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.