In determining the course to be pursued in carrying on hostilities the administration selected Canada as the only field of operations promising any success. The navy was to be shut up in port, leaving our seven thousand merchantmen to slip through the hands of British cruisers, and reach home as they best could. It was to be a war on land and not on the sea, and the conquest of Canada would undoubtedly be the result of the first campaign. General Dearborn, who had served in the revolution, was appointed commander-in-chief of the northern forces, and soon repaired to Plattsburgh, while General Van Rensalaer, of the New York militia, and General Smith were stationed on the Niagara frontier. In anticipation of the war, General Hull, Governor of Michigan, had been ordered to occupy his territory with an army of two thousand men, for the purpose of defending the north-western frontier from the Indians, and in case of war to obtain the command of Lake Erie, and thus be able to cooperate with Dearborn and Van Rensalaer in the invasion of Canada. The command naturally descended on him as Governor of Michigan. Having, also, been an officer of merit under Washington, the appointment was considered a very judicious one. With part of the first regiments of United States infantry, and three companies of the first regiment of artillery, the balance made up of Ohio volunteers and Michigan militia, and one company of rangers, he left Dayton, in Ohio, the first of June, just eighteen days before the declaration of war. On the tenth, he was joined at Urbana by Colonel Miller, with the fourth regiment of infantry, composed of three hundred men. Here the little army entered the untrodden wilderness, and slowly cut its way through the primeval forest, two hundred miles in extent, to Detroit. It reached Maumee the latter part of June, where, on the second of July, Hull received the news of the declaration of war. The letter of the Secretary of War had been _fourteen days_ reaching him. The British officer, at Maiden, had been officially notified of it _two days before_. "On this occasion, the British were better served. Prevost received notice of it, on the 24th of June, at Quebec. Brock on the 26th, at Newark. St. George on the 30th, at Malden; and Roberts on the 8th of July, at St. Joseph's. But, a fact still more extraordinary than the celerity of these transmissions, is, that the information thus rapidly forwarded to the British commanders, at Malden and St. Joseph, was received under envelopes, franked by the Secretary of the American Treasury."[15] But, if the Secretary of the Treasury had been the victim of a shrewd trick, the Secretary of War had commenced his career by a most egregious blunder. On the day of the declaration of war, he wrote two letters to General Hull, one announcing the fact, and the other making no mention of it. The latter despatched by a special messenger, reached the General on the 24th of June. The former being intrusted to