200 Chapter 7 National Growing Pains
The third arm of the American “attack” was
equally unsuccessful. Major General Henry Dearborn,
who had fought honorably in the Revolution from
Bunker Hill to Yorktown, but who had now grown so
fat that he needed a specially designed cart to get from
place to place, set out from Plattsburgh, New York, at
the head of an army of militiamen. Their objective was
Montréal, but when they reached the border, the
troops refused to cross. Dearborn meekly marched
them back to Plattsburgh.
Meanwhile, the British had captured Fort
Michilimackinac in northern Michigan, and the
Indians had taken Fort Dearborn (now Chicago),
massacring eighty-five captives. Instead of sweeping
triumphantly through Canada, the Americans found
themselves trying desperately to keep the Canadians
out of Ohio.
Stirred by these disasters, westerners rallied
somewhat in 1813. General Harrison, the victor of
Tippecanoe, headed an army of Kentuckians in a
series of inconclusive battles against British troops
and Indians led by Tecumseh. He found it impossi-
ble to recapture Detroit because a British squadron
controlling Lake Erie threatened his communica-
tions. President Madison therefore assigned
Captain Oliver Hazard Perry to the task of building
a fleet to challenge this force. In September 1813,
at Put-in-Bay near the western end of the lake,
Perry destroyed the British vessels in a bloody
battle in which 85 of the 103 men on Perry’s flag-
ship were casualties. “We have met the enemy and
they are ours,” he reported. About a quarter of
Perry’s 400 men were blacks, which led him to
remark that “the color of a man’s skin” was no
more an indication of his worth than “the cut and
trimmings” of his coat. With the Americans in con-
trol of Lake Erie, Detroit became untenable for the
British, and when they fell back, Harrison gave
chase and defeated them at the Thames River, some
60 miles northeast of Detroit. Although little more
than a skirmish, this battle had large repercussions.
Tecumseh was among the dead and without him
the Indians lost heart. But American attempts to
win control of Lake Ontario and to invade Canada
in the Niagara region were again thrown back. Late
in 1813 the British captured Fort Niagara and
burned the town of Buffalo. The conquest of
Canada was as far from realization as ever.
The British fleet had intensified its blockade of
American ports, extending its operations to New
England waters previously spared to encourage the
antiwar sentiments of local maritime interests. All
along the coast, patrolling cruisers, contemptuous of
Jefferson’s puny gunboats, captured small craft,
raided shore points to commandeer provisions, and
collected ransom from port towns by threatening to
bombard them. One captain even sent a detail ashore
to dig potatoes for his ship’s mess.In the heat of the Battle of Lake Erie, Perry had to abandon his flagship, the Lawrence, which had been shot
to pieces by enemy fire. (Over three-fourths of the ship’s crew were killed or wounded.) He was rowed to the
Niagara, from which he directed the rest of the engagement.