The Battle of Fort Stephenson-Part Three

[The third part of my series on the Battle of Fort Stephenson, which was fought at modern-day Fremont Ohio on August 3rd, 1813.]

The famous cannon today.

The old dent on the breech which allowed Thomas L. Hawkins to identify the French and Indian War-era gun after the war.

...At about 5pm the time of decision arrived. Croghans men on the walls glimpsed scarlet coats through the gunsmoke, but not until they were only 20 paces from the stockade did the Americans spot a massive, close-packed column of 350 Englishmen. The column was headed by light infantry company of the regiment. Croghan's men were ready for them. Their loopholes erupted with musketry and the sudden rain of small arms fire staggered the column for a moment. Lt. Colonel William Short, who was heading up the column, quickly rallied his men and urged them to follow him forward into the ditch. Lacking scaling ladders and faced with the bayonets on the intact wooden stockade, Short and his men tried to hack the timber down with axes, even as the defenders continued to shoot down into their crowded ditch at point-blank range.

            At this moment, the port-hole that no one had been able to see from the British lines creaked open, and a black muzzle rolled out. There must have been a flash of light and flame, and the searing streaks of hundreds of iron slugs, but most of the Englishmen in the ditch had no time to see or hear it. A six-pounder cannon could be reloaded just as fast as a musket, and within tens of seconds a second blast swept the ditch. Within minutes, every man who had entered the ravine was either wounded or dead. The survivors of the column fled to safety.         Colonel Short was dead, as was Lieutenant J. G. Gordon who was badly wounded by a large caliber ball from a wall piece, and was hacking at the pickets with his sword when the same gun blew his brains out.[1] Major Adam Muir, who had led many of the British operations over the past year, was badly wounded but dragged from the scene by Indians. On the opposite side of the fort, another infantry column led by Lt. Colonel Wharburton advanced, but raked with rapid musket fire and realizing the main attack had failed, these men too retreated back towards safety. Within 30 minutes, the battle for Fort Stephenson was over. The Americans had lost a total of seven men slightly wounded, in addition to their earlier fatality.

A Missed Opportunity?

            The remaining British forces embarked and sailed from Lower Sandusky after dusk. A couple of British deserters made it into the stockade at 3am to inform Major Croghan of their retreat. General Procter's small western forces lost, according to his account, a total of 26 dead, 41 wounded, and 29 captured soldiers in the attack.[2] He blamed the Indians and the officers of the Indian Department for forcing him to attack. “Impossibilities being attempted, failed,” he later reported, and added that Croghans men had put up “the severest fire I ever saw” on the attacking columns. The Indians, who had been expected to support the assault, faded away as they saw it fail.[3]

            Many of the attackers were trapped in the ditch, either too wounded to escape or pinned down by the American fire. While the battle was still ongoing, the garrison cut gaps in the picketing to aid the mass of wounded men lying only a few feet from the walls. As August 3 dawned, the Americans collected 70 muskets and several sets of pistols from around the fort, as well as a boat laden with clothing and military stores, left behind by the British in their hasty retreat. Croghan set his surgeon to assisting the wounded as best he could.

            General Procter had left the neighborhood of Fort Stephenson so fast that some of his men, who had lost their way after the failed assault were picked up later near Lake Erie by General Harrison’s Indian scouts.[4] Procter had good reason to move quickly. Many Americans in Harrison's army saw an opportunity to counterattack and trap the British force even as they were attacking Fort Stephenson. The phlegmatic Virginian ordered his men to stand fast, to their chagrin. He awaited the arrival of 250 mounted volunteers from the Ohio settlements. Moreover, there was every evidence that his nemesis Tecumseh remained perched in the Black Swamp, waiting for Harrison and his untrained recruits to bungle through.

            As soon as he had word on August 3 that the British were gone, Harrison now changed his mind and rode out at the head of Colonel Ball's dragoons, anxious to catch them before they escaped to the lake. Generals McArthur and Cass followed with their infantry regiments. It soon became apparent that the main force had already returned to Malden, and ever fearful of an Indian ambush, the general ordered most of his forces back into camp at Fort Seneca.

            There remained for the Americans the problem of the wounded. On visiting Fort Stephenson the day after the attack, General Harrison set his hospital surgeon to treating them, including many British soldiers whose condition was quite serious. General Procter sent Lt. John Le Breton of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment with a surgeon to the fort under a flag of truce.[5] When they arrived on August 10, Major Croghan forwarded Procter's letter appealing to General Harrison to allow his men medical attention to Fort Seneca. Procter also asked that his non-wounded prisoners be released on parole.

