CHAPTER XV.
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.
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.