“Friends of your country! ye who have ‘the will to do, the heart to dare!’ the moment ye have wished for has arrived! Think on your country’s honors torn! her rights trampled on! her sons enslaved! her infants perishing by the hatchet! Be strong! be brave! and let the ruffian power of the British king cease on this continent!” Two detachments were to cross the river from Black Rock before dawn, November 28, to surprise and disable the enemy’s batteries and to destroy a bridge five miles below; after this should be done the army was to cross. The British were supposed to have not more than a thousand men within twenty miles to resist the attack of three thousand men from Buffalo. Apparently Smyth’s calculations were correct. His two detachments crossed the river at three o’clock on the morning of November 28 and gallantly, though with severe loss, captured and disabled the guns and tore up a part of the bridge without destroying it. At sunrise the army began to embark at the navy yard, but the embarkation continued so slowly that toward afternoon, when all the boats were occupied, only twelve hundred men, with artillery, were on board. “The troops thus embarked,” reported Smyth,[311] “moved up the stream to Black Rock without sustaining loss from the enemy’s fire. It was now afternoon, and they were ordered to disembark and dine.” This was all. No more volunteers appeared, and no other regulars fit for service remained. Smyth would not cross without three thousand men, and doubtless was right in his caution; but he showed want of courage not so much in this failure to redeem his pledges, as in his subsequent attempt to throw responsibility on subordinates, and on Dearborn who had requested him to consult some of his officers occasionally, and be prepared if possible to cross into Canada with three thousand men at once.[312] Smyth consulted his officers at the moment when consultation was fatal. “Recollecting your instructions to cross with three thousand men _at once_, and to consult some of my principal officers in ‘all important movements,’ I called for the field officers of the regulars and twelve-months volunteers embarked.”