            Harrison, who may have been piqued that Procter was implying the Americans would not treat wounded British prisoners with humanity, replied curtly that the British soldiers were being treated by his own surgeon “according to those principles which are held sacred in the American army.”[6] The Americans had seen their wounded abandoned and massacred by their opponents. One of Harrison's own surgeons had been imprisoned by Procter himself in a similar situation, after his guide had been murdered by one of Procter's allies. The unwritten rebuke in Harrison's cordial note, sent back with Lt. Le Breton and the surgeon, must have been unmistakable.

            As the drama on the Sandusky concluded, word arrived for the Americans in camp at “Sink-a-Town” (Seneca Town) that Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry's squadron had  sortied from its shipyards and refuge behind Presque Isle at Erie, Pennsylvania. Perry's two 18-gun brigs had tipped the balance of power on Lake Erie solidly towards the Americans, and the British fleet had fled for safety in its own refuge on the Detroit River. The stage was set for the battle that would decide the campaign. It would be fought not in swamp or forest, but on the inland seas.

---

[1]Letter of W. B. T Webb, reprinted in Sandusky County Historical Society, History Leaflet No. 4 (September 1963) (http://www.sandusky-county-scrapbook.net/FtSteph/SoldLtr.htm accessed 6/2/14.)

[2]Alec R. Gilpin, The War of 1812 in the Old Northwest (East Lansing, Michigan: The Michigan State University Press, 1958), 207.

[3]MPHC 15, 347-48.

[4]Esarey, 523.

[5]Ibid., 518.

[6]Esarey, 521.

The Battle of Fort Stephenson-Part Two

Continuing the narrative of the siege and battle of Fort Stephenson on August 1-2 1813

No sooner did the young major arrive back at his little command, than word came back from General Harrison's lookouts that a large flotilla had been spotted sailing up Sandusky Bay on the evening of July 31. By noon on August 1 they had made it back as far as Fort Stephenson, where they informed Major Croghan before hurrying south to tell General Harrison. Only a few hours later, the first large group of Indians appeared on the river bluff opposite the fort. Croghan ordered the volunteers manning “old betsy” to open fire, which drove the Indians away. Only a half hour later, several gunboats flying British colors appeared in the river. The Indians reappeared in every direction round the stockade. Retreat was now certainly out of the question.

            British regulars from the 41^st Regiment disembarked from their boats about a mile downstream from the fort. A 5 ½ inch howitzer was manhandled up the opposite shore. Soon, a white flag of truce appeared from the treeline outside the stockade. It was borne by two men in the uniforms of British officers, who turned out to be Major Robert Dickson of the Indian Department and Major Peter Chambers of the 41^st. Major Dickson was an imposing presence, a burly Scot named “Red Head” by the western Indians for his bright red hair and beard. He had orchestrated the successful attack on Fort Mackinac the previous year, and had gathered thousands of fierce western tribesmen for the attack at Fort Meigs and now Fort Stephenson. To meet them, Croghan sent out his youngest officer, Ensign Edmund Shipp.

            Major Chambers made the usual demand in such circumstances for the Americans to surrender “to spare the effusion of blood.” Shipp replied that Croghan and his garrison were determined to defend the fort to the last extremity—or to bury themselves in its ruins. Dickson replied that it was a pity that so fine a young man should fall into the hands of the “savages”-- “Sir, for God's sake surrender, and prevent the dreadful massacre that will be caused by your resistance.” Shipp answered, “When the fort is taken there will be none left to massacre. It will not be given up while a man is able to resist.”

            At that, their conference was interrupted when an Indian leaped out from the cover of a nearby ravine, ran to the American and tried to grab his sword. Major Dickson stepped up to defend Ensign Shipp, and anxiously ushered him back towards the safety of the stockade. The parley was over.

A close up of the layout of the fort. B blockhouse at top center was where "old Betsy" was hidden. Note the extra curtain wall where the fort was expanded into a rectangle. The plateau where the fort was constructed is now the location of the Fremont Public Library.

Major George Croghan in the uniform of Major, 17th Infantry.

