Chapter IX: The Outbreak of War

The indecisive outcome of the battle of Tippecanoe seemed to necessitate the continuation of the war which Harrison's campaign had precipitated. But Tecumseh's plans were not yet matured, and his British advisers steadily warned him against the mistake of making a premature beginning of the struggle with the Americans, which would permit them to crush the Indians before the British should be ready to come to their assistance. He chose, therefore, to make light of the affair at Tippecanoe, and continued to protest that there would be no war with the Americans unless they themselves forced it.[525] One thing had, however, been rendered certain by the Tippecanoe campaign: sooner or later the Americans must renew the attack upon the Indians; and a war with the British would bring an Indian war also upon the Northwest.

[Footnote 525: In a speech delivered at a council of the tribes at Massassinway on the Wabash, in May, 1812, Tecumseh disclaimed responsibility for the fight of Tippecanoe, referring to it as "the unfortunate transaction that took place between the white people and a few of our young men at our village." He stated that the trouble between his followers and Governor Harrison had been settled, and further that had he been at home there would have been no bloodshed (Dawson, Harrison, 266-67).]

Finally after long debate the country blundered hesitantly and half-heartedly into the War of 1812. The people of New England were so bitterly opposed to this step, and to the party in power, as to give rise to suspicion of their loyalty to the Union. The middle and southern states were, on the whole, favorably disposed toward the war. But in no other section were the people as eager for war to begin as in the West. Here, on the frontier, the traditional enmity toward England was comparatively untouched by the commercial advantages which committed New England to a policy of peace. Revival of commerce had little effect upon the West with its desultory cultivation and crude and inadequate means of transportation, but the spirit of expansion was strong and the greed for land was unappeased. To this sentiment was added the belief, firmly held by the westerner, that the British were primarily responsible for the insecurity of the frontier. In part this was justified by the facts of the situation, but not to the extent which the American frontiersmen believed it was. Whether well founded or not, the belief filled them with resentment toward the British and rendered them keen for war. "I cannot but notice," wrote Surgeon Van Voorhis from Fort Dearborn in October, 1811, in a letter to a friend, "the villainy practiced in the Indian country by British agents and traders; you hear of it at a distance, but we near the scene of action are sensible of it. They labor by every unprincipled means to instigate the Savages against the Americans, to inculcate the idea that we intend to drive the Indians beyond the Mississippi, and that in every purchase of land the Government defrauds them; and their united efforts aim too at the destruction of every trading house and the prevention of the extension of our frontier. Never till a prohibition of the entrance of all foreigners, and especially British subjects, into the Indian Country takes place, will we enjoy a lasting peace with the credulous, deluded, and cannibal savages."[526]

[Footnote 526: Van Voorhis, _Ancestry of Major Wm. Roe Van Voorhis_, 144-45.]

The West looked forward to war, not only as a solution of the Indian problem, but also as the means of securing Canada. Yet greater danger threatened the Northwest, in the event of war, than any other portion of the United States. Of the territories Michigan was the most defenseless and exposed to attack. There were in all ten settlements scattered over a wide extent of country, the distance between the closest of them being thirty miles and that between the two extremes over ten times as great.[527] The entire population, counting British, French, Americans, negroes, and the troops of the garrison at Detroit, was less than five thousand, four-fifths of them being of French-Canadian descent. The chief source of danger arose, however, from the exposed situation of the settlements, rather than from lack of numbers. Ordinarily the frontier was the extreme line of white occupation and was backed by settlements whose population became denser in proportion to their distance from it. Michigan, however, presented the phenomenon of a double frontier, open on one side to the British and on the other to the savages; furthermore the settlements were so scattered as to render effectual co-operation between them in case of attack out of the question.

[Footnote 527: Memorial of the inhabitants of Michigan Territory to the President and Congress, December 8 and 10, 1811, in _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 780-82; _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 61-63.]

