avor not a pound of provisions had been carried within
fifty miles of this place. Wagons and pack-trains floundered in the mud
and were abandoned. The rivers froze and thwarted the use of flotillas
of scows. Winter closed down, and the American army was forlornly mired
and blockaded along two hundred miles of front. The troops at Fort
Defiance ate roots and bark. Typhus broke out among them, and they died
like flies. For the failure to supply the army, the War Department was
largely responsible, and Secretary Eustis very properly resigned in
December. This removed one glaring incompetent from the list but it
failed to improve Harrison's situation.

It was not until the severe frosts of January, 1813, fettered the swamps
that Harrison was able to extricate his troops and forward supplies to
the shore of Lake Erie for an offensive against Amherstburg. First in
motion was the left wing of thirteen hundred Kentucky militia and
regulars under General Winchester. This officer was an elderly planter
who, like Hull, had worn a uniform in the Revolution. He had no great
aptitude for war and was held in low esteem by the Kentuckians of his
command--hungry, mutinous, and disgusted men, who were counting the days
before their enlistments should expire. The commonplace Winchester was
no leader to hold them in hand and spur their jaded determination.

While they were building storehouses and log defenses, within
dangerously easy distance of the British post at Amherstburg, the
tempting message came that the settlement of Frenchtown, on the Raisin,
thirty miles away and within the British lines, was held by only two
companies of Canadian militia. Here was an opportunity for a dashing
adventure, and Winchester ordered half his total force to march and
destroy this detachment of the enemy. The troops accordingly set out,
drove home a brisk assault, cleared Frenchtown of its defenders, and
held their ground awaiting orders.

Winchester then realized that he had leaped before he looked. He had
seriously weakened his own force while the column at Frenchtown was in
peril from two thousand hostile troops and Indians only eighteen miles
beyond the river Raisin. The Kentuckians left with him decided matters
for themselves. They insisted on marching to the support of their
comrades at Frenchtown. Meanwhile General Harrison had learned of this
fatuous division of strength and was hastening to the base at the falls
of the Maumee. There he found