Ohio History Journal

GENERAL WILLIAM HULL AND HIS CRITICS

 

By M. M. QUAIFE

 

The Detroit campaign of 1812 lasted, in all, but little over

two months (June 10-August 16); a century and a quarter has

passed since its conclusion, during which General William Hull's

countrymen have continued to load upon him the heavy measure

of condemnation which was meted out to him by his contemporary

associates and critics.     This attitude has been      perpetuated by

three generations of historians most of whom have repeated the

chorus of contemporary condemnation.¹ In the writer's opinion

it is quite time to re-examine the verdict which blasted Hull's

reputation and condemned him to a shameful death. The recent

article of Prof. C. H. Cramer2 reflects, in a general way, the

current condemnation of Hull's leadership. This offering is in-

tended as a commentary upon Cramer's presentation, in part, but

in a larger sense upon the entire body of criticism of Hull,

whether voiced by Cramer or not.

That Hull was no military genius is, of course, painfully

obvious; equally obvious is it that there were no leaders of

Napoleonic character in the American army in 1812.           Had there

been, their talent would have been wasted for lack of the public

spirit and governmental organization essential to the successful

waging of military campaigns.        Hull failed, in part because of

his own defective leadership; but in larger part because of con-

ditions over which he had no control, and which his contemporary

 

1 It is somewhat noteworthy that Michigan historians, who might be presumed

to know the facts as well as any, have been disposed on the whole to extenuate

Hull's failure. Among exemplars of this attitude may be noted Judge Thomas M.

Cooley, Clarence Monroe Burton and George B. Catlin. The Dictionary of American

Biography (New York, 1928-1937) article on Hull, the most recent expression of

American historical scholarship on the subject, after stating that Hull was found

guilty of cowardice and neglect of duty, observes that "these charges would hardly

be sustained today." The author adds that "his surrender without a battle was a

blow to American morale from which it took nearly two years to recover." To the

present writer this statement seems wholly without foundation.

2 C. H. Cramer, "Duncan McArthur: the Military Phase," Ohio State Archaeo-

logical and Historical Society Quarterly (Columbus), XLVI (1937), 128-47.

(168)

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GENERAL WILLIAM HULL                  169

 

critics were equally impotent to cope with. This is not an attempt

to relieve Hull of the measure of condemnation to which he is

justly liable but merely to indicate the extent to which he has

been made a scapegoat for America's shortcomings in the War

of 1812.

The more important criticisms which Cramer's article in-

vites are two in number: Lack of familiarity with the geography

of the Detroit River area, leading to confused, or even unintel-

ligible, statements, and too ready acceptance of contemporary

reports at their authors' own valuation, without subjecting them

to the test of critical examination.

The geographical confusion is shared by Cramer with a dis-

tinguished predecessor in the historical field, for Francis Parkman

never understood his directions at Detroit, although Robert

"Believe-it-or-not" Ripley does. From Lake St. Clair to Sand-

wich (well below the Detroit of 1812) the river flows from east

to west, instead of from north to south, with the result that

Canada is here south of the United States. Indeed, a century or

so ago present-day Windsor was called South Detroit. At Sand-

wich the river turns southward in its further course to Lake

Erie (14 or 15 miles distant). Confusion over these simple

facts serves to render certain of Cramer's statements unintelligible.

For example (p. 131), "McArthur commanded the detachment

which successfully decoyed the enemy south of the town," after

which he "hurried north . . . to join the main American force."

The Pied Piper decoyed the rats of Hamelin into the river, and

General Duncan McArthur must have done as much for the

British army if he followed these directions. Today, the vehicu-

lar tunnel runs south from Detroit to Windsor, and north from

Windsor to Detroit. Obviously, McArthur did not follow its

course; instead, he marched westward from Detroit, along the

river bank, and having performed his feint, returned eastward

through the town to rejoin the main army, which crossed the

river at Belle Isle, landing in modern Walkerville (more recently

incorporated in Greater Windsor).

