129 cause it requires the deliberate concurrence of a majority of the representatives of the people with that of those of the states, before a bill can be presented to the president, by his approval to become an act of Congress; furthermore, that is a wholesome fiat of the organic law which renders its alteration so difficult as to be well nigh impossible. But the influence of England predominated when the rubric of acts of Parliament, supposed to proceed from the king, came to be applied to the method which places the popular after the executive branch of Congress, in the title of acts of Congress: still more did this English influence prevail when, by social regulations of precedence, senators take rank of those who represent the sovereignty, as lords do commons.

130

MILITARY OPERATIONS OF 1813. [JAN. 1813.

CHAPTER IV.

MILITARY OPERATIONS OF 1813.-NORTH-WESTERN ARMY.-KENTUCKY VOLUNTEERS.-GENERAL HARRISON.-WINCHESTER.-MASSACRE AT RIVER RAISIN.-SIEGES AT FORT MEIGS.-REPULSE AT SANDUSKY.— CROGHAN.-NAVAL BATTLE ON LAKE ERIE. - PERRY.- ELLIOTT.—

BARCLAY.

HULL's surrender left the north-west in hostile possession; more than the present state of Michigan; and exposed the borders of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky. To recover lost ground, a large body of volunteers and militia were called out from Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and placed under the command of Brigadier-General William Henry Harrison, of the Ohio militia, who had long been the popular Governor of the north-western territories. The call to arms was met everywhere with ardour; in Kentucky with great enthusiasm. Every one had led the frontier life, which renders a warlike order like an invitation to a hunting party. The question was not who should go, but who would stay. It was computed that as many as 15,000 Kentuckians were in the field. The people rose as one man, of all parties, callings, ages and situations. Several members of the Kentucky delegation in Congress with me served as privates, particularly Samuel M'Kee and Thomas Montgomery : Mr. Simpson, a fine young man, six feet six inches tall, member elect, was killed at the river Raisin; Richard M. Johnson acted as volunteer aid to General Harrison, afterwards as colonel of his excellent mounted regiment, 1200 strong. Mr. Clay, though not under arms, was abroad at the musters, urging them to action, and promising that, (as after many difficulties they did,) they should retake Malden, and bring the British with them prisoners to Kentucky. His fellow citizens were to remember, he said, that they were expected to distinguish themselves, not only as Americans, but as Kentuckians too. The Ohio Senators, Thomas Worthington and Jeremiah Morrow, were also serving as com

missioners with Governor Meigs of that State to prevail on the Indians not to take up arms against us.

A difficulty as to rank between Winchester and Harrison, both brigadiers, was adjusted at a kind of caucus, as it was called in the west, where Isaac Shelby, Judge Todd of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Clay and others settled it, that Harrison should be commissioned major-general by Governor Scott, of Kentucky, and thus, without dispute, take his place as leader of the expedition. Some of the primordial friends of the war desired also a western board of war, to direct operations there, deemed too remote from Washington for promptly efficient management. But the Secretary of War, Armstrong, had no difficulty in convincing President Madison that this would never do.

In a short time 10,000 soldiers, nearly all volunteers and militia, excellent raw materials, were embodied. Fragments of the seventeenth regiment of regular Infantry, commanded by Colonel John Miller, and of the nineteenth regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Van Horne, the seventeenth a Kentucky, the nineteenth an Ohio regiment, to whom afterwards during the seige of Fort Meigs, 200 of the regular dragoons were added, were joined to Harrison's army of 10,000 men from Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, at probably greater expense of money than the same number of men ever cost. Confidence and ardour pervading the whole, from general to private, Harrison led out this brave force, over forests, deserts, swamps, and almost insuperable obstacles for a winter campaign, doomed to be defeated in the beginning of 1813, with deplorable loss and misfortune.

