Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4Jefferson, Thomas
History
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
With us the affairs of war have taken the more favorable turn which
was to be expected. Our thirty years of peace had taken off, or
superannuated, all our revolutionary officers of experience and grade;
and our first draught in the lottery of untried characters had been
most unfortunate. The delivery of the fort and army of Detroit, by the
traitor Hull; the disgrace at Queenstown, under Van Rensellaer; the
massacre at Frenchtown, under Winchester; and surrender of Boerstler
in an open field to one third of his own numbers, were the inauspicious
beginnings of the first year of our warfare. The second witnessed but
the single miscarriage occasioned by the disagreement of Wilkinson and
Hampton, mentioned in my letter to you of November the 30th, 1813; while
it gave us the capture of York by Dearborn and Pike; the capture of Fort
George by Dearborn also; the capture of Proctor’s army on the Thames by
Harrison, Shelby, and Johnson; and that of the whole British fleet
on Lake Erie by Perry. The third year has been a continued series of
victories; to wit, of Brown and Scott at Chippeway; of the same at
Niagara; of Gaines over Drummond at Fort Erie; that of Brown over
Drummond at the same place; the capture of another fleet on Lake
Champlain by M’Donough; the entire defeat of their army under Prevost,
on the same day, by M’Comb, and recently their defeats at New Orleans by
Jackson, Coffee, and Carroll, with the loss of four thousand men out of
nine thousand and six hundred, with their two Generals, Packingham and
Gibbs killed, and a third, Keane, wounded, mortally, as is said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4 — John Shaqi
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