Separated from even the southernmost of the Michigan settlements by a wide extent of wilderness, which contained the stronghold of the budding Indian confederacy, were the white settlements of Indiana. They had a population of about thirty thousand, clustered principally in two groups, the one around Vincennes, the other on the Ohio opposite Louisville, with one hundred miles of wilderness between them.[528] From the Wabash to the Illinois and Kankakee, stretching far to the southward, was the great wedge of lands still held by the Indian tribes. Beginning with the old French town of Vincennes, then Harrison's headquarters, the line of the frontier followed the Wabash River nearly fifty miles to Fort Harrison, opposite the present city of Terre Haute. Extending north from Fort Harrison to the Michigan settlements and westward to the Mississippi were the Indian villages and hunting-grounds. The principal settlements of Illinois were still, as in the old French days, clustered along its lower Mississippi border. A line drawn from Vincennes to the mouth of Rock River on the Mississippi would have had south of it practically all of them. The total white population of the territory was probably less than half that of Indiana.

[Footnote 528: Henry Adams, _History of the United States_, VI, 68.]

To protect this extensive northwestern frontier the United States had, in the early part of 1812, some half-dozen feeble garrisons, with an average strength of about seventy-five men. At Detroit, the largest and most important military station in the Northwest, were ninety-four men;[529] at Mackinac, three hundred miles away, were seventy-nine; at the opposite end of Lake Michigan and about an equal distance from both Mackinac and Detroit was Fort Dearborn with a garrison of fifty-five men; at Fort Wayne and at Fort Harrison, the new stockade on the Wabash, were about as many. All of these were one-company posts except Detroit, which had two companies. The fortifications had not been designed for, nor were they expected to be capable of, defense against the forces of a civilized nation. They were supposed to possess sufficient strength to withstand an attack by Indians alone, and, providing the supply of provisions held out, this expectation would ordinarily have been realized. Even so, however, they could do nothing toward defending the scattered settlements against the attacks of the Indians, and the sequel showed that the garrisons were not even able to defend themselves. Mackinac surrendered without resistance to a combined force of Indians and Canadian traders; Fort Dearborn was abandoned, and the garrison was destroyed while seeking to escape; and Fort Wayne was saved from impending capture only by the approach of a large force of militia under General Harrison.

[Footnote 529: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 781.]

Against this frontier could be launched, in the event of an Indian war alone, several thousand warriors.[530] If war were joined with Great Britain at the same time, it was believed by both sides, and with good reason, that several thousand men employed in the Indian trade and in sympathy with the British would co-operate in the attack on the American frontier.[531] Potentially the Americans possessed in the population of Ohio and Kentucky resources vastly greater than those their opponents could bring to bear on the Northwest; and in the end the superiority of population made itself manifest in the triumph of the American cause in this region. But this triumph came only after more than a year of fighting, during the greater part of which the Americans met with disaster after disaster. For the immediate present the northwestern frontier was practically undefended while in the traders and Indians the British possessed a force immediately available for action which constituted to all intents and purposes a formidable standing army.

[Footnote 530: In the memorial cited above (note 527) of the inhabitants of Michigan Territory to the President and Congress, December 8 and 10, 1811, the number of warriors that might be brought against Detroit was estimated at five thousand.]

[Footnote 531: _Michigan Pioneer Collections_, XV, 61-63, 70-72; Drennan Papers, Hull to Eustis, March 6, 1812. The Americans estimated the number of traders who would assist the British at four thousand.]

That this force was not such as could safely be despised both the words and actions of the frontiersmen gave testimony. In more recent years on the western plains the forces of the regular army of the United States have time and again manifested their superiority over the Indians in open battle; and only rarely, when the advantage of numbers or position was greatly in their favor, have the red men won a victory over them. But in the old Northwest, where advantage could be taken of the heavy timber which covered so much of the country, the Indian warriors fighting on their own ground were superior, man for man, to any regular force that could be sent against them. In fifty years of warfare with the whites the northwestern Indians had never been defeated in open battle where the strength on both sides was nearly equal,[532] while time and again the forces of the whites had succumbed to inferior numbers. The one decisive American victory over these tribes down to the War of 1812 was that of Fallen Timbers in 1794. But this victory was won by a largely superior force under the command of the ablest general, with the possible exception of Clark, that the Americans had ever sent into the Northwest, and after two years of arduous preparation for the contest.

