The Fight for a Free Sea | Page 6

were
eager to take the measure of the redcoats. The colonels were in open
mutiny and, determined to set General Hull aside, they offered the
command to Colonel Miller of the regulars, who declined to accept it.
When Hull proposed a general retreat, he was informed that every man
of the Ohio militia would refuse to obey the order. These troops who
had been so fickle and jealous of their rights were unwilling to share
the leader's disgrace.
Two days after his arrival at Amherstburg, General Brock sent to the
Americans a summons to surrender, adding with a crafty discernment
of the effect of the threat upon the mind of the man with whom he was
dealing: "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." Hull could see only the horrid picture
of a massacre of the women and children within the stockades of
Detroit. He failed to realize that his thousand effective infantrymen
could hold out for weeks behind those log ramparts against Brock's few
hundred regulars and volunteers. Two and a half years later, Andrew
Jackson and his militia emblazoned a very different story behind the
cypress breastworks of New Orleans. Besides the thousand men in the
fort, Hull had detached five hundred under Colonels McArthur and
Cass to attempt to break through the Indian cordon in his rear and
obtain supplies. These he now vainly endeavored to recall while he
delayed a final reply to Brock's mandate.
Indecision had doomed the garrison which was now besieged.
Tecumseh's warriors had crossed the river and were between the fort
and McArthur's column. Brock boldly decided to assault, a desperate
venture, but he must have known that Hull's will had crumbled. No
more than seven hundred strong, the little British force crossed the river
just before daybreak on the 16th of August and was permitted to select
its positions without the slightest molestation. A few small field pieces,
posted on the Canadian side of the river, hurled shot into the fort,
killing four of Hull's men, and two British armed schooners lay within
range.
Brock advanced, expecting to suffer large losses from the heavy guns
which were posted to cover the main approach to the fort, but his men
passed through the zone of danger and found cover in which they made
ready to storm the defenses of Detroit. As Brock himself walked
forward to take note of the situation before giving the final commands,
a white flag fluttered from the battery in front of him. Without firing a
shot, Hull had surrendered Detroit and with it the great territory of
Michigan, the most grievous loss of domain that the United States has
ever suffered in war or peace. On the same day Fort Dearborn
(Chicago), which had been forgotten by the Government, was burned
by Indians after all its defenders had been slain. These two disasters
with the earlier fall of Mackinac practically erased American dominion
from the western empire of the Great Lakes. Visions of the conquest of
Canada were thus rudely dimmed in the opening actions of the war.

General Hull was tried by court-martial on charges of treason,
cowardice, and neglect of duty. He was convicted on the last two
charges and sentenced to be shot, with a recommendation to the mercy
of the President. The verdict was approved by Madison, but he remitted
the execution of the sentence because of the old man's services in the
Revolution. Guilty though he was, an angry and humiliated people also
made him the scapegoat for the sins of neglect and omission of which
their Government stood convicted. In the testimony offered at his trial
there was a touch, rude, vivid, and very human, to portray him in the
final hours of the tragic episode at Detroit. Spurned by his officers, he
sat on the ground with his back against the rampart while "he
apparently unconsciously filled his mouth with tobacco, putting in quid
after quid more than he generally did; the spittle colored with tobacco
juice ran from his mouth on his neckcloth, beard, cravat, and vest."
Later events in the Northwest Territory showed that the British
successes in that region were gained chiefly because of an unworthy
alliance with the Indian tribes, whose barbarous methods of warfare
stained the records of those who employed them. "Not more than seven
or eight hundred British soldiers ever crossed the Detroit River," says
Henry Adams, "but the United States raised fully twenty thousand men
and spent at least five million dollars and many lives in expelling them.
The Indians alone made this outlay necessary. The campaign of
Tippecanoe, the surrender of Detroit and Mackinaw, the massacres at
Fort Dearborn, the river Raisin, and