The history of Detroit and Michigan; or, The metropolis illustrated; a chronological cyclopedia of the past and present, Vol I, Part 63

Author: Farmer, Silas, 1839-1902
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Detroit, S. Farmer & co
Number of Pages: 1096

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* His voice was, at this time, tremulous." In answer to a question from General Hull, Captain Charles Fuller, of the Fourth Regiment Infantry, said at the trial (page 98), " I have no doubt of your appearance on that occasion being the effect of per- sonal fear: I had none then, I have none now."

With regard to his neglecting to attack and con- quer Fort Malden, the following facts appear. On July 9 he received a letter from William Eustis, Sec- retary of War, dated June 24, with the following order : " Should the force under your command be equal to the enterprise, and should it be consistent with the safety of your own post, you will take pos- session of Malden, extending your conquests as cir- cumstances will justify." Concerning this letter and order, General Hull, on page 36 of his Defense, says :

This letter informs me that I am authorized to commence offen- sive operations. This would not have been the language addressed to me upon this occasion if the government had supposed I had a force sufficient to commence such operations. In that case, I should have received a command instead of an authority. In this letter the Secretary adverts to my taking possession of Malden ; but not as if he supposed I had the power of doing it.

It may well be doubted whether the annals of any police court afford a more perfect illustration of pettifoggery. Concerning this order, received July 9, General Hull says further, on page 10 of his Memoirs :

The authority I received to attack the enemy's fortress at Malden being discretionary, I wrote to the Government the same day I received it, that my force was not adequate to the enter- prise, and stated as a reason that the enemy commanded the Lake and the savages.

On July 14 he must have been more hopeful, for he wrote to the Secretary of War as follows (See the Dearborn manuscript) :

SIR,- .

The Canadian militia are deserting from Malden in large parties ; about sixty came in yesterday. I send them to their homes and give them protection. The probability is that the greatest part of them will desert in a few days. The force under my command, and the movement into their province, has had a

great effect on the Indians. They are daily returning to their villages. I have reason to believe the number of hostile Indians daily decreasing.

Again, on July 19, he wrote the Secretary :

The British force, which in numbers was superior to the Amer- ican, including militia and Indians, is daily diminishing. Fifty or sixty of the militia have deserted daily, since the American stand- ard was displayed, and taken protection. They are now reduced to less than one hundred. In a day or two I expect the whole will desert. Their Indian force is diminishing in nearly the same proportion. I have now a large council of ten or twelve nations sitting at Brownstown, and I have no doubt that the result will be that they will remain neutral.

On July 22 he addressed the Secretary of War as follows (page 10 of Appendix to his Trial) :

It is in the power of this army to take Malden by storm, but it would be attended, in my opinion, with too great a sacrifice under present circumstances. * * * If Malden was in our possession I could march this army to Niagara or York in a very short time.

This letter probably stated the facts as to his ability to take Malden. That he did not do it was one of the chief grounds for believing him cow- ardly, and his own letter proved the charge.

We now reach his charge that the lack of co-op- eration, and the armistice entered into by General Dearborn, made his defeat possible, and the sur- render necessary. The Dearborn manuscript states that on July 26 the Secretary of War wrote to Gen- eral Hull :

General Dearborn's headquarters are at Albany. He will be apprised of your situation, and directed to keep up a correspond- ence with you and the immediate command at Niagara, and to take measures to afford the necessary support.

The same day, as is shown by the Dearborn man- uscript, the instructions were sent to General Dear- born, and reached him on July 31. There is no evidence brought forward by General Hull or his defenders that, prior to this date, General Dearborn shared the responsibility of his movements, or was expected to co-operate with him. Indeed, any defi- nite arrangement could not have been made sooner, for information of Hull's arrival at Detroit had but just reached Washington on the 26th of July. On August 3 General Dearborn wrote to General Van Rensselaer at Niagara :

Take measures for keeping up a correspondence with General Hull, and ascertain his movements by expresses or otherwise, and * * * make any exertion in your power to co-operate with him, and if your force will not admit of any strong offensive operations it may be well to make such diversions in his favor as circum- stances will permit, so as to prevent the enemy from directing any force from the vicinity of Niagara to oppose the movements of General Hull.