            The British opened fire immediately after their envoys returned to their lines. 6- and 12- pounders from their gunboats thundered, while the single 5 ½ howitzer occupied  the heights which had worried Harrison and his staff so much. The shelling continued into the evening, but without much effect. The British simply did not have heavy guns enough to threaten the stockade. They did cause some damage, particularly to Croghan's warehouse, which was demolished by the howizter shells. At dawn the following day, the garrison discovered three 6-pounders in the brink of a ravine only 250 yards north of their walls. The British began to fire these guns, letting the recoil roll them back into the ravine where the gunners could load under cover. The 6-pound shot made little impact of the logs of the stockade. Croghan's only casualty, however, occurred when an over-eager infantryman, perhaps a private from the 24^th Regiment, climbed to the top of a blockhouse for a potshot at the artillerists. A well-aimed cannonball took his head off.

            Croghan had a limited supply of shot on hand for his only 6-pounder, and ordered the crew to husband it carefully. By 4pm he realized that most of the British fire was concentrated against the northwest corner of the fort. Gathering as many hands as he could spare from the wall, he ordered his men to stack sacks of flour, sand and other debris against the stockade there to reinforce it. It seemed the British were planning on throwing an assault against this section of the fort. Croghan's garrison was well prepared. Most of them were experienced infantrymen, armed with the .69 caliber Springfield pattern muskets ubiquitous among American soldiers. Several companies of Pennsylvania militia had left their muskets behind at the fort as they mustered out, and with these Croghan was able to give each man one or two extra loaded muskets. The extra bayonets had been nailed pointing downwards from the top of the wall, and traps were set with logs and other deadfalls at likely points.

            The ace up Major Croghan's sleeve was his cannon. The gun crew was ordered to stop firing when a well-placed shot passed through its original location in a blockhouse, as if the British had dismounted and silenced it. Then the volunteers hauled “old betsy” into a different blockhouse on the northwest corner, behind a hidden gunport, which covered the ditch on that side of the stockade. They charged it with a double load of canister, essentially making it into a giant shotgun. Led by Sergeant Brown of the Volunteers, the crew silently waited their turn to reply to the British cannonade.

            In the heat of the August afternoon the smoke of the bombardment collected and settled like a fog bank. As they listened to the bombardment 10 miles away at Fort Seneca, Private Northcutt and his comrades chafed at being kept out of the fight, thinking it “an extreme hard case that Croghan should be cooped up with a handful of men to be massacred by the British while Harrison was lying in hearing of him with fifteen hundred men, and would not go and help him.”[1] Instead, the general, whose army had been considerably strengthened with the arrival of General Duncan McArthur's 28^th Infantry and other elements, set fatigue parties to digging trenches and other fortifications. His pickets were constantly harassed by Indians, though. “Every time during the day that I not out on duty the guard would fire and run in. One fellow swore that he saw two Indians and was so close to them as to see their blankets rolled up and hopperesed on their backs.”[2]

            After the battle, and indeed long after the war Harrison would be blamed for not marching to the relief of Fort Stephenson. However, he believed that while the British surrounded Croghan, Tecumseh and thousands of well-seasoned warriors lurked in the swamps and forests between them. Marching out with his mostly green regulars would have been an invitation to a third massive defeat at their hands. Perhaps the general also realized that the reports from downstream were not from heavy guns, 18- and 24-pounders that were capable of knocking down the little fort. With only light guns threatening their walls, Croghan's detachment was just as snug as it would have been with Harrison's army present.

---

[1]Northcutt, 334.

[2]Ibid.

The Battle of Fort Stephenson-Part One

Here's an excerpt from my book project, a narrative of the Batle of Fort Stephenson which took place at modern-day Fremont 201 years ago this August:

Throughout the siege of Fort Meigs General Harrison had waited, impatiently, with the balance of his army at Lower Sandusky: he had no more than 300 regulars with him, of whom more than 150 were posted forward at the lower ford of the Sandusky River in a stockade called Fort Stephenson. He made a new headquarters at a friendly Indian village called Seneca Town, a few miles to the south along the river. He was waiting for Governor Meigs' Ohio volunteers to arrive, as well as the two Ohio 12-months regular regiments under Generals Duncan McArthur and Lewis Cass.

            Fort Stephenson was a square timber stockade with two blockhouses and a gatehouse that stood on a low bluff overlooking the lowest ford of the Sandusky River, about 20 miles upriver from Sandusky Bay. A government post before the war, it had been fortified by the Ohio brigade of General Simon Perkins late in 1812. Sometime later it had been expanded with the simple expedient of adding a second square enclosure to the first, making the fort into a rectangle with room for a small warehouse and some huts for soldiers and teamsters. It stood as a waypoint along Harrison's military road, a crossroads with trails leading west to Fort Meigs, north to Lake Erie, and east to Cleveland and Erie. A rotating series of militia and regular soldiers formed the garrison.

