By Sarah E. Miller
British Fort Miamis on the Maumee River nearly provoked an international incident between the Americans and the British in 1794, just after the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The restrained, yet aggravating, language of letters exchanged between American General Anthony Wayne and British Major William Campbell reveal the animosity between the two countries positioned on the brink of war.
At the end of the American Revolution, the Peace Treaty of Paris 1783 stated that Britain would remove its military forts from the United States, particularly in the Northwest Territory. For various reasons the British did not comply. In fact, an order from Lord Dorchester, Governor of Canada, authorized the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, to construct Fort Miamis along the Maumee River, plainly situating it on land belonging to the United States. American Secretary of State Edmund Randolph complained to British Ambassador George Hammond that the intrusion was “an act, the hostility of which cannot be palliated.”
Immediately following the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the British army closed the gates of Fort Miamis and refused shelter to the retreating Indians. Fear of instigating an international incident prevented the garrison from aiding the Native Americans. General Wayne, like many other Americans, was perturbed by the mere existence of the British fort.
A formal, but sarcastic, exchange of letters followed the encampment of Wayne’s troops not far from Fort Miamis. Campbell wrote to Wayne on August 21, 1794, feigning ignorance to the reason why Wayne and his legion were in the vicinity, exclaiming he knew “of no war existing between Great Britain and America.” Although tempted not to reply, Wayne contemptuously returned the message, “were you entitled to an answer, the most full and satisfactory one was announced to you from the muzzles of my small arms yesterday morning in an action against hordes of savages.” Each commander was infuriated by the presence of the other; but both understood that any engagement between the two armies would detonate a renewed war between Great Britain and the United States.
Malice raged between the two armies as the Americans crept within range of the British guns. The British soldiers ached to fire on the Americans who mocked the garrison. John Anderson, a soldier in the British army, recalled that the American troops “came within musket Shott [sic] of the fort, at which time artillery officers had the slow & quick matches burning and the Cannon well loded [sic] and request[ed] permeation [sic] to fire by the Maj[o]r Positively refused.” The following day, Campbell admonished Wayne with a letter resenting the “insults offered the British flag” by approaching Fort Miamis “within pistol range …not only singly, but in numbers, with arms in their hands.” Wayne ignored this dispatch and insisted that Campbell remove his men from the fort and return to Canada. Campbell, however, insisted that he would not abandon the fort without proper orders from his superiors. The Americans did not
not acknowledge this last correspondence except to promptly light it on fire. Wayne then assembled his men and marched to the headwaters of the river, destroying Indian cornfields along the way.
The anger between the Wayne’s army and the British troops at Fort Miamis represented a greater animosity between the two countries they represented. American settlers on the Ohio frontier blamed British encouragement for the numerous Indian attacks on their villages. Other Americans were frustrated by the lack of respect given to the new United States by a government that not only refused to remove itself from forts on American land, but also, built a new fort in defiance of the peace treaty. Despite treading on the brink of war, Anthony Wayne and William Campbell understood the great consequences of their actions and exchanged only insults before retiring. The Near-Battle of Fort Miamis is one of many examples representative of the bitterness between Great Britain and the United States that festered along the American frontier until the end of the War of 1812.
Fort Miami Park
The park commemorating Fort Miamis is on River Road at Michigan Avenue in Maumee.