Anthony Wayne

Anthony Wayne was a Pennsylvania surveyor who made a reputation for coming on when other men wanted a council. The British and the newspapers called him Mad Anthony. The name is less useful than the night at Stony Point.

On July 16, 1779, he took a Hudson River fort by bayonet after a march in the dark. He was wounded in the head and still finished the work. The guns and the position mattered. So did the proof that a Continental column could do a professional thing without turning it into a speech.

He had already seen Paoli, the Brandywine country, and the long business of keeping Pennsylvania troops in the line. After the Revolution he commanded in the Northwest and won at Fallen Timbers — a later war, and not this page's subject except as evidence that the same man kept being sent where a lock had to be broken.

He died at Presque Isle on December 15, 1796. The later reburial stories are a footnote. The assault is the record.