General William Hull, then in command of the Northwestern army assembled at Detroit, had served with distinction in the Revolutionary War, and had rendered excellent service as Governor of the Territory during the previous seven years. Until he surrendered Detroit he was held in high esteem and possessed the confidence of the administration. A letter of instructions to Captain Heald from General Hull was the most important among the despatches brought by the messenger. This letter gave specific directions to the officer commanding at Fort Dearborn, and was as follows: It is with regret I order the evacuation of your post, owing to the want of provisions only, a neglect of the Commandant of Detroit. You will therefore destroy all arms and ammunition; but the goods of the Factory you may give to the friendly Indians who may be desirous of escorting you on to Fort Wayne, and to the poor and needy of your post. I am informed this day that Mackinac and the Island of St. Joseph's [in the St. Mary's River] will be evacuated on account of the scarcity of provisions, and I hope in my next to give you an account of the surrender of the British at Maiden, as I expect 600 men here by the beginning of Sept. [Signed] Brigadier Gen. Hull. The letter, the original of which is preserved in the Draper collection of manuscripts at Madison, Wisconsin, bears the marks of having been hastily written. Evidently Mrs. John H. Kinzie, when she wrote the first published accounts of the events here narrated, had never seen the letter in which is contained the order to evacuate. In her work entitled _Wau-Bun_ she says that the order received by Captain Heald from General Hull was "to evacuate 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." Mrs. Kinzie's account of the order was doubtless gathered from those who were participants in the affairs of that time and who gave the contents of General Hull's letter from memory. For it must be remembered that the author of _Wau-Bun_, in which was printed the first authentic account of these events, was not a participant in them. She was the wife of John H. Kinzie, the son of John Kinzie the pioneer of 1804, and she did not come to Chicago until 1833, twenty-one years after the occurrences of which we are writing. [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF LETTER OF GENERAL HULL TO CAPTAIN HEALD. _By courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society._]