advanced posts in Ohio, and he had with him about 2,000 men, of whom 350 were regular troops. Not having received word of the declaration of war, Hull sent his supplies by Lake Erie, but the British, getting earlier information, captured them on the way. On the 12th of July Hull crossed into Canada. The British post at Malden, garrisoned by a force less than half his own, might have been captured by a bold stroke; but Hull, after issuing an ineffectual proclamation and fortifying his camp, delayed action until Malden had been reinforced, and after losing a part of his troops in an attempt to open communications which had been closed by the Indians, finally returned to Detroit. On the 16th of August, General Brock, the

governor of Upper Canada, a professional soldier of experience and courage, appeared before Detroit with a force composed chiefly of Indians and militia. Without waiting for the enemy's attack, Hull surrendered his command, and with it the Territory of Michigan.

At the other advanced posts of the frontier, the Niagara River and Lake Champlain, the army, though it accomplished nothing, did not meet with such conspicuous disaster. At the Niagara, General Stephen van Rensselaer was in command of about six thousand men, half of whom were militia. On the 13th of October an attack was made upon the enemy at Queenstown. Imperfect organization, hap-hazard preparations, and the absence of discipline in the militia, made the operation a fiasco. Colonel Solomon van

* [Fac-simile of a woodcut in P. Stansbury's Pedestrian Tour in North America, 1821 (New York, 1822). A view of Fort Niagara from the British side of the river, 1814, is given in the Doc. Hist. N. Y., ii. 1105. Lossing (p. 274) also gives a view from Fort George; and copies a picture (p. 597) which was made in 1813, and originally appeared in The Portfolio, July, 1817, and in which both Fort Niagara and Fort George are seen from a point on the lake opposite the entrance to the river. Cf. Harper's Mag., xxvi. 730; xxvii. 596. – ED.]

Rensselaer, who commanded the attack, was severely wounded early in the day, and on the British side Sir Isaac Brock was killed. Colonel Scott, who had volunteered for the occasion, assumed command of the detachment, but the failure to send him reinforcements from the New York side, and the arrival of General Sheaffe with a force from Fort George, finally compelled him to surrender. The British loss was trifling. General Van Rensselaer resigned his command, and was succeeded by General Alexander Smyth, a most incompetent officer, who also presently retired.1

The force on the New York frontier, under the immediate command of General Dearborn, confined its operations to desultory forays, one of which captured a small garrison at the village of St. Regis, and the other a block-house at La Colle. Neither event was of any strategic importance, and the army soon after withdrew to winterquarters.

After Hull's surrender, nothing was done in the West beyond raising a new army, chiefly composed of volunteers from Kentucky, which, after some changes, was finally placed under the command of General Harrison. Raids were made upon various Indian settlements, and the country south of Lake Erie, which now represented the advanced line of defence, was effectively garrisoned. These events concluded the land campaign of 1812.

In March, 1813, Admiral Sir John Warren assumed the command of the British squadron on the American coast. Although rather past his prime, his defects were more than compensated by the activity of his second in command, Rear-Admiral Cockburn, who during this summer and the next kept the coasts of Chesapeake Bay in a continuous state of alarm by suc

1 Part of Smyth's correspondence while in command, transmitted by him to the House of

Representatives, will be found in Am. St. Pap.,
Mil. Aff., i. 490–510.

* [Cf. Lossing, p. 249. Dearborn was born in 1751, and died in 1829. There is a woodcut of a portrait by Stuart, painted in 1812, in the Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 574 (Mason's Stuart, p. 170). The original, now belong. ing to Miss Mary Dearborn, is deposited in the rooms of the Bostonian Society. I find a statement that a Stuart likeness belongs to Herbert Welsh of Philadelphia. On the Dearborn portraits, see Goodwin's Provincial Pictures (Chicago, 1886, pp. 72, 74). There is a portrait in Independence Hall. For views of Dearborn's house, see Drake's Roxbury, p. 327; Lossing's Field-Book of the War of 1812, p. 250. —ED.]

VOL. VII. — 25

cessful raids, in which much valuable property was destroyed. Among the more important of the actions of 1813 were the capture and destruction (in part) of Havre de Grace, Md., early in May, and an attack on the village of Hampton, Va., on the 25th of June. "Acts of rapine and violence"1 on the part of the invading forces characterized the latter attack, which excited intense indignation throughout the country. An attempt to capture Craney Island, made a few days earlier by a boat expedition from the British fleet, was repulsed, with severe loss to the enemy.