            General Harrison thought that Fort Meigs being too strong to fall to such forces as General Procter could bring against it, the British commander might try his luck against the Lower Sandusky. With his staff, including Captain Eleazar D Wood of the engineers and Major George Croghan of the 17^th Infantry, the general inspected Fort Stephenson. It became apparent that the opposite bank of the river was actually higher ground than that occupied by the stockade. The fort would have to be razed and rebuilt on the opposite bluff if it was to be expected to survive a siege or bombardment.

            When word arrived that Procter and Tecumseh were out in force, Harrison decided there was no time to make Fort Stephenson defensible. He took a handful of infantry, about 140 infantrymen and retreated upriver to the fortified Camp Seneca. Major Croghan was left to hold Fort Stephenson with Captain James Hunter's Company of the 17^th Infantry Regiment, Lieutenant Benjamin Johnson commanding Captain Duncan's Company of the 17^th, and scraps and volunteers from other units including the 7^th and 24^th Infantry Regiments and a half dozen men from the Petersburgh Volunteers and Pittsburgh Blues. These men totaled about 160 muskets. There was also an old iron six-pounder which the men believed to date back to the French and Indian Wars, with a prominent dent in the breech made, perhaps, by an enemy shot. The garrison affectionately nicknamed the piece “old bess” and Croghan placed it in the charge of a sergeant and men from the Volunteers, who had some experience with artillery.

            Harrison's orders to Croghan were to defend the stockade if a force made up solely of Indians approached, since with small arms alone they would have no way of reducing the fort. However, if British forces accompanied by artillery arrived up the Sandusky, the general instructions were to burn the post and its contents and retreat south to Fort Seneca. Fort Stephenson, after all, only held 200 barrels of flour and perhaps a hundred stacks of arms-nothing worth sacrificing two companies of infantry for. These orders were to lead to a misunderstanding between Harrison and his young protege, and would eventually become a source of controversy for decades after the war.

            Shortly after posting Croghan at Lower Sandusky, and sending scouts to watch the Lake Erie shoreline for signs of the British squadron, General Harrison received large reinforcements in the form of Colonel James V Ball's squadron of Light Dragoons, nearly 200 strong, as well as Colonel George Paull's newly-recruited 27^th Infantry Regiment to make about 600 effectives at Fort Seneca.

            On July 29, Harrison's scouts reported sightings of Indians in the vicinity of Fort Stephenson and Fort Seneca. When word arrived that the siege of Fort Meigs had been lifted, Harrison believed that General Procter would probably try to attack a weaker post such as Fort Stephenson at Lower Sandusky or Fort Huntington at Cleveland. The general called upon William Conner, a volunteer Indian scout who in civilian life was a trader in the Indiana Territory. Conner had grown up with his Moravian parents among the Delaware tribe of Ohio, and had known the Lower Sandusky area as a youth. He was given a written message to give to Major Croghan which read:

Sir. Immediately on receiving this letter, you will abandon Fort Stephenson, set fire to it, and repair with your command this night to headquarters. Cross the river and come up on the opposite side. If you should deem and find it impractical to make good your march to this place, take the road to Huron and pursue it with the utmost circumspection and dispatch.[1]

            However, William Conner did not remember the wilderness trails along the Sandusky River as well as he had thought, or perhaps in the darkness and with hostile Indians to evade the going was much slower than he had anticipated. Either way, he did not reach Fort Stephenson with the orders until noon the following day. By then, Major Croghan had observed significant numbers of Indians in the brush surrounding the stockade and its outbuildings. Retreat would invite a massacre, and besides, hadn't Harrison ordered him to stay put in case of an investment by Indians alone? He scribbled a short note for Conner to take back in reply to Harrison:

Sir, I have just received yours of yesterday, 10 o'clock PM ordering me to destroy this place and make good my retreat, which was received too late to be carried into execution. We have determined to defend this place, and by heavens we can.[2]

            When Harrison read this he was outraged. The young Croghan had apparently defied a direct order and thus placed his detachment in peril—and Harrison himself in danger of having his own name attached to a third military disaster not wholly of his own making. He lost no time in dispatching Colonel Ball with his entire squadron to relieve Croghan of his command, and to leave Colonel Samuel Wells of the 17^th Infantry in command of the fort. Croghan would be placed under arrest and court-martialled. There was a card left in George Croghan's hand yet: long a friend of the general's, he had served as aide-de-camp to Harrison during the Tippecanoe campaign. When Colonel John Boyd of the 4^th Infantry Regiment charged Harrison with neglecting to fortify the American camp, Croghan defended his commander. Once face to face with the general, he might be able to make an explanation for his insubordination.

