GENERAL HULL, two days after entering Canada, called a council
of war, which decided against storming Malden and advised delay. Their
reasons were sufficiently strong. After allowing for the sick-list and
garrison-duty, the four regiments could hardly supply more than three
hundred men each for active service, besides the Michigan militia, on
whom no one felt willing to depend. Hull afterward affirmed that he
had not a thousand effectives; the highest number given in evidence
two years later by Major Jesup was the vague estimate of sixteen or
eighteen hundred men. Probably the utmost exertion could not have
brought fifteen hundred effectives to the Canadian shore. The British
force opposed to them was not to be despised. Colonel St. George
commanding at Malden had with him two hundred men of the Forty-first
British line, fifty men of the Royal Newfoundland regiment, and
thirty men of the Royal Artillery.[252] Besides these two hundred and
eighty veteran troops with their officers, he had July 12 about six
hundred Canadian militia and two hundred and thirty Indians.[253]
The militia deserted rapidly; but after allowing for the desertions,
the garrison at Malden, including Indians, numbered nearly nine hundred
men. The British had also the advantage of position, and of a fleet
whose guns covered and supported their left. They were alarmed and
cautious, but though they exaggerated Hull’s force they meant to meet
him in front of their fortress.[254] Hull’s troops would have shown
superiority to other American forces engaged in the campaign of 1812
had they won a victory.
[Illustration:
MAP
OF
Detroit River
and
ADJACENT COUNTRY,
From an Original Drawing
by a British Eng’r.
Struthers & Co., Engr’s and Pr’s, N.Y.
_Philadelphia: Published by JOHN MELISH, Chestnut Street,
26 August, 1813._]
The Ohio militia, although their officers acquiesced in the opinion of
the council of war, were very unwilling to lose their advantage. If
nothing was to be gained by attack, everything was likely to be lost
by delay. Detachments scoured the country, meeting at first little
resistance, one detachment even crossing the Canard River, flanking and
driving away the guard at the bridge; but the army was not ready to
support the unforeseen success, and the bridge was abandoned. Probably
this moment was the last when an assault could have been made with a
chance of success. July 19 and 24 strong detachments were driven back
with loss, and the outlook became suddenly threatening.
Hull tried to persuade himself that he could take Malden by siege.
July 22 he wrote to Eustis that he was pressing the preparation of
siege guns:[255]--
“I find that entirely new carriages must be built for the
24-pounders and mortars. It will require at least two weeks to
make the necessary preparations. It is in the power of this army
to take Malden by storm, but it would be attended in my opinion
with too great a sacrifice under the present circumstances....
If Malden was in our possession, I could march this army to
Niagara or York (Toronto) in a very short time.”
This was Hull’s last expression of confidence or hope. Thenceforward
every day brought him fatal news. His army lost respect for him in
consequence of his failure to attack Malden; the British strengthened
the defences of Malden, and August 8 received sixty fresh men of the
Forty-first under Colonel Proctor from Niagara;[256] but worse than
mutiny or British reinforcement, news from the Northwest of the most
disastrous character reached Hull at a moment when his hopes of taking
Malden had already faded. August 3 the garrison of Michillimackinaw
arrived at Detroit as prisoners-of-war on parole, announcing that
Mackinaw had capitulated July 17 to a force of British and savages,
and that Hull must prepare to receive the attack of a horde of Indians
coming from the Northwest to fall upon Detroit in the rear.
Hull called another council of war August 5, which, notwithstanding
this news, decided to attack Malden August 8, when the heavy artillery
should be ready; but while they were debating this decision, a party
of Indians under Tecumthe crossing the river routed a detachment of
Findlay’s Ohio regiment on their way to protect a train of supplies
coming from Ohio. The army mail-bags fell into British hands. Hull then
realized that his line of communication between Detroit and the Maumee
River was in danger, if not closed. On the heels of this disaster he
received, August 7, letters from Niagara announcing the passage of
British reinforcements up Lake Ontario to Lake Erie and Malden. Thus
he was called to meet in his front an intrenched force nearly equal to
his own, while at least a thousand Indian warriors were descending on
his flank from Lake Huron, and in the rear his line of communication
and supply could be restored only by detaching half his army for the
purpose.
