Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic

Anthony Wayne: Soldier of the Early Republic by Paul David Nelson. 384 pages. 1985. This book is the biography recommended by the guides at Waynesborough as the best of the available biographies of Anthony Wayne. This book is currently out of print and must have had a small run as new copies go for almost $70.00USD and used copies start around $40.00USD, thank God for libraries. The book covers Wayne's life from his birth at Waynesborough through the revolution, interwar years, campaigns in the Ohio area, his death near Erie, Pennsylvania, and finishing with his re-internment in Saint David's, Pennsylvania. As such it is a standard chronological biography. The author tends to stick fairly close to the facts and offers no evaluations of Wayne beyond that offered by Wayne's own peers. The book would be helped by perhaps a chapter on Wayne's legacy and role in popular culture and military history. There is a good deal of interesting detail provided about Wayne's financial troubles and travails. The text moves fairly rapidly and though I got a sense of Wayne the man I did not really get to know him. I am not sure if the reason is due to author's intent or that Wayne was a much more complex man shifting beneath the text. The illustrations tend to be adequate and show portraits of Wayne at various stages as well as prominent people in his life. Given the available biographical texts this book is a good primer. Had Wayne been merely a hero of the Revolution his memory would have faded like Greene's, von Steuben's, Sullivan's Morgan's, and other generals and heroes. What solidify's Wayne's memory is the role he played culminating not just in his victory at Fallen Timbers but the confrontation and orderly transfer of outposts from Detroit, to Spanish enclaves along the Mississippi, and others. These secured essentially all lands wet of the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi River. Sadly though even in the area where he was born, raised, occasioned defeat and victory and is buried there are many who know nothing of the man.