The fall of Detroit and Chicago in August, 1812, threw the American
frontier back to the line of the Wabash and the Maumee, and threatened
to throw it still farther back to the Indian boundary itself. The Miami
or Maumee River was defended by Fort Wayne; the Wabash had no other
defence than the little fort or blockhouse which Harrison built during
the Tippecanoe campaign, and named after himself. Fort Harrison stood
near the later city of Terre Haute, close to the border of Illinois;
Fort Wayne stood within twenty miles of the Ohio border. The width of
Indiana lay between the two.
Had Brock been able, after the capture of Detroit, to lead his little
army into Ohio, he might have cleared not only the Maumee River, but
the whole western end of Lake Erie from American possession. Recalled
in haste to defend Niagara, Brock left only two or three companies of
troops as garrison at Detroit and Malden. The Indians could do little
without the aid of regular forces, but they tried to carry both Fort
Wayne and Fort Harrison by stratagem. The attacks were made almost
simultaneously a few days after September 1, and not without skill.
In the case of Fort Harrison the Indians were nearly successful, not
so much in fighting as in burning it. With great difficulty its young
captain, Zachary Taylor, of the Seventh Infantry, succeeded in saving
his post. Fort Wayne was held by Captain James Rhea of the First
Infantry until reinforcements arrived, September 12. Except the usual
massacres of scattered families, the Indians accomplished nothing.
Upon the State of Ohio, with its quarter of a million inhabitants, and
of Kentucky with four hundred thousand, fell the immediate burden of
defending the border between the Ohio and the Lakes. Governor William
Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory leaving Vincennes June 19, the
day after the declaration of war, was at Cincinnati when threatening
news began to arrive from Detroit. Harrison had military knowledge and
instincts. He saw that after the capture of Mackinaw Detroit must fall,
and that Hull could save himself only by evacuating it.[44] Harrison’s
ambition, which had drawn him to Tippecanoe, drew him also to lead
the new crusade for the relief or recovery of Detroit. He went to
Kentucky at the invitation of Governor Scott, and under the patronage
of Scott and Henry Clay he took the direction of military affairs.
August 24 news reached Kentucky that Hull was shut in Detroit, and must
surrender unless immediately relieved.[45] The Governor of Kentucky at
once summoned what was then called a _caucus_, composed of himself,
his successor elect Governor Shelby, Henry Clay, Justice Todd of the
United States Supreme Court, Major-General Hopkins of the Kentucky
militia, various Congressmen, judges, and other citizens,[46] whose
whole authority was needed to warrant giving to Harrison, who was not
a citizen of Kentucky, the commission of major-general and the command
of the expedition to Detroit. By general acclamation, and on the warm
assurances of universal popular approval, the measure was taken; and
Harrison started at once for Cincinnati and Detroit to organize the
campaign. The news of Hull’s surrender met him as he left Frankfort.
By this combination of skill and accident, Harrison reached the object
of his ambition,--the conduct of war on a scale equal to his faith
in his own powers; but the torrent of Western enthusiasm swept him
forward faster than his secret judgment approved. Appointed by caucus
the general of volunteers, he could keep his position only by keeping
his popularity. Without deciding precisely where to march, or what
military object to pursue, he talked and acted on the idea that he
should recover Detroit by a _coup-de-main_.[47] He knew that the idea
was baseless as a practical plan, and futile as a military measure; but
nothing less would satisfy the enthusiasm of his Kentucky volunteers,
and the national government almost compelled him to pretend what he
did not at heart believe possible.
The confusion thus created was troublesome. First, Harrison insisted
on commanding the troops marching to relieve Fort Wayne, and obliged
the good-natured General Winchester, who outranked him, to yield the
point.[48] Then after a forced march with the Kentuckians down the
St. Mary’s River, having relieved Fort Wayne, Harrison was obliged,
September 19, to surrender the command to Winchester, who arrived
with orders from the Secretary of War to take general charge of the
northwestern army. Harrison then left Fort Wayne for Piqua. Meanwhile
the President and Eustis, learning what had been done in Kentucky,
September 17, after much debate decided to give to Harrison the
commission of brigadier-general, with the command of the northwestern
army, to consist of ten thousand men, with unlimited means and no
orders except to retake Detroit.[49] Brigadier-General Winchester,
who was already at Fort Wayne, was given the option of serving under
Harrison, or of joining the army at Niagara.
