1812: The Navy's War (20 page)

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Authors: George Daughan

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To protect himself, Dearborn had already written to his friend Madison, blaming Eustis for the mix-up. He told the president—inaccurately—that he had no orders or directions relating to Upper Canada, “which I had considered as not attached to my command, until my last arrival at this place.” He insisted that he had been “detained at Boston
by direction
.” He then went on to assert that, “If I had been directed to take measures for acting offensively on Niagara and Kingston, with authority such as I now posses, for calling out the militia, we might have been prepared to act on those points as early as General Hull commenced his operations at Detroit; but unfortunately no explicit orders had been received by me in relation to Upper Canada until it was too late even to make an effectual diversion in favor of General Hull.”
Despite his unwillingness to take responsibility for the inaction at Niagara and Kingston, the politically savvy Dearborn could see that the president was unwilling to accept the realities on the ground. Wanting to back off from an escalating confrontation, Dearborn sent Washington a feel-good message to relieve Madison’s anxiety for the moment. “If the troops are immediately pushed on from the southward,” he wrote to Eustis, “I think we may calculate on being able to possess ourselves of Montreal and Upper Canada before the winter sets in.”
Given the state of the American army and the lack of naval supremacy on the lakes, this assessment was laughable. Nonetheless, the president and Eustis were receptive—as Dearborn knew they would be—to the notion that with the forces in hand, Hull and Dearborn, could still “secure Upper Canada” before the year was over.
The reality was far different. At Sandwich General Hull was growing more pessimistic by the hour. He thought his position had markedly deteriorated, and he was reconsidering his decision to attack Fort Malden. He feared that large numbers of western Indians were descending on his rear, and he believed that Fort Malden itself had been reinforced to the point where it was now equal in strength to his own force. Furthermore, the British had control of the Detroit River, and Captain Brush was stuck miles away at the Maumee with Governor Meig’s supply train. In view of all this, Hull decided to retreat back to Fort Detroit. He even considered going all the way to the Maumee and making a juncture with Brush, but Ohio colonel Lewis Cass, furious at Hull’s lack of aggressiveness, warned him that if he retreated to the rapids of the Maumee, all the Ohio militiamen would go home.
On the night of August 8, under cover of darkness, Hull surprised Colonel Proctor and the Provincial Marine and moved his army across the Detroit River to the safety of Fort Detroit without incident. The next day, Hull dispatched a substantial part of his effective force, six hundred men, including two hundred regulars with cavalry and artillery under Lieutenant Colonel James Miller, to escort Brush’s supply train to Detroit and reestablish the fort’s link with Ohio. Fourteen miles south of Detroit, however, at the Indian village of Maguaga, a mixed force of two hundred fifty British regulars, militiamen, and Tecumseh’s Indians attacked Miller. After a vicious fight, Miller drove them back across the river to Amherstburg, but his men were so beaten up he returned to Detroit without making contact with Captain Brush, who by now had reached as far north as the River Raison, forty miles south of Detroit.
Meanwhile, General Brock, knowing nothing of the armistice worked out between Dearborn and Prevost, made the critical decision to ignore the threat from the Niagara area for the moment and concentrate on Hull. He also decided to take command at Fort Malden personally. Aided immeasurably by control of Lake Erie, he left Long Point on August 8 with three hundred additional troops and traveled by boat to Amherstburg, arriving five days later on the night of August 13.
The very same day, Colonel Proctor’s men began preparing a battery at Sandwich to bombard Detroit. As they did, the Ohio militia colonels and many of their men had grown so tired of Hull’s wavering they were seriously considering mutiny. Colonel Miller refused to go along with them, however, and since he was the ranking regular army officer, they backed off.
At the same time, Hull was growing increasingly despondent, worrying about what would happen to the women and children of Detroit if he were defeated. He envisioned thousands of angry tribesmen eviscerating them. While he brooded, General Brock held a strategy meeting the morning after he arrived at Fort Malden. Tecumseh, who now had 1,000 warriors at the fort, attended. He was delighted when Brock proposed crossing the river and attacking Fort Detroit right away.