Hull decided at once to recross the river, and succeeded in effecting
this movement on the night of August 8 without interference from the
enemy; but his position at Detroit was only one degree better than it
had been at Sandwich. He wished to abandon Detroit and retreat behind
the Maumee, and August 9 proposed the measure to some of his principal
officers. Colonel Cass replied that if this were done every man of the
Ohio militia would refuse to obey, and would desert their general;[257]
that the army would fall to pieces if ordered to retreat. Hull
considered that this report obliged him to remain where he was.
This was the situation at Detroit August 9,--a date prominent in the
story; but Hull’s true position could be understood only after learning
what had been done in Canada since the declaration of war.
The difficulties of Canada were even greater than those of the United
States. Upper Canada, extending from Detroit River to the Ottawa within
forty miles of Montreal, contained not more than eighty thousand
persons. The political capital was York, afterward Toronto, on Lake
Ontario. The civil and military command of this vast territory was
in the hands of Brigadier-General Isaac Brock, a native of Guernsey,
forty-two years old, who had been colonel of the Forty-ninth regiment
of the British line, and had served since 1802 in Canada. The
appointment of Brock in October, 1811, to the chief command at the
point of greatest danger was for the British a piece of good fortune,
or good judgment, more rare than could have been appreciated at the
time, even though Dearborn, Hull, Winchester, Wilkinson, Sir George
Prevost himself, and Colonel Proctor were examples of the common
standard. Brock was not only a man of unusual powers, but his powers
were also in their prime. Neither physical nor mental fatigue such
as followed his rivals’ exertions paralyzed his plans. No scruples
about bloodshed stopped him midway to victory. He stood alone in his
superiority as a soldier. Yet his civil difficulties were as great as
his military, for he had to deal with a people better disposed toward
his enemies than toward himself; and he succeeded in both careers.
Under Brock’s direction, during the preceding winter vessels had been
armed on Lake Erie, and Malden had been strengthened by every means
in his power. These precautions gave him from the outset the command
of the lake, which in itself was almost equivalent to the command of
Detroit. Of regular troops he had but few. The entire regular force in
both Canadas at the outbreak of the war numbered six thousand three
hundred and sixty rank and file, or about seven thousand men including
officers. More than five thousand of these were stationed in Lower
Canada. To protect the St. Lawrence, the Niagara, and the Detroit,
Brock had only fourteen hundred and seventy-three rank and file, or
including his own regiment,--the Forty-ninth, then at Montreal,--two
thousand one hundred and thirty-seven men at the utmost.[258]
When the news of war reached him, not knowing where to expect the first
blow, Brock waited, moving between Niagara and Toronto, until Hull’s
passage of the Detroit River, July 12, marked the point of danger and
startled the province almost out of its dependence on England. Sir
George Prevost, the governor-general, reported with much mortification
the effect of Hull’s movement on Upper Canada:
“Immediately upon the invasion of the province,” wrote
Sir George, August 17,[259] “and upon the issuing of the
proclamation by General Hull, which I have the honor of herewith
transmitting, it was plainly perceived by General Brock that
little reliance could be placed upon the militia, and as little
dependence upon the active exertions of any considerable
proportion of the population of the country, unless he was
vested with full power to repress the disaffected spirit which
was daily beginning to show itself, and to restrain and punish
the disorders which threatened to dissolve the whole militia
force which he had assembled. He therefore called together the
provincial legislature on July 27 in the hope that they would
adopt prompt and efficient measures for strengthening the hands
of the Government at a period of such danger and difficulty....
In these reasonable expectations I am sorry to say General Brock
has been miserably disappointed; and a lukewarm and temporizing
spirit, evidently dictated either by the apprehension or the
wish that the enemy might soon be in complete possession of the
country, having prevented the Assembly from adopting any of
the measures proposed to them, they were prorogued on the 5th
instant.”
