by Mark Zuehlke
Although the way lay open for the Americans to join Brush at the Raisin River, Miller could not even persuade his troops to go back into the woods to retrieve their knapsacks. They huddled in the middle of a small clearing, spending a “tentless and foodless night in pouring rain.” With the dawn, Miller trailed back to Detroit.
Desperate for Brush’s supplies, Hull sent another escort column of four hundred men under command of the militia officers, Colonels Lewis Cass and Duncan McArthur, toward the Raisin River. Fed up with his timidity, these two men had been conspiring to arrest Hull and take over command, so he was glad to temporarily remove them from the fort. Cass and McArthur reached the Raisin River without incident, but discovered that Brush had decamped back to Urbana, destroying whatever supplies he had not taken with him. After briefly considering following Brush’s example, the two men decided to rejoin the Detroit garrison. Leading their men back at a leisurely pace, neither bothered sending a messenger to inform Hull of what had transpired.9
Hull, meanwhile, was panicked by news that on August 13 Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock had arrived at Fort Malden with 50 regulars, 250 Canadian militia, and a six-pound cannon. The balance was beginning to tilt toward the British. Brock’s arrival was greeted by Tecumseh’s warriors firing off several musket volleys. After being introduced to Tecumseh, Brock quietly commented that the musket salutes were “really an unnecessary waste of ammunition when Detroit had to be captured.” Tecumseh turned to his warriors and said, “This is a man.” Of Tecumseh, Brock wrote, “a more sagacious or a more gallant Warrior does not I believe exist.”10
Three days later Brock crossed the Detroit River to the south of Fort Detroit with a force of 300 regulars and 400 militia supported by 30 artillerymen manning three six-pound and two three-pound cannon. Tecumseh brought to the field 600 warriors, ostensibly under the direction of Lt. Col. Matthew Elliott of the Indian Department. Brock realized that if these braves managed to get inside Fort Detroit a massacre was inevitable, for the British had scant control over them. Brock also was able to draw the brigs Queen Charlotte and General Hunter up the river so that the fort was within range of their eighteen-pound cannon. He then called upon Hull to surrender, playing on the old general’s fear that, if Detroit was taken by storm, Brock could not restrain the Indians. Hull refused.
That evening the British shelled the fort and the next morning Brock’s troops and Tecumseh’s warriors advanced toward its walls. Before battle was joined, Hull hoisted a flag of truce. Terms were quickly arranged, whereby Hull surrendered not just the garrison but also the men out in the field with Cass and McArthur. Some 1,600 Ohio militiamen were paroled home and escorted by British regulars beyond range of Tecumseh’s warriors, who had greeted the surrender amicably and posed no threat to the fort’s inhabitants. Hull and 582 regular troops were marched off to prisoner-of-war camps near Quebec City. Brock was pleased to capture thirty-three cannon and 2,500 muskets, as his own armament supply was limited and these would help arm more Canadian militia. It was a bloodless victory that put the British in undisputed control of the frontier country.
The only two remaining American forts, Fort Dearborn and Fort Wayne, soon fell. At Fort Dearborn the garrison attempted to withdraw and were fallen upon by 400 local Potawatomi warriors, who now rose against the Americans, and about two-thirds of the fleeing men, women, and children were massacred. Fort Wayne was thereafter overrun by an Indian assault. By summer’s end no significant American presence remained in the disputed frontier. Hull’s army had not only been defeated, it had been annihilated.
As the grim news from the northern boundaries of the United States filtered in by messengers riding fast horses and was added to the discouraging reports from Jonathan Russell regarding attempts to arrange an armistice through the offices of Viscount Castlereagh in London, disillusionment with the war had grown within President James Madison’s administration. Personally shaken by the revelation that the very day he had signed the declaration of war Castlereagh had revoked the orders-in-council, Madison later lamented that if this news had been received promptly he would have either recalled the document or sought an immediate armistice.
Yet Madison also thought the revocation strengthened his hand, persuading himself that Castlereagh had taken the step because of a combination of the firm American position and domestic pressure to normalize commerce between the two countries. “I think it not improbable,” he wrote Jefferson, “that the sudden change in relation to the Orders in Council … was the effect of apprehensions in the Cabinet that the deliberation of Cong[res]s would have upon that issue, and that the Ministry could not stand [against], the popular torrent [against] the Orders in Council, swelled as it would be by the addition of a war with the U.S.”11
Despite the diplomatic victory implicit in cancellation of the orders, Madison was convinced that it was too late to use this as a pretext to back away from war and unilaterally declare an armistice. He and Secretary of State James Monroe brushed off attempts by the remaining British representative in Washington, Anthony St. John Baker, to renew negotiations because they preferred to pursue discussions through Russell in London. They continued to foster the belief that this channel for negotiation remained open for several weeks after the chargé d’affaires had actually departed England.