Meanwhile, on August 14, Hull, knowing of the discontent bordering on mutiny in his ranks, sent the two chief malcontents, Colonels Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur, away with four hundred men to bring the supply train on the River Raison forward to Detroit by a more circuitous route. After seeing the Ohio militiamen off, Hull got word of General Brock’s arrival at Fort Malden with reinforcements, and on the fifteenth he hurriedly sent orders to Cass and McArthur to return.
Directly across the river at Sandwich, Brock was preparing a full-scale attack. On August 15 he sent a note to Fort Detroit, demanding Hull’s surrender. “It is far from my inclination to join in a war of extermination,” he wrote, “but you must be aware that the numerous body of Indians who have attached themselves to my troops, will be beyond my control the moment the contest commences.”
Brock’s demand seemed an outlandish, arrogant ploy, even to his own officers. Colonel Proctor thought the note was preposterous. Hull rejected Brock’s demand, but he continued to be nervous and depressed about what he viewed as his worsening situation.
Immediately after Hull’s refusal to surrender, the Provincial Marine’s
Queen Charlotte
and
Hunter
moved upriver directly before Fort Detroit and, in concert with the batteries at Sandwich, opened fire. Hull replied with thirty-three pieces of iron and brass ordinance, and an inconclusive artillery duel commenced. One of the British cannonballs struck Lieutenant Porter Hanks, who was awaiting his court-martial, and cut him in two.
While the bombardment distracted Hull, Tecumseh and six hundred warriors silently crossed the river at night, followed in the wee hours of the morning by Brock with seven hundred fifty regulars. They brought five field pieces with them. Brock had no orders from Prevost to invade the United States, but he thought the situation demanded it. He soon discovered that the American colonels Cass and McArthur were in his rear with a substantial body of men and could possibly be returning to the fort. Brock decided to attack before the Ohioans reached the battlefield. He faced a substantial roadblock, however. Hull had placed two twenty-four pounders on the road, where the British troops had to pass. Brock’s guns were six- and three-pounders. His men would have been cut to pieces. All the while, cannonballs from Sandwich on the other side of the river kept falling into the fort.
Refusing to back off, Brock exhibited a white flag and sent another message to Hull demanding that he surrender and save the fort and town from a bloody massacre. Brock’s officers were astonished at his audacity. They did not expect to succeed against the fort’s artillery, especially if Cass and McArthur were in their rear—although, as it turned out, they actually were not. (After leaving the fort, the disgruntled Ohio colonels ignored Hull’s order to return, and deliberately stayed away.)
By this time Hull was more deeply depressed than ever about his position. He believed he was greatly outnumbered, that thousands of Indians were coming from the west, and that Tecumseh’s force was three times the size it was. Brock’s demand did not seem outlandish to him at all. Fearing the entire fort and town would be butchered, he did not delay long before surrendering without a fight. The British officers and Hull’s own troops were astonished.
Brock’s unexpected triumph produced a windfall for him. Hull forfeited not only the soldiers at Fort Detroit but the troops under Cass and McArthur and even those under Captain Henry Brush at the River Raisin—2,200 regulars and militiamen. In addition, Hull surrendered 33 pieces of artillery, 2,500 muskets, 5,000 pounds of gunpowder, and all the fort’s other supplies, as well as the 6-gun brig
Adams
, tied up at Detroit’s waterfront. The British later rename her
Detroit
in honor of their victory.
Adding to Hull’s disaster, on August 15 a large force of Potawatomi massacred the American soldiers and civilians evacuating Fort Dearborn (Chicago). Afraid of just such an attack, Hull had ordered the evacuation, but it came much too late. The fort was burned, ending the last vestige of American authority west of the Maumee River. A few days later, similar Indian attacks were repulsed at Fort Harrison on the Wabash and at Fort Madison on the upper Mississippi. The battle at Fort Harrison went on for ten difficult days, from September 4 to 14. Captain Zachary Taylor was commander of the tiny American garrison, and he emerged as a hero. Hull’s evacuation order had prevented Fort Dearborn from mounting a similar defense.
