Tecumseh and Brock (18 page)

During the critical early weeks of the conflict, General Brock behaved as though he had nothing on his mind but the upcoming battle against the Americans. In truth, Brock and Prevost had been thinking about whether a deal might be negotiated to bring an early end to the war. They were acutely aware that one of the U.S. government's major quarrels with Britain was the British Orders in Council directing the Royal Navy to blockade all continental ports and halt the entry of foreign ships, including U.S. vessels, unless they first landed at a British port and paid customs duties.

Having rather reluctantly led the United States into war with Great Britain, the Madison administration was also not averse to seeking ways to end the conflict. A few weeks after the declaration of war, Secretary of State James Monroe instructed the administration's chargé d'affaires in London, Jonathan Russell, to attempt to work out a deal to end the conflict. Monroe required two concessions from the British. The first was the repeal by the British of the Orders in Council; the second was an end to the practice of impressment.

In fact, on the eve of the outbreak of the War of 1812, the British had decided to offer the Americans an olive branch by repealing the Orders in Council. Two days before the United States declared war, the Parliament at Westminster took steps to repeal the Orders, and three days after the declaration of war, they were repealed. The Americans, of course, were not aware that the British had made this conciliatory gesture.

Meanwhile, Monroe's other demand — that impressment be stopped — had not been met. Toward the end of August 1812, when Russell outlined the American case to Britain's foreign minister, Lord Castlereagh, he added as a further inducement that the U.S. Congress would swiftly pass legislation prohibiting the use of British seamen on American vessels, a policy that the Americans believed would end the practice of impressment.

Castlereagh responded that he believed that the repeal of the Orders in Council gave sufficient incentive to stop the American rush to war. He rejected the impressment demand with derision. “I cannot refrain on one single point from expressing my surprise,” declared Castlereagh, “that as a condition preliminary even to a suspension of hostilities, the Government of the United States should have thought fit to demand that the British Government should desist from its ancient and accustomed practice of impressing British seamen from the merchant ships of a foreign state, simply on the assurance that a law shall hereafter be passed to prohibit the employment of British seamen in the public or commercial service of that state.” Castlereagh closed the matter by saying that his government could not “consent to suspend the exercise of a right upon which the naval strength of the empire mainly depends.”
27
As far as direct negotiations between the two belligerent powers were concerned, that was that, for the time being.

Several weeks earlier, on July 31, 1812, still hopeful that a deal might be reached to bring about an early end to the war, General Prevost, writing from Quebec, alerted General Brock at Fort George that “should the intelligence which arrived yesterday by the way of Newfoundland, prove correct, a remarkable coincidence will exist in the revocation of Our Orders in Council as regards America, and the declaration of war by Congress against England, both having taken place on the same day in London and at Washington, the 17th June.”
28

In a further letter, sent two days later, on August 2, and marked “private and confidential,” Prevost acquainted Brock with a communication he had received “referring to a declaration of Ministers in Parliament, relative to a proposed repeal of the Orders in Council, provided the United States Government would return to relations of amity with us.” Prevost held out the prospect to Brock that a deal might be worked out that would “induce the American Government to agree to a suspension of Hostilities as a preliminary to negotiations for Peace.”
29

Hoping for an early end to the war, Prevost at once sent Colonel Edward Baynes, the adjutant general for British forces in Canada, under a flag of truce to meet with General Dearborn in Albany to propose an armistice. Dearborn was favourable to the idea, but he lacked the authority to negotiate an armistice. He was willing, nonetheless, to order his officers to limit themselves to defensive measures until he received word from the U.S. government about its wishes. As it turned out, President Madison was completely hostile to Dearborn's proposal of an armistice. As far as the president and the members of his administration were concerned, only one of their two demands had been addressed with the repeal of the Orders in Council. And to halt the war only a few weeks after it had been declared would leave the United States looking weak and foolish.