A more significant geographical error is evidenced on page

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170   OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

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GENERAL WILLIAM HULL                171

 

133, in dealing with Hull's final effort to restore his line of com-

munication with distant Ohio. Apart from confusing Captain

Henry Brush of Chillicothe with Major Elijah Brush of Detroit,

commander of the Michigan Territorial Militia, Cramer confuses

the operation he seeks to describe.  Captain Henry Brush had

come northward (over the trail opened by Hull) as far as Mon-

roe, bringing cattle and other supplies for Hull's army. From

the Maumee to Detroit, the road skirted the lakeshore and (farther

north) the river bank, passing through the present down-river

suburbs of Trenton, Wyandotte, Ecorse, and River Rouge. About

midway between Monroe and Detroit and directly across the

river lies Amherstburg (frequently called Malden), since 1796

the British military and administrative center at the west end of

Lake Erie. The British and Indians knew their local geography,

and early in August they put an effective check upon Hull's

invasion of Canada by crossing the river from Amherstburg to

Brownstown and occupying the roadway at that point.  By this

simple operation they effected the complete isolation of Hull's

army from its government, and its base of supplies in Ohio.

Until the road should be cleared and the communication restored,

the army was a veritable "lost battalion," and to this objective

Hull promptly bent his further energies.  Two efforts to open

the road to Monroe led to two battles (Brownstown on August

5 and Monguagon on August 9) and two complete failures.

Even before the issue of the second effort, Hull withdrew the

army from Canada to Detroit, in the night of August 7 and the

following morning. Following Monguagon, General Isaac Brock

arrived at Amherstburg from Niagara, and Hull, late on August

14, dispatched Colonels Lewis Cass and McArthur, two of the

three militia colonels, with approximately one-fourth of his entire

army, on a third effort to contact Captain Brush.

The ancient Indian trail from Detroit to Fort St. Joseph ran

westward through Dearborn, Wayne, and Ypsilanti, and at dif-

ferent times has been known as the Road to St. Joseph, the

Sauk Trail, the Chicago Road, and U. S. Highway No. 112.

Ypsilanti is on the Huron River, which empties into Lake Erie

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172    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

near Rockwood, a dozen miles north of Monroe, and almost thirty

miles southwest of Detroit. It is also eight or ten miles below

Brownstown, where the enemy lay athwart the direct road from

Monroe to Detroit. Since two efforts to drive him from it had

failed, it was now proposed to circumvent him by sending Cass

and McArthur by the inland trail to Ypsilanti, to which point

Captain Brush would proceed from Monroe; from Ypsilanti, the

covering force would escort Brush, with his supplies, back to

Detroit.

Although the trail to Ypsilanti had been familiar to Detroiters

for more than a century, Cass and McArthur made sad work of

following it, and even sadder work of supplying an intelligible

report of their movements. To follow Cramer, however, they

were sent out to relieve Captain Brush, who had been "bottled

up" at Monroe. The term is inaccurate, since nothing restrained

his freedom of movement save the knowledge that if he moved

forward to Brownstown he would there encounter the British.

"After advancing twenty-four miles" Cass and McArthur found

themselves in a marsh and short of food, and they now learned

of Hull's surrender to Brock. "With the enemy in front and

famine in the rear," McArthur (presumably, also, his associate,

Cass) was in a difficult situation. In this dilemma manna de-

scended from heaven in the form of a large ox, which the soldiers

joyfully barbecued. While thus engaged, two British officers

appeared, with the articles of Hull's capitulation.  McArthur

thereupon surrendered to them, "since a retreat to Fort Wayne"

(the nearest place where supplies could be found) was out of

the question.

Professor Cramer's confusion is sufficiently obvious; excuse

for it is found in the fact that the reports he is following are

either purposely misleading or amazingly careless of the truth.

The real movements of Cass and McArthur on the critical fif-

teenth and sixteenth of August cannot certainly be determined,

but Clarence Monroe Burton, whose knowledge of Detroit local

history has never been excelled, has arrived at an approximate

exposition of them. The detachment left Detroit about sunset

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GENERAL WILLIAM HULL                  173

 

on the fourteenth, intent on contacting Brush at Ypsilanti. If it

advanced twenty-four miles, it was far beyond any possible inter-

ference from Brock on the sixteenth. Instead, Burton shows3

that camp was made the first night barely two miles from the

fort. On the fifteenth the detachment advanced "slowly" until

evening, when the leaders (having encountered no enemy) decided

to return to Detroit, and marching much of the night, encamped

on the ground occupied the night before.  The morning of the

sixteenth, when Brock was crossing from Sandwich to Spring

Wells, and the cannonading from Windsor was proceeding, they

were within sight of the Detroit stockade, but made no effort to

inform Hull of their presence or to interfere with Brock, despite

the fact that a messenger had come from Hull the night before,

expressly ordering them to return.  Instead, they retreated to

the Rouge (perhaps three or four miles) and were here engaged

roasting their ox while the surrender of Detroit was taking place.