In August the president and Monroe decided that peace would be possible only if the British ceased impressment. Monroe later defended this hardening of the American position in a letter to his former mentor Col. John Taylor. “Impressment having long been a ground of complaint, and a principal cause of the war, the British claim would have been confirmed, as it was thought, if the war was terminated without some adequate provision for it. I was satisfied, that, had we caught, at the modified repeal of the orders in council, made afterwards without an arrangement of other questions particularly that of impressment, the British government would have concluded that it had gained a victory, and maintained the whole system in full vigor, even the principles of the orders in council in the form of blockades, against the United States. Having gone to war, it seemed to be our duty, not to withdraw from it, till the rights of our country were placed on a more secure basis.”12
This decision to insist that any peace agreement depended on Britain’s discarding impressment coincided with several British representatives approaching the Americans almost simultaneously with varying proposals for a negotiated settlement. In Canada, Sir George Prevost had been trying to limit the fighting even as Brock mustered troops to drive Hull out of Upper Canada and seize Detroit. Having learned that the orders were cancelled, he thought it reasonable the Americans would welcome a return to the negotiating table. On August 5 he dashed off a dispatch to Lord Liverpool reporting that despite the failure of his earlier attempts at conciliation, the prime minister “may rest assured that unless the safety of the Provinces entrusted to my charge should require them, no measures shall be adopted by me to impede a speedy return to those accustomed relations of amity and goodwill which it is the mutual interest of both countries to cherish and preserve.”13
Within days Prevost’s aide, Lt. Col. Edward Baynes, met under a flag of truce with Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn at the American commander.’ Greenbush headquarters, across the river from Albany, New York. The sixty-one-year-old general responsible for the prosecution of the invasion of Canada was “a ponderous, flabby figure, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds.”14 Called Granny by his men, this veteran of the Revolution had fought at Bunker Hill and followed Benedict Arnold on his ill-fated march through the winter wilderness to Quebec only to be captured and exchanged. He had been living the comfortable life of a successful Massachusetts politician until Madison called him back to the flag.
Since assuming command Dearborn had focused his attention on a largely futile recruiting campaign in the New England states, not returning to Greenbush until July 26 to find only 1,200 men had reported. These men were ill equipped and untrained. As Dearborn took no measures to prevent Baynes sizing up
the encampment and its occupants, the British officer gathered a great deal of intelligence on his opponents. He reported that Dearborn did “not appear to possess the energy of mind or activity of body requisite for the important station he fills.” The American general basically confirmed this, advising Baynes that “the burden of command at this time of life was not a desirable charge.” The soldiers under Dearborn’s command impressed the professional soldier not a bit. They were “independent in their habits and principles, their officers ignorant and totally uninformed in every thing relating to the possession of arms and possess no influence over the militia but in proportion as they court it by popular and familiar intercourse.”15
Dearborn received Prevost’s armistice offer with the relief of a drowning man grabbing hold of a safety line, although he allowed that it was impossible for the matter to be formal. Unauthorized to enter into such an agreement, he would carry out only defensive actions. Lacking direct authority over Hull, he could do no more than advise the general to cease offensive operations. The two officers agreed that reinforcements and supply convoys could continue moving west without threat of attack by either side.
On August 9, hands were shaken and each man’s honour staked on the guarantee that their side would fairly apply the informal terms. Baynes was happy. He had secured a much-needed breathing space for the British and the right to continue moving men and materiel out to Brock without the worry of American interference. And there was always the slight possibility that the armistice would last long enough to allow the governments to actually negotiate a formal truce. Certainly that process would be helped if meantime not too much blood was shed. Dearborn was equally content, assured that he now had time to amass the 5,000 to 6,000 men he considered necessary for the main invasion of Canada. He sent a dispatch to Hull asking him to consider withdrawing from Canada, but by the time it arrived Detroit was in Brock’s hands and Hull a captive travelling toward Quebec.
It took six days for Dearborn’s letter reporting the informal armistice with Prevost to reach Washington. Madison was infuriated, and War Secretary Dr. William Eustis immediately ordered the general to give Prevost notice that the agreement was repudiated and to “proceed with the utmost vigor in your operations.” Having also received communiqués from Hull about how dire his situation was, Eustis advised Dearborn that “the President thinks it proper that not a moment should be lost in gaining possession of the British posts at Niagara and Kingston, or at least the former.” On August 25, Dearborn sent a message to Prevost that the armistice should be considered terminated. He then informed Eustis that shifting headquarters to the Niagara front in time to have any effect during the campaigning season was impossible, so he would continue gathering his forces at Albany and “push towards Montreal at the same time that our troops on the western frontier of this state strike at Upper Canada.” The advance on all fronts would begin in October.16
Believing no more could be done to chivvy his generals into pressing the campaign, Madison left Washington for Montpelier on August 28. He and his wife were in a carriage dragging slowly along a rain-soaked road when a hard-riding horseman dispatched by Eustis intercepted them with the news that General Hull had surrendered his army. Furious, Madison ordered the carriage turned about and hastened back to the capital. “Do you not tremble with resentment at this treacherous act?” Dolley Madison tersely asked. “Yet we must not judge the man until we are in possession of his reasons.”17 There was no question of Hull’s escaping a court martial once he was exchanged by the British and returned to Washington.