While U.S. political leaders were preoccupied with matters of high policy, General Hull became ever more obsessed with his supply lines. He dispatched two hundred U.S. Army regulars under the command of Major Thomas Van Horne to proceed to the River Raisin south of
Detroit and meet an expected supply convoy under the command of
Captain Henry Brush. Van Horne's men planned to escort Brush's convoy back to the American base at Sandwich. A native scout discovered Van Horne's marching route and reported it to Tecumseh. With seventy warriors, the Shawnee chief lay in wait in a wooded position beside the road and launched a surprise attack on the Americans. Having failed to send scouts ahead of his main force, Van Horne was thrown into panic by Tecumseh's well-planned ambush. Before the
Americans could disengage and escape, one hundred troops were killed.

Tecumseh's attack took advantage of the strengths of native warriors against a European-style foe. Native forces were more mobile than those of the Americans and the British and they were less dependent on water transport. Both sides deployed native forces, the Americans much less effectively than the British. While the native warriors relied on the British or the Americans for ammunition and sometimes for food, they were far more capable of living off the land. They were also most effective fighting in the open and ambushing enemy units. Because they lacked artillery, they were less successful in sieges of forts.

Among the items Tecumseh retrieved from the shattered American force was a mailbag containing a letter from Hull to U.S. Secretary of War William Eustis, in which the general admitted that he feared being besieged by thousands of native warriors. The letter could only raise the morale of Tecumseh and his men, as well as that of the British. By the time of the assault on Van Horne's men, Hull's officers were growing restive under his command. Some of his Ohio officers circulated a petition “requesting the arrest and displacement of the General.”
30

Hull took the news of the ambush hard. Panic was in the air. Hull decided that he had to go on the defensive at Detroit. On August 7, he ordered the evacuation of Sandwich, and his troops crossed the Detroit River. His invasion of Canada had lasted just twenty-seven days. Still preoccupied with his supply lines to the south, Hull chose Lieutenant Colonel James Miller to lead a force of six hundred men to complete the job that had eluded Van Horne.

Meanwhile, Tecumseh's scouts kept him apprised of Miller's slow progress, which was dangerously retarded by the unwise decision to take along heavy pieces of artillery. Cannon were immensely difficult to tow on poor roads and tracks and across open countryside. Teams of horses dragged a gun and its ammunition on a limber. This slow process stalled infantry, leaving it more vulnerable to enemy attack.

Usually, cannon were deployed on the flanks of a force of artillery. Fired at a rate of about one round per minute, their preferred use was against foot soldiers rather than against opposing cannon. There was always the risk of gunners' being exposed to an enemy flanking attack or assaults from sharpshooters or skirmishers. When attacked from the flank, the first choice of gunners was to hitch up the horses and tow the guns and ammunition out of danger. As a last resort, if their position was likely to be taken by the enemy, they spiked their guns, disabling them by driving a nail into the touch hole.

In his pursuit of the Americans, Tecumseh was joined by ten British regulars and by militiamen under the command of Major Adam Muir. Tecumseh and his warriors lay flat on the ground, hiding themselves in tall grass to await the Americans, while Muir's men positioned themselves on a nearby rise. The U.S. troops, advancing slowly across the plain, walked straight into the trap. When they were within range, the warriors leapt to their feet and opened fire.

In a desperate battle that lasted for two and half hours, the Americans fixed bayonets and repulsed an enemy charge. The horses used to haul the U.S. artillery pieces bolted. Muir's men, brightly clad in red, made easy targets for the Americans, and fell back. Tecumseh and his warriors held their ground and prevented Miller from going after the retreating British. The Shawnee chief, though nicked by a bullet in the neck, fought alongside his warriors.

Eighteen Americans died in the fight, and sixty-four were wounded. Five of Muir's men died, fourteen were wounded, and two went missing. According to the best estimate — neither the British nor the Americans made exact counts of native casualties — eleven of Tecumseh's warriors died and six or seven were wounded. A brief episode of friendly fire increased the casualties. When the British mistook some of the warriors for Americans and fired on them, the natives returned their fire. Despite this mishap, Miller was forced to halt his march and to return to Detroit.
31

The momentum of the war was shifting. What looked at the outset like a triumphal American occupation of western Upper Canada now took on the appearance of an American fortress under siege. Hull and Tecumseh had been the key actors in the first weeks of the war. Another major player was about to arrive on the scene.

