The War on Land--Tecumseh's Indian Confederacy--Harrison at Tippecanoe
--General Hull and General Brock--A Fatal Armistice--Surrender of
Detroit--English Masters of Michigan--General Harrison Takes Command
in the Northwest--Harrison's Answer to Proctor--"He Will Never Have This
Post Surrendered"--Crogan's Brave Defence--The British Retreat--War on
the Niagara Frontier--Battle of Queenstown--Death of Brock--Colonel
Winfield Scott and the English Doctrine of Perpetual Allegiance.
The sea victories were a fortunate offset to American disasters on land.
With the aid of the great Indian chieftain Tecumseh, the British set out
to conquer the Northwest. Tecumseh, chief of the Shawaneese, was probably
the ablest Indian that the white man had ever met. He resolved early in
life to make a final stand against the progress of the palefaces. His
scheme was at first not of a warlike nature, for he began with a secret
council of representative Indians about the year 1806, the object of
which was to form an Indian confederacy to prevent the further sale of
lands to the United States, except by consent of the confederacy, which
was to include the entire Indian population of the Northwest. Thus the
American Union was to be met by an Indian union. Tecumseh had a brother,
known in history as "The Prophet," who visited the various tribes and
brought the influence of superstition to bear in favor of Tecumseh's
projects. Governor William Henry Harrison, whose Territory of Indiana
included the present States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin,
viewed Tecumseh's operations with alarm, although assured by that
chieftain that his intentions were peaceful. In order to remove any just
ground for discontent Governor Harrison offered to restore to the Indians
any lands that had not been fairly purchased. Tecumseh met Governor
Harrison at Vincennes, and recited the old story of Indian wrongs. After
complaining of white duplicity in obtaining sales of land, and
endeavoring to sow strife between the tribes, Tecumseh added: "How can we
have confidence in the white people? When Jesus Christ came upon the
earth, you killed him and nailed him on a cross. You thought he was dead,
but you were mistaken. Everything I have said to you is the truth. The
Great Spirit has inspired me." The first interview ended in great
excitement, but a second meeting, on the following day, was more decorous
in character. Nothing came of these discussions, as Tecumseh's demand for
the restoration of all Indian lands purchased from single tribes could
obviously not be granted. Hostilities followed, and the battle of
Tippecanoe was fought during the absence of Tecumseh, who on going South
to visit the Cherokees and other tribes had given strict orders to his
brother, the Prophet, not to attack the Americans. The Indians attempted
a surprise after midnight, November 7, 1811. They fought furiously, and
if Harrison had been a Braddock, the story of Duquesne might have been
repeated. But Harrison understood frontier warfare, and he directed his
men so skillfully, although many of them had never been under fire
before, that the Indians were at length repulsed. One of Harrison's
orders, which probably saved his army, was to extinguish the campfires,
so that white and Indian fought in the darkness on equal terms. The
American loss was thirty-seven killed and 151 wounded, and that of the
Indians somewhat smaller. In effect Tippecanoe was a decisive victory for
the Americans, and broke the spell in which Tecumseh and the Prophet had
held the tribes.
* * *
The War of 1812 revived the hopes of the great Indian chieftain, and with
the rank of brigadier-general in the British army he set about to assist
General Isaac Brock, the Governor of Upper Canada, in the task of
wresting the Northwest from the Americans. General William Hull, an uncle
of Captain Isaac Hull, the commander of the Constitution, was Governor of
the Territory of Michigan, which had been organized in 1805 and now
contained about 5000 inhabitants. To General Hull was given the command
of the forces intended for defensive and offensive operations on the
Upper Lakes. A small garrison of United States troops was stationed at
Michilimacinac and one at Chicago, which were the outposts of
civilization. The English near Detroit appear to have been aware of the
declaration of war before the news reached General Hull, and while the
latter was moving with an extreme caution excusable only on the ground of
age, Brock swiftly laid out and as swiftly entered upon an aggressive
campaign. The American outposts were captured by the British and Indians,
and the garrison of Fort Dearborn--Chicago--was cruelly massacred. On
this occasion Mr. John Kinzie, the first settler at Chicago, who as a
trader was much liked by the Indians, did noble service, with his
excellent wife, in saving the lives of the soldiers' families. Mrs.
Heald, the wife of Captain Heald, was ransomed for ten bottles of whiskey
and a mule, just as an Indian was about to scalp her.