Brock himself wrote to Lord Liverpool a similar account of his trials:--
“The invasion of the western district by General Hull,” he
wrote August 29,[260] “was productive of very unfavorable
sensations among a large portion of the population, and so
completely were their minds subdued that the Norfolk militia
when ordered to march peremptorily refused. The state of the
country required prompt and vigorous measures. The majority
of the House of Assembly was likewise seized with the same
apprehensions, and may be justly accused of studying more to
avoid by their proceedings incurring the indignation of the
enemy than the honest fulfilment of their duty.... I cannot
hide from your Lordship that I considered my situation at that
time extremely perilous. Not only among the militia was evinced
a disposition to submit tamely, five hundred in the western
district having deserted their ranks, but likewise the Indians
of the Six Nations, who are placed in the heart of the country
on the Grand River, positively refused, with the exception of
a few individuals, taking up arms. They audaciously announced
their intention after the return of some of their chiefs from
General Hull to remain neutral, as if they wished to impose
upon the Government the belief that it was possible they could
sit quietly in the midst of war. This unexpected conduct of
the Indians deterred many good men from leaving their families
and joining the militia; they became more apprehensive of the
internal than of the external enemy, and would willingly have
compromised with the one to secure themselves from the other.”
Brock’s energy counterbalanced every American advantage. Although he
had but about fifteen hundred regular troops in his province, and was
expected to remain on the defensive, the moment war was declared, June
26, he sent to Amherstburg all the force he could control, and ordered
the commandant of the British post at the island of St. Joseph on
Lake Huron to seize the American fort at Michillimackinaw. When Hull
issued his proclamation of July 12, Brock replied by a proclamation of
July 22. To Hull’s threat that no quarter should be given to soldiers
fighting by the side of Indians, Brock responded by “the certain
assurance of retaliation;” and he justified the employment of his
Indian allies by arguments which would have been more conclusive had
he ventured to reveal his desperate situation. In truth the American
complaint that the British employed Indians in war meant nothing to
Brock, whose loss of his province by neglect of any resource at his
command might properly have been punished by the utmost penalty his
Government could inflict.
Brock’s proclamation partly restored confidence. When his legislature
showed backwardness in supporting him he peremptorily dismissed them,
August 5, after they had been only a week in session, and the same day
he left York for Burlington Bay and Lake Erie. Before quitting Lake
Ontario he could not fail to inquire what was the American force at
Niagara and what it was doing. Every one in the neighborhood must have
told him that on the American side five or six hundred militia-men,
commanded by no general officer, were engaged in patrolling thirty-six
miles of river front; that they were undisciplined, ill-clothed,
without tents, shoes, pay, or ammunition, and ready to retreat at any
sign of attack.[261] Secure at that point, Brock hurried toward Malden.
He had ordered reinforcements to collect at Long Point on Lake Erie;
and August 8, while Hull was withdrawing his army from Sandwich to
Detroit, Brock passed Long Point, taking up three hundred men whom he
found there, and coasted night and day to the Detroit River.
Meanwhile, at Washington, Eustis sent letter after letter to Dearborn,
pressing for a movement from Niagara. July 26 he repeated the order of
July 20.[262] August 1 he wrote, enclosing Hull’s despatch of July 19:
“You will make a diversion in his favor at Niagara and at Kingston as
soon as may be practicable, and by such operations as may be within
your control.”
Dearborn awoke August 3 to the consciousness of not having done all
that man could do. He began arrangements for sending a thousand militia
to Niagara, and requested Major-General Stephen Van Rensselaer of the
New York State militia to take command there in person. In a letter of
August 7 to the Secretary of War, he showed sense both of his mistakes
and of their results:[263]--
“It is said that a detachment [of British troops] has been sent
from Niagara by land to Detroit; if so, I should presume before
they can march two hundred and fifty miles General Hull will
receive notice of their approach, and in season to cut them off
before they reach Fort Malden. It is reported that no ordnance
or ammunition have reached Niagara this season, and that there
is great deficiency of these articles. Not having considered
any part of the borders of Upper Canada as within the command
intended for me, I have received no reports or returns from that
quarter, and did not until since my last arrival at this place
give any orders to the commanding officers of the respective
posts on that frontier.”