Chapter 9

Two Warriors

I
N EARLY AUGUST,
General Isaac Brock left York with a small force. He travelled to Burlington Bay, at the western edge of Lake Ontario, and then by land to Long Point, on Lake Erie, where 40 British regulars, 260 Canadian volunteers, and about 60 Mohawk warriors joined him. Brock's men commandeered all the boats they could find in the area, and in this rather ramshackle convoy they set out on the five-day passage up the lake, rowing in heavy rain to Fort Malden.
1

When Brock arrived at Fort Malden to take command of a larger force and work out a plan with native allies, his presence would stiffen the spines of the men he had to rally. The general was far from vainglorious, but he was well aware of his ineffable ability to transmit spirit and energy to a body of men. He would not have described himself as charismatic, but he was exactly that. He insisted that his fitness to lead his men was a function of his rank. But he understood that there was much more to it. He knew that his unusual height made him physically imposing and that the sight of him in his scarlet uniform made soldiers confident of what they could do. For thousands of years, warriors have followed such leaders into battle, gaining strength from the sight of them. Brock drew much of his power from the ancient code of the warrior, while his scarlet uniform announced that British power was alive and well in the heart of North America.

Late on the evening of August 13, Brock's flotilla reached Amherstburg, near Fort Malden. Native warriors fired muskets into the night air to welcome the general and the recruits he had brought with him. Brock immediately sent Matthew Elliott, who had served for decades as the British Indian agent in the region, to find Tecumseh. Elliott had two messages for the Shawnee chief. The first was to ask Tecumseh to tell his warriors to stop shooting and save their ammunition for the Americans. The second was that Brock wanted to meet Tecumseh immediately. Brock knew that Tecumseh commanded native forces that he himself could not control, forces that could well prove decisive on the battlefield over the next few days.

Tecumseh, too, was anxious to meet Brock. His opinion of British commanders was not high — he remembered the numerous occasions when the British had played a double game with the natives and the Americans — but he was ready to make up his own mind about the major general. As a show of respect, Tecumseh dressed more ornately than was his custom for the occasion. He wore a large silver medallion of George III, the long-serving British monarch who had sat on the throne since 1760, attached to a coloured wampum string around his neck. Suspended from the cartilage of his nose were three small silver crowns. He was attired in a tanned deerskin jacket and trousers of the same material, and he wore his leather moccasins decorated with dyed porcupine quills.
2

Tecumseh set out with Elliott for the meeting. By the time they arrived, the major general had already received the good news that Hull had pulled his remaining troops at Sandwich back across the river to Fort Detroit, ending the American invasion of Upper Canada. Brock had been sitting at a candlelit table, reading the packets of mail captured from the Americans, which told of Hull's low morale and the lack of confidence of the men under his command, when the door opened and Tecumseh entered.
3

The general, taller and stouter than Tecumseh, rose to his feet and stepped forward to shake the hand of his visitor. The two men were physically imposing, the Shawnee chief with his muscular grace and the British general with his unusual size. Both had the indefinable ability to attract notice and command respect, even awe.

Observers have described Tecumseh at this stage of his life as a striking man, handsome, with large, dark, penetrating eyes and heavily arched brows that reinforced his grave and severe expression. He moved easily, despite the slight limp that was the consequence of his old leg injury. He was nearly six feet tall, with a compact build that displayed his capacity for physical endurance. He had even features, high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, a well-formed mouth, and regular teeth.
4
Though not as classically handsome as Tecumseh, Brock had boyish good looks. Portraits show an open, attractive face with a smallish nose and an unruly shock of hair.