This order shows that when Dearborn was direct- ed to co-operate with Hull, he gave directions to that

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THE SURRENDER OF DETROIT.

end. That General Hull himself did not expect that he was in any way responsible to General Dearborn prior to July 26 is clearly evident from the fact that he would not march into Canada without an order from the Secretary of War; and all his letters are addressed to and his orders received from the Secretary of War, which would have been a most absurd arrangement if he was to act under General Dearborn. There is no evidence of any kind brought forward, by Hull or Clarke, to show that Dearborn had anything to do with the raising, equipment, or drilling of Hull's force. General Hull does not claim that Dearborn ordered the march to Detroit, or give any evidence that Dearborn was to act with him prior to the order of July 26. The armistice, as shown in a letter from Dearborn to the Secretary of War, was not concluded until August 9; and, as General Dearborn shows in his letter of that date to the Secretary of War, General Hull was not in- cluded in it, because he had been receiving his orders directly from the Secretary of War, and was then believed to be capable of and engaged in offensive operations. In a letter to General Hull, dated August 9, General Dearborn said :

The removal of any troops from Niagara to Detroit, while the present arrangement continues, would be improper and incom- patible with the true intent of the agreement. I have made no arrangement that should have any effect upon your command.

General Hull complained that this armistice en- abled General Brock to withdraw forces from Niagara, and throw them against him at Detroit. It will be shown, however, that Brock himself did not know of the armistice until after the surrender of Detroit.

On page 166 of his Memoirs, General Hull says:

After the capitulation I first learned from the lips of the British commander the true state of the case-that the armistice of Gen- eral Dearborn had been eight days in operation, and that that cir- cumstance alone had enabled him to bring such a force against me.

This seems like a positive statement. General Hull, however, on page 124 of his Memoirs, says, of a letter of Colonel Cass, " It ought not to be con- sidered as any evidence. He was not under oath when he wrote it." The same remark will apply admirably to much that General Hull says.

That the armistice in question had no effect upon the situation, and that General Brock himself had no knowledge of it, is positively shown by the letter from General Brock to General Van Rensselaer, dated Fort George, August 25, 1812, given in the Dearborn manuscript. General Brock says, "It was not until my arrival at Fort Erie, late in the evening of the 23d inst., that I learned that a ces- sation of hostilities had been agreed upon between General Dearborn and Sir George Prevost." Com- parison of this letter with the statements of General

Hull makes it evident that one of the two was guilty of falsehood ; and all the facts point to General Hull as the guilty one.

In reviewing the entire campaign, General Hull, in his Memoirs, page II, says :

I remained in the enemy's country about a month, * during this time I received * *

* certain information that General Brock, with all the regulars and militia of Upper Canada, was proceeding to Malden, * * * under these circumstances I considered it my duty to recross the river, *

* * (and) on the 8th of August I recrossed the river to Detroit.

On page 49 of his Defense he says that on August 7,

About one o'clock, an express arrived with letters to me from the commanding officers on the Niagara frontier,- two from Major General Hall and one from General P. B. Porter, * * * to inform me that a large force from the neighborhood of Niagara was moving towards my army.

Comparing these two statements with the well- known fact that the army began moving the night of the 7th, it is evident that the date given in his Defense is the correct one; and the position in which he places himself is this: first, he says that he had "certain information on August 7 that Brock, with all the regulars and militia of Upper Canada, was proceeding to Malden;" second, he claims that the armistice which was entered into a day afterwards, August 8, at Niagara was the only thing that enabled him (Brock) "to bring such a force against me."

Comparison shows the absurdity of these state- ments. General Hull actually claimed that General Brock was on his way to Malden on the 7th of August, and that an occurrence of the day after was the prime cause of his being on the march. Such an anachronism is fatal to his argument. There was really nothing new in the statement of the fact that General Brock went to and from Malden. As early as June 24 General Hull himself wrote to the Secretary of War, "General Brock, the Governor of Upper Canada, arrived at Malden on the 14th inst., with one hundred British troops. On the 17th he sailed for Fort Erie, in the Queen Charlotte, and it is said she will return with a re-inforcement imme- diately." His statement on page II of his Memoirs only shows that Brock, on August 7, was still going to and from Malden.

