or die. Harrison consolingly informed him that he was to retreat if
attacked by British troops "but that to attempt to retire in the face of
an Indian force would be vain."

Major Croghan blithely prepared to do anything else than retreat, while
General Harrison stayed ten miles away to plan a battle against
Tecumseh's Indians if they should happen to come in his direction. On
the 1st of August, Croghan's scouts informed him that the woods swarmed
with Indians and that British boats were pushing up the river. Procter
was on the scene again, and no sooner had his four hundred regulars
found a landing place than a curt demand for surrender came to Major
Croghan. The British howitzers peppered the stockade as soon as the
refusal was delivered, but they failed to shake the spirit of the
dauntless hundred and sixty American defenders. On the following day,
the 2d of August, Procter stupidly repeated his error of a direct
assault upon sheltered riflemen, which had cost him heavily at the
Raisin and at Fort Meigs. He ordered his redcoats to carry Fort
Stephenson. Again and again they marched forward until all the officers
had been shot down and a fifth of the force was dead or wounded.
American valor and marksmanship had proved themselves in the face of
heavy odds. At sunset the beaten British were flocking into their boats,
and Procter was again on his way to Amherstburg. His excuse for the
trouncing laid the blame on the Indians:

The troops, after the artillery had been used for some hours,
attacked two faces and, impossibilities being attempted, failed.
The fort, from which the severest fire I ever saw was maintained
during the attack, was well defended. The troops displayed the
greatest bravery, the much greater part of whom reached the fort
and made every effort to enter; but the Indians who had proposed
the assault and, had it not been assented to, would have ever
stigmatized the British character, scarcely came into fire before
they ran out of its reach. A more than adequate sacrifice having
been made to Indian opinion, I drew off the brave assailants.

The sound of Croghan's guns was heard in General Harrison's camp at
Seneca, ten miles up the river. Harrison had nothing to say but this:
"The blood be upon his own head. I wash my hands of it." This was a
misguided speech which the country received with marked disfavor while
it acclaimed young Croghan as the sterling