paring to come this way to whom bloody roads were not new and for whom they had no fear. Leaving the Indian commissioners going slowly on their way to a conference with the hostile tribes at "Auglaize"—the mouth of the Auglaize River where Defiance, Ohio, now stands—and Putnam waiting for the Weas and Kickapoos to assemble at Vincennes, let us look back to the gathering "Legion of the United States" into whose ready hands the matter of peace would go when the Indians got courage enough to throw off the mask.
It was one thing to plan an army on paper but a far more serious task to raise and organize it. And first and foremost arose the trebly difficult task of choosing a leader. The officers of Revolutionary days were fast passing into old age, and as Washington looked about him to the comrades of former years, there were few left capable of taking up the difficult task that St. Clair laid down. A memorandum left by Washington indicates the serious necessity of a wise choice and the nature of the possible candidates. Lincoln was sober,