The consequences of such incapacity showed themselves without an
instant’s delay. While Dearborn was writing from Albany, August 7,
General Brock, as has been told, passed from Lake Ontario to Lake
Erie; and the next morning, when Brock reached his detachment at Long
Point, Hull evacuated Sandwich and retired to Detroit. Had he fallen
back on the Maumee or even to Urbana or Dayton, he would have done only
what Wellington had done more than once in circumstances hardly more
serious, and what Napoleon was about to do three months afterward in
leaving Moscow.
Desperate as Hull’s position was, Dearborn succeeded within
four-and-twenty hours by an extraordinary chance in almost extricating
him, without being conscious that his action more than his neglect
affected Hull’s prospects. This chance was due to the reluctance of the
British government to accept the war. Immediately after the repeal of
the Orders in Council the new Ministry of Lord Liverpool ordered their
minister, Foster, to conclude an armistice in case hostilities had
begun, and requested their governor-general to avoid all extraordinary
preparations. These orders given in good faith by the British
government were exceeded by Sir George Prevost, who had every reason
to wish for peace. Although he could not make an armistice without
leaving General Hull in possession of his conquests in Upper Canada,
which might be extensive, Prevost sent his adjutant-general, Colonel
Baynes, to Albany to ask a cessation of hostilities, and the same day,
August 2, wrote to General Brock warning him of the proposed step.[264]
Colonel Baynes reached headquarters at Albany August 9, and obtained
from Dearborn an agreement that his troops, including those at Niagara,
should act only on the defensive until further orders from Washington:--
“I consider the agreement as favorable at this period,” wrote
Dearborn to Eustis, “for we could not act offensively except at
Detroit for some time, and there it will not probably have any
effect on General Hull or his movements.”[265]
What effect the armistice would have on Hull might be a matter for
prolonged and serious doubt, but that it should have no effect at
all would have occurred to no ordinary commander. Dearborn had been
urgently ordered, August 1, to support Hull by a vigorous offensive
at Niagara, yet August 9 he agreed with the British general to act
only on the defensive at Niagara. Detroit was not under Dearborn’s
command, and therefore was not included in the armistice; but Dearborn
stipulated that the arrangement should include Hull if he wished it.
Orders were sent to Niagara August 9, directing the commanding officers
“to confine their respective operations to defensive measures,” and
with these orders Dearborn wrote to Hull proposing a concurrence
in the armistice. Had Brock moved less quickly, or had the British
government sent its instructions a week earlier, the armistice might
have saved Detroit. The chance was narrow, for even an armistice
unless greatly prolonged would only have weakened Hull, especially
as it could not include Indians other than those actually in British
service; but even the slight chance was lost by the delay until August
9 in sending advices to Niagara and Detroit, for Brock left Long Point
August 8, and was already within four days of Detroit when Dearborn
wrote from Albany. The last possibility of saving Hull was lost by
the inefficiency of American mail-service. The distance from Albany
to Buffalo was about three hundred miles. A letter written at Albany
August 9 should have reached Niagara by express August 13; Dearborn’s
letter to Hull arrived there only on the evening of August 17, and
was forwarded by General Van Rensselaer the next morning.[266] Even
through the British lines it could hardly reach Detroit before August
24.
Slowness such as this in the face of an enemy like Brock, who knew the
value of time, left Hull small chance of escape. Brock with his little
army of three hundred men leaving Long Point August 8 coasted the shore
of the lake, and sailing at night reached Malden late in the evening of
August 13, fully eight days in advance of the armistice.
