Still, the details of the military debacle are instructive, not only about the life of frontier Ohio, but also about divisions that reigned among those who set out to defend “the land of the free and the home of the brave” in the war that inspired Francis Scott Key to write those lyrics.
The setting
In 1812, 25 years after the United States adopted its Constitution, Ohio was a state. But parts of it remained very much a wilderness.
“People don’t realize Urbana was an outpost of the United States at the time,” explained Irick, a minister with a long interest in frontier Ohio and the route of what’s called Hull’s Trace.
When Hull, brigadier general of the American Northwest, received orders to march to Detroit, Urbana was the rendezvous point for Ohio militiamen and federal troops.
His strategic objective was the same as George Rogers Clark’s had been when he fought the Battle of Piqua at present day George Rogers Clark Park during the Revolutionary War: to counter the British and Native American influence in the western lands.
The previous year, Indiana Gov. William Henry Harrison had defeated the Indian tribes at the Battle of Tippecanoe. Far from giving up, however, the tribes sought to strengthen ties with Britain in hopes of keeping a flood of American settlers out of the territory.
Meanwhile, the British, fighting a protracted war with Napoleon, were exploiting regional divisions in the United States to limit American trade with France. They used their presence and that of Native Americans as a point of pressure against their former colony.
The settlers
Such geopolitical intrigues led Samuel Black to leave his log cabin and family in what is now Clark County’s Pike Twp. and take to the field with the militia.
Black didn’t travel with the Hull expedition in the summer of 1812, but rather started north with a different band in September over the same land.
That November, he wrote his beloved wife, Agnes: “I could, ere this time, no doubt, my dear, have been released from this tour of duty. (B)ut why should I shrink back from my country’s cause, if able to go on, and if doomed to fall therein, be reconciled to fate?”
Black’s contingency followed the same route Hull had opened up with 1,800 militia and 400 regular army soldiers.
To reach the headwaters of the Maumee on the way to Detroit, the force had had to “hack a road for 200 miles north through dense forest, creeks and swamps,” writes George C. Daughan in his 2011 book “1812: The Navy’s War.”
Irick said the advancing army had 186 wagons, 26 cannon, plus horses and mules, “a lot of stuff to move through the woods” — and across an area called the Black Swamp.
Desertions and burials were commonplace.
The divisions
Hull had been named brigadier general based on his good record during the American Revolution and political connections developed afterward. But as he advanced north, rifts developed between him, his regular army and militia leaders Duncan McArthur, James Findlay and Lewis Cass — all future governors and senators themselves.
“(The militia leaders) were all in competition with each other,” writes Daughan,” and had no respect for the aged Hull.”
The presence of Hull’s family was no help.
“One of the early accounts said that when crossing the Mad River at West Liberty, Hull’s son was so drunk he fell off his horse into the river,” said Springfielder Wes Baker, who also has studied for years Hull’s Trace and the foray to Detroit.
Further confusion arrived June 26, 1812, when Hull received a letter from U.S. Secretary of War William Eustis. Although Eustis ordered Hull to reach Detroit as quickly as possible, writes Daughan, “incredibly, the secretary made no mention of the declaration of war” Congress had issued against Great Britain.
The unsuspecting Hull didn’t protect the barge on which his heavy equipment, sick soldiers and orders were stored as they sailed up the Detroit River, resulting in their capture by a British gunship near Amherstburg, Ontario.
The surrender
What happened when Hull and his troops arrived at Detroit in July often has been told. There was a brief and seemingly successful taking of Sandwich (the present day Windsor).
But Hull refused to attack Fort Malden near Amherstburg, “an unpardonable and fatal error,” in the words of one soldier.
After further delays, Hull moved his restive troops back to Fort Detroit. There he heard news of Tecumseh’s successful attack on his resupply train and the fall of Fort Michilmackinac in northern Michigan. All the time, the British and American Indians were strengthening their forces for an eventual battle.
When British Gen. Isaac Brock demand on Aug. 16 that Hull surrender, it “seemed an outlandish, arrogant ploy even to (Brock’s) officers,” Daughan writes.
They must have been shocked when Hull complied.
Militia Col. Lewis Cass, the future “Boy Governor” of Michigan, wrote: “The guns of the fort were all loaded, the matches lighted and the men waiting anxiously for the word when Gen. Hull surrendered without suffering a single shot to be fired.”
Irick suggests one reason for Hull’s surrender was his fear of American Indians, which Brock played on in composing his note demanding surrender. Unlike his troops, Brock wrote, the American Indians “would be beyond my control” once a battle began.
Although Hull has some defenders, the bottom line was ugly. As Daughan reports, Hull surrendered “2,200 regulars and militiamen ... 33 pieces of artillery, 2,500 muskets, 5,000 pounds of gunpowder ... all of the fort (Detroit’s) supplies, as well as a 6-gun brig, Adams, tied up at Detroit’s waterfront.”
The aftermath
Later court-martialed and convicted for neglect of duty, cowardice and treason, Hull was spared execution by a confluence of events: a recommendation of leniency from the court-martial board, the friendship of President James Madison and national celebration over a Naval victory by the USS Constitution.
Harrison later reconstituted the American force, successfully retook Detroit and saw Tecumseh fall in 1813 at the Battle of Thames in Canada, accomplishments that helped bring the overall war to a draw, although one much celebrated by the fledgling United States.
An introduction to the Clark County Historical Society’s publication of Samuel Black’s diary says he “returned after his tour of duty, hopelessly ill of tuberculosis, and here, on 19 June 1814, he died.”
His wife “never remarried, but continued to live in her log house until she died on 7 September 1838, at the age of 58 years, 4 months and 16 days.”
It seems likely that Hull’s march to Detroit, and later her husband’s, are events she, too, would rather have forgotten. Still, they remain chapters in local and American history.
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368 or tstafford@coxohio.com.
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