Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/90

86 to the British commander at Detroit explaining candidly the nature of the campaign now on foot, explicitly stating its object and asking that the enemy should receive no assistance from British traders "from whose instigation," he made bold to add, "there is good reason to believe, much of the injuries committed by the savages has proceeded."

Everything considered, the young government responded nobly to the call of its western citizens. This was its first war, and one has to know only a little of the struggles for mere equipoise and maintenance since the close of the Revolution to realize that a war at this time, of any proportions, was a most trying and exhausting undertaking. This has never been sufficiently emphasized. His first inauguration now two years past, the labors of his new honors were already bearing heavily upon the first president. If greater trials had ever been his portion, even in the struggle for independence, they had in a measure been anticipated and borne with a patience commensurate with the great interests at stake. He had been able to