These mortifications prostrated Dearborn, whose strength had been steadily failing. June 8 he wrote to Armstrong: “My ill state of health renders it extremely painful to attend to the current duties; and unless my health improves soon, I fear I shall be compelled to retire to some place where my mind may be more at ease for a short time.”[183] June 10, his adjutant-general, Winfield Scott, issued orders devolving on Major-General Morgan Lewis the temporary command not only of the Niagara army but also of the Ninth Military district.[184] “In addition to the debility and fever he has been afflicted with,” wrote Dearborn’s aid, S. S. Connor, to Secretary Armstrong, June 12,[185] “he has, within the last twenty-four hours, experienced a violent spasmodic attack on his breast, which has obliged him to relinquish business altogether.” “I have doubts whether he will ever again be fit for service,” wrote Morgan Lewis to Armstrong, June 14;[186] “he has been repeatedly in a state of convalescence, but relapses on the least agitation of mind.” June 20 Dearborn himself wrote in a very despondent spirit both in regard to his health and to the military situation: “I have been so reduced in strength as to be incapable of any command. Brigadier-General Boyd is the only general officer present.”[187] The sudden departure of Morgan Lewis, ordered to Sackett’s Harbor, left General Boyd for a few days to act as the general in command at Niagara. Boyd, though well known for his success at Tippecanoe, was not a favorite in the army. “A compound of ignorance, vanity, and petulance,” wrote his late superior, Morgan Lewis,[188] “with nothing to recommend him but that species of bravery in the field which is vaporing, boisterous, stifling reflection, blinding observation, and better adapted to the bully than the soldier.” Galled by complaints of the imbecility of the army, Boyd, with Dearborn’s approval,[189] June 23, detached Colonel Boerstler of the Fourteenth Infantry with some four hundred men and two field-pieces, to batter a stone house at Beaver Dam, some seventeen miles from Fort George.[190] Early in the morning of June 24 Boerstler marched to Beaver Dam. There he found himself surrounded in the woods by hostile Indians, numbering according to British authority about two hundred. The Indians, annoying both front and rear, caused Boerstler to attempt retreat, but his retreat was stopped by a few militia-men, said to number fifteen.[191] A small detachment of one hundred and fifty men came to reinforce Boerstler, and Lieutenant Fitzgibbon of the British Forty-ninth regiment, with forty-seven men, reinforced the Indians. Unable to extricate himself, and dreading dispersion and massacre, Boerstler decided to surrender; and his five hundred and forty men accordingly capitulated to a British lieutenant with two hundred and sixty Indians, militia, and regulars.