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.
CHAPTER XVI.
Although the loss of Detroit caused the greatest loss of territory that ever before or since befell the United States, the public at large understood little of the causes that made it inevitable, and saw in it only an accidental consequence of Hull’s cowardice. Against this victim, who had no friend in the world, every voice was raised. He was a coward, an imbecile, but above all unquestionably a traitor, who had, probably for British gold, delivered an army and a province, without military excuse, into the enemy’s hands. If any man in the United States was more responsible than Hull for the result of the campaign it was Ex-President Jefferson, whose system had shut military efficiency from the scope of American government; but to Jefferson, Hull and his surrender were not the natural products of a system, but objects of hatred and examples of perfidy that had only one parallel. “The treachery of Hull, like that of Arnold, cannot be a matter of blame to our government,” he wrote[283] on learning the story of Lewis Cass and the Ohio militia officers, who told with the usual bitterness of betrayed men what they knew of the causes that had brought their betrayal to pass. “The detestable treason of Hull,” as Jefferson persisted in calling it, was the more exasperating to him because, even as late as August 4, he had written with entire confidence to the same correspondent that “the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.” Perhaps the same expectation explained the conduct of Hull, Madison, Eustis, and Dearborn; yet at the moment when Jefferson wrote thus, Madison was beginning to doubt. August 8, the often-mentioned day when Brock reached Long Point and Hull decided to retreat from Canada, Madison wrote to Gallatin:[284]—
MAP
OF THE
Straits of
Niagara
from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.
From “Memoirs of My Own Times,” By Gen. James Wilkinson, Philadelphia, 1816.
Struthers & Co., Engr’s and Pr’s, N.Y.
“Should he [Hull] be able to descend upon Niagara and an adequate co-operation be there afforded, our prospect as to Upper Canada may be good enough. But what is to be done with respect to the expedition against Montreal? The enlistments for the regular army fall short of the most moderate calculation; the Volunteer Act is extremely unproductive; and even the militia detachments are either obstructed by the disaffected governors or chilled by the Federal spirit diffused throughout the region most convenient to the theatre. I see nothing better than to draw on this resource as far as the detachments consist of volunteers, who, it may be presumed, will cross the line without raising Constitutional or legal questions.”