Meanwhile Hull was besieged at Detroit. Immediately after returning
there, August 8, he sent nearly half his force--a picked body of six
hundred men, including the Fourth U. S. Regiment--to restore his
communications with Ohio. Toward afternoon of the next day, when this
detachment reached the Indian village of Maguaga fourteen miles south
of Detroit, it came upon the British force consisting of about one
hundred and fifty regulars of the Forty-first Regiment, with forty or
fifty militia and Tecumthe’s little band of twenty-five Indians,--about
two hundred and fifty men, all told.[267] After a sharp engagement
the British force was routed and took to its boats, with a loss of
thirteen men or more, while the Indians disappeared in the woods. For
some unsatisfactory reason the detachment did not then march to the
river Raisin to act as convoy for the supplies, and nothing but honor
was acquired by the victory. “It is a painful consideration,” reported
Hull,[268] “that the blood of seventy-five gallant men could only open
the communication as far as the points of their bayonets extended.”
On receiving a report of the battle Hull at first inclined to order
the detachment to the Raisin, but the condition of the weather and the
roads changed his mind, and August 10 he recalled the detachment to
Detroit.
The next four days were thrown away by the Americans. August 13 the
British began to establish a battery on the Canadian side of the
river to bombard Detroit. Within the American lines the army was in
secret mutiny. Hull’s vacillations and evident alarm disorganized his
force. The Ohio colonels were ready to remove him from his command,
which they offered to Lieutenant-Colonel Miller of the U. S. Fourth
Regiment; but Colonel Miller declined this manner of promotion, and
Hull retained control. August 12 the three colonels united in a letter
to the governor of Ohio, warning him that the existence of the army
depended on the immediate despatch of at least two thousand men to
keep open the line of communication. “Our supplies must come from our
State; this country does not furnish them.” A postscript added that
even a capitulation was talked of by the commander-in-chief.[269] In
truth Hull, who like most commanders-in-chief saw more of the situation
than was seen by his subordinates, made no concealment of his feelings.
Moody, abstracted, wavering in his decisions, and conscious of the low
respect in which he was held by his troops, he shut himself up and
brooded over his desperate situation.
Desperate the situation seemed to be; yet a good general would still
have saved Detroit for some weeks, if not altogether. Hull knew that
he must soon be starved into surrender;[270] but though already short
of supplies he might by vigorous preparations and by rigid economy
have maintained himself a month, and he had always the chance of a
successful battle. His effective force, by his own showing, still
exceeded a thousand men to defend the fort; his supplies of ammunition
were sufficient;[271] and even if surrender were inevitable, after the
mortifications he had suffered and those he foresaw, he would naturally
have welcomed a chance of dying in battle. Perhaps he might have chosen
this end, for he had once been a brave soldier; but the thought of
his daughter and the women and children of the settlement left to the
mercy of Indians overcame him. He shrank from it with evident horror,
exaggerating the numbers and brooding over the “greedy violence” of
the bands, “numerous beyond any former example,” who were descending
from the Northwest.[272] Doubtless his fears were well-founded, but a
general-in-chief whose mind was paralyzed by such thoughts could not
measure himself with Isaac Brock.
On the evening of August 14 Hull made one more effort. He ordered
two of the Ohio colonels, McArthur and Cass, to select the best men
from their regiments, and to open if possible a circuitous route of
fifty miles through the woods to the river Raisin. The operation was
difficult, fatiguing, and dangerous; but the supplies so long detained
at the Raisin, thirty-five miles away by the direct road, must be had
at any cost, and the two Ohio colonels aware of the necessity promptly
undertook the service. Their regiments in May contained nominally
about five hundred men each, all told. Two months of severe labor with
occasional fighting and much sickness had probably reduced the number
of effectives about one half. The report of Colonel Miller of the U. S.