[Footnote 532: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 100; Dawson, _Harrison_, 216, 250.]

The battle of Tippecanoe afforded the most recent illustration of the prowess of the native warriors. Harrison was probably better fitted to command in a campaign against the Indians than any other man in the Northwest, and in this campaign he had a force of one thousand soldiers[533] of as high quality, on the whole, as America could produce. In the actual battle his force outnumbered the Indians in the proportion of two to one.[534] Yet it was only with extreme difficulty and at the cost in killed and wounded of one-fourth of his army that the Indian attack was beaten off. Even this success was due in part to good fortune for the savages had purposely neglected far more favorable opportunities for attacking Harrison than the one they finally embraced. Furthermore, even Harrison's advocate grants that they fought with inferior arms and under circumstances which sacrificed the advantages which their style of fighting ordinarily afforded.[535] But for the absence of Tecumseh and the reluctance of the Indians to fight at all, it is not improbable that Harrison's army would have been overwhelmed.[536]

[Footnote 533: The number of Harrison's troops cannot be stated with entire precision. For a discussion of this point see Adams, _op. cit._, W, 96, and note 534 below.]

[Footnote 534: Harrison himself stated his number in the battle as "very little above seven hundred men," aside from sixty dragoons whom he omitted from consideration because they were "unable to do us much service." They were present in the battle, however, and it is obvious that the mere fact of Harrison's failure to make effective use of them does not justify their omission from a statement of the strength of his army. The statement of Dawson, his biographer, therefore, that on the day before the battle he had "something more than eight hundred men," may be regarded as approximately correct. The number of the Prophet's followers can only be estimated. Harrison was "convinced that there were at least six hundred," but he admits that he had no data from which to form a correct statement. Henry Adams, allowing for "the law of exaggeration," concludes that there were not more than four hundred Indians in the battle. On the size of the two armies see _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 778; Dawson, _Harrison_, 216; Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 104-5.]

[Footnote 535: Dawson, _Harrison_, 211-12, 236-37.]

[Footnote 536: See in this connection the account of the campaign, and particularly of the plight of the army after the battle, in Dawson, _Harrison_, 233, 238-39; see also, Adams, _op. cit._, VI, chap. v.]

An indecisive blow had thus been struck, after which Harrison's forces were disbanded or scattered, and the frontier again became as defenseless as before the Tippecanoe campaign. With the series of depredations and murders which marked the spring of 1812 the settlers became panic-stricken. Large numbers abandoned their farms and either took refuge in temporary stockade forts or fled to a safer retreat in the older settlements.[537] The peril from which they fled was graphically painted by the citizens of Detroit in their appeal to the government for protection, in December, 1811. "The horrors of savage belligerence, description cannot paint. No picture can resemble the reality. No effort can bring the imagination up to the standard of fact. Nor sex, nor age, have claims. The short remnant of life left to the hoary head, trembling with age and infirmities, is snatched away. The tenderest infant, yet imbibing nutrition from the mamilla of maternal love, and the agonized mother herself, alike await the stroke of the relentless tomahawk. No vestige is left of what fire can consume. Nothing which breathes the breath of life is spared. The animals reared by the care of civilized man are involved in his destruction. No human foresight can divine the quarter which shall be struck. It is in the dead of the night, in the darkness of the morn, in the howling of the storm, that the demoniac deed is done."[538]

[Footnote 537: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 110; Dawson, _Harrison_, 236.]

[Footnote 538: _American State Papers, Indian Affairs_, I, 781.]