On page 95 of his Memoirs General Hull quotes General Brock's summons to surrender, dated August 15, and on page 97 he says, "I ask on what grounds I could have possibly conceived that Gen- eral Brock had left that vital part of his province?" (meaning Niagara.) There was nothing singular about it. For nearly two months General Brock had been on the march, and General Hull had rea- son to expect him.

296

THE SURRENDER OF DETROIT.

The plea of General Hull and Mr. Clarke that the armistice was the real cause of the surrender is evi- dently an afterthought,- a plea studied up for the purpose of multiplying excuses. Its flimsy charac- ter is evident from the fact that when on trial Gen- eral Hull never even alluded to the armistice. It was only after he had been tried, convicted, and mercifully pardoned, that he discovered that the armistice was the real cause of all his troubles.

The question as to the number of men composing the army of General Hull has also been the subject of much discussion. Mr. Clarke says (Life of Hull, page 362) that "commanders are very apt, even when meaning to tell the truth, to exaggerate the enemy's forces and underrate their own." He means by this remark to insinuate that Brock had more men than the official account shows him to have had; it applies equally well, however, to both sides, and the effort to depreciate the numbers of the American army is pushed to the extreme by the friends of General Hull. On page 8 of his Memoirs General Hull says, "I proceeded to the State of Ohio, took the command of the forces, which consisted of twelve hundred militia and volunteers and about three hun- dred regulars."

In three other places in his Memoirs he repeats the statement that his forces consisted of three hun- dred of the Fourth United States Regulars and twelve hundred militia. The evidence that he understates their number is abundant, and some of it is furnished by his own words. Among the State Historical Society papers at Detroit is a letter from Judge James Witherell, dated June 22, 1812, in which he states that he has received a letter from Hull, dated June 14, showing that he would be at the river Raisin about the 26th, with about 2,200 men. On June 24 General Hull wrote to the Sec- retary of War, " In the event of hostilities, I feel a confidence that the force under my command will be superior to any which can be opposed to it. It now exceeds two thousand, rank and file."

A letter given in the Dearborn manuscript shows that two days later, in a letter to the Secretary of War from Fort Findlay, he said : "Inclosed is the most correct return that can be made of the army under present circumstances." The return is as follows :

4th Regiment of Infantry 483

Col. Findlay's Reg. of volunteers and militia 509

Col. Cass's

483

Col. McArthur's 66 "

552

Captain Sloan's troops of Cin. Lt. Dragoons 48

Total 2,075

In his Memoirs General Hull does not deny the correctness of this return, but on page 203 he says that General Dearborn

makes it appear that in the three Ohio regiments of militia, with the few dragoons, there were fifteen hundred and ninety-two men. This number is three hundred and ninety-two more than the President had ordered, which number, as has been stated, was twelve hundred, and I had no authority to take any surplus under my command. The Colonels, I presume, at that time must have included this surplus of three hundred and ninety-two men in their returns, in order to obtain provision for them in the wilder- ness, as it could not be obtained in any other way. These men were volunteers who had joined us at intervals in our march, and were not under my orders. They returned home whenever they pleased.

What amazing liberality on the part of Hull's quartermasters when food was so scarce ! General Hull would have us believe that about one fifth of the force that marched with his army, nearly four hundred men, was simply a "surplus," -volunteers, who were liable to leave the army, and did leave it, whenever they pleased. Yet these same men were on the muster-rolls, and certified to by the colonels, and even by Hull himself, as belonging to his army. Amazing "surplus"! and still more amazing effron- tery! Concerning the militia of the territory, on page 56 he says, "Little or no advantage could be derived from this militia," and yet, on page 125, he shows that there were four hundred Michigan mili- tia, some of whom he claims deserted to the enemy when they landed.

Mr. Clarke says, on page 383 of his Life of General Hull, "The whole number of troops under General Hull's command, from the beginning of his march until the surrender, was 1,800." He subtracts for blockhouses garrisoned, sickness, etc., eight hundred and forty, leaving only nine hundred and sixty at Detroit on August 16. He evidently renders an old saying, " Let Hull be true and every man a liar," but the facts show that General Hull's own state- ments do not harmonize.

