The Ohio people toiled and waited for the inventions of the future to
open ways out into the world for them with the great riches to which
they were shut up in their own borders; but it must have been with a
growing uneasiness. Great Britain, as we know, had long held the forts
in the West which she had agreed to give up to the United States, and
after she surrendered them, her agents and subjects in Canada abetted
the Indians in their rising against the Americans under Tecumseh and
the Prophet. The trouble with the Indians would probably have ended at
Tippecanoe, if it had not been for the outbreak of war between the two
countries; yet this outbreak must have been a kind of relief to the Ohio
people. The English insisted upon the right of searching our vessels
on the high seas, and pressing into their navy any sailors whom they
decided to be British subjects, and though the Ohio people could not
feel the injury of this, as it was felt in the seaboard states whose
citizens were forced into the English service by thousands, they could
feel the insult. They were used to fighting, and they welcomed the war
which at least unmasked their enemies. Their ardor was chilled, however,
by one of its first events, which was the surrender of Detroit by
General Hull. This threw the state open to invasion by the British and
Indians, and the danger was felt in every part of it. The militia were
called out, troops poured in from Kentucky, and General Harrison marched
into the northwest to recapture Detroit. A detachment of his army was
beaten in the first action, which took place beyond the Ohio limits,
and after yielding to the British was butchered in cold blood by their
Indian allies. The next spring Harrison built Fort Meigs on the Maumee;
from this point he hoped to strike a severe blow at the enemy in Canada,
but he was himself attacked here by General Proctor, who marched down
from Maiden with a large force of British regulars, Canadian militia,
and Indians led by Tecumseh.
Proctor planted batteries on the shore of the river, and Tecumseh’s
Indians climbed trees and poured down a galling fire on the besieged.
The British commander then summoned the fort to surrender, but Harrison
answered his messenger, “As General Proctor did not send me a summons on
his first arrival, I had supposed that he believed me determined to do
my duty,” and he dismissed the envoy with the assurance that if the post
fell into Proctor’s hands it would be in a manner to do him more honor
than any surrender could do. The fight then continued until the British
general found his fickle savage friends deserting him, and on the 12th
day raised the siege.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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