            Meantime, Colonel Ball did not reach Lower Sandusky unmolested. As his dragoons trotted along the river road, handsomely attired in blue coats with silver buttons and leather helmets with long white plumes, the outriders of the advance guard were fired upon by Indians lurking in sparse woodlands on the west side of the road. One of the scouts was wounded, but Ball ordered the main body of his squadron to charge. Mounted on a better horse than his enlisted troopers,  Ball soon outpaced them. Overtaking two Indians, he rode between them and hacked down the one on the right with his saber. The other one swung at him with a tomahawk which narrowly missed his back, and buried itself in his saddle. A corporal following on the colonel's heels shot the other Indian down.

            Lieutenant James Hedges was riding down another warrior when his stirrup broke, spilling him on top of the Indian. Both men tumbled to the ground, and then sprang to their feet. Dodging a tomahawk blow, “Hedges struck the Indian across the head, and as he was falling buried his sword up to its hilt in his body.[3]” Captain Samuel Hopkins of the 2^nd US Light Dragoons had a similar close call when an Indian he was pursuing swiped at him with a tomahawk, making his horse swerve and nearly dismounting him. The warrior fought off another trooper who came up to Hopkin's assistance, but was finally killed by a third trooper.    There turned out to be only twenty warriors in this party watching the road, and all or nearly all of them were cut down in this unequal contest. As Private William B. Northcutt of Gerrard's Company of Volunteer Light Dragoons (the Bourbon Blues) recalled:

The first thing the Indians knew of the squadron they were right under our broadswords and we made their heads rattle like old gourds. They caught their guns in both hands and gabbered something I suppose about quarters, but we were Kentuckians and did not understand one word about the Indian language, and we gobbled them up right on the spot.[4]

            Here there was a reversal of roles as the troopers, most of whom came from Kentucky as volunteers or regulars, looted the bodies and took trophies. One of Private Northcutt's messmates asked if he should cut the scalp from an Indian he had killed, but Northcutt talked him out of it. Later, on the return trip to Fort Seneca Northcutt picked up a blanket bundle and medicine bag belonging to one of the dead Indians. He later gave the medicine bag to one of Harrison's Indian allies, whom the Kentuckians referred to as “Harrison's pets.” These allied scouts later went back and buried their enemies, and reported that one of them had limped away, wounded, according to the signs they had read on the battleground.

            The squadron arrived at Lower Sandusky without further incident, and Croghan was replaced with Colonel Wells and escorted back to headquarters. When he arrived, Croghan explained that he felt the Indians had surrounded him in force, making it dangerous to retreat from the post. Colonel Ball's brief skirmish could attest to that much. The blustering and confidednt tone of the note had been meant to deceive any British officer who might intercept it—as had occurred in three separate incidents already in the war.[5] Harrison accepted this explanation at face value, and sent Croghan back to Fort Stephenson with another heavy escort.

---

[1]McAffee, 322.

[2]McAfee, 323.

[3]“The Croghan Celebration,” in Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly 16, no. 1 (January 1907), 47.

[4]William B. Northcutt, “War of 1812 Diary of William B. Northcutt,” ed. G. Glenn Clift, in Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society 56 no. 3 (July 1958), 332-333.

[5]Most famously, General Isaac Brock intercepted and read General William Hull's papers when the schooner Cayuga was captured on June 30, 1812. Then, another mail pouch fell into Brock's hands after the skirmish at Brownstown on August 4. Finally, the mail pouch to Fort Meigs was captured during the siege in May 1813. Each of these incidents provided valuable intelligence for British commanders.

Book Update

 Colonel Richard M. Johnson and Major General Harrison depicted at the Battle of the Thames.