The peninsula of Michigan which Hull surrendered and Harrison finally with Perry's preliminary victory reconquered, lies in conical configuration between Lakes Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Erie, with Lakes Superior and Ontario not far distant, in marvellous communication; Green Bay, Manitouline Bay and Saginaw Bay, parts of this immense expanse of Mediterranean seas, all of them much deeper than the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans, "deeper than did ever plummet sound;" so clear and transparent, most of their waters, that 200 feet below the surface is discernible; a series of lakes rising in terraces above the level of tide-water and the ocean, in incomprehensible steps of progressive altitude from Ontario to Lake Superior. The magnificent falls of Niagara and the Strait of Detroit are among the natural,

the cities of Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Erie, Sandusky, Buffalo, Rochester and Kingston of the artificial curiosities of this lake region, destined, since steam has come to control wind and water, to be seats of more extensive commerce, plied by more numerous mariners than now man the vessels of these United States, with their millions of tonnage on all the oceans of the world. The surface of Lake Huron is nearly 700 feet above the level of the ocean, while the bottom of that lake is 1100 feet in Saginaw Bay below that level. These lakes altogether are nearly nineteen degrees of latitude in breadth, by sixteen degrees of longitude in length. Their surface covers between ninety and a hundred thousand miles in extent, and they drain an area of territory of about four hundred thousand square miles. Michigan, the cabinet encircled by these frames of water, was the prize for surrendering which, without striking a blow, to an inferior force, Hull was not shot when condemned to be, to regain which Harrison pushed forward with his raw levies, on the attempt of a winter campaign in regions of impracticable difficulty.

A more gallant army than Harrison's never went to battle; the Kentucky part of it especially embraced numbers of the most estimable and considerable men of that state, and many of them veterans in Indian warfare. But seldom was discomfiture more complete or fatal than theirs. While General Harrison with the right wing was lying at Sandusky, General Winchester, commanding the left, was induced to detach Colonels Lewis and Allen, of Kentucky, to advance beyond reach of support, for the protection of the inhabitants of Frenchtown, a village on the river Raisin, which is a small stream emptying into the northwest angle of Lake Erie. The generous but unmilitary motive for this rash advance was to comply with a request of the inhabitants, who sent messages to Winchester entreating protection from Indian pillage and destruction, with which they said they were threatened. On the 18th of January, 1813, the Kentuckians, under Lewis, attacked and defeated a combined Indian and English force of 500 men under Major Reynolds, of the Canadian militia. Colonel Lewis had great experience in Indian hostilities. He had served in the campaigns of Harmer, St. Clair and Wayne, twenty years before, as well as with Governor Scott; was a man of great courage, and the favourite officer of that wing of the army. Such was the universal ardour for this expedition, that in filling the Kentucky quota

of troops to overflowing, many other veterans in Indian warfare, Simon Kenton, Bland Ballard, George Madison and others marched on this occasion. Their success at Frenchtown was so complete that it produced a degree of most unfortunate confidence in the double character of Americans and Kentuckians. The new Secretary of War, General Armstrong, sneered at what he called this press of valour under popular leaders; he never liked Harrison, and had little confidence in militia.

A good deal of bloodshed in the first essay at Frenchtown, rescuing the inhabitants from the depredations they feared, and the natural effects of complete success, flushed not only the victors themselves under Lewis, but inspired their comrades under Winchester, to almost invidious eagerness for further conflict. The news was electric at the Rapids, a few miles distant, where Winchester was. Not a man under his command could be restrained from rushing forward to join Lewis, renew his triumphs, and share their glory. General Winchester was welldisposed to lead them. He was then an elderly man, having served in the army of the Revolution; a native of Maryland, appointed from Tennessee brigadier-general of the regular army. He was a man of fortune, mild, generous, popular, and no doubt a brave man. When selected for appointment, an obscure man of that state, Andrew Jackson, desired the place given to James Winchester. But the distinguished member of Congress representing the district preferred the latter; and, as was said, because, if not put in the army, Winchester might have been a formidable candidate for Congress. On such insignificant things does the fate of men depend; and of nations. If Jackson had commanded at the Raisin, instead of Winchester, either Jackson, by being defeated, would have marred his wonderful advancement, or by heading the Lewises, Madisons, Harts, Simpsons, and other elite of Kentucky, defeated and destroyed on the 22d January, would have reversed the fortunes of that disastrous day. If so, Malden might have been retaken, the whole current of the campaign changed from a series of discomfitures, into a stream of success. Winchester was so unpopular with the Kentucky volunteers, that, when stationed, before they marched, for some time, at Lexington, prejudice against him went so far as almost to create a mutiny among these self-opinionated troops of whom he took command at Fort Wayne. For a considerable period VOL. I.-12