War was declared by the United States against England on June 12, 1812. Mackinaw was taken by the British on July 16. Having Detroit to protect and a force of British and Indians to oppose, General Hull naturally aimed to mass his forces and abandon all indefensible outlying posts, such as Fort Dearborn evidently was. Therefore, about August 1st, he sent by Winnemeg, a friendly Indian, a dispatch to Captain Heald, ordering him to evacuate the fort and to proceed to Detroit by land with his command, leaving it to his discretion to dispose of the public property as he might think proper.[Z] Mrs. Kinzie, in Wau-Bun, says that the messenger arrived on August 7th, instead of the 9th which Captain Heald names as the date of his receipt of the order, and adds that the same letter brought news of the declaration of war (which had taken place about two months earlier) and of the loss of the post at Mackinaw. She also gives us a new reading of the dispatch, quite different from that given by Captain Heald. She says the orders to Captain Heald were "to vacate the fort if practicable, and in that event to distribute all the United States property contained in the fort and in the United States factory, or agency, among the Indians in the neighborhood." This discrepancy between our two sources of information becomes important in judging of the blame, if any, attributable to Captain Heald for the disaster toward which all were hastening. Guided by the ordinary rules of evidence, we must take Captain Heald's version as the true one, and believe that the order was peremptory, only to be disobeyed if the subordinate officer felt sure that it would not have been given if his superior had been on the spot; and also that the distribution of goods was, on Captain Heald's part, a voluntary concession intended to win the favor of the Indian--the incurable savage. [Z] See Appendix E. It should here be stated that there is a broad divergence--one might say a contradiction--between the Kinzie account and the Heald account of the occurrences of that troubled, appalling, disastrous time. Mrs. Kinzie says that Winnemeg privately told Mr. Kinzie that the fort ought not to be evacuated, seeing that it was well supplied with provisions and ammunition, and advised waiting for reinforcements. Also that if Captain Heald was to go at all, he should start at once, to get out of the way of the hostiles by a forced march while the Indians were dividing the spoil. (How many "forced marches" would it have taken to make that lumbering caravan safe from pursuit by the red runners of the wilds?) She says: