Wayne, Anthony

WAYNE, ANTHONY. (1745–1796). Continental general. Anthony Wayne was born at the family estate of Waynesborough in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Isaac Wayne, a prosperous farmer and tanner. At an early age, he challenged his father's authority by resisting farm work. Hence, the elder Wayne enrolled him in a school run by his uncle, Gilbert Wayne. There, he did well in mathematics. After studying for two years at Philadelphia Academy, he became a surveyor in Chester County at the age of eighteen. In 1765, he was hired by a land company to survey and settle a tract of land in Nova Scotia. On 25 March 1766 he married Mary Penrose; they had two children. Later he was estranged from his wife and took up with a Wilmington socialite named Mary Vining. When his father died in 1776 he inherited Waynesborough.

SERVICE IN THE REVOLUTION

As antagonisms grew between Britain and America in the 1770s, Wayne emerged as a leader of Pennsylvania Patriots. He was a sturdy, handsome, well-educated, and established citizen. Though given to swearing, bombast, vanity, and impulsiveness, he was admired and respected by his neighbors. In 1774 he was elected chairman of the Chester County Committee of Safety and to a term in the Provincial Assembly. During the following year he turned his attention to things martial, helping to organize and drill militiamen. Appointed colonel of the Fourth Pennsylvania Battalion on 3 January 1776, he marched with his soldiers in mid-May to the Continental army's encampment at New York. From there he almost immediately proceeded to reinforce an American army that was withdrawing from Canada. At Trois Rivières on 8 June, while serving under the command of General William Thompson, he was involved in a hot battle with the British and received a slight wound in the leg. After withdrawing into New York, he was given command of Fort Ticonderoga. During the following winter, he battled cold, lack of provisions, and near-mutiny among his disgruntled soldiers.

On 21 February 1777 Wayne was promoted brigadier general. Rejoining the main Continental army at Morristown, New Jersey, on 20 May, he was given command of the Pennsylvania Line, even though he did not receive the commensurate rank of major general. In the battle of the Brandywine on 11 September, General George Washington posted him at Chadd's Ford, in command of the army's left wing. He performed with zeal and competence, covering the army's retreat after Washington's right wing was routed. On 18 September he was detached with 1,500 men to harass the British army's rear as it marched toward Philadelphia. On the evening of 20 September, he was surprised in camp at Paoli by General Charles Grey, who commanded 5,000 soldiers. Routed from the field, he suffered 200 men killed and another 150 wounded. His opponent, Grey, had only ten casualties. Wayne was charged with negligence, and although acquitted by a court-martial, he was haunted long thereafter by accusations of military ineptitude. In the battle of Germantown on 4 October, he avenged his insult at Paoli by leading his Pennsylvanians in furious assaults against the enemy. On the brink of victory, he descried musket fire at his rear and was forced to retreat. Soon Washington's army was in flight, with Wayne once more covering the withdrawal.

For some months afterward, as he lived through the travails of the army's winter encampment at Valley Forge, Wayne was disgusted with Washington's leadership. At the battle of Monmouth on 28 June 1778 he was given a large role by Washington. Fighting furiously, he earning the military glory that he cherished. His confidence in Washington restored, he served on a court-martial of Charles Lee, who was charged with military incompetence and insubordination. He also came close to fighting a duel with Lee over these matters. On 21 June 1779 Washington gave him command of an elite corps of Continental light infantry, numbering 2,000 men. These troops he led on the night of 15 July against Stony Point, a strategically important British post on the Hudson River below West Point. Overwhelming the defenders, he received a slight wound to the head and immortality as a soldier. Shortly thereafter, the light infantry corps was disbanded. On 20 July 1780 he commanded an unsuccessful assault against a British blockhouse at Bull's Ferry, New Jersey. Two months later, he frustrated Benedict Arnold's attempt to deliver West Point into enemy hands by marching his soldiers quickly to the defense of that post.

On 1 January 1781 Wayne's Pennsylvania troops mutinied, after months of discontented grumbling. In a display of good sense and courage, he managed to placate the soldiers while presenting their demands to Congress. By the end of January, many of his troops had been discharged. In May, Wayne and the remaining 800 troops were ordered to join the Marquis de Lafayette's army in Virginia. After quelling two more mutinies, Wayne proceeded southward and, on 6 July, audaciously attacked Lord Charles Cornwallis's entire army at Green Spring. Only his steely fearlessness managed to extricate him from this dangerous predicament. Thereafter, he was known as "Mad Anthony" Wayne.

Wounded in the leg by an American sentry on 2 September, he was not present at General Charles Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown on 19 October. In early 1782 he assumed command of American forces in Georgia, and for the next seven months battled British Loyalists, Creeks, and Cherokees. After the enemy evacuated Savannah in 11 July, Wayne joined Nathanael Greene in South Carolina. There he fell ill with a fever that nearly killed him. On 14 December the British withdrew from Charleson, South Carolina, and eight months later Wayne returned to Pennsylvania. He was promoted brevet major general on 30 September 1783, and on 3 November resigned from the army.

COMMAND OF THE LEGION

In late 1783 Wayne was elected to the Pennsylvania Council of Censors and the Assembly. He served as an assemblyman for two years, and in 1787 was a member of the Pennsylvania convention that ratified the new Constitution. Given a rice plantation by Georgia for his wartime services there, he went deeply in debt in a futile effort to make it pay. Finally he had to sell the plantation. In 1791 he was elected to Congress in Georgia, but served only seventeen days before his seat was declared vacant because of election irregularities. On 5 March 1792 he was appointed commander of the American army that was fighting Indians in the Northwest, with the rank of major general. He replaced Arthur St. Clair, who had been defeated in battle the year before. Taking command at Pittsburgh, he devoted the next two years to the careful training of his army in the use of the bayonet and musket. He marched northward from Cincinnati into Indian country, establishing military posts as he went. On 20 August 1794, on the Maumee River, he routed an Indian army in the battle of Fallen Timbers, and broke the will of the natives to resist American hegemony. In 1795 he negotiated the Treaty of Greenville, thus confirming the submission of the Northwest Indians. Praised for his exploits, he was touted in the east as a possible secretary of war, but never got the appointment. He died of gout on 15 December 1796 at Presque Isle, and was buried there. On 3 October 1809 he was exhumed, then reinterred at St. David's Church near Waynesborough on 3 October 1809. A courageous and intelligent military leader, Anthony Wayne deserves his reputation as one of America's great soldiers.

SEE ALSO Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania; Green Spring (Jamestown Ford, Virginia); Stony Point, New York.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Knopf, Richard C., ed. Anthony Wayne, A Name in Arms: Soldier, Diplomat, Defender of Expansion Westward of a Nation: The Wayne-Knox-Pickering-McHenry Correspondence. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1960.

Nelson, Paul David. Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Rankin, Hugh F. "Anthony Wayne: Military Romanticist." In George Washington's Generals. Edited by George A. Billias. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1964.

Stillé, Charles Janeway. Major-General Anthony Wayne and the Pennsylvania Line in The Continental Army. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1893.

Tucker, Glen. Mad Anthony Wayne and the New Nation: The Story of Washington's Frontline General. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1973.

Wildes, Harry Emerson. Anthony Wayne: Trouble Shooter of the American Revolution. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1941.

                            revised by Paul David Nelson