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.”