The nation entered upon the war in June, 1812, with a large portion of its best citizens and one entire section of the country bitterly opposed to the measure. Apathy and opposition combined with the incompetence of the administration at Washington to produce a state of unpreparedness which, in view of the seriousness of the situation, seems today incredible. Congress voted men for the army, but there was little disposition on the part of the country to supply them. The money that was no less essential to the conduct of a war not even Congress was willing to vote, except to a ludicrously inadequate degree.[539] Great Britain had stood undaunted for years between Napoleon and the realization of his ambition of European if not of world supremacy. Through generations of warfare her people had become habituated to devoting their treasure to this end, and had developed a strong military tradition. Both government and army had been brought to the greatest possible state of efficiency for the conduct of war by the experience gained in the two decades of practically constant warfare which the French Revolutionary era had opened. That the greater part of this schooling had been gained in combat with Napoleon, the greatest military genius of modern times, did not detract from its value. On the sea the power of England was superior to that of all the rest of the world combined.

[Footnote 539: On this whole subject see Adams, _op. cit._, Vol. VI, _passim_; Babcock, _Rise of American Nationality, chaps_, iv and v.]

The contrast presented by the United States in 1812 in all that pertained to military affairs could hardly have been more striking. That the Americans were brave and potentially capable of making good soldiers does not, of course, admit of question. But this is equally true of the members of the mob which flees in terror before a detachment of regulars one-tenth as numerous as itself. The lack of a well-trained army was less serious, however, than was the absence of a disposition to submit to the labors and discipline necessary to create one. Of capable military leaders we had none. Yet this, while deplorable enough, was not so serious, probably, as was the contempt which all Americans outside the army itself evinced for regular military training and experience. Even after the bitter lessons taught us on land by the War of 1812, a sixteen-year-old runaway boy could convince as intelligent a man as Calhoun that he had a greater claim to preferment in the army than had the graduate of West Point.[540] And in the early stages of our next war with a civilized nation the President of the United States deliberately determined to appoint all of the officers of a newly created regiment from civil life, on the double ground that since he could not promote all of the officers of the existing army he would not promote any of them, and that it was "generally expected that they should be selected from citizens."[541]

[Footnote 540: Andrews, Biographical Sketch of James Watson Webb, 5-7.]

[Footnote 541: Diary of James K. Polk, I, 412. The same contempt for trained military leaders, and preference for political appointees, was manifested during the early years of the Civil War.]

On the sea we opposed sixteen ships,[542] excellent enough for their class, to the eight hundred odd of England. Their showing in the ensuing war is worthy of all praise. Yet it was probably as genuinely a matter of surprise to the Americans as it was to the British themselves. The glamor which resulted from the success of the Americans in a number of single-ship duels has blinded the eyes of later generations to the facts that during the greater part of the war the British vessels maintained a close blockade of the American coast, insulting our sea ports with impunity, and that the navy committed blunders almost as serious as those of the army on land.

[Footnote 542: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 362. This statement omits from consideration the gunboats of Jefferson's mosquito fleet.]

The army, when war was declared, was partly in the field and partly on paper.[543] The former portion consisted of ten old regiments with ranks partly filled, scattered in numerous garrisons from New England to New Orleans. The latter consisted of thirteen new regiments which had been authorized by Congress in January, but although recruiting began in March, only four thousand men had been secured by the middle of June. Shortly after the declaration of war Congress fixed the regular establishment at thirty-two regiments with a strength of thirty-six thousand seven hundred men, yet at this time, including the four thousand new recruits, there were but ten thousand men under arms. In February the raising of fifty thousand volunteers for one year was authorized, and in April the President was given power to call out one hundred thousand state militia. But in June less than one-twelfth of the volunteers had been enrolled, and whether the states would heed the call upon them for militia, or whether the militia when raised would serve beyond the frontier, no one yet knew.

[Footnote 543: On the state of the army at this time see McMaster, _History of the People of the United States_, III, chap, xxiii; Adams, _op. cit._, VI, chap, xiv; Babcock, _op. cit._, chap. v.]

