Meanwhile batteries had been erected opposite Detroit, which opened on the evening of August 15, the fort replying; but slight harm was done on either side. Next day Brock crossed the greater part of his force, landing three miles below Detroit. His little column of assault consisted of 330 regulars, 400 militia, and 600 Indians, the latter in the woods covering the left flank.[450] The effective Americans present were by that morning's report 1,060;[451] while their field artillery, additional to that mounted in the works, was much superior to that of the enemy, was advantageously posted, and loaded with grape. Moreover, they had the fort, on which to retire.
Brock's movements were audacious. Some said nothing could be more desperate; "but I answer, that the state of Upper Canada admitted of nothing but desperate remedies."[452] The British general had served under Nelson at Copenhagen, and quoted him here. He knew also, through the captured correspondence, that his opponent was a prey to a desperation very different in temper from his own, and had lost the confidence of his men. He had hoped, by the threatening position assumed between the town and its home base, to force Hull to come out and attack; but learning now that the garrison was weakened by a detachment of three hundred and fifty, despatched two days before under Colonel McArthur to open intercourse with the Maumee by a circuitous road, avoiding the lake shore, he decided to assault at once. When the British column had approached within a mile, Hull withdrew within the works all his force, including the artillery, and immediately afterward capitulated. The detachment under McArthur, with another from the state of Ohio on its way to join the army, were embraced in the terms; Brock estimating the whole number surrendered at not less than twenty-five hundred. A more important capture, under the conditions, was an American brig, the "Adams," not yet armed, but capable of use as a ship of war, for which purpose she had already been transferred from the War Department to the Navy.
In his defence before the Court Martial, which in March, 1814, tried him for his conduct of the campaign, Hull addressed himself to three particulars, which he considered to be the principal features in the voluminous charges and specifications drawn against him. These were, "the delay at Sandwich, the retreat from Canada, and the surrender at Detroit."[453] Concerning these, as a matter of military criticism, it may be said with much certainty that if conditions imposed the delay at Sandwich, they condemned the advance to it, and would have warranted an earlier retreat. The capitulation he justified on the ground that resistance could not change the result, though it might protract the issue. Because ultimate surrender could not be averted, he characterized life lost in postponing it as blood shed uselessly. The conclusion does not follow from the premise; nor could any military code accept the maxim that a position is to be yielded as soon as it appears that it cannot be held indefinitely. Delay, so long as sustained, not only keeps open the chapter of accidents for the particular post, but supports related operations throughout the remainder of the field of war. Tenacious endurance, if it effected no more, would at least have held Brock away from Niagara, whither he hastened within a week after the capitulation, taking with him a force which now could be well spared from the westward. No one military charge can be considered as disconnected; therefore no commander has a right to abandon defence while it is possible to maintain it, unless he also knows that it cannot affect results elsewhere; and this practically can never be certain. The burden of anxieties, of dangers and difficulties, actual and possible, weighing upon Brock, were full as great as those upon Hull, for on his shoulders rested both Niagara and Malden. His own resolution and promptitude triumphed because of the combined inefficiency of Hull and Dearborn. He scarcely could have avoided disaster at one end or the other of the line, had either opponent been thoroughly competent.
There was yet another reason which weighed forcibly with Hull, and probably put all purely military considerations out of court. This was the dread of Indian outrage and massacre. The general trend of the testimony, and Hull's own defence, go to show a mind overpowered by the agony of this imagination. After receiving word of the desertion of two companies, he said, "I now became impatient to put the place under the protection of the British; I knew that there were thousands of savages around us." These thousands were not at hand. Not till after September 1 did as many as a hundred arrive from the north—from Mackinac.[454] In short, unless what Cass styled the philanthropic reason can be accepted,—and in the opinion of the present writer it cannot,—Hull wrote the condemnation of his action in his own defence. "I shall now state what force the enemy brought, or might bring, against me. I say, gentlemen, might bring, because it was that consideration which induced the surrender, and not the force which was actually landed on the American shore on the morning of the 16th. It is possible I might have met and repelled that force; and if I had no further to look than the event of a contest at that time, I should have trusted to the issue of a battle.... The force brought against me I am very confident was not less than one thousand whites, and as many savage warriors."[455]
The reproach of this mortifying incident cannot be lifted from off Hull's memory; but for this very reason, in weighing the circumstances, it is far less than justice to forget his years, verging on old age, his long dissociation from military life, his personal courage frequently shown during the War of Independence, nor the fact that, though a soldier on occasion, he probably never had the opportunity to form correct soldierly standards. To the credit account should also be carried the timely and really capable presentation of the conditions of the field of operations already quoted, submitted by him to the Government, which should not have needed such demonstration. The mortification of the country fastened on his name; but had the measures urged by him been taken, had his expedition received due support by energetic operations elsewhere, events need not have reached the crisis to which he proved unequal. The true authors of the national disaster and its accompanying humiliation are to be sought in the national administrations and legislatures of the preceding ten or twelve years, upon whom rests the responsibility for the miserably unprepared condition in which the country was plunged into war. Madison, too tardily repentant, wrote, "The command of the Lakes by a superior force on the water ought to have been a fundamental part in the national policy from the moment the peace [of 1783] took place. What is now doing for the command proves what may be done."[456]
FOOTNOTES:
[416] Captains' Letters, June 3, 1812. Navy Department MSS.
[417] Ibid., June 8, 1812.
[418] Captains' Letters, Sept. 2, 1812. Navy Department MSS.