862

HULL'S SURRENDER OF MICHIGAN.

1812.

General Brock appeared at Sandwich, and began to erect batteries to protect his further operations. These batteries Hull would not suffer any to molest, saying, that if the enemy did not fire on him, he would not on them, and though, when summoned to surrender upon the 15th, he absolutely refused, yet upon the 16th, without a blow struck, the governor and general crowned his course of indecision and unmanly fear, by surrendering the town of Detroit and territory of Michigan, together with fourteen hundred brave men longing for battle, to three hundred English soldiers, four hundred Canadian militia, disguised in red coats, and a band of Indian allies.*

For this conduct he was accused of treason and cowardice, and found guilty of the latter. However brave be may have been personally, he was, as a commander, a coward; and moreover, be was influenced, confessedly, by his fears as a father, lest his daughter and her children should fall into the hands of the Indians.

In truth, bis faculties seemed to have been paralyzed by fear; fear that he should fail; fear that his troops would be unfair to him, fear that the savages would spare no one, if opposed with vigor; fear of some undefined and horrid evil impending. M'Afee accuses him of intemperance, but no effort was made on his trial to prove this, and we have no reason to think it a true charge; but his conduct was like that of a drunken man, without sense or spirit.

But the fall of Betroit, though the leading misfortune of this unfortunate summer, was not the only one. Word, as we have stated, had been sent through the kindness of some friend, uuder a frank from the American Secretary of the Treasury, informing the British commander at St. Joseph, of the declaration of war; while Lieut. Hanks, commanding the American fortress at Mackinac, received no notice from any source.

The consequence was an attack upon the key of the northern lakes, on the 17th of July, by a force of British, Canadians, and savages, numbering in all, one thousand and twenty-one: the garrison amounting to but fifty-seven effective men, felt unable to withstand so formidable a body, and to avoid the constantly threatened Indian massacre, surrendered as prisoners of war, and were dismissed on parole, t

*M'Afce, from 85 to 92. Armstrong's Notices, i. 26 to 33 ; ibid. i. Appendix, No. 10. j-For the British account of Hull's surrender, see Niles' Register, iii. 14, 33, 2G5 to 2GB.