In the summer of 1813 occurred the first serious reverse of the navy during the war. On the 1st of June the frigate "Chesapeake," Captain James Lawrence, sailed from Boston to engage the "Shannon," which was lying outside, waiting for the battle. The two ships were nearly matched in guns and men, what slight difference there was being in favor of the "Chesapeake"; but the crew of the latter had been recently shipped and was partly composed of disaffected men, and Lawrence had had no time to discipline them. The engagement was short and decisive. Ranging up

* [From an engraving in the Analectic Mag. (1813), vols. ii. and iii. (separate engravings), after Stuart's picture, which is owned by Mrs. Wm. Redmond of Newport, R. I., and has been engraved by Edwin, by N. Rollinson, and by W. S. Leney. (Cf. Mason's Stuart, 212.) The medal given to Lawrence for his capture of the "Peacock" has a profile likeness (Loubat, no. 34; Lossing, 700). A view of Lawrence's tomb in Trinity Church is given in Harper's Mag., Nov., 1876, p. 872. — ED.]

"

alongside of the "Shannon," whose crew had been brought to the highest state of efficiency by Captain Broke their commander, the "Chesapeake at the first fire received a severe injury in the loss of several of her officers. Falling foul of the "Shannon," she was effectually raked, and presently a boarding party, led by Captain Broke, got possession of her deck. The great mortality among the officers,1 and the want of discipline in the crew, resulted in a victory for the boarders. The battle lasted fifteen minutes only, and the "Chesapeake " was carried as a prize to Halifax.

During this summer the naval war on the ocean continued with varying fortunes, two important actions being fought. The brig "Argus," Captain Allen, after a successful voyage in the Irish Sea, in which many prizes were taken and destroyed, was captured by the English brig "Pelican," on the 14th of August. Early in September the brig "Enterprise," commanded by Lieutenant Burrows, captured the English brig "Boxer," near Portland, Me.

The opening event of the land campaign of 1813 took place in January. General Winchester, who commanded the advance of Harrison's army of the West, reaching the Maumee Rapids on the 10th, received an urgent call for succor from the village of Frenchtown, on the River Raisin, which had been attacked by the English and Indians. Winchester sent a detachment to its relief, which beat off the assailants, and then marched to Frenchtown in person. Meanwhile, Colonel Proctor, taking advantage of the ice on the lake, crossed over in force from Malden, attacked the Americans, and made Winchester a prisoner. The latter then ordered his late command to surrender, which was done. Taking with him six hundred prisoners, Proctor returned to Malden, leaving the wounded, mostly Kentucky volunteers, at Frenchtown, where they were massacred by the Indians. The massacre of the River Raisin aroused intense indignation in the army of the Northwest, but for the present it was decided to act on the defensive. General Harrison's advance post was now Fort Meigs, on the Maumee River. The fort was invested in May by Colonel Proctor with a force of British and Indians, but the timely arrival of General Clay with a body of Kentucky volunteers compelled Proctor to retire. Another attempt to take Fort Meigs, made by Proctor in July, met with no better success, and the English general moved against Fort Stephenson, on the Sandusky, from which, on the 2d of August, he was repulsed, with great gallantry, by Major Croghan and a small garrison.

During the spring of 1813, Secretary Armstrong, who had succeeded Eustis at the War Department, had issued an order dividing the territory of the United States into nine military districts, the eighth comprising. the neighborhood of Lake Erie, under Harrison, and the ninth the rest of the frontier from Niagara to Lake Champlain, under Dearborn. It was now recognized that the command of the lakes was essential to the 1 See list of killed, wounded, and prisoners, Amer. St. Pap., Nav. Aff., ii. 629.

success of military operations in the adjacent territory, and the judicious efforts made by the navy, with this object, were destined shortly to lead to definite results. Already in the autumn of 1812, Commodore Isaac Chauncey had taken command at Sackett's Harbor, the naval depot of the Americans on Lake Ontario. At the beginning the only naval vessel on the lake was the small sloop of war "Oneida." Before Chauncey's arrival, Lieutenant Woolsey had captured the schooner "Julia," and had purchased

six other schooners. With these, Chauncey, on the 9th of November, made a brisk attack on the Canadian flotilla in Kingston harbor, a much stronger force, but badly officered and manned. Although he could not capture the Canadians, Chauncey obtained virtual control of the lake for the time. Meanwhile the construction of new vessels was actively pushed under the direction of a skilful constructor, Henry Eckford. Four additional schooners were purchased, the ship "Madison" was completed and launched, and a powerful corvette, the "General Pike," by far the largest vessel on the lake, was begun.

When the spring navigation opened, General Dearborn, being now sure of efficient coöperation on the water, determined on an offensive movement, which met with greater success than any which had hitherto been

* [From an engraving in the Analectic Mag. (1816), vol. viii., made by Edwin after a picture by J. Wood. Stuart's picture is at the Navy Yard, Brooklyn. Cf. Lossing, 887; Lamb's New York, vol. ii. — ED.]