The Naval War of 1812 | Page 4

the chapters devoted to the naval operations.
As before said, the other campaigns on land do not deserve very minute
attention; but, for the sake of rendering the account of the battle of New
Orleans more intelligible, I will give a hasty sketch of the principal
engagements that took place elsewhere.
The war opened in mid-summer of 1812, by the campaign of General
Hull on the Michigan frontier. With two or three thousand raw troops
he invaded Canada. About the same time Fort Mackinaw was

surrendered by its garrison of 60 Americans to a British and Indian
force of 600. Hull's campaign was unfortunate from the beginning.
Near Brownstown the American Colonel Van Horne, with some 200
men, was ambushed and routed by Tecumseh and his Indians. In
revenge Col. Miller, with 600 Americans, at Maguaga attacked 150
British and Canadians under Capt. Muir, and 250 Indians under
Tecumseh, and whipped them,--Tecumseh's Indians standing their
ground longest. The Americans lost 75, their foes 180 men. At Chicago
the small force of 66 Americans was surprised and massacred by the
Indians. Meanwhile, General Brock, the British commander, advanced
against Hull with a rapidity and decision that seemed to paralyze his
senile and irresolute opponent. The latter retreated to Detroit, where,
without striking a blow, he surrendered 1,400 men to Brock's nearly
equal force, which consisted nearly one half of Indians under Tecumseh.
On the Niagara frontier, an estimable and honest old gentleman and
worthy citizen, who knew nothing of military matters, Gen. Van
Rensselaer, tried to cross over and attack the British at Queenstown;
1,100 Americans got across and were almost all killed or captured by a
nearly equal number of British, Canadians, and Indians, while on the
opposite side a large number of their countrymen looked on, and with
abject cowardice refused to cross to their assistance. The command of
the army was then handed over to a ridiculous personage named
Smythe, who issued proclamations so bombastic that they really must
have come from an unsound mind, and then made a ludicrously
abortive effort at invasion, which failed almost of its own accord. A
British and Canadian force of less than 400 men was foiled in an
assault on Ogdensburg, after a slight skirmish, by about 1,000
Americans under Brown; and with this trifling success the military
operations of the year came to an end.
Early in 1813, Ogdensburg was again attacked, this time by between
500 and 600 British, who took it after a brisk resistance from some 300
militia; the British lost 60 and the Americans 20, in killed and wounded.
General Harrison, meanwhile, had begun the campaign in the
Northwest. At Frenchtown, on the river Raisin, Winchester's command
of about 900 Western troops was surprised by a force of 1,100 men,
half of them Indians, under the British Colonel Proctor. The right
division, taken by surprise, gave up at once; the left division, mainly

Kentucky riflemen, and strongly posted in houses and stockaded
enclosures, made a stout resistance, and only surrendered after a bloody
fight, in which 180 British and about half as many Indians were killed
or wounded. Over 300 Americans were slain, some in battle, but most
in the bloody massacre that followed. After this, General Harrison went
into camp at Fort Meigs, where, with about 1,100 men, he was besieged
by 1,000 British and Canadians under Proctor and 1,200 Indians under
Tecumseh. A force of 1,200 Kentucky militia advanced to his relief and
tried to cut its way into the fort while the garrison made a sortie. The
sortie was fairly successful, but the Kentuckians were scattered like
chaff by the British regulars in the open, and when broken were cut to
pieces by the Indians in the woods. Nearly two thirds of the relieving
troops were killed or captured; about 400 got into the fort. Soon
afterward Proctor abandoned the siege. Fort Stephenson, garrisoned by
Major Croghan and 160 men, was attacked by a force of 391 British
regulars, who tried to carry it by assault, and were repulsed with the
loss of a fourth of their number. Some four thousand Indians joined
Proctor, but most of them left him after Perry's victory on Lake Erie.
Then Harrison, having received large reinforcements, invaded Canada.
At the River Thames his army of 3,500 men encountered and routed
between 600 and 700 British under Proctor, and about 1,000 Indians
under Tecumseh. The battle was decided at once by a charge of the
Kentucky mounted riflemen, who broke through the regulars, took
them in rear, and captured them, and then dismounting attacked the
flank of the Indians, who were also assailed by the infantry. Proctor
escaped by the skin of his teeth and Tecumseh died fighting, like the
hero that he was. This battle ended the campaign in