At this critical juncture General Hull was weakened, and the British
forces opposed to him were encouraged by the news that General Henry
Dearborn, commander of the American troops in the Northern Department,
instead of invading Canada from the Niagara frontier, in obedience to his
instructions, had agreed to a provisional armistice with Sir George
Prevost, the governor-general of Canada. The ground for the armistice was
that England had revoked the orders in council obnoxious to Americans,
five days after the declaration of war by the United States, and that
intended peace negotiations would therefore have in all probability a
happy result. As a matter of fact England had not yielded, and had no
intention, as it proved, of yielding on the question of impressment,
which was the principal American grievance. But even if England had
surrendered every point it was an outrageous assumption on the part of
General Dearborn to depart from the line of military instructions and
military duty upon any representation foreign to that duty. By his error
in this regard General Dearborn injured the American cause more than a
severe defeat would have done, leaving as he did General Hull and his
handful of men, who were not included in the armistice, to bear the brunt
of British hostility. The government at Washington disapproved General
Dearborn's course, and the armistice was cancelled, but not in time to
prevent the loss of Detroit.
General Hull had only eight hundred men in Detroit when General Brock
attacked the place by land and water, with a much more numerous force of
British and Indians, assisted by ships of war. It is often asserted that
General Hull surrendered the place without serious defence. This is not
true. In addition to the official statements of both sides, and General
Hull's own vindication, the journal of an Ohio soldier named Claypool who
was in the American ranks at the time, shows that the Americans returned
the British fire vigorously during August 15, and for several hours on
the following day, when General Hull, in view of the overwhelming force
opposed to him, capitulated. General Hull was afterward tried by
court-martial and sentenced to death, but the sentence was not carried
out, the United States escaping a stain like that which attaches to
England for the fate of Admiral Byng. Hull had proven during the
Revolution that he was no coward. Whatever may have been his errors of
judgment before the surrender, at the time of the surrender Detroit was
indefensible.
* * *
The English were now masters of Michigan Territory, and the western
forests were alive with Indians on the warpath. Fort Wayne was besieged,
and Captain Zachary Taylor bravely defended Fort Harrison. General
Harrison, appointed to the command of the Northwestern army, promptly
relieved both posts, and the government ordered that ten thousand men
should be raised to recover Detroit and invade Canada. General James
Winchester, in command of the advance corps of Harrison's forces,
imprudently engaged in conflict with a much more numerous body of British
at Frenchtown, on the River Raisin. Nearly all his troops, numbering
about eight hundred, were killed or captured, and some of the captives
were massacred. General Winchester himself was taken prisoner. Soon
afterward the British General Proctor issued a proclamation requiring the
citizens of Michigan to take the oath of allegiance to the British crown,
or leave the Territory. The American residents in Detroit, under the
terms of the capitulation, remained undisturbed in their homes, but their
hearts were continually wrung by the spectacle of cruelties practiced by
Indian allies of the British upon American captives. Many families parted
with all but necessary wearing apparel to redeem the sufferers, and
private houses were turned into hospitals for their relief. Mr. Kinzie,
of Chicago, who was now a paroled prisoner in Detroit, was foremost in
this work of patriotism and humanity.
The defeat at the River Raisin was a hard blow to General Harrison,
especially as the troops to make up his army of ten thousand men were
slow in arriving. He did not lose courage, however, and when General
Proctor sent an imperious demand for the surrender of Fort Meigs,
Harrison answered: "He will never have this post surrendered to him upon
any terms. Should it fall into his hands, it will be in a manner
calculated to do him more honor and to give him larger claims upon the
gratitude of his government than any capitulation could possibly do."
"There will be none of us left to kill" was the reply of Captain Crogan
at Fort Stephenson, when Proctor's messenger menaced him with Indian
vengeance, should he fail to surrender. Harrison, reinforced by General
Clay Green, from Kentucky, compelled the besiegers to withdraw, and the
heroic Crogan mowed down with one discharge of his single cannon more
than fifty of the assailants who were advancing to carry his fort by
storm. Hardly had the remainder fled when the Americans let down pails of
water from the wall of the fort for the relief of their wounded enemies.
The formation of an army for the invasion of Canada now went forward in
earnest, while the retreat of the British shook the confidence of
Tecumseh and his Indian followers in England's ability to protect them
against the Americans.
The Niagara frontier was the scene of desultory warfare, with varied
fortune for both sides. The battle of Queenstown, October 13, 1812,
although it resulted in the defeat and capture of the Americans engaged
and witnessed a pitiable exhibition of cowardice on the part of
militiamen who refused to cross the river to the aid of their countrymen,
was attended by a loss for the Canadians that more than counterbalanced
their victory, in the death of Major-General Isaac Brock, whose
well-deserved monument is a conspicuous feature of the Niagara landscape.
Among the Americans who surrendered on this occasion was Colonel Winfield
Scott, who, while himself a prisoner, took a resolute and memorable stand
against the British claim that certain Irishmen captured in the American
ranks should be sent to England to be tried for treason. The Irishmen,
twenty-three in number, were put in irons and deported to England, but in
the following May Colonel Scott, after the battle of Fort George,
selected twenty-three British prisoners, not of Irish birth, to be dealt
with as the British authorities should deal with the Irish-Americans. The
latter were finally released and returned to America, and the British
doctrine of perpetual allegiance was shattered without treaty or
diplomacy.