The main reliance of the Americans must obviously be the militia. Fighting within their own boundaries, under competent officers of their own choosing, and in their own way, they were capable of excellent, and at times even brilliant service; Bennington, King's Mountain, and New Orleans are sufficient evidence of this. But for prolonged service in a national and offensive war they were of very little account. In subservience to impulse and impatience of discipline they rivaled the Indian himself. Said Amos Kendall, after witnessing a temporary muster in Kentucky in the summer of 1814: "The soldiers are under no more restraint than a herd of swine. Reasoning, remonstrating, threatening, and ridiculing their officers, they show their sense of equality, and their total want of subordination."[544] Even so popular and experienced a frontiersman as Harrison, leading the citizens of his own territory in defense of their own homes, found great difficulty in controlling the militia in the short Tippecanoe campaign. His biographer repeats with evident pride that he relied upon his persuasive eloquence, rather than his authority, to prevent a general desertion.[545]

[Footnote 544: Quoted in Babcock, _op. cit._, 79-80.]

[Footnote 545: Dawson, _Harrison_, 230-31.]

Equally typical of the volunteer militia of this period was the action of the Ohioans on receipt of the news, in the summer of 1812, that Fort Wayne was in imminent danger from the Indians. Their ardor to serve was such that "every road to the frontiers was crowded with unsolicited volunteers."[546] Yet this zeal, praiseworthy as it was in itself, only resulted in the consumption of the provisions which by General Hull's orders had been accumulated at the outposts for his use. When Harrison was finally ready to start upon the expedition for the relief of Fort Wayne he paraded his troops, "read several articles of war, prescribing the duty of soldiers, and explained the necessity for such regulations," and gave those who were unwilling to submit to them an opportunity to withdraw from the force. The enthusiasm of the troops was such that only one man availed himself of this opportunity; and he was conveyed astride a rail by his disgusted associates to the banks of the Big Miami, "in the waters of which they absolved him from the obligations of courage and patriotism." Yet not all of Harrison's eloquence sufficed ten days later to prevent the Ohio militia from abandoning his army in a body and returning to their homes with the campaign but half completed.[547]

[Footnote 546: _Ibid._, 288.]

[Footnote 547: McAfee, _History of the Late War in the Western Country_, 128.]

However excellent the quality of the rank and file may have been, it still would have availed little in the absence of competent leaders. The painful experience of the government in the early years of the Civil War has burned this lesson deeply into the consciousness of the American people. Though the War of 1812 was waged on a far smaller scale, the lack of competent generals in the earlier years is even more painfully apparent. The officers appointed by the President to command the army in 1812 have been well described as "old, vain, respectable, and incapable."[548] Of the two major generals and five brigadiers the youngest was fifty-five years of age, and the average age was fifty-nine. Most of them were veterans of the Revolutionary War, and only one had ever commanded a regiment in the face of an enemy.

[Footnote 548: McMaster, _United States_, III, 546.]

The general plan proposed by Dearborn for the campaign provided for a main expedition against Montreal by way of Lake Champlain, flanked by invasions of Canada from Detroit, Niagara, and Sackett's Harbor. Such a plan vigorously pushed with proper forces would have compelled the British forces to stand strictly on the defensive, the Indians would have had no encouragement to rise, and the northwestern frontier might have been spared the horrors of the warfare that soon broke upon it. But while a force was sent to Detroit under Hull to begin the campaign in that quarter, elsewhere hostilities lagged. Hull's campaign, therefore, on the issue of which hung the fate of the Northwest, may receive our undivided attention.

Hull had neither sought nor desired the appointment to the command of the army in the Northwest. As a soldier of the Revolution and in various capacities since that war he had acquitted himself with credit, when, in 1805, he was appointed by Jefferson governor of the newly created Michigan Territory. In this office he remained when the War of 1812 began, notwithstanding the fact that his career as governor had been marked by discord and disappointment, due largely to Hull's inability to adjust himself to the environment, new to him, of the frontier.[549] He had urged upon the government the desirability of rendering Michigan defensible from a military point of view, advocating as essential to this end the control by armed vessels of Lake Erie.[550] In the early part of 1812 he was in Washington urging the same subject again upon the government. While thus engaged the military appointment of commander of the forces in that quarter was tendered to him by Madison and declined.[551] Colonel Jacob Kingsbury, who had commanded at Detroit, Mackinac, and Belle Fontaine from 1804 to 1811, and was now on leave of absence, was ordered to the West to resume his old command. He was, however, incapacitated by illness, whereupon Hull, urged a second time by the administration, accepted the appointment.