Enough, perhaps, has been said to suggest that such criticism

of Hull as proceeds from the mouths of Cass and McArthur

should be examined with care before credence is given to it. It

is proposed here, however, to take a somewhat wider view of

the campaign, and in its course to examine more generally the

charges leveled against Hull. His first and greatest mistake--the

one from which all later consequences flowed--was his initial

decision to accept command of the army, since as he had cor-

rectly pointed out to the Government, Detroit was untenable by

any force which lacked naval command of the lakes. The Gov-

ernment did nothing to achieve this command, yet Hull foolishly

yielded to its persuasion that he assume charge of the army de-

signed to hold Michigan and conquer western Canada. The force

that was raised was primarily an assemblage of adult males, rather

than an army. It consisted of the Fourth U. S. Infantry, about

300 strong, and three regiments of Ohio militia, 1,200 in all,

raised in the frontier fashion and officered by local politicians,

who were about as innocent of military skill as they were of a

knowledge of Sanscrit. Although the war was popular in Ohio,

3 Clarence Monroe Burton, City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922 (Chicago, 1922),

11, 1009-11.

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174      OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

neither privates nor officers had any remote conception of disci-

pline, or any notion of submitting to it.⁴       Before the departure of

the army from Urbana a portion of the militia defied their com-

mander, and were cowed into submission only by Hull's firmness

in using his one regular regiment to subdue them.

At the moment of invading Canada a similar revolt occurred.

Hull had planned to cross the river in the night of July 10, but

his project was defeated by some unruly soldiers, who in defiance

of orders "kept constantly firing off their pieces." Although the

militia were duly exhorted by their officers "in the catching lan-

guage of sincerity" concerning the necessity of invading Canada,

and the resultant glory to be gained therefrom, a considerable

fraction of the army refused to leave American soil.⁵ Exhibi-

tions of similar insubordination at Niagara and elsewhere are

matters of common knowledge. Not so well known, perhaps, is

the fact that General William Henry Harrison, the most popular

leader the Northwest produced in the war, was wholly unable in

1812 to control his soldiers. Upon the news of the Indian siege

of Fort Wayne, the Ohioans swarmed to the colors in such num-

bers that "every road to the frontiers was crowded with un-

solicited volunteers."6    Their zeal merely led to the consumption

of the supplies accumulated by Hull's orders for the use of his

own army, for within ten days they deserted the army en masse,

with Fort Wayne still unrelieved and unseen, and not all the

eloquence employed by Harrison could restrain them. Unlike

4 Professor Theodore Calvin Pease's graphic characterization (Centennial History

of Illinois, II, 160-61) of the Illinois soldiers assembled to fight Chief Black Hawk

in 1832 might well have been penned to describe the Ohio soldiers of 1812. At

Stillman's River in 1832, 340 militiamen were put to utter rout by Black Hawk

with only forty warriors.  At Brownstown, on August 5, 1812, Major Thomas B.

Van Horn's 200 Ohioans were driven in similar rout by Tecumseh with twenty-five

warriors. The numerical ratio is identical in each instance--eight militiamen to one

Indian. At Brownstown six officers were slain--one-third the total deaths suffered

by Van Horn. Hull supplies the reason: The militia "ran away at the first fire and

left their officers to be massacred." Report of the Trial of Brig. Gen. Wm. Hull

(New York, 1814), 66. The "Ohio Volunteer," James Foster, was able to find

satisfaction in their nimble footwork, observing: "Fortunately for Major Vanhorne,

a small portion of his detachment which behaved in a rather cowardly manner, by

precipitantly retreating, prevented a party of British and Indians, who were detached

for that purpose, from cutting off his retreat." See his The Capitulation (Chillicothe,

1812), 56.

5 Hull puts the number at 180. Other statements vary, but it is clear that the

true figure was distressingly large.

6 Moses Dawson, Narrative...of the Civil and Military Services of Major Gen-

eral William Henry Harrison (Cincinnati, 1824), 288.

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GENERAL WILLIAM        HULL                     175

 

Hull at Urbana, Harrison made no effort, other than oratorical,

to control them.⁷

Not only was the army a stranger to soldierly discipline, but

it was well-nigh criminally lacking in ordinary material equipment.

The revolt at Urbana was occasioned by the neglect to pay for

the clothing that had been promised. On reaching Cincinnati,

on his way to join the army, Hull had learned that the powder

supply was dangerously inadequate, and the very guns supplied

the soldiers were in such deporable condition that he was forced

to organize a company of artificers and procure a traveling forge

with which to repair them while the army was maching north-

ward to meet the enemy.

