General William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippecanoe and the Governor of Indiana Territory, whose capital was at Vincennes on the Wabash, possessed the experience and the instincts of a soldier. He had foreseen that Hull, unless he received support, must either abandon Detroit or be hopelessly hemmed in. The task of defending the western border was ardently undertaken by the States of Kentucky and Ohio. They believed in the war and were ready to aid it with the men and resources of a vigorous population of almost a million. When the word came that Hull was in desperate straits, Harrison hastened to organize a relief expedition. Before he could move, Detroit had fallen. But a high tide of enthusiasm swept him on toward an attempt to recover the lost empire. The Federal Government approved his plans and commissioned him as commander of the Northwestern army of ten thousand men. In the early autumn of 1812, General Harrison launched his ambitious and imposing campaign, by which three separate bodies of troops were to advance and converge within striking distance of Detroit, while a fourth was to invade and destroy the nests of Indians on the Wabash and Illinois rivers. An active British force might have attacked and defeated these isolated columns one by one, for they were beyond supporting distance of each other; but Brock now needed his regulars for the defense of the Niagara frontier. The scattered American army, including brigades from Virginia and Pennsylvania, was too strong to be checked by Indian forays, but it had not reckoned with the obstacles of an unfriendly wilderness and climate. In October, no more than a month after the bugles had sounded the advance, the campaign was halted, demoralized and darkly uncertain. A vast swamp stretched as a barrier across the route and heavy rains made it impassable. Hull had crossed the same swamp with his small force in the favorable summer season, but Harrison was unable to transport the food and war material needed by his ten thousand men. A million rations were required at the goal of the Maumee Rapids, and yet after two months of heartbreaking endeavor not a pound of provisions had been carried within fifty miles of this place. Wagons and pack-trains floundered in the mud and were abandoned. The rivers froze and thwarted the use of flotillas of scows. Winter closed down, and the American army was forlornly mired and blockaded along two hundred miles of front. The troops at Fort Defiance ate roots and bark. Typhus broke out among them, and they died like flies. For the failure to supply the army, the War Department was largely responsible, and Secretary Eustis very properly resigned in December. This removed one glaring incompetent from the list but it failed to improve Harrison's situation.