held
them to their task. An interesting sidelight on the conditions under
which their work was done is contained in the following extract from a
letter written by a volunteer in 1814:

"On the second day of our march a courier arrived from General Harrison,
ordering the artillery to advance with all possible speed. This was
rendered totally impossible by the snow which took place, it being
a complete swamp nearly all day. On the evening of the same day news
arrived that General Harrison had retreated to Portage River, eighteen
miles in the rear of the encampment at the rapids. As many men as could
be spared determined to proceed immediately to re-enforce him.... At two
o'clock the next morning our tents were struck, and in half an hour we
were on the road. I will candidly confess that on that day I regretted
being a soldier. On that day we marched thirty miles under an incessant
rain; and I am afraid you will doubt my veracity when I tell you that
in eight miles of the best of the road, it took us over the knees,
and often to the middle. The Black Swamp would have been considered
impassable by all but men determined to surmount every difficulty to
accomplish the object of their march. In this swamp you lose sight of
terra firma altogether--the water was about six inches deep on the ice,
which was very rotten, often breaking through to the depth of four or
five feet. The same night we encamped on very wet ground, but the driest
that could be found, the rain still continuing. It was with difficulty
we could raise fires; we had no tents; our clothes were wet, no axes,
nothing to cook with, and very little to eat. A brigade of pack-horses
being near us, we procured from them some flour, killed a hog (there
were plenty of THEM along the road); our bread was baked in the ashes,
and our pork we broiled on the coals--a sweeter meal I never partook of.
When we went to sleep it was on two logs laid close to each other, to
keep our bodies from the damp ground. Good God! What a pliant being is
man in adversity." *

* Dawson. "William H. Harrison," p. 369.

The principal theater of war was the Great Lakes and the lands adjacent
to them. Prior to the campaign which culminated in Jackson's victory at
New Orleans after peace had been signed, the Mississippi Valley had been
untrodden by British soldiery. The contest, none the less, came close
home to the backwoods populations. Scores of able-bodied men from every
important comm