It was urged on one hand, that the expense of
such a force would involve the necessity of severe taxation; that too
much power was thrown into the hands of the president; that the war had
been badly managed, and ought to have been entrusted to the militia of
the west, under their own officers; and with more force they urged that
no success could be of any avail, so long as the British held those
posts within our acknowledged limits, from which the savages were
supplied with protection, shelter, arms, advice, and instigation to the
war.
On the other hand, the justice of the cause, as a war of defence, and
not of conquest, was unquestionable. It was proved, that between 1783
and 1790, no less than one thousand five hundred people of Kentucky had
been massacred by the savages, or dragged into a horrid captivity; and
that the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia had suffered a loss not
much less. It was proved that every effort had been made to pacify the
savages without effect. They showed that in 1790, when a treaty was
proposed to the savages at the Miami, they first refused to treat, and
then asked thirty days for deliberation. It was granted. In the interim,
they stated that not less than one hundred and twenty persons had been
killed and captured, and several prisoners roasted alive; at the term of
which horrors, they refused any answer at all to the proposition to
treat. Various other remarks were made in defence of the bill. It tried
the strength of parties in congress, and was finally carried.
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