These new orders reached Harrison September 25 at Piqua. Harrison then
resumed command, and two days afterward, September 27, wrote to the
secretary, announcing his plan for the autumn campaign. Three columns
of troops, from widely distant quarters, were to move to the Maumee
Rapids,--the right column, consisting of Virginia and Pennsylvania
troops, by way of the Sandusky River; the centre column, of twelve
hundred Ohio militia, by Hull’s road; the left column, consisting of
four Kentucky regiments and the Seventeenth U. S. Infantry, was to
descend the Auglaize River to Fort Defiance on the Maumee, and thence
to fall down that river to the point of junction with the two other
columns.
Compared with Hull’s resources, Harrison’s were immense; and that he
had no serious enemy to fear was evident from his dividing the army
into three columns, which marched by lines far beyond supporting
distance of each other. At the same time he ordered Major-General
Hopkins of the Kentucky militia to march with two thousand men up the
Wabash into the Indian country, and to destroy the Indian settlements
on the Wabash and Illinois rivers. Had a British force been opposed
to the Americans, its general would have had little difficulty in
destroying some one of these four isolated columns, and driving
Harrison back to central Ohio; but only bands of Indians, not exceeding
five hundred at most, were to be feared before the army should cross
the Maumee, and little anxiety existed on account of enemies, unless
for the safety of Fort Wayne.
Harrison’s anxieties bore a different character. September 23 he wrote
to the Secretary of War: “If the fall should be very dry, I will take
Detroit before the winter sets in; but if we should have much rain, it
will be necessary to wait at the rapids until the Miami of the Lakes is
sufficiently frozen to bear the army and its baggage.”[50] The promise
was rash. However dry the season might be, the task of marching an army
with siege-artillery past Malden to Detroit, and of keeping it supplied
from a base two hundred miles distant, with the British commanding the
Lake, was one which Harrison had too much sense to attempt. Nothing but
disaster could have resulted from it, even if Detroit had been taken.
In the actual condition of that territory, no army could be maintained
beyond the Maumee River without controlling the Lake. Perhaps Harrison
was fortunate that constant rains throughout the month of October
brought the army to a halt long before it reached the Maumee. Only the
left division of five Kentucky regiments succeeded in getting to the
river, and camped in the neighborhood of old Fort Defiance, waiting for
the other columns to reach the rapids. There the Kentuckians remained,
under the command of General Winchester, without food, clothing, or
sufficient shelter, in a state of increasing discontent and threatening
mutiny, till the year closed.
Within a month after assuming command Harrison found himself helpless
either to advance or to retreat, or to remain in any fixed position.
The supplies required for ten thousand troops could not be sent forward
by any means then known. October 22 the left column, consisting of
the Kentucky regiments and some regulars, was at Defiance on the
Maumee; the central column of a thousand Ohio troops under General
Tupper was on Hull’s road, a hundred miles from the Maumee, unable to
march beyond Urbana, where its supplies were collecting; the right
column of Pennsylvanians and Virginians was still farther from the
front, slowly approaching the Sandusky River from the southeast, but
far out of reach. General Hopkins’s expedition up the Wabash ended
in failure, his troops becoming a mere mob, and at last disbanding,
leaving their general to follow them home. Harrison himself was riding
indefatigably through the mud, from one end to the other of his vast
concave line,--now at Defiance, making speeches to pacify Winchester’s
Kentuckians; then at Piqua and Urbana with the Ohioans; soon a hundred
miles away at the river Huron, east of Sandusky; next at Wooster,
Delaware, or Franklinton, afterward Columbus, in the centre of Ohio,
looking for his right wing; but always searching for a passable ridge
of dry land, on which his supplies could go forward to the Maumee
Rapids. The result of his search was given in a letter of October 22,
from Franklinton, to the Secretary of War:--
“I am not able to fix any period for the advance of the troops to
Detroit. It is pretty evident that it cannot be done upon proper
principles until the frost shall become so severe as to enable us
to use the rivers and the margin of the Lake for transportation
of the baggage and artillery upon the ice. To get them forward
through a swampy wilderness of near two hundred miles, in wagons
or on packhorses which are to carry their own provisions, is
absolutely impossible.”