When Brock, on August 15, summoned him to surrender, Hull replied, "I am prepared to meet any force which may be at your disposal." On page IIO of his Memoirs he says, " I however gave a de- cided answer that I should defend the fort, hoping to be able, before he made the invasion, to collect at Detroit the detachments under the command of McArthur and Cass, * * * and other detach- ments which were absent on other duties."

It seems, then, that at this time he thought he might defend the post, and cope with General Brock and all his force. How soon his brave vaporing changed to abject cowardice !

With regard to the lack of supplies for his army, General Hull, in his report to the Secretary of War made after the surrender, says:

It was impossible, in the nature of things, that an army could have been furnished with the necessary supplies of provision, military stores, clothing and comforts for the sick, on pack-horses, through a wilderness of two hundred miles filled with hostile savages.

297

THE SURRENDER OF DETROIT.

Why did he not realize this impossibility before he took the command of the army? He had lived in Detroit for the seven years previous, and knew its situation and its sources of supplies. In denying the proposition that if Hull had defended himself supplies would have been brought from Ohio, and in order to show that it would have been impossible, Mr. Clarke, on page 373 of his Life of Hull, quotes from a letter of General Harrison, of October 22, 1812, as follows: "To get supplies forward through a swampy wilderness of near two hundred miles, in wagons or on pack-horses which are to carry them provisions, is absolutely impossible."

The introducing an extract from a letter written in the fall of the year, when roads and swamps were notoriously bad, as evidence that the transportation of supplies in midsummer over this same route was impossible, is but one of the many absurd arguments resorted to in defense of General Hull. It seems strange, indeed, that if, as General Hull would have us believe, the probable want of provisions was one reason of his surrender, he did not anticipate this difficulty. He was evidently exceedingly prodigal of his supplies, for it will be remembered that on page 203 of his Memoirs he claims that a "surplus" of three hundred and ninety-two men, who were not under his command, were included with his army, and fed from the supplies. As late as July 29 he seems to have entertained no fear that the supplies would not hold out, for the original order issued by him on that date, in possession of the State Historical Society at Detroit, shows that he ordered rations given to persons who had fled from the British standard.

Mr. Clarke, on page 360, says:

We have seen that General Hull made three attempts to open his communications to Ohio. The first was on August 4th, by means of Major Van Horn's detachment of two hundred men, which was defeated by a small body of British and Indians. The second was on August 8th, by Colonel Miller's detachment of six hundred men, who defeated the enemy, but returned to Detroit without effecting their object. The third was by means of Mc- Arthur's and Cass's detachment, which set out August 14th, to go by a back route.

That this statement is a misrepresentation of the truth is shown by the fact that both of the last named detachments were ordered back by Hull him- self, which fact is studiously ignored in the above statement of Mr. Clarke. On page 368 he says:

As to the cattle and flour at the River Raisin within reach of the army, we have seen that before General Brock crossed the river, Major Van Horn and Colonel Miller had both attempted to reach it; the one with two hundred and the other with six hun- dred men, and that both had failed.

This statement is not true in the sense in which Mr. Clarke would have us believe. Colonel Miller would have gone forward but for lack of provisions,

which were not forwarded in time, and because he was soon ordered back by General Hull. However Mr. Clarke elsewhere concedes the whole case, in so far as lack of provisions having compelled the sur- render, for, in the preface to the Life of Hull, on page 12, he states that "General Hull could have sustained his post at Detroit had not an armistice, now a portion of history, been entered into by General Dearborn, to the exclusion of General Hull's army and without his knowledge."

General Hull voluntarily tried to include in the surrender the very troops and provisions at the Raisin which had been sent for his relief. Fortu- nately, however, they refused to be included, and escaped to Ohio.

Among the other reasons assigned for the surren- der, General Hull, on page 108 of his Memoirs, says that Brock's position at Sandwich was " more ele- vated than the fort at Detroit." This statement is well known to be absurdly untrue. He would not cross to Canada or attack Malden without orders : why, then, was he in such haste to surrender entirely on his own responsibility? He says dis- tinctly, in his letter of August 26, 1812, to the Sec- retary of War, giving an account of the surrender, " I well knew the high responsibility of the measure, and I take the whole upon myself."

