Not only the army at Detroit, but the whole territory, with all its forts and garrisons, were surrendered to the British. The British were as much astonished at this surrender as the Americans themselves. General Hull, being exchanged for thirty British prisoners, was arraigned before a court-martial. He was acquitted of treason, but convicted of cowardice and unsoldierlike conduct, and sentenced to death, but was afterwards pardoned by the president in consideration of his revolutionary services. His name, however, was struck from the rolls of the army.
Leaving Colonel Proctor to hold possession of the Detroit frontier, Brocke moved off rapidly along the Niagara frontier, from which quarter, also, arrangements had been made, during the summer, for the invasion of Canada, and where a body of troops was collected, under command of Stephen van Rensselaer. Early in the morning of Oct. 13th, a detachment, under Colonel Solomon van Rensselaer, crossed the river and gained possession of the heights of Queenstown, on which was a small battery. At the moment of success the enemy received a reinforcement, under General Brocke, and a long and obstinate engagement ensued, in which the gallant Brocke was killed; and spite of all the exertions General van Rensselaer could make the republicans retired with great loss. A singular circumstance occurred on this disastrous day. General van Rensselaer commanded the militia of New York, in the ranks of which federalist principles were very prevalent; when, therefore, they were needed to support their failing brethren on the other side of the river, they refused to embark, on the plea that they had scruples of conscience against carrying offensive war into the British territories.
Soon after the battle of Queenstown, General van Rensselaer retired from the service, and General Alexander Smyth, of Virginia, assumed the command; and issuing an address, announcing that he would retrieve the honour of his country by another attack on Canada, he invited the young men of the country to share in the glory of the enterprise. Between 4,000 and 5,000 responded to his call; but after storming a battery on Black Rock and thus opening a way for the much-vaunted undertaking, it was suddenly abandoned; the troops, to their great astonishment, were recalled, and sent into winter-quarters.
In the meantime, Ohio and Kentucky had collected forces for the support of Hull, which were on their march to Detroit when the news of the surrender of that post met them. Harrison, governor of the Indiana territory, who possessed the entire confidence of the West, and brigadier-general in the army, was appointed by congress to the command of these forces, amounting to nearly 10,000. With these he marched to the north-western parts of Ohio, to protect the country against the incursions of the Indians, which were becoming more and more terrible every day.
On the 2nd October, 2,000 mounted volunteers from the territories of Indiana and Illinois assembled at Vincennes, under the command of General Hopkins, and on the 10th, set out on an expedition against the Kickapoo and Peoria towns. On the fourth day, alarming masses of smoke and flame, advancing with the wind, were seen in the distance, by which they perceived that the Indians had set fire to the long thick grass of the prairie over which they had to pass. The troops became mutinous, and demanded to return. Hopkins called a council of his officers, and agreed to take the sense of the army. The majority were for returning. The general, mortified at this result, commanded the army to follow him onward; but they turned their horses’ heads and rode off almost to a man. Hopkins could do no less than follow. With better success, the same officer, in the month of November, marched from Fort Harrison against the Prophet’s town and a Kickapoo village, which were both destroyed.
Nor were the achievements of the republican forces under Dearborn calculated to retrieve the honour of the American arms. A detachment marched from Plattsburgh, on Lake Champlain, a short distance into Canada, where they surprised a small body of combined British and Indians, and destroyed a considerable quantity of stores. That was the extent of their operations. After the misfortunes of Detroit and Niagara, the army in all its branches seemed paralysed.
While defeat and disgrace, however, attended the arms of the republic by land, the most brilliant success crowned their efforts on sea.
On August 19th, Captain Isaac Hull, commanding the Constitution of forty-four guns, engaged the British frigate Guerrière of thirty-eight guns, that very frigate which had been the great cause of quarrel about the English deserters, and after an action of half an hour, nearly every mast and spar being shot away, Captain Dacres, who commanded the Guerrière, struck his flag. One-third of the crew were either killed or wounded, while the American vessel lost only seven, and eight men wounded. The Guerrière was so shattered that it was impossible to get her into port, and she was burned. Again, on the 18th of October, the American sloop Wasp, of eighteen guns, commanded by Captain Jacob Jones, had an encounter with the British frigate Frolic, of twenty-two guns, which after a bloody fight of three-quarters of an hour, was boarded by the Americans, when only three officers and one seaman were found on the forecastle, while the decks, slippery with blood, were covered with the dead and dying. The Frolic lost eighty men, the Wasp only ten. The Wasp, with her prize, was captured the same day by a British seventy-four. A few days after, the frigate United States, commanded by Captain Decatur, engaged the British frigate Macedonian. The action lasted nearly two hours, when the Macedonian struck her colours, being nearly disabled, and her loss amounting to upwards of 100 men, while the Americans lost but five, and eight wounded. This engagement took place near the Canary Islands, and the prize was brought safely into New York harbour. Finally, in December, the Constitution, now commanded by Commodore Bainbridge, achieved a second victory, after a most desperate encounter with the Java, of forty-nine guns and four hundred men. The combat took place off the coast of Brazil; nor did the Java strike her flag until she was a mere wreck, with 161 killed and wounded. Like the Guerrière, she was burned. These naval victories were peculiarly gratifying to the Americans, especially as being gained on an element where the American citizens had suffered so much. Many British merchantmen were also captured by American privateers, which now issued from every port. Above 300 prizes was taken in the first seven months of the war.
As regards this extraordinary series of naval successes, the English naval historian records, that “the Java, for instance, was perhaps the worst-manned ship that we ever had afloat. Our Admiralty, obliged to keep at sea in all parts of the world such an immense number of men of war, straitened in their finances, and finding it difficult to obtain at short notice crews for all their ships, had certainly sent to sea a great many vessels exceedingly ill-manned. The Java had been patched up and commissioned only on the 17th of August of the present year. The greatest difficulty was to provide her with any crew; sixty-nine Irishmen were on board who had never been to sea before. She appears to have had but eight tried and excellent seamen; and including officers, not fifty on board had ever been in action before. The Constitution, on the other hand, had a crew consisting entirely of able-bodied and practised sailors, there being the usual proportion of deserters from English ships, and of other subjects of Great Britain, whose treason and dread of the gallows disposed them to fight desperately.” Such was the consolation which England took to herself in this hour of mortification.
Very soon after declaration of war, the United States communicated to Great Britain her willingness to pacificate on condition that the orders in council should be repealed, the impressment of American seamen discontinued, and those already impressed restored. These conditions, however, were rejected by Lord Castlereagh, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs, although negotiation was entered upon and an armistice proposed. The arbitrary conduct of the British government towards America met with strong opposition even in England. On June 16th, Mr. (now Lord) Brougham, who had always strenuously advocated the revocation of these orders in council, moved an address to the Prince Regent, beseeching him to recall or suspend the orders, and to adopt such other measures as might tend to conciliate neutral powers. Lord Castlereagh opposed the motion, but stated that government intended to make a conciliatory proposition to the United States; and accordingly on the 23rd of June the orders in council were revoked as far as regarded America. Great Britain still, however, reserved to herself the right of impressment, and the United States, rejecting negotiation on these terms, prepared to prosecute the war.