The Second War with England, Vol. 1 of 2

by Joel Tyler Headley

Jan. 2.

This success of the navy at length roused Congress to do something in its aid, and an act was passed on the 2d of January, authorizing the President to build four seventy-fours, and six ships of forty-four guns, thus increasing the force of the navy tenfold. On the 3d of March, by another act, it authorized the building of such vessels on the lakes as was deemed necessary to their protection. Sums were also voted to the officers and crews as prize money.

CHAPTER VII.

Harrison plans a winter campaign — Advance of the army — Battle and massacre at the River Raisin — Baseness of Proctor — Promoted by his Government — Tecumseh, his character and eloquence — He stirs up the Creeks to war — Massacre at Fort Mimms — Investment of Fort Meigs — Advance of Clay's reinforcements and their destruction — Successful sortie — Flight of the besiegers — Major Croghan's gallant defence of Fort Stephenson.

The army of General Harrison, which in October was slowly pushing its way towards Malden to Detroit, soon became involved in difficulties that compelled him to abandon his original design of an autumnal campaign. The lakes being in possession of the enemy, provisions, ammunition and cannon had to be transported by land, through swamps and along forest paths which could be traced only by blazed trees, and traversed only when the ground was frozen. He therefore occupied his time in sending out detachments and hurrying up his forces, in order to be ready to advance when the frozen ground, and especially the ice along the margin of the lake would facilitate the transportation of his guns and munitions of war.

General Tupper made two attempts, first from Fort Defiance and afterwards from Fort McArthur, to dislodge the Indians at the Rapids, but failed in both. Another detachment under Col. Campbell left Franklintown in December, to attack the Indian villages on the Missisineway, which were reached on the 18th, and four out of five destroyed.

At length the column which formed the right of this army, nominally of ten thousand men, having arrived at Sandusky with the park of artillery, Gen. Harrison gave the order for the whole to move forward. In three divisions, one from Sandusky, one from Fort McArthur, and the third under General Winchester, from Fort Defiance, were to advance to the Rapids of the Maumee, there take in their supply of ordnance and provisions, and proceed at once to invest Malden. Harrison, commanding the central division, started on the 31st of December. Gen. Winchester, who had moved six miles from Fort Defiance, to Camp No. 3, did not commence his march till the 8th of January. It was a cold bitter day and the snow lay over two feet deep in the forest when that doomed column, one thousand strong, set out for the Rapids, twenty-seven miles distant. The troops, most of whom were Kentuckians, were brave and hardy, and cheerfully harnessing themselves to sledges dragged their baggage through the deep snow. Gen. Winchester was ordered to fortify himself at the Rapids and wait the arrival of the other troops. But three days after he reached the place, while constructing huts to receive the supplies on the way, and sleds for their transportation to Malden, he received an urgent request from the inhabitants of Frenchtown, a small settlement nearly forty miles distant, on the River Raisin, to come to their rescue. Feeling, however, the importance of fulfilling his orders, he gave the messengers no encouragement. But another express on the next day, and a third the day after, telling him that the whole settlement was threatened with massacre by the Indians—that only a small force of the enemy held possession of the place, and by a prompt answer to their prayer the ruin of all would be prevented, he called a council of war. Col. Allen, and other gallant officers, pleaded the cause of the helpless settlers with all the eloquence of true sympathy. They declared that the chief object of the expedition was to protect the frontiers from the merciless Indians, and that brave men spurned danger when the prayers of women and children were sounding in their ears. Jan. 20. Such appeals prevailed over the cooler and safer arguments drawn from the necessity of not damaging the success of the whole campaign by perilling one of the wings of the advancing army, and a detachment of five hundred men, under Colonel Lewis was sent forward to Presque Isle, there to await the arrival of the main column. But this officer hearing at the latter place that an advance party of French and Indians were already in possession of Frenchtown, hurried forward, and the next day in the afternoon arrived on the banks of the stream opposite the village. The river being frozen, he immediately ordered the charge to be sounded. The column advanced steadily across on the ice, and entering the village under a heavy fire of the British, forced them from their position and soon drove them to the woods, when darkness closed the combat. Two days after, General Winchester arrived with a reinforcement of two hundred and fifty men. He had sent a dispatch to Gen. Harrison, then on the Lower Sandusky, announcing his departure from his orders, and asking for reinforcements. Jan. 23. The latter sent forward a detachment of three hundred, and followed himself the same day with a corps of three hundred and sixty men. The assistance, however, came too late, for on the day before they started, the fate of Gen. Winchester's army was sealed. Gen. Proctor, at Malden, only eighteen miles distant, hearing of Col. Lewis' advance on Frenchtown, hurried down with about 1500 men and six pieces of artillery to attack him. The latter had stationed the main force behind pickets, in the form of a half circle, but the two hundred and fifty men who had arrived with Gen. Winchester were, through some strange fatuity, placed outside, four hundred yards distant, and wholly uncovered. Just as the drums beat the morning reveillé, Proctor advanced to the assault. The troops came on steadily till within range of the Kentucky rifles, when they were met by such a fierce and deadly fire that they wheeled and fled in confusion.