[Footnote 549: On Hull's career as governor see Cooley, _Michigan_, chap. viii.]

[Footnote 550: Cooley, _Michigan_, 164; Hull, _Campaign of 1812_, 19-21; _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, March 6, 1812.]

[Footnote 551: Cooley, _Michigan_, 167; Hull, _Campaign of 1812_, 14-18.]

From every point of view this was a calamity. Hull's opinion that the control of the lakes was essential to the safety of Detroit and the Northwest had been repeatedly expressed, the last time as recently as March 6, 1812. Since that control had not been gained, it followed that Hull believed himself at the mercy of the enemy in the event of war. Holding such views it was impossible for him to enter upon the invasion of Canada with any confidence or determination. Kingsbury had seen much of the Northwest. Having had years of military service there, he was familiar with Heald, Whistler, and the other post commanders, and was possessed of energy and decision of character. Under him, even though the invasion of Canada had not been carried out, it is not likely that Detroit would have surrendered without a light, and Fort Dearborn have been left to its fate.

The force put at Hull's disposal consisted of three regiments of Ohio militia, the Fourth United States Infantry, which had constituted the nucleus of Harrison's force at Tippecanoe, a troop of Ohio dragoons, and some scattering companies of volunteers, amounting in all to about two thousand men. With this force he must cut a road through the wilderness of northern Ohio, establish blockhouses to protect his line of communication for two hundred miles through the Indian country, protect the settlements, and, according to the expectations of the government, conquer Upper Canada. The mere statement of the task is sufficient to demonstrate the impossibility of executing it with the means at his disposal.

On April 25 Hull reached Pittsburgh on his way to the West,[552] and twelve days later was at Cincinnati, having come from Baltimore, a distance of over eight hundred miles, in sixteen days.[553] Meanwhile Governor Meigs with praiseworthy expedition was recruiting and organizing the regiments of militia. On May 25 he turned them over to Hull with a spirited speech worthy of Napoleon's best style and containing withal much good advice.[554] The failure of the dragoons and the regiment of regulars to arrive was causing Hull much anxiety, but he announced his intention to proceed without them.[555] At last, on June 10, the regulars joined him at Urbana.[556] The whole army marched out a mile to meet and escort them ceremoniously into camp. A triumphal arch had been erected near the camp, with the American eagle displayed on the keystone, and inscribed in capitals on one side the word "Tippecanoe," and on the other "Glory." In the place of honor at the head of the army, preceded only by the troops of mounted dragoons, the regulars made their way into camp. Arrived at the arch, the cavalry opened out, allowing them to pass beneath it, while the militia regiments passed by on the outside, "hoping soon to be entitled to similar honors."

[Footnote 552: _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, April 26, 1812.]

[Footnote 553: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, May 8, 1812.]

[Footnote 554: _Ibid._, Meigs's address to the "First Army of Ohio," May 25, 1812; Hull to Eustis, May 26, 1812.]

[Footnote 555: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, May 17, 1812.]

[Footnote 556: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 11, 1812.]

This pleasing ceremony ended, and permission having been gained from the Indian chiefs to open a road through their country and protect it with blockhouses,[557] the advance was pressed with vigor. The obstacles to be overcome were many: a new road fit for the passage of an army must be cut, blockhouses were to be erected at intervals of twenty miles through the Indian country, and the provisions needed for the army must be brought forward from the settled portion of Ohio. The equipment of the army was notably deficient in certain important respects. On reaching Cincinnati, Hull had found the supply of powder so inadequate as to necessitate sending at once to Lexington for more.[558] The guns were in such poor condition that to render them fit for use Hull was compelled to carry a traveling forge and create a company of artificers to repair them as the army advanced. In this way they were rendered serviceable at the rate of fifty a day.[559]

[Footnote 557: The agreement entered into is given in _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, June 9, 1812.]