I have been working very slowly on the War of 1812 book project, as work and my personal life allow. Currently I'm nearly done with the bit of narrative that spans the early summer of 1813, as General William Henry Harrison sought to reestablish his army along an Ohio coastline that was vulnerable at all points to an amphibious attack by the British fleet on Lake Erie. Here's an early draft:

Despite Secretary of War John Armstrong's admonition not to employ more volunteer militia, Kentucky congressman Richard M. Johnson lobbied the War Department and President Madison himself for permission to raise an independent mounted regiment of 1,000 men. Johnson had spent much of the previous year raising and leading a battalion of mounted volunteers as a Kentucky militia major. His troops assisted General Harrison in the relief of Fort Wayne before heading home late in 1812. Returning to Congress in the winter, Johnson argued for a highly mobile, mounted regiment of riflemen to scour the Indian settlements along the northwest frontier, conducting in effect a scorched earth campaign. Harrison, who had tried this at great expense with Colonel Cambell's mounted raid against the Mississinewa River towns in December, was skeptical when he got word. Nevertheless, the President and the Secretary of War gave Johnson the go-ahead. He eagerly returned to Kentucky in the early spring of 1813 to begin recruiting.

Congressman, now Colonel Johnson was a War Hawk, and a key ally of Speaker of the House Henry Clay. Ambitious and headstrong, he was a characteristic member of the second generation of Kentucky settlers. His parents had fought off Indian raids during the Revolutionary War, but he himself was an educated man, a lawyer who dabbled in many businesses. Later in life, he would earn some notoriety by living in a common-law marriage with one of his father's former slaves. When his first wife died, he took another slave as a lover, but sold her “down the river” when she spurned him for another man—and subsequently had a relationship with the unfortunate woman's sister, also his slave. Thus Abraham Lincoln ironically used him as an example of a southern slave-owner being in favor of equality between whites and blacks during the Lincoln-Douglass debate.

The scandals were in the future, as was a stint as Vice President. However, they do provide some insight into the man who now used his influence and connections to raise an independent force expressly to fight Indians. His younger brother John T Johnson had already distinguished himself as an aide-de-camp to General Harrison at Fort Meigs. Another brother, James, became the Lt. Colonel and second in command of the new regiment.

In May, the siege of Fort Meigs caused Colonel Johnson to order his volunteers to muster and ride north to join the battle: “That Crisis has arrived! Fort Meigs is attacked--the North Western army is Surrounded by the enemy, and under the Command of Gen'l Harrison nobly defending the Sacred Cause of the Country against a Combined enemy, the British & Indians. They will maintain the ground until relieved...”¹ The Colonel ordered the men who had already volunteered to rendezvous at the Great Crossing, near Georgetown Kentucky. The volunteers would draw weapons and tents from the Federal Arsenal at Newport. He added “An Extra powder horn, Bulletbag, forage-bag, five flints &c will be important.”

Soon several companies of mounted men had assembled and were on the road north. Captain Robert B. McAfee had raised 78 volunteers whom he led towards the rendezvous. When his company got word that General Harrison had dismissed the Ohio volunteers, they assumed the order included them. The bearer of this bad news was Colonel Johnson's brother, John. “Great dissatisfaction and confusion prevailed for some time until we met Colonel Johnson who ordered us on again, which again restored us to order.”² The Colonel refused to disband his regiment, arguing that the Secretary of War himself had authorized it.

Avoiding Newport, most of Johnson's riders traveled to Dayton, Ohio, by way of North Bend. There they were issued Federal muskets, rifles, and tents. Colonel Johson ordered that “the riflemen should take as much powder and lead as possible and the musket-men as much fixed ammunition.” Every captain was to take responsibility for keeping the arms in good order. He set up a workshop staffed by the regiments gunsmiths to repair weapons that needed skilled work, like replacing main springs or re-hardening frizzens. Eventually, each company designated men as blacksmiths, farriers and saddlers to maintain the mens' arms, mounts and tack.

Despite being termed “mounted riflemen,” Johnson's regiment was equipped relatively equally with muskets and rifles. McAfee recorded that his company drew 30 rifles and 27 muskets, which only partially supplied them. Johnson organized his men into two battalions, one with six and the other with five companies. The captains drew lots to determine the order of their companies. Robert McAfee drew first captain of the first battalion, which made it the first in the line of battle. A separate company of sharpshooters was organized to function as scouts and outriders. To assist them, the colonel also recruited a dozen Shawnee scouts from the town of Wapakoneta, led by a half-French, half-Ottawa man named Anthony Shane who had known Tecumseh personally. Shane had already participated in General William Hull's campaign at Detroit, and had assisted General Harrison during the ensuing winter. The Indian scouts would be a valuable asset for a force intended to punish the hostile tribes.