But, while the attack in front was thus repulsed, that on the unprotected left wing of two hundred and fifty men was, in a few minutes, completely successful. Such a preposterous position, as that to to which it was assigned, no sane man could dream of holding. Outflanked, and almost surrounded by yelling Indians, its danger was perceived when too late to remedy it. General Winchester and Colonel Lewis, however, each with a detachment of fifty men, rushed forward to the rescue, but they only swelled the disaster. Their followers were cut down and tomahawked, and they themselves captured, and taken to Proctor. The latter had paused after his attack on the pickets, for nearly one-fourth of the regular troops had fallen in that one assault, and he hesitated about exposing himself again to the deadly fire of Kentucky rifles. It is very doubtful whether he would have ventured on a second attack. He, however, represented to General Winchester, that he could easily set the town on fire, and reduce the garrison; but, in that case, he would not guarantee the lives of the soldiers, or the inhabitants from the barbarity of the Indians. General Winchester fully believing that the five hundred men, who still gazed undauntedly on the foe, must be sacrificed, agreed to a capitulation; and an officer was sent with a flag to Major Madison, on whom the command had devolved, informing him of the unconditional surrender of all the troops by his superior officer. The brave major, who did not at all look upon himself and gallant band as vanquished men, indignantly refused to obey so unworthy a summons, even from his rightful commander, and coolly told the officer, "he should do no such thing; nay, would not surrender at all, unless the side arms of the officers would be restored to them at Amhertsburg, the wounded promptly and securely transported to that post, and a guard sufficient for their safety assigned them."[35] If the British commander refused to grant these terms, he and his men would fight to the last, and, if necessary, die with their arms in their hands. This proposition, to which any officer fit to wear a sword would have cheerfully accepted, Proctor at first rejected, and yielded at last only because no other terms would be listened to. But no sooner did the garrison surrender, than in direct violation of the conditions, he gave unbridled license to the soldiers and Indians. The latter were allowed to scalp and mutilate the dead and wounded, whose bleeding corpses crimsoned the snow on every side. Proctor, fearing the approach of Harrison, made all haste to depart, and the next night reached Amhertsburg with the prisoners, who were there crowded into a "small and muddy wood yard, and exposed throughout the night to a cold and constant rain, without tents or blankets, and with only fire enough to keep them from freezing." He had brutally left the dead at French town unburied, and sixty of the wounded, who were too feeble to march, unprotected. By a great stretch of kindness, he allowed two American surgeons to remain and take care of them. He had promised to send sleds the next day, to convey them to Malden. These never arrived; but, instead, there came a party of his Indian allies, who tomahawked a portion of the wounded, and then set fire to the houses, consuming the dead and dying together, and responding to the shrieks of the suffering victims with yells and savage laughter. Captain Hart, a relative of Henry Clay, was among the number, as was also a member of Congress. Hart, and indeed a large majority of them, belonged to the most respectable families of Kentucky. One officer was scalped in presence of his friends, and with the blood streaming down his pallid features, rose on his knees, and silently and most piteously gazed on their faces. While in this position, an Indian boy was told by his father to tomahawk him. The unskilful stripling struck again and again, only producing faint groans from the sufferer, till at length the father, in showing how a blow should be planted, ended the tragedy. The secretary of General Winchester was shot while on horseback, and scalped, and his body stripped and cast into the road. The dead, to the number of two hundred, were left unburied; and, for a long time after, hogs and dogs were seen devouring the bodies, and running about crunching human skulls and arms in their teeth. Most of these facts were sworn to before a justice of the peace, and forwarded by Judge Woodward, of the supreme court of Michigan, to Colonel Proctor, with the remark, "The truth will undoubtedly eventually appear, and that unfortunate day must meet the steady and impartial eye of history." General Harrison was at the Rapids, hurrying on the reinforcements, when he heard of the catastrophe. A few days after, he dispatched Dr. M'Kechen with a flag of truce to the river Raisin, to pass thence, if possible, to Malden. Seized by the Indians and stript, he was at length taken to Captain Elliot, who kindly forwarded him to Colonel Proctor. The latter denied his mission, declaring he was a spy, and would not recognize him, in his official character, till the fifth of February. Three weeks after, he was accused of carrying on a secret correspondence with the Americans, and without the form of a trial thrown into a filthy dungeon below the surface of the ground, where he lay for a whole month, and was finally liberated, only to carry the seeds of disease, implanted by this brutal treatment, to his grave.