As for food, there was plenty in southern Ohio, but the

problem of transporting it to feed the army was one of appalling

dimensions. There was no road through the Indian country

from Urbana northward, and permission must first be gained

from the red men before Hull could even begin cutting one.⁸

With 300 regulars and 1200 militia as his army, Hull was ex-

pected to cut a road through the northern Ohio wilderness; build

and garrison blockhouses to guard it; maintain his 200-mile line

of communications, open all the way to Indian or British attack,

and from Maumee Rapids onward to naval attack, against which

he was helpless; to invade Canada, despite the presence of British

armed vessels, and conquer it as far as Niagara, at the opposite

end of Lake Erie.

He cut the road and brought his army to Detroit, all things

 

7 McArthur's methods of enforcing discipline were similar to Harrison's. Illus-

trative, is his conduct at a critical moment in the Detroit campaign which affords

a unique addition to the literature of military science. After the battle of Mon-

guagon on August 9, McArthur was sent from Detroit with 100 men to bring in

the wounded. He was returning with them in boats up the river, when his valiant

militiamen spied the British ship Hunter across the river, which is here two or

more miles wide. Although the Hunter was paying no attention to the boats, and

evidently had not seen them, the militiamen immediately abandoned their helpless

charges and rushed madly for the protecting forest. McArthur followed them and

not only stayed their flight, but induced them to return to their post of duty. How

he accomplished it is thus related by Foster, his admiring fellow-Ohioan: "He had

on board of his boat a cask, which contained a few gallons of whiskey, with which

he told the men to fill their canteens and invited them to drink freely; he related

to them the anecdote of an Indian, who finding himself descending with rapidity to

the falls of Niagara, seized his bottle of rum and drunk the contents ere he had

reached the dreadful precipice. In this manner, the Col. encouraged his men, and

without difficulty they reembarked."

8 Not until several years later was it possible for one to journey from Detroit

to the adjoining United States without trespassing on Indian territory.

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176    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

considered an extremely creditable feat. From Detroit on July

12 he crossed the river unopposed, thanks to the operation which

Cramer has described, and advanced a few miles in the direction

of Amherstburg. Here the campaign boggled down, and the

invasion ended, four weeks later, in the withdrawal of the army

to Detroit. Although the commander of a beaten army wastes

his time apologizing for his failure, the historian may properly

examine the causes of it. Hull himself gave several reasons for

his failure; among others, Henry Dearborn's armistice which left

the British farther east free to transfer their forces to Detroit;

the fall of Mackinac and the approach of the "northern hordes"

of savages, avid to pillage and massacre; the inability to maintain

his communication with Ohio, on which the further existence of

his army depended. He did not mention, of course, the cause

which his critics vociferously emphasized, his own lack of bolder,

more aggressive leadership.

Ignoring, for the moment, both defense and hostile criticisms,

the two compelling causes of Hull's failure, before which all

other details pale to insignificance are: he had been given a task

ludicrously beyond the possibility to perform with the resources

at his command; and there was not a responsible officer in his

army (the three Ohio colonels not excepted) who possessed

enough military skill or knowledge to lead it against the enemy.

The latter point is treated first. From Hull's headquarters

in Windsor (still standing) to the River Canard, the farthest

advance of the American force, is ten or a dozen miles. From

July 12 to the night of August 7, Hull maintained his head-

quarters at Windsor, meanwhile sending out detachments of

troops repeatedly toward Malden. The country is as level as a

table-top, and there were no defenses of any kind, except Fort

Maiden itself. The Ohio political colonels, Cass and McArthur,

led these expeditions (McArthur for several days commanded

the entire army in Canada) and at the Canard were within four

miles of Fort Malden. What (save their own incompetence)

prevented them from going on and taking the place? Let any

reader peruse the recital of James Foster, a soldier under McAr-

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GENERAL WILLIAM HULL                 177 thur, or the journal of another soldier, and future governor, of Ohio, Robert Lucas, of these wearisome days, and conclude if he can that any of the Ohio militia officers were any better

qualified to lead the army, or more eager to face the enemy, than the general they derided and conspired to overthrow. So far as Cass and McArthur (perhaps Hull's most influential critics) are concerned, their crowning demonstration of incapacity for ag- gressive leadership was afforded on their joint final expedition

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178    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

of August 14 to 16. Ordered to Ypsilanti to meet and convoy

Captain Brush, they abandoned the mission, although unopposed;

returning to the vicinity of the town, they calmly disregarded

Hull's order to rejoin him; with the bombardment going on and

Brock crossing to the attack, they went off in another direction

to the Rouge, where no enemy was, to regale themselves upon

an unfortunate ox. Unlike brave Rowland and Captain Brush

at Monroe, they neither fought nor made any effort to escape.