Each man was at the height of his powers. Tecumseh was forty-four years old; Brock was nearly forty-three. The tall general in his scarlet uniform with gold-fringed epaulettes and the lithe, athletic Shawnee chief sized each other up and concluded that they could work together. They had come to their fateful meeting in very different ways, but it was apparent that they had much to offer each other.

Aware that morale in the American camp was low and that the ageing General Hull was terrified of the native warriors, Brock was quickly developing a strategy. With a swift assault on Fort Detroit, and with Tecumseh's warriors highly visible in the attack, Hull could be psychologically undermined. The fort, Brock reasoned, could be taken in a
coup de main
that would flow from a
coup de théâtre
. And if that didn't work, the Americans could be provoked to come out of their fort, where they could be beaten in a classic European-style battle. In his canny judgement of his opponent, an essential skill for a general, Brock was confident that a coup might work.

According to an account written by British Captain John Bachevoyle
Glegg, who was present at the meeting, Brock commended Tecumseh for his leadership and courage in the native warriors' recent
engagements against the Americans. “I have fought against the enemies of our father, the king beyond the great lake, and they have never seen my back,” he continued. “I am come here to fight his enemies on this side of the great lake, and now desire with my soldiers to take lessons from you and your warriors, that I may learn how to make war in these great forests.”

Glegg recorded that Brock outlined his plan for a swift attack on Fort Detroit, while the British officers shook their heads and strongly dissented. Tecumseh responded positively to the proposed offensive, and when Brock asked him about the lay of the land en route to Detroit, the Shawnee chief spread out a long strip of elm bark on the table. He secured the corners with stones, unsheathed his knife, and proceeded to create a map with its tip. Brock was impressed as Tecumseh drew in the roads, waterways, and valleys and hills of the neighbouring terrain.
5

With this, the meeting concluded, and Brock arranged to meet with Tecumseh and his warriors the next day to plan the campaign.

The following morning, a thousand warriors drawn from different tribes — the fruit of Tecumseh's mobilization effort — assembled at Fort Malden. Once ceremonial greetings were completed, Brock addressed the multitude and declared that together they would drive the Americans from Fort Detroit. The general's words drew loud cheers. Tecumseh replied to Brock, saying that he was pleased that “their father beyond the great salt lake had at last consented to let his warriors come to the assistance of his red children, who had never ceased to remain steadfast in their friendship and were now all ready to shed their last drop of blood in their great father's service.”
6

According to one account, Tecumseh remarked in English that while the previous British commander at Fort Malden had said, “Tecumseh, go fight Yankee,” General Brock said instead, “Tecumseh, come fight Yankee.”
7
Another often repeated version of events has it that Tecumseh said of Brock to his fellow warriors: “This is a man.”
8

Over the next three days, Brock and Tecumseh led their men — British regulars, Canadian militia, and native warriors — onto American soil to capture Detroit. Outnumbered by the Americans, the British general and the Shawnee chief were breaking cardinal rules of warfare, aiming to seize an American fortress and dash American assumptions about an easy conquest of Canada.

More than mere chance brought Tecumseh and Brock together. Tecumseh's career as a warrior, and lately as the leader of the native confederacy in alliance with the British, pointed him inexorably to the battlefield in the southwestern corner of Upper Canada next to the Ohio country, where the struggle to hold on to native land had reached fever pitch. Nor was it an accident that Brock, the most offensive-minded senior British officer in the Canadas, should rush to meet Hull's invasion. Brock was betting heavily on Tecumseh. Unlike the other British commanders in Canada, he regarded the alliance with native forces as absolutely crucial to the success of the campaign in the western theatre of war. Without Tecumseh, he calculated that the British cause could only go down to defeat in the west. With Tecumseh and with a daring assault, they just might win. Brock was that rare commander who was prepared to wager it all on a single calculation. The stakes were nothing less than the fate of a continent.

Tecumseh and Brock sealed their commitment to fight side by side with a handshake and a few brief meetings. Lengthy protocols and precise terms of alliance did not have to be negotiated and signed. The two men simply sized each other up and resolved to entrust their respective fates to one another.