The obstacle which brought Harrison’s autumn campaign to this sudden
close was the vast swamp that extended from the Sandusky River on his
right to the Auglaize River on his left, and for the moment barred the
passage of his necessary supplies as effectually as though it had been
the Andes. Hull had crossed it, cutting a road as he went, and no one
had then appreciated his effort; but he had marched with a small force
in May and June. Harrison tried to transport supplies, heavy guns,
military stores, and all the material for an army of ten thousand men
on a long campaign, as the autumn rains set in. On the extreme right,
with great effort and expense, a considerable quantity of rations was
accumulated on the Sandusky River, to be sent to the Maumee Rapids
whenever the frosts should harden the swamps. On the extreme left,
desperate efforts were made to carry supplies to Winchester’s army at
Defiance by way of the Auglaize and St. Mary’s rivers. Hull’s road was
impassable, and for that reason the column of Ohio troops and their
supplies were stopped in the neighborhood of Urbana.
Throughout the months of October and November Harrison’s army stood
still, scattered over the State of Ohio, while wagons and packhorses
wallowed in mud toward the Maumee Rapids. None arrived. Sometimes
the wagons were abandoned in the mud; sometimes the packhorses broke
down; sometimes the rivers were too low for boats; then they froze and
stopped water-transport. Universal confusion, want of oversight and
organization, added to physical difficulties, gave play to laziness,
incapacity, and dishonesty. No bills of lading were used; no accounts
were kept with the wagoners; and the teams were valued so high, on
coming into service, that the owners were willing to destroy them
for the price to be received.[51] The waste of government funds was
appalling, for nothing short of a million rations at the Maumee Rapids
could serve Harrison’s objects, and after two months of effort not a
ration had been carried within fifty miles of the spot. In Winchester’s
camp at Defiance the men were always on half rations, except when they
had none at all. During the greater part of December they had no flour,
but lived on poor beef and hickory roots. Typhus swept them away by
scores; their numbers were reduced to about one thousand. The exact
force which Harrison had in the field was matter of conjecture, for he
sent no return of any description to the adjutant-general’s office.[52]
The Government gave him _carte blanche_, and he used it.[53] Chaos and
misconduct reigned in every department, while he, floundering through
the mud along his line of two hundred miles front, sought in vain for
a road.
For the train of errors and disasters in the northwest Secretary Eustis
was chiefly responsible, and his resignation, Dec. 3, 1812, left the
campaign in this hopeless condition. From Dec. 3, 1812, until Jan. 13,
1813, Monroe acted as Secretary of War; and to him Harrison next wrote
from Delaware, December 12, a letter which not only disheartened the
Government, but was calculated to create a prejudice against the writer
in the mind of any Secretary of War who was not invincibly prejudiced
in his favor.[54]
“If there were not some important political reason,” said
Harrison, “urging the recovery of the Michigan Territory and
the capture of Malden as soon as those objects can possibly be
effected, and that to accomplish them a few weeks sooner expense
was to be disregarded, I should not hesitate to say that if
a small proportion of the sums which will be expended in the
quartermaster’s department in the active prosecution of the
campaign during the winter was devoted to obtaining the command of
Lake Erie, the wishes of the Government, in their utmost extent,
could be accomplished without difficulty in the months of April and
May. Malden, Detroit, and Mackinaw would fall in rapid succession.
