief of the Army. His assignment was to destroy the Indian power north of the Ohio River. For a year Wayne gathered and trained an army; in the spring of 1793 they set out for the west. At Fallen Timbers (near present-day Toledo) he defeated the Indians in August 1794. He negotiated the Treaty of Greenville with the chiefs (1795), by which the several tribes acknowledged American supremacy in the region. This ended a generation of warfare on the frontier.

While on a tour of inspection of frontier posts, Wayne died on Dec. 15, 1796, at Presque Isle (Erie) in Pennsylvania. Often impetuous and occasionally rash, he was called "mad, " but none disputed his courage and competence.

Further Reading

Wayne's activities in the Old Northwest are recorded in The Wayne-Knox-Pickering-McHenry Correspondence, edited by R. C. Knopf (1960). The best study of Wayne is Charles J. Stillé, Major-General Anthony Wayne and the Pennsylvania Line in the Continental Army (1893); complete and judicious, it contains many of Wayne's letters. Harry Emerson Wildes, Anthony Wayne: Trouble Shooter of the American Revolution (1941), does not add much new. An interesting and colorful biography, but not as scholarly as Stillé's, is Thomas Boyd, Mad Anthony Wayne (1929).

Additional Sources

Fox, Joseph L., Anthony Wayne, Washington's reliable general, Chicago, Ill.: Adams Press, 1988.

Isaac, Norm, Wayne—Ohio's wilderness warrior, Richmond, Ind.: N. Isaac, 1982.

Nelson, Paul David, Anthony Wayne, soldier of the early republic, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. □

Wayne, Anthony (1745–1796) U.S. army officer and Congressman. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Anthony Wayne earned the nickname of “Mad Anthony” for his boldness and courage in battle during the Revolutionary War. He was commissioned colonel of the of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment in January 1776. During that year he saw action at Three Rivers and commanded Fort Ticonderoga. He took part as a brigadier general in the battles around Philadelphia in 1777, distinguishing himself at Germantown. He fought at Monmouth in June 1778, and was later given command of a new corps of light infantry. In July 1779 he took the British post at Stony Point in a brilliant night bayonet attack that boosted American spirits while demoralizing the British. In 1781 he was sent south to reinforce American forces there, participating in the Yorktown campaign and later liberating Georgia and Charleston. He served in the Pennsylvania assembly before moving to Georgia, where he was elected once to the U.S. House of Representatives. In April 1792 President George Washington recalled him to duty as the senior officer in the army. Wayne was given the mission to pacify Indians in the Ohio Valley who were being encouraged by the British and had already defeated two previous American expeditions. Wayne organized and trained his “Legion” well. They built a line of forts as they approached the Indian strongholds, and then won the decisive battle of the campaign at Fallen Timbers in August 1794. The next year he dictated the Treaty of Greenville to the pacified chiefs, which opened much of the Old Northwest to settlement. In 1796 he was sent back to the region to take possession of British forts being relinquished according to the terms of Jay's Treaty. He died returning from that mission.

Wayne, Anthony (1745–96) American Revolutionary general, who led a Pennsylvanian regiment in the abortive invasion of Canada (1776). He displayed conspicuous initiative in such actions as Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth. In 1779 his brilliantly planned and executed night attack on Stony Point, a British-held fort on the Hudson, won him the nickname of “Mad Anthony”. In 1794 he commanded the western army, which defeated the Native Americans at the Battle of Fallen Timbers and opened up the NORTHWEST TERRITORY to settlement.

Wayne, Anthony (1745–96) US general. He served under Washington in the Revolutionary War campaigns around New York and Pennsylvania, and in 1779 he led the successful night attack on Stony Point, N.Y. In 1781–83 he fought in the South. After the war he defeated the Ohio Indians in the Battle of Fallen Timbers (1794) and signed the Treaty of Greenville, the first to recognize Native American title to US lands.