Even if Brock had as many troops as Hull inti- mates, his was the attacking force ; he had to cross the river and approach a fort. All the advantages and probabilities were against him. Many battles have been fought and won under much greater odds than General Hull claims he had to contend against. It was not, however, the force that Brock really had, but only that which Hull imagined he might have, that led to the surrender. In his Defense, on pages 59 and 60, General Hull made these remarkable admissions :

I shall now state what force he (the enemy) brought, or might bring, against me. I say, gentlemen, might bring,-because it was that consideration which induced the surrender, and not the force which was actually landed on the American shore, on the morning of the 16th. It is possible that I might have met and repelled that force. If I had no further to look than the event of a contest at that time, I should have trusted to the issue of a battle. * * * If the British landed at Springwells were not much more numerous than my own troops, I knew they must have a powerful force in reserve, which they could bring to operate on me either by crossing them above the town of Detroit, or by trans- porting them in their ships to that point, and thus attack the fort on all sides, and place my army between their fire. * * * If the attack of the enemy had been repelled, our triumph would have been but temporary. My numbers must have been dimin- ished by loss in battle. They would have been daily lessened by the cannon of the enemy from the opposite shore. The force of the enemy, augmented as it was by reinforcements under Colonel Proctor, Major Chambers, and the Commander-in-chief, General Brock, would have been daily augmenting.

Yet, at that time, as he elsewhere states, he had reason to expect, and was expecting, the co-opera-

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THE SURRENDER OF DETROIT.

tion of General Dearborn, and reinforcements from Ohio; and two hundred fresh men were less than forty miles away with provisions and supplies. Verily, he had neither faith nor courage !

The statements of General Hull and his friends having been compared and analyzed, I now submit the following copies of original letters, bound up with the manuscript defense of General Dearborn, now in possession of the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Three of the letters were written by ex- Presidents of the United States; and when John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Mad- ison condemn the conduct of General Hull, we may well believe that his defenders lead a forlorn hope and essay an impossible task.

Letter of John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State.) WASHINGTON, 16 August, 1824.

General H. A. S. Dearborn Boston.

DEAR SIR,-

I have to acknowledge tne receipt of your letter, with the four newspapers containing your defence of your father against the recent publications of General Hull. Of these I had seen and read only three or four numbers, which had not excited so much interest as to induce me to look for more. While General Hull remained silent, I had, since his pardon, considered him an object of com- passion. His present appeal to the public had weakened that sentiment in my mind. Perhaps it is not in his power to forfeit the claim to it altogether. If he could, it would be by the attempt to shed upon honorable men the shame which his country has endured for committing a trust of honor and of danger to him.

I am, with great respect, Dear Sir,

Your very humble and obedient servant, JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

(Letter from Thomas Jefferson, ex-President of the United States.)

Thomas Jefferson returns his thanks to Mr. Dearborn for the communication of the papers containing the defence of his father. To him, however, no defence could, be needed of a person who has ever possessed his unlimited confidence. It has served to establish radically the opinion before entertained of the degraded being who has excited this new enquiry.

Th. J. salutes Mr. Dearborn with respectful consideration.

MONTICELLO, Aug. 20, '24.

(Letter from James Madison, President of the United States during the War of 1812.)

MONTPELIER, Aug. 23, 1824.

DEAR SIR,-

I have received and thank you for the papers containing your reply to General Hull. A part only of his address has fallen under my eye. But the facts you have arrayed before the public can scarcely fail to make him sensible of his indiscretion in pro- voking a review of his disastrous career. You have done well in performing this task, both as a contribution to the truth of His- tory and as the discharge of a filial duty to one whose solid repu- tation will be but the more firmly settled on its foundation by attempts to shake it.

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The history of Detroit and Michigan; or, The metropolis illustrated; a chronological cyclopedia of the past and present, Vol I, Part 63

Author: Farmer, Silas, 1839-1902 Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Detroit, S. Farmer & co Number of Pages: 1096

Author: Farmer, Silas, 1839-1902
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Detroit, S. Farmer & co
Number of Pages: 1096