On the contrary, all that I can certainly promise to accomplish
during the winter, unless the strait should afford us a passage
on the ice, is to recover Detroit. I must further observe that no
military man would think of retaining Detroit, Malden being in
possession of the enemy, unless his army was at least twice as
strong as the disposable force of the enemy. An army advancing to
Detroit along a line of operation passing so near the principal
force of the enemy as to allow them access to it whenever they
think proper, must be covered by another army more considerable
than the disposable force of the enemy. I mention this circumstance
to show that the attack ought not to be directed against Detroit,
but against Malden; and that it depends upon the ice affording a
safe passage across the strait, whether I shall be able to proceed
in this way or not. Detroit is not tenable. Were I to take it
without having it in my power to occupy the opposite shore, I
should be under the necessity of hiding the army in the adjacent
swamp to preserve it from the effects of the shot and shells which
the enemy would throw with impunity from the opposite shore. This
result is so obvious to every man who has the least military
information, that it appears to me as extraordinary as any other
part of General Hull’s conduct that he should choose to defend
Detroit rather than attack Malden.”
Hull could have asked no better apology for his surrender. Harrison
did not know that the insubordination and refusal of the Ohio colonels
to evacuate Detroit had forced Hull to remain there; but that Detroit
was not tenable came at last to the surface as a self-evident truth of
the campaign,--which Hull had always seen, and which Harrison himself
announced almost as clearly in August as in December, but which he
ignored in the interval.
“If it should be asked,” he continued, “why these statements were
not made sooner,--I answer that although I was always sensible
that there were great difficulties to be encountered in the
accomplishment of the wishes of the President in relation to the
recovery of Detroit and the conquest of the adjacent part of Upper
Canada in the manner proposed, I did not make sufficient allowance
for the imbecility and inexperience of the public agents and the
villany of the contractors. I am still, however, very far from
believing that the original plan is impracticable. I believe on the
contrary that it can be effected.”
The excuse did not satisfy the Cabinet, who thought they saw that
Harrison wished to throw upon Government the responsibility for a
military failure fatal to himself. Perhaps a simpler motive guided
Harrison, who from the first never had known precisely what to do,
or had seen any clear path to success. He wrote, January 4, from
Franklinton,--
“When I was directed to take the command in the latter end of
September, I thought it possible by great exertions to effect the
objects of the campaign before the setting in of winter.... The
experience of a few days was sufficient to convince me that the
supplies of provisions could not be procured for our autumnal
advance; and even if this difficulty was removed, another of equal
magnitude existed in the want of artillery. There remained then no
alternative but to prepare for a winter campaign.”
According to this account he had seen early in October that advance was
impossible, yet he wasted millions of money and many of his best troops
in attempting it. Winter had come, and he was pledged to a winter
campaign as impracticable as the autumn campaign had proved to be.
Without the control of the Lake, any army beyond the Maumee must starve
or surrender. The government had already paid a vast price in money and
men in order to obtain this knowledge; yet Harrison proposed a winter
campaign, with full persuasion of its uselessness.
December 20 he sent orders[55] to Winchester to descend the Maumee
River from Defiance to the rapids, there to prepare sleds for an
expedition against Malden, to be made by a choice detachment when
the whole army should concentrate at the rapids. Early in January,
the ground being at last frozen, provisions in large quantities
were hurried to the Maumee River. Artillery was sent forward. The
Pennsylvania and Virginia brigades moved to the Sandusky River, making
an effective force of fifteen hundred men at that point. The whole
effective force on the frontier amounted to six thousand three hundred
infantry.[56] Harrison intended to move his headquarters forward from
the Sandusky, and to reach the Maumee Rapids January 20, to which point
he supposed General Winchester already in motion from Defiance.[57]
This was the situation January 12; and although Harrison hinted in
his reports of January 4 and 8 that his winter campaign would probably
fail,[58] he showed the intention of advancing at least as far as the
strait opposite Malden, about thirty-five miles beyond the Maumee. This
he might venture without much danger; and if he reached that point,
supposing the straits to be frozen, the enemy to show little sign of
resistance, and the weather to favor, he might attack Malden. Hull had
been expected to take Malden with twelve or fourteen hundred men, with
an open river behind him, a British fleet on his flank, fifty miles
of road to cover, and supplies for only a few days at Detroit; but
Harrison with six thousand men, the river frozen and the British fleet
frozen in it, a secure base, with a million rations close in his rear,
and no Isaac Brock in his front, still spoke with extreme doubt of his
prospects, and said that “most of the well-informed men who knew the
character of the country”[59] expected a suspension of operations for
the winter.