If either Ohio colonel performed the legendary act, discussed

by Cramer on page 134, of breaking his sword in disgust over

the surrender, he had ample cause for doing so; but a greater

degree of candor would have fixed the object of his disgust nearer

home than the person of Hull.

It remains to note the regular army lieutenant colonel, James

Miller, of subsequent text-book fame. The regimental flag he lost

at Detroit is still preserved in London as a military trophy. He dif-

fered from the Ohio colonels in at least one important respect, for

when he found the enemy in sight he possessed the will to fight.

Yet he failed as completely of attaining the objective set him as did

all of Hull's other officers. To Monguagon on August 9 he led

600 men, one-half of them his own (and Hull's only) regular

regiment. He fought a good battle and drove the enemy in flight

from the field of action. Instead, however, of reaping the fruits

of victory by proceeding on to contact Captain Brush at Monroe,

he halted in his tracks and presently returned to Detroit. With

one-third to one-half the entire army, and on the American side

of the river, he failed to open the line to Monroe. His reasons?

--lack of provisions, personal illness, the necessity of caring for

his wounded, and the difficult state of the roads by reason of

recent rains. That these were not compelling, is not denied. But

the pot, at least, should not call the kettle black. If Miller,

entrusted with more than one-third of the army, could not ad-

vance the twenty miles from Brownstown to Monroe, even after

clearing the enemy from the way; if McArthur and Cass, given

repeated opportunities, could not march from the Canard to

Maiden, four miles away; or, unopposed, the thirty miles from

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GENERAL WILLIAM       HULL                     179

Detroit to Ypsilanti, when directly ordered to do so; they, at

least, should not be too clamant in condemning Hull for not

conquering all western Canada and marching through hostile

country 250 miles to Niagara.

Let the activities of some of his contemporaries who were

not condemned to death, but instead were loaded with political

favors by their appreciative countrymen, now          be noted.    After

his triumph of August 16, Brock left Colonel Henry Procter

with a garrison of 250 men to hold Detroit, while he himself

hurried eastward to glory and death at Niagara. For over a year

Procter's single 41st Regiment, aided by the Indian allies and

such Canadian militia as could be mustered, held Detroit and the

Lake Erie front, despite every effort of the Americans, with

vastly larger forces than Hull had commanded, to dislodge them.

Twice during 1813 he carried the war to the Maumee, where

Harrison maintained possession of Fort Meigs only by desperate

efforts.   For over a year, Harrison did not venture to send a

soldier north of the Maumee, although the immediate objective

of all his operations was the recovery of Detroit.          In January,

1813, General James Winchester ventured as far north as Monroe,

only to have his army entirely destroyed by Procter; and Har-

rison, without awaiting the news of Winchester's fate, made in-

decent haste to disclaim all military and moral responsibility for

his venture. With marching and counter-marching, the establish-

ment of bases and the later burning of them in panic,⁹ the year

was filled with futile and in large part aimless gestures in the

direction of Detroit; the operations as a whole amounted to a

demonstration on a larger scale of that inability to lead an army

 

9 Rev. Alfred Brunson was a soldier in Harrison's army at Fort Seneca, at the

time of Procter's advance upon Fort Stephenson. He relates that on hearing reports

of Procter's advance with "5000 regulars and 6000 Indians [the actual army may

have been one-tenth these numbers]" Harrison hastily ordered Major George Croghan

to burn Fort Stephenson and join his army at Fort Seneca, where Harrison himself

was in readiness to burn everything, "provisions, stores, tents," and beat an instant

retreat. The order to Croghan miscarried; he did not join Harrison the next morning,

and the latter must either hold his ground at Fort Seneca or abandon Croghan's

little force to (as believed) certain destruction. In this dilemma a "Council of

War" was held, to decide which course to pursue. When Harrison asked for Cass's

opinion, the latter sagely observed that it would be better not to retreat "till we

see something to retreat from," and so the army remained, "to meet the enemy at

our breastworks... despite the odds in numbers." Comment upon the state of mind

of the general, to whom the recovery of the Northwest had been committed, seems

needless.