Fourth Regiment in regard to the condition of his command showed this
proportion of effectives,[273] and the Fourth Regiment was probably
in better health than the militia. The two Ohio regiments of McArthur
and Cass numbered perhaps six or seven hundred effective men, and from
these the two colonels selected three hundred and fifty, probably the
best. By night-time they were already beyond the river Rouge, and the
next evening, August 15, were stopped by a swamp less than half way to
the river Raisin.
After their departure on the night of August 14 Hull learned that
Brock had reached Malden the night before with heavy reinforcements.
According to Hull’s later story, he immediately sent orders to
McArthur and Cass to return to Detroit, giving the reasons for doing
so;[274] in fact he did not send till the afternoon of the next
day,[275] and the orders reached the detachment four-and-twenty miles
distant only at sunset August 15. So it happened that on the early
morning of August 16 Hull was guarding the fort and town of Detroit
with about two hundred and fifty effective men of the Fourth Regiment,
about seven hundred men of the Ohio militia, and such of the Michigan
militia and Ohio volunteers as may have been present,--all told, about
a thousand effectives. Hull estimated his force as not exceeding eight
hundred men;[276] Major Jesup, the acting adjutant-general, reported
it as one thousand and sixty, including the Michigan militia.[277] If
the sickness and loss of strength at Detroit were in proportion to the
waste that soon afterward astonished the generals at Niagara, Hull’s
estimate was perhaps near the truth.
Meanwhile Brock acted with rapidity and decision. After reaching Malden
late at night August 13, he held a council the next day, said to have
been attended by a thousand Indian warriors.[278]
“Among the Indians whom I found at Amherstburg,” he reported to
Lord Liverpool,[279] “and who had arrived from distant parts
of the country, I found some extraordinary characters. He who
attracted most my attention was a Shawnee chief, Tecumset,
brother to the Prophet, who for the last two years has carried
on contrary to our remonstrances an active warfare against the
United States. A more sagacious or more gallant warrior does
not, I believe, exist. He was the admiration of every one who
conversed with him.”
Brock consumed one day in making his arrangements with them, and
decided to move his army immediately across the Detroit River and throw
it against the fort.
“Some say that nothing could be more desperate than the
measure,”[280] he wrote soon afterward; “but I answer that the
state of the province admits only of desperate remedies. I
got possession of the letters my antagonist addressed to the
Secretary of War, and also the sentiments which hundreds of his
army uttered to their friends. Confidence in their general was
gone, and evident despondency prevailed throughout. I crossed
the river contrary to the opinion of Colonel Proctor, etc. It is
therefore no wonder that envy should attribute to good fortune
what, in justice to my own discernment, I must say proceeded
from a cool calculation of the _pours_ and _contres_.”
Probably Brock received then Sir George Prevost’s letter of August
2 warning him of the intended armistice, for Hull repeatedly and
earnestly asserted that Brock spoke to him of the armistice August
16; and although twelve days was a short time for an express to pass
between Montreal and Malden, yet it might have been accomplished at
the speed of about fifty miles a day. If Brock had reason to expect an
armistice, the wish to secure for his province the certainty of future
safety must have added a motive for hot haste.
At noon August 15 Brock sent a summons of surrender across the river to
Hull. “The force at my disposal,” he wrote, “authorizes me to require
of you the surrender of Detroit. It is far from my inclination to join
in a war of extermination, but you must be aware that the numerous body
of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops will be beyond my
control the moment the contest commences.” The threat of massacre or
Indian captivity struck Hull’s most sensitive chord. After some delay
he replied, refusing to surrender, and then sent orders recalling
McArthur’s detachment; but the more he thought of his situation the
more certain he became that the last chance of escape had vanished. In
a few days or weeks want of provisions would oblige him to capitulate,
and the bloodshed that would intervene could serve no possible purpose.
Brock’s movements increased the general’s weakness. As soon as Hull’s
reply reached the British lines, two British armed vessels--the “Queen
Charlotte” of seventeen guns and the “Hunter” of ten guns--moved up the
river near Sandwich, while a battery of guns and mortars opened fire
from the Canadian shore and continued firing irregularly all night on
the town and fort. The fire was returned, but no energetic measures
were taken to prepare either for an assault or a siege.