Aware that from a military point of view no land-campaign could, except
by accident, effect any result proportionate to its cost, Harrison had
placed himself at the head of a popular movement so strong that he
would have met the fate of Hull and Alexander Smyth, had he not made at
least a demonstration against an enemy whose face he had not yet seen.
Forced by his own pledges and the public discontent to enter on an
unmilitary campaign, he was anxious to risk as little as possible where
he could hardly expect to gain anything; and he would probably have
contented himself with his first scheme of a _coup-de-main_ against
Malden or Detroit, without attempting to hold either place, had not his
subordinate, General Winchester, rescued him from an awkward position
by a blunder that relieved Harrison of further responsibility.
Brigadier-General Winchester was a planter of Tennessee, sixty-one
years old, and formerly an officer in the Revolutionary War. Though
outranking Harrison, he had allowed himself to be set aside by what he
thought intrigue,[60] and consented to conduct the left wing of the
force under Harrison’s command. Winchester was not a favorite with
his Kentucky militia-men, who had no choice in electing him to their
command. Their term of service was to expire in February; they had
been imprisoned since September in a wilderness at Defiance,--hungry,
cold, sick, and mutinous, able to find no enemy willing to fight them,
and disgusted with idleness. No sooner was the ground frozen and the
general movement of concentration possible, than Winchester’s command
by common consent, under Harrison’s orders, broke up their camp near
Defiance and marched to the rapids, where Hull’s road crossed the
Maumee. There they arrived January 10, as Harrison expected. They
fortified themselves on the north bank, and waited for the arrival of
Harrison, who intended to join them January 20.
Winchester’s force included three regiments of Kentucky militia,
numbering nine hundred effectives,[61] and the Seventeenth United
States Infantry, numbering three hundred men, also Kentuckians.
Altogether he had under his command at the rapids about thirteen
hundred men,[62]--a force barely sufficient to hold the exposed
position it had taken on the north bank of the river. The three
Kentucky militia regiments were soon to go home. The other columns were
not yet within supporting distance. If Colonel Proctor, who commanded
at Malden, were capable of imitating Brock’s enterprise, he would
hardly throw away an opportunity, which might never recur, to strike a
blow at the Kentuckians, and by defeating them to drive Harrison’s army
behind the Sandusky River. Every military motive warned Winchester not
to divide, detach, or expose his troops without caution. He was himself
a detachment, and he had no support nearer than the Sandusky.
While the troops were busily engaged in building a store-house and
throwing up log-works in an injudicious and untenable position,[63]
two Frenchmen came into camp, begging protection for the inhabitants
of Frenchtown on the river Raisin, thirty miles in front, and within
the British lines. Thirty-three families, or about one hundred and
fifty persons, were resident at Frenchtown, and the place was held by
a few Canadian militia, supposed to consist of two companies, with
about as many Indians,--in all, some three hundred men.[64] This
force might easily be destroyed, and the loss to the British would be
serious. Winchester’s troops became eager to dash at them. A council
of war decided, January 16, without a voice in remonstrance, that the
movement should be made. The most ardent supporter of the adventure
was Col. John Allen of the Kentucky Rifle regiment; but no one offered
opposition, and Winchester agreed to the council’s opinion.[65]
The next morning, Jan. 17, 1813, Col. William Lewis, of the Fifth
Kentucky militia, started for the river Raisin, with four hundred and
fifty men.[66] A few hours afterward he was followed by Colonel Allen
with one hundred and ten men. No reports told what regiments were
taken, or where they were at any moment stationed; but Lewis and Allen
probably led twelve companies, drawn from four Kentucky regiments,--the
Seventeenth United States Infantry, recruited in Kentucky, commanded
by Col. Samuel Wells; the Kentucky Rifles, Col. John Allen; the First
Kentucky Infantry; and Colonel Lewis’s regiment, the Fifth Kentucky
Infantry,--in all, six hundred and sixty men, representing the flower
of Kentucky.