As the regiment moved north from Dayton, Johnson issued strict orders for his men to be drilled in light cavalry maneuvers. The captains were to train their men to form a battalion line on the center company, to form by sections into line, and other techniques that were designed to convert a long column of mounted soldiers into a firing line in minutes. The role of mounted riflemen was to be that for which dragoons were originally intended in 18^th century armies: a highly mobile infantry force that dismounted to fight. Johnson's soldiers were for the most part completely new to this kind of warfare. Each officer and his men needed to know their place in line and each of the standard movements required to get from a single-file column of horsemen to a fighting line—without entangling themselves with other platoons and companies.

Johnson paid close attention to drilling the men. They marched in a formation of five columns across, each made up of two or three companies, with an advanced guard several hundred yards in front and another guard bringing up the rear. In the event of a battle, most of the companies would form to the front or on the flanks as needed, dismount and fight as infantry. One or two companies would remain mounted as a reserve, to shore up gaps in the line or to disperse groups of Indian warriors with a charge. At night the regiment formed a square to camp, protecting the horses and baggage wagons behind the lines. Despite the drilling, the volunteers lacked much discipline: the colonel had to repeat his orders for the men not to fire their rifles without orders.

Johnson's column reached Fort Wayne on June 7. Captain McAfee noted that “One hour before we got to the Fort the Indians about ten or fifteen in number, shot and scalped two boatmen...another man jumped out in the St. Mary's and was drowned. The men were killed at the first bend of the river in sight of the fort.”³ The boats had been manned by 18 men and carried about 1800 barrels of flour destined for the supply dumps at Fort Meigs. The colonel immediately sent some of his men in pursuit, but they were unable to pick up the Indians' trail.

Three days later, the 700-man regiment left the Maumee Valley on its first combat mission: to destroy and disperse the hostile Pottawatomie villages in the Michigan Territory. They drew rations for ten days and set off through the muddy trails leading north. They found the towns of Five Medals and White Pigeon deserted, and crossed the trail from Detroit to Chicago without encountering any Indians. Although they had no way of knowing at the time, Johnson's men had missed by a few days the force of nearly 1,000 warriors from the western tribes recruited by British agent Robert Dickson at Chicago, who were then marching to Amherstburg.⁴ After riding for 180 miles cross country in six days, the regiment returned to Fort Wayne.

Johnson's men and horses were now severely fatigued, with little forage available in the swamps and forests of the Michigan Territory. When General Harrison recommended another raid into Indian country, the colonel had to decline while the regiment rested and refitted at Fort Wayne. However, General Clay at Fort Meigs became apprehensive at the reports of a large force massing at Amherstburg-- among them the Indians that Johnson's regiment had missed. Clay requested that Johnson reinforce him with his regiment, and after a few days the riflemen were back in the saddle. They arrived opposite the fort in the evening of June 21 and bivouaced. Early the next morning, the gunners at Fort Meigs fired a morning gun. The report of the 18-pounder startled Johnson's horses and caused a stampede.

Reinforcements

As the garrison at Fort Meigs nursed the wounded and repaired the damaged suffered during the siege, the rest of the Northwest Army was in motion. General Harrison was anxious to consolidate his position and prepare for another invasion of Canada. He knew that he could not advance until the navy built a new fleet and won control of Lake Erie and the Detroit River. Those ships, building in the protected shallows of Erie, Pennsylvania, were under the protection of the Pennsylvania militia. At the same time, a flotilla of smaller boats was under construction at the village of Cleveland, and supplies were arriving at Lower Sandusky and the Maumee Rapids. The three latter posts, especially Cleveland and Lower Sandusky, were all within striking distance of the British fleet and amphibious landings by General Procter's troops.

Faced with a long, open flank along the Lake Erie shoreline, Harrison took immediate steps to secure his outposts. He ordered Major Ball's dragoons to ride for Cleveland early in June and rode out himself with his staff and Engineer officer, Captain Wood, to inspect the fortifications and boatyards there. It was none too soon. The village, garrisoned only by a company of the Second Regiment of Artillery under Captain Stanton Sholes and a few militiamen, was commanded by Major Thomas Jessup-- a career Army officer who had been captured at Detroit and paroled, and who would later win fame during the bitter fights at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane.