During the night Tecumthe and six hundred Indians crossed the river
some two miles below and filled the woods, cutting communication
between McArthur’s detachment and the fort. A little before daylight
of August 16 Brock himself, with three hundred and thirty regulars
and four hundred militia, crossed the river carrying with them three
6-pound and two 3-pound guns. He had intended to take up a strong
position and force Hull to attack it; but learning from his Indians
that McArthur’s detachment, reported as five hundred strong, was only
a few miles in his rear he resolved on an assault, and moved in close
column within three quarters of a mile of the American 24-pound guns.
Had Hull prayed that the British might deliver themselves into his
hands, his prayers could not have been better answered. Even under
trial for his life, he never ventured to express a distinct belief that
Brock’s assault could have succeeded; and in case of failure the small
British force must have retreated at least a mile and a half under the
fire of the fort’s heavy guns, followed by a force equal to their own,
and attacked in flank and rear by McArthur’s detachment, which was
within hearing of the battle and marching directly toward it.
“Nothing but the boldness of the enterprise could have insured
its success,” said Richardson, one of Brock’s volunteers.[281]
“When within a mile and a half of the rising ground commanding
the approach to the town we distinctly saw two long, heavy guns,
afterward proved to be 24-pounders, planted in the road, and
around them the gunners with their fuses burning. At each moment
we expected that they would be fired, ... and fearful in such
case must have been the havoc; for moving as we were by the main
road, with the river close upon our right flank and a chain of
alternate houses and close fences on our left, there was not
the slightest possibility of deploying. In this manner and with
our eyes riveted on the guns, which became at each moment more
visible, we silently advanced until within about three quarters
of a mile of the formidable battery, when General Brock, having
found at this point a position favorable for the formation of
the columns of assault, caused the whole to be wheeled to the
left through an open field and orchard leading to a house about
three hundred yards off the road, which he selected as his
headquarters. In this position we were covered.”
All this time Hull was in extreme distress. The cannon-shot from the
enemy’s batteries across the river were falling in the fort. Uncertain
what to do, the General sat on an old tent on the ground with his
back against the rampart. “He apparently unconsciously filled his
mouth with tobacco, putting in quid after quid more than he generally
did; the spittle colored with tobacco-juice ran from his mouth on his
neckcloth, beard, cravat, and vest.”[282] He seemed preoccupied, his
voice trembled, he was greatly agitated, anxious, and fatigued. Knowing
that sooner or later the fort must fall, and dreading massacre for
the women and children; anxious for the safety of McArthur and Cass,
and treated with undisguised contempt by the militia officers,--he
hesitated, took no measure to impede the enemy’s advance, and at last
sent a flag across the river to negotiate. A cannon-ball from the
enemy’s batteries killed four men in the fort; two companies of the
Michigan militia deserted,--their behavior threatening to leave the
town exposed to the Indians,--and from that moment Hull determined to
surrender on the best terms he could get.
As Brock, after placing his troops under cover, ascended the brow
of the rising ground to reconnoitre the fort, a white flag advanced
from the battery before him, and within an hour the British troops,
to their own undisguised astonishment, found themselves in possession
of the fortress. The capitulation included McArthur’s detachment and
the small force covering the supplies at the river Raisin. The army,
already mutinous, submitted with what philosophy it could command to
the necessity it could not escape.
On the same day at the same hour Fort Dearborn at Chicago was in
flames. The Government provided neither for the defence nor for the
safe withdrawal of the little garrison, but Hull had sent an order to
evacuate the fort if practicable. In the process of evacuation, August
15, the garrison was attacked and massacred by an overwhelming body
of Indians. The next morning the fort was burned, and with it the
last vestige of American authority on the western lakes disappeared.
Thenceforward the line of the Wabash and the Maumee became the military
boundary of the United States in the Northwest, and the country felt
painful doubt whether even that line could be defended.