n, Vermont, the other at Plattsburg. The
third contingent, under the command of General Brown, was sent to
Sackett's Harbor, where it arrived February 24.

The Secretary of War, General Armstrong, despite his vacillating
course the previous year, had never lost sight of his perfectly
accurate conviction that Kingston, if not Montreal, was the true
objective for the northern army. Convinced that he had been misled in
the spring of 1813 by the opinions of the commanders on the spot,
Chauncey and Dearborn, he was again anxious, as he had been in the
intervening autumn, to retrieve the error. On February 28 he issued to
Brown two sets of instructions;[272] the one designed to transpire, in
order to mislead the enemy, the other, most secret, conveying the real
intention of the Department. In the former, stress was laid upon the
exposure of western New York, and the public humiliation at seeing
Fort Niagara in the hands of the British. Brigadier-General Scott
accordingly had been sent there to organize a force for the capture of
the fort and the protection of the frontier; but, as his numbers were
probably insufficient, Brown was directed to march to Batavia, and
thence to Buffalo, with the two thousand troops he had just brought
from French Mills. This letter was meant to reach the enemy's ears.
The other, embodying the true object aimed at, read thus: "It is
obviously Prevost's policy, and probably his intention, to
re-establish himself on Lake Erie during the ensuing month. But to
effect this other points of his line must be weakened, and these will
be either Kingston or Montreal. If the detachment from the former be
great, a moment may occur in which you may do, with the aid of
Commodore Chauncey, what I last year intended Pike should have done
without aid, and what we now all know was very practicable, viz.: to
cross the river, or head of the lake, on the ice, and carry Kingston
by a _coup de main_." The letter ended by making the enterprise depend
upon a concurrence of favorable conditions; in brief, upon the
discretion of the general, with whom remained all the responsibility
of final decision and action.

These instructions were elicited, immediately, by recent information
that the effective garrison in Kingston was reduced to twelve
hundred, with no prospect of increase before June, when
re-enforcements from Europe were expected. Certainly, Drummond at this
time thought the force there no stronger than it should be