By June 5 Jessup reported that he had 47 boats finished or nearly complete. However, his large flotilla was vulnerable to British raiders. Already, on June 7 the British fleet's biggest ships, HMS Queen Charlotte and Lady Prevost, approached the cove and hovered offshore for a while before disappearing over the horizon. Not intimidated by the meager garrison, the captain sent a longboat on shore and requisitioned an ox, leaving a promissory note for eight dollars in payment.⁵

Despite the strong artillery contingent, there was only one old six-pounder available to protect the boatyards. Captain Sholes put himself to work building a military hospital, pegged together entirely from wood for lack of nails. Harrison, alarmed at the lack of protection for the boats, ordered Captain Wood to build a proper fortification which was called Fort Huntington. The completed boats were sunk in the Cuyahoga River, to be raised when Harrison needed them. The food and other supplies were rigged for burning if Procter did decide to land at the village. Major Ball's men stayed for two weeks while the Cleveland defenses were reorganized. Ball's dragoons arrived without tents, and made lean-tos out of chestnut tree bark, which coincidentally helped conceal them from British ships cruising offshore. Half the men at a time worked on the fort, while the other half guarded the village. By the end of July, the fort was nearly complete and the dragoons were ordered back to the main encampment of the army near Lower Sandusky.

There were large reinforcements already on the march for Fort Meigs. In addition to the new 12-month regular infantry regiments (the 26^th, 27^th and 28^th United States Regiments of Infantry) being raised in Ohio and Kentucky, the 24^th Regiment of Infantry was marching north with 500 men. The 24^th, under Colonel William P Anderson, was a Tennessee outfit that had spent much of its service in the west guarding the frontier. After a long march along the muddy tracks leading through the Black Swamp, they arrived at the Maumee rapids on June 28.

General Harrison chose to mass what troops he had near his main line of supplies, the military road running north from Franklinton at Lower Sandusky. The latter fort was too small to accommodate his forces, and was also vulnerable to a naval landing, so he chose a point a few miles south along the road as an encampment. Since it was near a Seneca Indian village, the camp became known as Fort Seneca. From here, Harrison could reinforce Fort Meigs, Fort Stephenson, or Cleveland—or retreat southwards if a larger force of British troops and Indians sought him out.

1Robert B. McAfee, “Book and Journal”.

2Ibid.

3“Robert B. McAffee's Journal,” 10.

4McAffee, 297-98.

5Diary of Stanton Sholes; Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette, 9 July 1813.

The Siege of Fort Meigs

I’ve spent much of the past months working on the rough draft of my book, tentatively called Thunder in the Wilderness: American Artillery and the War for the Frontier, 1812-1815. The book is half campaign history, half narrative. It follows a company of the 2nd United States Regiment of Artillery through the campaigns of the American Northwest Army in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan during the War of 1812. My intent is to combine the wider context of these campaigns with the experiences of a small group of Ohio citizen-soldiers.
The latest chapter that I’ve finished is also the longest and most complete. It is a narrative of the First Siege of Fort Meigs, which occurred in April and May 1813. The siege was one of few times during the war that a full-scale British incursion took place in the state of Ohio. I’ve decided to post it online as a pdf (you can download it here). Please read and enjoy:

Battle of Frenchtown (crosspost from Thunder in the Wilderness)

In January 1813, Major General William Henry Harrison ordered three seperate columns of American soldiers to converge on the Maumee River near present-day Toledo, Ohio. Their mission was to cross over 100 miles of sparsely settled or uninhabited wilderness to retake Detroit, which had surrendered to the British earlier in the War of 1812. Harrison's plans soon went awry, and one of these columns was surprised and defeated by the British forces of Colonel Henry Procter and the Indians led by Tecumseh (who was absent from this fight). The ensuing battle took place near modern-day Monroe Michigan with heavy loss of life on both sides...

Should the present Campaign fail when will the present war end? A little energy at first, would have conquered upper Canada… without firing a gun, but now we must fight every man in the country.

--Duncan McArthur, February 6 1813.

I.

The River Raisin Disaster

Brigadier General James Winchester’s occupation of Frenchtown (modern day Monroe, Michigan) had started off well enough. On January 17, in response to pleas of some of the inhabitants, he sent Lt. Colonel William Lewis with 550 Kentucky volunteers to recapture the village. Marching down the ice of Maumee Bay and north along the Lake Erie shoreline, they made landfall a few miles south of the River Raisin on the morning of the 18th. Two companies of the Canadian 2nd Essex militia held the town, along with four hundred Potawatomi and Wyandot warriors. A small, 3.3 inch howitzer manned by a single regular bombardier of the Royal Artillery rounded out the detachment.# By early afternoon, the Kentuckians had approached within a quarter of a mile of the British lines... (read more at Google Documents)