eat Indian chieftain, and with
the rank of brigadier-general in the British army he set about to assist
General Isaac Brock, the Governor of Upper Canada, in the task of
wresting the Northwest from the Americans. General William Hull, an uncle
of Captain Isaac Hull, the commander of the Constitution, was Governor of
the Territory of Michigan, which had been organized in 1805 and now
contained about 5000 inhabitants. To General Hull was given the command
of the forces intended for defensive and offensive operations on the
Upper Lakes. A small garrison of United States troops was stationed at
Michilimacinac and one at Chicago, which were the outposts of
civilization. The English near Detroit appear to have been aware of the
declaration of war before the news reached General Hull, and while the
latter was moving with an extreme caution excusable only on the ground of
age, Brock swiftly laid out and as swiftly entered upon an aggressive
campaign. The American outposts were captured by the British and Indians,
and the garrison of Fort Dearborn--Chicago--was cruelly massacred. On
this occasion Mr. John Kinzie, the first settler at Chicago, who as a
trader was much liked by the Indians, did noble service, with his
excellent wife, in saving the lives of the soldiers' families. Mrs.
Heald, the wife of Captain Heald, was ransomed for ten bottles of whiskey
and a mule, just as an Indian was about to scalp her.

At this critical juncture General Hull was weakened, and the British
forces opposed to him were encouraged by the news that General Henry
Dearborn, commander of the American troops in the Northern Department,
instead of invading Canada from the Niagara frontier, in obedience to his
instructions, had agreed to a provisional armistice with Sir George
Prevost, the governor-general of Canada. The ground for the armistice was
that England had revoked the orders in council obnoxious to Americans,
five days after the declaration of war by the United States, and that
intended peace negotiations would therefore have in all probability a
happy result. As a matter of fact England had not yielded, and had no
intention, as it proved, of yielding on the question of impressment,
which was the principal American grievance. But even if England had
surrendered every point it was an outrageous assumption on the part of
General Dearborn to depart from the line of military instructions and
military duty upon any representation foreign to that du