Procter had put a week behind him before Harrison set out from Amherstburg in pursuit, but the British column was hampered in flight by the women and children of the deserted posts, the sick and wounded, the wagon trains, the stores, and baggage. The organization had gone to pieces because of the demoralizing example set by its leader. A hundred miles of wilderness lay between the fugitives and a place of refuge. Overtaken on the Thames River, they were given no choice. It was fight or surrender. Ahead of the American infantry brigades moved Johnson's mounted Kentuckians, armed with muskets, rifles, knives, and tomahawks, and led by a resourceful and enterprising soldier. Procter was compelled to form his lines of battle across the road on the north bank of the Thames or permit this formidable American cavalry to trample his straggling ranks under hoof. Tecumseh's Indians, stationed in a swamp, covered his right flank and the river covered his left. Harrison came upon the enemy early in the afternoon of the 5th of October and formed his line of battle. The action was carried on in a manner "not sanctioned by anything that I had seen or heard of," said Harrison afterwards. This first American victory of the war on land was, indeed, quite irregular and unconventional. It was won by Johnson's mounted riflemen, who divided and charged both the redcoats in front and the Indians in the swamp. One detachment galloped through the first and second lines of the British infantry while the other drove the Indians into the American left wing and smashed them utterly. Tecumseh was among the slain. It was all over in one hour and twenty minutes. Harrison's foot soldiers had no chance to close with the enemy. The Americans lost only fifteen killed and thirty wounded, and they took about five hundred prisoners and all Procter's artillery, muskets, baggage, and stores.
Not only was the Northwest Territory thus regained for the United States but the power of the Indian alliance was broken. Most of the hostile tribes now abandoned the British cause. Tecumseh's confederacy of Indian nations fell to pieces with the death of its leader. The British army of Upper Canada, shattered and unable to receive reinforcements from overseas, no longer menaced Michigan and the western front of the American line. General Harrison returned to Detroit at his leisure, and the volunteers and militia marched homeward, for no more than two regular brigades were needed to protect all this vast area. The struggle for its possession was a closed episode. In this quarter, however, the war cry "On to Canada!" was no longer heard. The United States was satisfied to recover what it had lost with Hull's surrender and to rid itself of the peril of invasion and the horrors of Indian massacres along its wilderness frontiers. Of the men prominent in the struggle, Procter suffered official disgrace at the hands of his own Government and William Henry Harrison became a President of the United States.
OLIVER HAZARD PERRY AT THE BATTLE OF LAKE ERIE
Painting by J.W. Jarvis. In the City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation.
ISAAC CHAUNCEY
Painting in the Comptroller's Office, City Hall, New York, owned by the Corporation.