In truth, nothing could be more alarming than this movement, which threatened Harrison in all directions,—from Fort Meigs, on the Maumee, to Erie, or Presqu’isle, where Perry’s fleet was building. On Sandusky River Harrison had collected his chief magazines. All the supplies for his army were lying at Upper Sandusky, some thirty miles above the British landing-place, and he had only eight hundred raw recruits to defend their unfortified position.[106] Nothing but an untenable stockade, called Fort Stephenson, on the Sandusky River, where the town of Fremont afterward grew, offered an obstacle to the enemy in ascending; and Tecumthe with two thousand Indians was said to be moving from Fort Meigs by the direct road straight for the magazines, thus flanking Fort Stephenson and every intermediate position on the Sandusky.
In just panic for the safety of his magazines, the only result of a year’s campaigning, Harrison’s first thought was to evacuate Fort Stephenson in order to protect Upper Sandusky. The flank-attack from two thousand Indians, who never showed themselves, impelled him to retire before Proctor, and to leave the river open. July 29, after a council of war, he sent down a hasty order to young Major Croghan who commanded Fort Stephenson, directing him immediately to burn the fort and retreat up the river or along the Lake shore, as he best could, with the utmost haste.[107] Croghan, a Kentuckian, and an officer of the Seventeenth U. S. regiment, refused to obey. “We have determined to maintain this place, and by Heaven, we will,” he wrote back.[108] Harrison sent Colonel Wells, of the same regiment, to relieve him; but Croghan went to headquarters, and by somewhat lame excuses carried his point, and resumed his command the next day. Harrison gave him only conditional orders to abandon the fort,—orders which Croghan clearly could not regard, and which Harrison seemed to feel no confidence in his wishing to follow.[109] In the face of British troops with cannon he was to retreat; but “you must be aware that the attempt to retreat in the face of an Indian force would be vain.” Proctor’s main force was believed to be Indian.
Neither evacuating nor defending Fort Stephenson, Harrison remained at Seneca, ten miles behind it, watching for Tecumthe and the flank attack, and arranging a plan of battle for his eight hundred men by which he could repel the Indians with dragoons in the open prairie.[110] Croghan remained at Fort Stephenson with one hundred and sixty men, making every preparation to meet an attack. August 1 the woods were already filled with Indians, and retreat was impossible, when the British boats appeared on the river, and Proctor sent to demand surrender of the fort. Immediately on Croghan’s refusal, the British howitzers opened fire and continued until it became clear that they were too light to destroy the stockade.
If experience had been of service to Proctor, he should have learned to avoid direct attack on Americans in fortified places; but his position was difficult, and he was as much afraid of Harrison as Harrison was afraid of him. Fearing to leave Croghan’s little fort in the rear, and to seek Harrison himself, ten miles above, on the road to Upper Sandusky; fearing delay, which would discontent his Indian allies; fearing to go on to Cleveland or Erie without crippling Harrison; still more afraid to retire to Malden without striking a blow,—Proctor again sacrificed the Forty-first regiment which had suffered at the river Raisin and had been surprised at Fort Meigs. On the afternoon of August 2 the Forty-first regiment and the militia, in three columns of about one hundred and twenty men each,[111] with the utmost gallantry marched to the pickets of Fort Stephenson, and were shot down. After two hours’ effort, and losing all its officers, the assaulting column retired, leaving twenty-six dead, forty-one wounded, and about thirty missing, or more than one fifth of their force. The same night the troops re-embarked and returned to Malden.
Proctor’s report[112] of this affair was filled with complaints of the Indians, who could not be left idle and who would not fight. At Sandusky, he said, “we could not muster more hundreds of Indians than I might reasonably have expected thousands.”
“I could not, therefore, with my very small force remain more than two days, from the probability of being cut off, and of being deserted by the few Indians who had not already done so.... On the morning of the 2d inst. the gentlemen of the Indian department who have the direction of it, declared formally their decided opinion that unless the fort was stormed we should never be able to bring an Indian warrior into the field with us, and that they proposed and were ready to storm one face of the fort if we would attempt another. I have also to observe that in this instance my judgment had not that weight with the troops I hope I might reasonably have expected.... The troops, after the artillery had been used for some hours, attacked two faces, and impossibilities being attempted, failed. The fort, from which the severest fire I ever saw was maintained during the attack, was well defended. The troops displayed the greatest bravery, the much greater part of whom reached the fort and made every effort to enter; but the Indians who had proposed the assault, and, had it not been assented to, would have ever stigmatized the British character, scarcely came into fire before they ran out of its reach. A more than adequate sacrifice having been made to Indian opinion, I drew off the brave assailants.”
Sir George Prevost seemed to doubt whether Proctor’s excuse for the defeat lessened or increased the blame attached to it.[113] The defeat at Sandusky ruined Proctor in the esteem of his men. On the American side, Harrison’s conduct roused a storm of indignation. Through the whole day, August 2, he remained at Seneca with eight hundred men, listening to the cannonade at Fort Stephenson till late at night, when he received an express from Croghan to say that the enemy were embarking. The story ran, that as the distant sound of Croghan’s guns reached the camp at Seneca, Harrison exclaimed: “The blood be on his own head; I wash my hands of it.[114]” Whatever else might be true, his conduct betrayed an extravagant estimate of his enemy’s strength. The only British eye-witness who left an account of the expedition reckoned Proctor’s force, on its departure from Malden, at about four hundred troops, and “nearly a thousand Indians.”[115] The Indians dispersed until those with Proctor at Fort Stephenson probably numbered two or three hundred,[116] the rest having returned to Detroit and Malden. Harrison reported the British force as five thousand strong, on the authority of General Green Clay.[117]
Whether the British force was large or small, Harrison’s arrangements to meet it did not please Secretary Armstrong. “It is worthy of notice,” he wrote long afterward,[118] “that of these two commanders, always the terror of each other, one [Proctor] was now actually flying from his supposed pursuer; while the other [Harrison] waited only the arrival of Croghan at Seneca to begin a camp-conflagration and flight to Upper Sandusky.”
The well-won honors of the campaign fell to Major George Croghan, with whose name the whole country resounded. Whatever were the faults of the two generals, Major Croghan showed courage and intelligence, not only before and during the attack, but afterward in supporting Harrison against the outcry which for a time threatened to destroy the General’s authority. Immediately after the siege of Fort Stephenson every energy of the northwest turned toward a new offensive movement by water against Malden, and in the task of organizing the force required for that purpose, complaints of past failures were stifled. Secretary Armstrong did not forget them, but the moment was not suited for making a change in so important a command. Harrison organized, under Armstrong’s orders, a force of seven thousand men to cross the Lake in boats, under cover of a fleet.
The fleet, not the army, was to bear the brunt of reconquering the northwest; and in nothing did Armstrong show his ability so clearly as in the promptness with which, immediately after taking office, he stopped Harrison’s campaign on the Maumee, while Perry was set to work at Erie. Feb. 5, 1813, Armstrong entered on his duties. March 5 his arrangements for the new movements were already made. Harrison did not approve them,[119] but he obeyed. The Navy Department had already begun operations on Lake Erie, immediately after Hull’s surrender; but though something was accomplished in the winter, great difficulties had still to be overcome when February 17 Commander Perry, an energetic young officer on gunboat service at Newport, received orders from Secretary Jones to report to Commodore Chauncey on Lake Ontario. Chauncey ordered him to Presqu’isle, afterward called Erie, to take charge of the vessels under construction on Lake Erie. March 27 he reached the spot, a small village in a remote wilderness, where timber and water alone existed for the supply of the fleets.