They marched on the ice, along the shore of Maumee Bay and Lake
Erie, until nightfall, when they camped, and at two o’clock the next
afternoon, January 18, reached without meeting resistance the houses
on the south bank of the river Raisin. The north bank was occupied,
according to British authority,[67] by fifty Canadian militia and two
hundred Indians. The British force opened fire with a three-pound
howitzer. The action began at three o’clock and lasted till dark, when
the enemy after an obstinate resistance was driven about two miles
into the woods with inconsiderable loss.[68] The action was sharp, and
cost the Americans not less than twelve killed and fifty-five wounded,
reducing their effective number to six hundred.
Colonel Lewis had orders to take possession of Frenchtown, and hold
it. He reported his success to General Winchester at the rapids, and
remained at Frenchtown waiting further orders. Winchester became
then aware that the situation was hazardous. Six hundred men were
with him in a half-fortified camp on the north bank of the Maumee;
six hundred more were thirty miles in advance, at the Raisin River;
while fully two thousand--or, according to Harrison’s estimate, four
thousand[69]--enemies held two fortresses only eighteen miles beyond
the Raisin. The Kentuckians at the Maumee, equally aware of their
comrades’ peril, insisted on going to their aid. Winchester promptly
started on the evening of January 19, and arrived at Frenchtown the
next morning. Colonel Wells’s Seventeenth United States Infantry,
two hundred and fifty men, followed, arriving at Frenchtown in the
evening.[70]
Winchester, before leaving the Maumee Rapids, sent a despatch to
Harrison with a report of the battle of the 18th, which met Harrison
on the road hurrying to the Maumee Rapids. The next morning, January
20, Harrison arrived at the camp on the Maumee, and found there about
three hundred Kentucky troops,[71] the remainder being all with
Winchester at the river Raisin. Probably Harrison, whose own caution
was great, felt the peril of Winchester’s situation,[72] but he sent
his inspector-general, Captain Hart, forward with orders to Winchester
“to hold the ground we had got at any rate,”[73] while he wrote to the
Secretary of War:--
“Upon my way to this place [Maumee Rapids] last evening, I received
the letter from the General [Winchester] of which the enclosed is
a copy, informing me of the complete success of the enterprise in
the defeat of the enemy and taking the stores they had collected.
The detachment under Colonel Lewis remain at the river Raisin,
and General Winchester very properly marched yesterday with two
hundred and fifty men to reinforce him and take the command....
It is absolutely necessary to maintain the position at the river
Raisin, and I am assembling the troops as fast as possible for the
purpose.”[74]
Harrison added that his only fear was lest Winchester should be
overpowered. He waited at the Maumee Rapids two days, until at noon,
January 22, a messenger arrived with disastrous tidings from the front.
Winchester afterward told the story of his own proceedings with so much
candor that his narrative became a necessary part of any explanation of
his disaster:--
“Suspecting that Proctor would make an attempt to avenge this
stroke, and knowing that our wounded men could not be removed, I
hastened to reinforce Colonel Lewis with Wells’s regiment, two
hundred and fifty men; and set out myself to join him, and arrived
on the morning of the 20th. The town, lying on the north side
of the river, was picketed on three sides, the longest facing
the north, and making the front. Within these pickets Colonel
Lewis’s corps was found. Not thinking the position eligible, nor
the pickets a sufficient defence against artillery, I would have
retreated but for the wounded, of whom there were fifty-five;
but having no sufficient means for transporting these, and being
equally destitute of those necessary for fortifying strongly, I
issued an order for putting the place in the best condition for
defence that might be practicable, intending to construct some new
works as soon as the means for getting out timber might be had. On
the evening of the 20th Wells arrived, and was directed to encamp
on the right, in an open field, immediately without the picketing.