When the news of this horrid massacre reached Kentucky, the State was filled with mourning, for many of her noblest sons had fallen victims to the savage. The Governor and his suite were in the theatre at the time the disastrous tidings arrived in Frankfort. The play was immediately stopped, the building deserted, and the next morning a funereal sadness rested on the town, and the voice of lamentation—like that which went up from Egypt when the first born of every house was slain—arose from almost every dwelling. But amid it all there was a smothered cry for vengeance, which never ceased ringing over the State, until it was hushed in the shout of victory that rose from the battle-field of the Thames.

Language has no epithets sufficiently opprobrious with which to stamp this atrocious deed of Colonel Proctor. It combines all the inhuman elements necessary to form a perfect monster—deceit, treachery, falsehood, murder, and that refinement of cruelty which looks with derision on slow torture, and the brutality which can insult the dead. The very apologies which his countrymen made for him only blackened his character. It was said that the prisoners surrendered at discretion, and he never pledged his word for their protection—a falsehood as afterwards fully proved by the prisoners, and a statement, whether true or false, utterly useless, only to make the whole transaction complete and perfect in every part. No man who was sufficiently acquainted with honor to simulate it successfully, would have attempted to cover an act so damning with such an excuse. The annals of civilized warfare present no instance of the massacre and torture of troops who have surrendered themselves prisoners of war on a fair battle-field. An act like this, committed by a British officer on the plains of Europe, sustained only by such an apology, would cost him his head. Absolute inability, on the part of a commander to protect his captives, is the only excuse a man would ever offer. This Proctor had not, for his allies were under his control and he knew it. At all events he never attempted to save the prisoners. No guard was left over the wounded, as he had stipulated to do—no sleighs were sent back the next morning to fetch them to Fort Malden, as promised—no effort whatever made in their behalf. He never designed to keep his promises or fulfil his engagements—he had abandoned the dead and wounded at Frenchtown to his savage allies, as their part of the reward. Our troops frequently employed Indian tribes, but no such atrocities were ever suffered to sully the American flag. The whole transaction, from first to last, is black as night. His deceit, treachery, cruelty to officers and men, neglect of the dead and abandonment of the wounded to worse than death—his after falsehood, meanness and cupidity are all natural and necessary parts to the formation of a thoroughly base and brutal man. He was a disgrace to his profession, a disgrace to the army and to the nation which rewarded him for this act with promotion. His memory shall be kept fresh while the western hemisphere endures, and the transaction hold a prominent place in the list of dark deeds that stand recorded against the English name. Just a month from this date three American seamen went down in the Peacock, while nobly struggling to save the prisoners. A few years before, some Turkish captives, in Egypt, being paroled by Napoleon, were afterwards retaken in a desperate battle and sentenced by a council of war to be shot. Although they had forfeited their lives by the laws of all civilized nations, in thus breaking their parole, and proved by their conduct that a second pardon would simply be sending them as a reinforcement to the enemy, and though Bonaparte only carried into execution the decision of a council of war, yet for this act of his, English historians to this day heap upon him the epithets of murderer and monster; while not the mere murder, which would have been comparative kindness, but the abandonment of American prisoners to slow torture by fire and the scalping knife, was rewarded with promotion in the army.