You might know Major General Anthony Wayne as the namesake of Fort Wayne. If you’re a connoisseur of craft beer, you might recognize him as the inspiration behind the Mad Anthony’s label. But if you’re like all of the people I met and interrogated on my walk along Wayne Street through the heart of downtown South Bend, you probably don’t know him as a Founding Father of the United States of America.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1745, Anthony Wayne was an early revolutionary, and one of the fierier ones at that. He began his political career in committee alongside Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris when he was just 30 years old. That’s the same year his political career very nearly ended. Wayne was cast out of the committee within a few months of joining it; recalled for being a “warlike radical.” Wayne denied the allegation, but the nickname he’d earned during the ordeal would stick with him for the rest of his life and beyond.
He would forever be known as “Mad Anthony.”
“Mad Anthony” Wayne; portrait by Edward Savage, c. 1795
A year after he was cast off from committee, the Revolutionary War broke out and the Continental Army found themselves in need of someone who might be considered a warlike radical. That’s how Wayne became colonel of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment, battling the British across the continent, winning some, losing a few more, and taking a bullet to the leg that would never be removed. He earned medals and promotions and even overcame a mutiny by his own troops in 1781.
Wayne’s troops would rendezvous with General Lafayette at The Battle of Green Spring, where the two would realize they’d fallen into a British trap and were only able to survive because of a bold and unexpected bayonet charge through the numerically superior British lines.
I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it would be historically appropriate for someone to open a bar at the corner of Lafayette and Wayne streets called The Green Spring.
The Revolutionary War ended, but what was good for America wasn’t so good for Anthony Wayne. He wasn’t cut out for much in life besides war. He failed as a Pennsylvania tanner, failed as a Georgia plantation owner, and was defeated by scandal during his Congressional career. By 1792, he was bankrupt, estranged from his wife, and barred from holding political office in his home state.
He needed a war, and so he started lobbying his old friend, George Washington, to give him one.
As it happened, the United States was already escalating a border conflict with tribal nations supported by British loyalists along the Ohio River. The United States suffered lopsided and embarrassing defeats in what would become known as the Northwest Indian War, so “Mad Anthony” Wayne offered to raise up and train the troops necessary to make sure things went the American’s way.
Amazingly, Washington went for the plan. More amazingly, it worked.
Still broke, still with a musket ball lodged into his swollen leg, and now riddled with complications from malaria, Wayne crisscrossed the United States recruiting soldiers and establishing a staggering number of military bases as part of his command of the newly formed Legion of the United States. He clawed back land, gained ground, and demoralized the Native American confederation. Eventually, he was able to pressure his enemies to the negotiation table where he obtained a treaty of peace and thousands of acres of land.
A General Anthony Wayne Statue in Fort Wayne.
The guarantee of peace with the Native American confederation was hard-earned, less because of any specific military victory and more because Wayne constructed a military so obviously and overwhelmingly powerful that victory felt inevitable to those who’d been labelled America’s enemies. The only concession Wayne had to make was the empty promise that “Indiana … was to remain Indian territory forever.”
It’s not known if Wayne himself believed the lie he was telling his antagonists, but the mistruth remains one of many black marks on Wayne’s complicated legacy.
As a military leader, the man wasn’t perfect, losing Revolutionary skirmishes that he should have had the wisdom to stay out of. He gets a lot of credit for overcoming that mutiny among his men, but not nearly enough blame for the fact that there was a mutiny in the first place. As Commander of the Legion of the United States, Anthony was unaware – for years – that his second in command was a Spanish spy, receiving regular payments from the Spanish crown.
Of course, there was the Congressional scandal that ultimately ended with charges of election fraud; even if it was his campaign manager that took the fall.
As a civilian, Wayne was a slaveholder and serial philanderer.
But perhaps it’s not surprising that “Mad Anthony” Wayne’s famously hot temper is the thing that casts the deepest and darkest shadow over the man’s life. Once, during a skirmish with Native Americans, he had thirty Native prisoners murdered in a whimsical and reactive rage tantrum. At least twice, he had his own soldiers executed on his orders for falling asleep on duty.
The many, many monuments dedicated to Anthony Wayne often fail to capture the nuance of the man’s life, but it’s a legacy that’s not actually ridiculously difficult to tell. The truth is that Wayne was not a very good person and that the United States would be an inexplicably different place without him.
At least that’s something to think about the next time you’re at the library, an institution that’s made its home at Main and Wayne since its inception.
Aaron Helman is an author, historian and humorist from South Bend. He is not very good at fantasy baseball. His books, “An Incomplete History of St. Joseph County” and “Ride the Jack Rabbit,” are available at aaronhelman.com and wherever books are sold.