On the 21st a patrol as far as Brownstown [opposite Malden] was
sent out, and returned without seeing anything of an enemy. On the
same day a man from Malden came in who reported that the enemy were
preparing to attack us; but knowing nothing of the kind or extent
of the preparation made or making, what he brought was thought to
be only conjecture and such as led to a belief that it would be
some days before Proctor would be ready to do anything.... Neither
night-patrol nor night-pickets were ordered by me, from a belief
that both were matters of routine and in constant use.... Not to
discommode the wounded men, ... I took quarters for myself and
suite in a house on the southern bank, directly fronting the troops
and only separated from them by the river, then firmly frozen, and
but between eighty and a hundred yards wide.”
The only educated officer under Harrison’s command was Major E. D.
Wood of the Engineers, one of the early graduates of West Point, and
an officer of high promise. He was not with Winchester’s division, but
with the right wing on the Sandusky, and arrived at the Maumee Rapids
some ten days afterward, where he built Fort Meigs, in February. During
the campaign he kept a diary, and his criticisms of Winchester, Lewis,
Allen, and their command were quoted with approval by the Kentucky
historian,[75] as well as by Harrison’s biographer:[76]--
“The troops were permitted to select, each for himself, such
quarters on the west side of the river as might please him best,
whilst the general ... took his quarters on the east side,--not the
least regard being paid to defence, order, regularity, or system,
in the posting of the different corps.... With only one third
or one fourth of the force destined for that service; destitute
of artillery, of engineers, of men who had ever seen or heard
the least of an enemy; and with but a very inadequate supply of
ammunition,--how he ever could have entertained the most distant
hope of success, or what right he had to presume to claim it, is
to me one of the strangest things in the world.... Winchester was
destitute of every means of supporting his corps long at the river
Raisin; was in the very jaws of the enemy, and beyond the reach of
succor. He who fights with such flimsy pretensions to victory will
always be beaten, and eternally ought to be.”
Defeat under such conditions was disgraceful enough; but defeat by
Colonel Proctor was one of the worst misfortunes that happened to
an American general. The Prince Regent took occasion, at the close
of the war, to express his official opinion of this officer, then
Major-General Proctor, in language of unusual severity.[77] Yet
Proctor’s first movements at the Raisin River showed no apparent sign
of his being “so extremely wanting in professional knowledge, and
deficient in those active, energetic qualities which must be required
of every officer,” as his later career, in the Prince Regent’s opinion,
proved him to be. He had opposed Brock’s bold movement on Detroit;
but he did not hesitate to make a somewhat similar movement himself.
January 21 he marched with artillery across the river on the ice, to
Brownstown opposite Malden, in full view of any American patrol in the
neighborhood. His force consisted of six hundred whites, all told,[78]
besides either four hundred and fifty, six hundred or eight hundred
Indians, under the chief Round Head, Tecumthe being absent collecting
reinforcements on the Wabash.[79] This large body of more than a
thousand men, without an attempt at concealment, crossed to Brownstown
and marched twelve miles, January 21, camping at night within five
miles of Frenchtown.[80] If the British historian James was correct,
they numbered eleven hundred and eighty men, of whom five hundred and
thirty were white, and the rest Indians;[81] but the official return
reported the whites, including every person present, at five hundred
and ninety-seven men. Two hours before dawn, January 22, they again
advanced, and before daybreak approached within musket-shot of the
picket-fence, and half-formed their line, before an alarm was given.