[Footnote 558: Drennan Papers, Hull to Eustis, May 8, 1812.]

[Footnote 559: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 11, 1812.]

Hull reported the spirit of the army as excellent, yet a serious case of insubordination occurred at Urbana over a grievance, real or fancied, on the part of the militia with respect to their pay.[560] The officers had promised the men an advance for the year's clothing, which was not forthcoming. Papers were accordingly posted on trees the night before the departure from Urbana, warning Hull not to march until the army had been paid. He announced his determination to proceed, and when the assembly beat all but one company obeyed the order. A detachment from the Fourth Regiment of regulars was immediately marched toward it, which cowed the mutineers into submission. Three of the ringleaders were tried by a court martial which sentenced them to have one-half their heads shaved, their hands tied behind their backs, to be marched around the lines with the label "Tory" between the shoulders, and be drummed out of the army.

[Footnote 560: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 18, 1812.]

This exhibition of firmness on Hull's part seems to have had the desired effect. The culprits felt the disgrace keenly, considering the punishment worse than death, and at the solicitation of their officers Hull consented to pardon them.[561] Heavy and incessant rains, combined with the other obstacles, prevented the army from making the progress the commander desired.[562] On June 26, when Hull received a message warning him of the impending hostilities and urging him to press forward with all possible speed, he had covered only about seventy-five miles from Urbana and was still thirty-five miles from the Maumee Rapids.[563] He reached this point four days later, and thereupon committed his first blunder. To save transportation, his personal baggage, papers, hospital stores, and other material were embarked on a schooner for Detroit. Meanwhile war had been declared by Congress on June 18; and the British forces at Malden, receiving prompt notice of this, seized the schooner with all it contained. Thus they became apprised of Hull's strength and of his instructions from his government.

[Footnote 561: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 562: _Ibid._, Hull to Eustis, June 24 and 26, 1812.]

[Footnote 563: Adams, _United States_, VI, 298-99; _Drennan Papers_, Hull to Eustis, June 26, 1812.]

On July 5 Hull reached Detroit, and four days later received word from Washington to begin the invasion of Canada.[564] His reply expressed confidence in his ability to drive the British from the opposite bank of the river, but he did not believe he could take Maiden. A week later he crossed the river and occupied Sandwich, the British retiring before him without a blow. From Sandwich a proclamation was issued to the Canadians, designed to secure their acquiescence in the American conquest.[565] To some extent this hope was realized, and numbers of the Canadian militia deserted to the Americans. Instead, however, of pressing the attack on Maiden at once, from this time Hull delayed until, with the enemy growing stronger and his own position more precarious, he lost all hope of success and retreated to Detroit. The factors responsible for this decision were the news of the capture of Mackinac with the prospect of the approach of a large number of traders and Indians upon Detroit in his rear, and the attacks by Tecumseh's Indians upon his line of communications with Ohio.

[Footnote 564: Adams, _op. cit._, VI, 302.]

[Footnote 565: _Ibid._, VI, 303-4.]

While Hull had thus been conducting affairs at Detroit, Dearborn, who had command of the army in New York, was dallying at Boston and Albany, doing nothing to engage the British by pushing the attack upon Canada from New York, a measure which was essential to Hull's success. On August 9 he even entered into an armistice with the British which bound him to act only on the defensive until the government at Washington should decide upon the effect of the repeal of the obnoxious orders. This inactivity in the East left Brock, the British commander in Upper Canada, entirely free to direct his attention to Hull; and the attack upon Niagara on which Hull on July 19 had declared all his own success would depend was not made. Moving with a vigor and daring conspicuously wanting in the American generals. Brock transferred all of his available forces from the Niagara frontier to Maiden. On arriving there he quickly determined to cross the river and assail Hull in Detroit. Although Hull's force was the larger, the audacity of Brock, combined with the senility displayed by Hull, rendered the movement a complete success. Without awaiting the assault, Hull surrendered his entire army, together with Detroit and Michigan Territory, to the British.