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180    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

in the face of the enemy which had been so painfully illustrated

by Hull, McArthur, and Cass between Windsor and Amherst-

burg in the summer weeks of 1812. The one success in a year

of campaigning was won by a twenty-one year old boy, Major

George Croghan, at Fort Stephenson; and for this brilliant

minor affair, Harrison could claim no credit. After Oliver

Hazard Perry's victory of September 10 had given the Americans

that naval control of the lakes which Hull two years before had

urged upon the Government as essential to American success in

the Northwest, Harrison, strengthened by fresh levies of a dozen

regiments from Kentucky, ventured for the first time to advance

upon Detroit; for the British, the game was up, and Procter's

little army promptly fled eastward, to be overtaken and destroyed

in a despairing rear-guard action at the Thames on October 5.

He who would know the shameful story of the northwestern oper-

ations from Detroit in 1812 to the Thames in 1813 may find it

succinctly stated in Emory Upton's Military Policy of the United

States, from which the following quotation is taken:

The cost of dispersing the 800 British regulars, who from first to last

had made prisoners of Hull's army at Detroit, let loose the northwestern

Indians, defeated and captured Winchester's command at Frenchtown, be-

sieged the Northwestern Army at Fort Meigs, and twice invaded Ohio . . .

teaches a lesson well worth the attention of any statesman or financier.

Not counting the hastily organized and half-filled regiments of regulars,

sent to the West, the records of the Adjutant-General's Office show that

about 50,000 militia were called out in 1812 and 1813, from the states of

Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, for service against

Procter's command.10

If to save Ohio from conquest, and to recover Detroit from

the grasp of the valiant British 41st Regiment, required a year

of time, the service of 50,000 militia, uncounted levies of regulars,

and a navy triumphant on Lake Erie, why should Hull have

been pilloried for his failure to do far more than this in a

few weeks, with 300 regulars, perhaps 1500 militia, and no navy

whatever? The answer rests largely in the realm of psychology.

A certain faction of the American public had stampeded the

Administration into declaring war against Great Britain. The

measures taken for conquering the most militant nation on earth

 

10 Emory Upton, Military Policy of the United States (Washington, 1917), 111.

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GENERAL WILLIAM HULL                  181

were largely confined to the field of oratory. In the West, where

alone the war was genuinely popular, it was fondly anticipated

that Canada would fall into our hands like an over-ripe apple.

Henry Clay, Kentucky's peerless orator, voiced the general ex-

pectation when he affirmed that Kentucky alone would conquer

Canada in a few weeks time. In such an atmosphere of child-

like innocence, Hull's army of 300 soldiers and 1200 Ohio citi-

zens began the romp from Urbana which was to continue to

Niagara, or even to Montreal. The disillusionment produced by

Hull's surrender was exceedingly painful. To blame others for

one's own stupidity and short-comings is easy and ever popular.

A scapegoat must be found to appease the angry multitude and

clear the skirts of the fatuous politicians at Washington and the

make-believe soldiers of Ohio, and Hull was offered up on the

altar of his country's folly. In three years of warfare the Gov-

ernment enlisted 500,000 soldiers, as many as the entire popula-

tion of Canada, and the end saw Canada unconquered, the Capitol

and presidential residence in flames, the country invaded and

within a hair's breadth of dismemberment and national ruin.

It was Hull's peculiar misfortune to be the first to reveal the

depths of the Nation's folly, and to attract the cyclone of its

wrath. If he failed totally, or even shamefully, it was not for

such blunderers as McArthur, of whom even Professor Cramer's

friendly pen does not make much of a military hero, to cast the

first stone. His final conclusion is that "since McArthur never led

a large army in a vital campaign, the story of what he might have

done remains within the realm of conjecture." Possibly so. At

any rate, it is known he was proficient at capturing an unguarded

flock of sheep, and an expert at writing letters of resignation; the

measure of his statesmanship is suggested by the fact that as late

as February, 1815, he had no conception that the war had been

won, and was deliberately advising his Government to depopulate

Detroit and make of western Canada and Michigan Territory an

uninhabited desert.¹¹

The nature of Hull's failure is better disclosed by certain

11 Duncan McArthur to James Monroe, Secretary of War, February 6, 1815.

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182    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

general remarks of William  Wood, Canada's historian of the

war, in comparing the opposing forces of the two hostile nations,

than by all the accusations of his contemporary critics:

"An armed mob must be very big indeed before it has the

slightest chance against a small but disciplined army." And "The

Americans [in the war] had more than four times as many men.

The British had more than four times as much discipline and

training."12

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12 William Wood, The War with the United States (Toronto, 1915), 20-22.

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