Until receiving this awful news, Madison had nurtured a scenario unfolding whereby Hull’s “triumphant army would have seized Upper Canada.” Lake Erie would be an American pond. “The Indians would have been neutral or submissive to our will.” Thousands of Americans, inspired by this great victory, would rush to enlist. Most important of all “the intrigues of the disaffected would have been smothered.”18
Instead, the president railed, Hull “sunk before obstacles at which not an officer near him would have paused, and threw away an entire army.” The surrender, he feared, must certainly turn “the people of Canada, not indisposed to favour us … against us” and persuade the Indians to ally themselves with the British. Madison gloomily noted that “a general damp spread over our Affairs.”19
The president needed victories, successes to justify the war and convince an increasingly dubious public that the adventure was warranted. But it was hard to conceive that any of the remaining armies were capable of bringing such an event about before the weather turned, and Madison also entered a bid for presidential re-election in the late fall that failure on the battlefield might just cause him to lose. Indisposed to journey 300 miles west to take personal charge of the army gathered at Lewiston, New York, facing Niagara, Dearborn sent Virginian Gen. Alexander Smyth in his stead with vague instructions to share command responsibility with New York Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer. Dearborn provided Smyth with 1,650 regulars to bring this central army up to about 5,000 troops—what he considered necessary for it to cross the Niagara River and enter Upper Canada. The old general, however, failed to dictate which general was superior to the other.
No soldier, Van Rensselaer had been appointed by New York governor Daniel D. Tompkins. Perversely, this was not an act of patronage on the governor’s part but rather a clever stratagem to dispose of his most likely opponent in the 1813 spring gubernatorial race. The forty-five-year-old Van Rensselaer hailed from one of New York’s first families and had inherited a 12,000-square-mile estate named Rensselaerswyck near Albany. Rather than sell the property off in sections to sustain the family wealth, he opted to lease parcels and soon had more than 3,000 tenants working the land for him. A Federalist, Van Rensselaer was assured the party’s candidacy for governor. Popular, wealthy, politically well connected, and considered somewhat of a reformer, Van Rensselaer promised Tompkins a hard run. When Tompkins offered him command of the central army because of his being a militia officer, Van Rensselaer could hardly refuse. To do so would seem unpatriotic, but if he accepted then it would be impossible for him to stand for election. And should he fail as a commander, his reputation would suffer. Realizing there was no way to escape Tompkins’s trap, Van Rensselaer had insisted on one stipulation, that his cousin Solomon Van Rensselaer be his aide-de-camp. Where Van Rensselaer’s expression and bearing exuded refinement and gentleness, his cousin looked every bit the soldier. “The handsomest officer I ever beheld,” one contemporary commented. His father had been a general in the Revolution and he had entered the military as soon as possible. As a seventeen-year-old ensign Solomon had distinguished himself fighting alongside Maj. Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne at Fallen Timbers, where he had been seriously wounded. Ten years junior to Stephen Van Rensselaer, he had served the past twelve years as New York’s adjutant general before accepting the rank of lieutenant colonel and joining the Army of the Center.20
Van Rensselaer was not enthusiastic about the war, and his appointment caused discontent, even amazement in the ranks of New York’s Republicans. When the call to arms had been issued it had been mostly Republicans who rallied to the flag and volunteered. But Van Rensselaer quickly surrounded himself with Federalist officers, such as his cousin, so that the commanders bore one political stripe and the troops another. When confronted by New York Republican leader John Canfield Spencer in early September over his lack of enthusiasm for the war, Van Rensselaer stated his position plainly. The general, Spencer wrote Tompkins, “is openly declaring against the war, represents it as undertaken from base, selfish, motives.” Solomon Van Rensselaer and the other Federalist officers were no better. They “whisper the same thing and worse,” Spencer declared. The result of this open criticism of the war’s purpose by their commander caused many a soldier to lose “confidence in the justice of their cause and that zeal in its support … necessary to the successful termination of the war.” This was not an army that Spencer thought would ever “go to
Canada under [its] present officers.”21
As the tragedy of Hull’s surrender became known, Van Rensselaer became convinced that he was being set up by his political rivals for a similar fate. He and his cousin privately hoped that Madison or Eustis would relieve them in favour of some Republican officers of equivalent rank and status. Tompkins certainly could take command as his privilege as governor. That no such order was issued from Washington infuriated Van Rensselaer, who portrayed the administration as “weak and despicable.” Nor could he request dismissal, for to do so would be to expose himself to accusations of cowardice. He was trapped, likely destined, he believed, to being “Hulled,” forced to serve as a scapegoat for Republican incompetence.22
General Smyth’s arrival on September 29 at Buffalo, south of Lewiston, only furthered Van Rensselaer’s increasing paranoia that a Republican conspiracy swirled around him. Born in Ireland, Smyth had come to America when he was ten years old and settled in Virginia. Trained as a lawyer, he had served multiple terms as a Republican in the Virginia House of Delegates. In 1808, he entered the army and when the war broke out was Eustis’s acting war secretary. Having reached Buffalo, Smyth announced his arrival and then refused to proceed to Lewiston or to meet with Van Rensselaer.
