Armstrong and Wilkinson made common cause in throwing upon Hampton the blame of failure. Wilkinson at first ordered Hampton under arrest, but after reflection decided to throw the responsibility upon Armstrong.[278] The secretary declined to accept it, but consented after some delay to accept Hampton’s resignation when renewed in March, 1814. Wilkinson declared that Hampton’s conduct had blasted his dawning hopes and the honor of the army.[279] Armstrong sneered at Wilkinson for seizing the pretext for abandoning his campaign.[280] Both the generals believed that Armstrong had deliberately led them into an impossible undertaking, and deserted them, in order to shift the blame of failure from himself.[281] Hampton behaved with dignity, and allowed his opinion to be seen only in his contemptuous silence; nor did Armstrong publicly blame Hampton’s conduct until Hampton was dead. The only happy result of the campaign was to remove all the older generals--Wilkinson, Hampton, and Morgan Lewis--from active service. The bloodless failure of an enterprise which might have ended in extreme disaster was not the whole cost of Armstrong’s and Wilkinson’s friendship and quarrels. In November nearly all the regular forces, both British and American, had been drawn toward the St. Lawrence. Even Harrison and his troops, who reached Buffalo October 24, were sent to Sackett’s Harbor, November 16, to protect the navy. Not a regiment of the United States army was to be seen between Sackett’s Harbor and Detroit. The village of Niagara and Fort George on the British side were held by a few hundred volunteers commanded by Brigadier-General McClure of the New York militia. As long as Wilkinson and Hampton threatened Montreal, Niagara was safe, and needed no further attention. After November 13, when Wilkinson and Hampton withdrew from Canada, while the American army forgot its enemy in the bitterness of its own personal feuds, the British generals naturally thought of recovering their lost posts on the Niagara River. McClure, who occupied Fort George and the small town of Newark under its guns, saw his garrison constantly diminishing. Volunteers refused to serve longer on any conditions.[282] The War Department ordered no reinforcements, although ten or twelve thousand soldiers were lying idle at French Mills and Plattsburg. December 10 McClure had about sixty men of the Twenty-fourth infantry, and some forty volunteers, at Fort George, while the number of United States troops present for duty at Fort George, Fort Niagara, Niagara village, Black Rock, and Buffalo, to protect the people and the magazines, amounted to four companies, or three hundred and twenty-four men.