Had Proctor dashed at once on the defenceless Seventeenth regiment and
the fence that covered the militia, he would probably have captured the
whole without loss; but he preferred to depend on his three-pound guns,
which gave the Kentuckians opportunity to use their rifles. In such
fighting the Americans had much the advantage, especially as British
regulars were opposite them. Within an hour the Forty-first regiment
lost fifteen killed and ninety-eight wounded, and of the entire body
of six hundred British troops not less than twenty-four were killed
and one hundred and sixty-one wounded.[82] Their three-pound guns were
abandoned, so murderous were the Kentucky rifles.[83] Had all the
American troops been under cover, the battle would have been theirs;
but Wells’s Seventeenth regiment was a hundred yards away, on open
ground outside the picket-fence on the right, where it was flanked by
the Canadian militia and Indians and driven back toward the river,
until Allen’s Rifle regiment went out to help it. Gradually forced
toward the rear, across the river, this part of the line was at last
struck with a panic and fled, carrying with it Winchester himself,
Colonel Allen, and Colonel Lewis; while six hundred Indians were in hot
pursuit, or already in advance of them.
In the deep snow escape was impossible. Nearly a hundred Kentuckians
fell almost side by side, and were scalped. Among these was Colonel
Allen. General Winchester and Colonel Lewis were so fortunate as to
fall into the hands of the chief Round Head, who first stripped them
and then took them to Proctor, who had for the time withdrawn his
forces and ceased firing. By Proctor’s advice, General Winchester sent
an order to the men within the picket-fence to surrender.
By eight o’clock all resistance had ceased except from three hundred
and eighty-four Kentuckians who remained within the picket-fence,
under the command of Major Madison of the Rifle regiment. Surrounded
by a thousand enemies, they had no chance of escape. Their ammunition
was nearly exhausted; retreat was impossible; they could choose only
between surrender and massacre, and they surrendered.[84] The British
officers looked at them with curiosity, as they came within the British
line.
“Their appearance,” said Major Richardson,[85] “was miserable
to the last degree. They had the air of men to whom cleanliness
was a virtue unknown, and their squalid bodies were covered by
habiliments that had evidently undergone every change of season,
and were arrived at the last stage of repair.... It was the depth
of winter; but scarcely an individual was in possession of a
great coat or cloak, and few of them wore garments of wool of any
description. They still retained their summer dress, consisting of
cotton stuff of various colors shaped into frocks, and descending
to the knee. Their trowsers were of the same material. They were
covered with slouched hats, worn bare by constant use, beneath
which their long hair fell matted and uncombed over their cheeks;
and these, together with the dirty blankets wrapped round their
loins to protect them against the inclemency of the season, and
fastened by broad leathern belts, into which were thrust axes
and knives of an enormous length, gave them an air of wildness
and savageness which in Italy would have caused them to pass for
brigands of the Apennines. The only distinction between the garb of
the officer and that of the soldier was that the one, in addition
to his sword, carried a short rifle instead of a long one, while
a dagger, often curiously worked and of some value, supplied the
place of the knife.”
This description gave a lifelike idea of what Harrison justly thought
the best material in the world for soldiery, had it been properly
handled. Men who for four months had suffered every hardship, and
were still unclothed, unfed, uncared for, and sacrificed to military
incompetence, but hardened to cold, fatigue, and danger, had no reason
to be ashamed of their misfortunes or of their squalor. Fortunately
about five hundred were saved as prisoners, and thirty or forty
escaped to the rapids; the rest, four hundred in number, were killed in
battle, or massacred afterward.
Had Proctor acted with energy, he might have advanced to the rapids,
and there have captured Harrison with his remaining force of nine
hundred men, his artillery train and stores. Even with the utmost
celerity Harrison could hardly have escaped, if an active pursuit
had been made by Indians through the swamp which he had with extreme
difficulty crossed two days before,[86] and in the heavy rain which
followed the battle;[87] but Proctor had no wish for fighting. So far
from thinking of attack, he thought only of escaping it, and hurried
back to Malden at noon the same day, leaving the wounded prisoners
behind without a guard. Nothing excused such conduct, for Proctor
knew the fate to which he was exposing his prisoners. That night
the Indians, drunk with whiskey and mad with their grievances and
losses, returned to Frenchtown and massacred the wounded. About thirty
perished, some apparently burned. Fortunately for the United States the
glamour of Proctor’s victory hid his true character, and he was made a
major-general,--the most favorable event of the war for the American
armies he was to meet, and one which cost Great Britain even more in
pride than in power.