gained as a deputy quartermaster-general
in 1781, and as colonel of a New Hampshire regiment after the end of
the Revolutionary War. Dearborn was a politician--not a general. After
serving several years in Jefferson's Cabinet, he graduated into the
custom-house at Boston, where he concerned himself more to beat the
Federalists than he ever exerted himself to defeat the British. In his
opinion, campaigning ought to have its regular alternations of
activity and repose, but he never knew when activity should begin. To
make the condition more supremely ironic, Morgan Lewis, now in his
fifty-ninth year, whose knowledge of war, like Dearborn's, had been
learned as a deputy quartermaster-general thirty years before, was
associated with him in command.

Dearborn submitted a plan of campaign, recommending that the main army
advance by way of Lake Champlain upon Montreal, while three corps of
militia should enter Canada from Detroit, Niagara and Sackett's
Harbour. This was as near as Dearborn ever came to a successful
invasion of Canada. War was declared on June 18, 1812, and July had
been frittered away before he left Albany. Meantime General Hull,
whose success depended largely upon Dearborn's vigorous support from
Niagara, having been a fortnight on British soil, now recrossed the
river and a few days later surrendered his army and Detroit to General
Brock. This tragic event aroused Dearborn sufficiently to send Stephen
Van Rensselaer to command the Niagara frontier, the feeble General
assuring the secretary of war that, as soon as the force at Lewiston
aggregated six thousand men, a forward movement should be made; but
Dearborn himself, with the largest force then under arms, took good
care to remain on Lake Champlain, clinging to its shores like a
barnacle, as if afraid of the fate visited upon the unfortunate Hull.
Finally, after two months of waiting, Van Rensselaer sent a thousand
men across the Niagara to Queenstown to be killed and captured within
sight of four thousand troops who refused to go to the help of their
comrades. Disgusted and defeated, Van Rensselaer turned over his
command to Brigadier-General Alexander Smith, a boastful Irish friend
of Madison from Virginia, who issued burlesque proclamations about an
invasion of Canada, and then declined to risk an engagement, although
he had three Americans to one Englishman. This closed the campaign of
1812.

With the hope of improving the military situation John Arm