Immediately after taking Detroit, General Brock annexed all of Michigan Territory in the name of George III. It was the biggest loss of territory in American history. Tecumseh’s dream of expelling the Americans from Indian lands north of the Ohio now came closer to reality.
 
 
ON AUGUST 28 President Madison and his wife were on the road, traveling to Montpelier, their plantation in Orange, Virginia, unaware of the momentous events at Detroit. The president was seriously ill with a recurring stomach ailment and in need of a long rest. Dolley feared for his life. As they approached the village of Dumfries, where they planned to stay for the night, an express rider galloped up unexpectedly and handed Madison an urgent message from Secretary Eustis, informing him of Hull’s surrender. The president was dumbfounded. His entire war plan and his political future were suddenly in peril. In spite of his health, he returned to Washington the following morning.
Not surprisingly, as they were engaged in a tight reelection fight against DeWitt Clinton of New York, the president and his closest political allies thought the first order of business was to deflect blame away from the commander in chief and place it entirely on General Hull. Madison felt that accepting any responsibility for what happened at Detroit would be politically disastrous. Jefferson reflected the administration’s approach when he wrote, “The treachery of Hull, like that of Arnold, cannot be a matter of blame to our government.” Monroe called Hull “weak, indecisive, and pusillanimous.” Colonel Lewis Cass wrote a scathing report of Hull’s surrender, which Madison had printed in the
National Intelligencer
.
Much later, long after the election, the discredited Hull, who had returned on parole from captivity in Canada, received a court-martial that lasted from January 3 to March 26, 1814. The presiding judge was the president’s close friend Henry Dearborn. With two-thirds of the members concurring, the court convicted Hull of cowardice and neglect of duty and sentenced him to be shot, but the general’s age and outstanding service during the Revolutionary War moved the court to recommend clemency to the president. On April 25 Madison solemnly pardoned Hull and cashiered him from the service. The culpability of the president, Secretary Eustis, and General Dearborn in the Canadian fiasco of 1812 was covered up.
Assigning exclusive blame to Hull, however, did not mitigate the dislike of the war that now spread over the entire country. Enthusiasm for invading Canada had never been strong, except in a few states, and it now sank to a new low, making recruitment for the army even more difficult. Madison’s ability to lead the war inevitably came into question. Had it not been for the wildly popular victory of the
Constitution
over the
Guerriere
, happening at the same time, Hull’s defeat probably would have cost the president reelection.
Naturally, Brock’s wholly unexpected victory delighted the British. The news reached London the first week of October—before reports of the
Guerriere
’s defeat. The
Times
wrote that General Hull’s surrender “was a glorious occurrence.” But when news of the
Constitution
’s success arrived only hours later, the
Times
could scarcely believe it. “The disaster . . . is one of that nature, with which England is but little familiar,” the editors lamented. “We would gladly give up all the laurels of Detroit, to have it still to say, that no British frigate ever struck to an American.”
The debacle at Detroit and the loss of Michigan Territory did not mean Madison was giving up his plan to invade Canada. He was more determined than ever to carry it out. Once fixed on a design, particularly one as important as the Canadian invasion, he stuck with it. This mild-mannered man, who had never seen military service, was a stubborn fighter. He viewed General Hull’s surrender as merely an unfortunate episode. In the middle of September he found another general to recover Detroit and resume the invasion. Secretary of State Monroe had volunteered for the job, but pressured by Henry Clay and the War Hawks, Madison appointed another Virginian, thirty-nine-year-old William Henry Harrison. Harrison was enormously popular in Kentucky, where the president hoped to raise a large contingent of militiamen.
Harrison was on the move quickly, trying to prevent a further deterioration of the American position in the Northwest. He dispatched an initial force of 900 from Piqua, Ohio, to relieve Fort Wayne in northeastern Indiana, which was under Indian and British attack. He then followed with 2,000 reinforcements. They drove the Indian besiegers away with no trouble.

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