The Great Republic by the Master Historians The Battle of the Thames byBancroft, Hubert H.
[The naval victory on Lake Erie was quickly followed by an equally decisive one
on the land. General Harrison, with an army of seven thousand men, was at that
time on the southern shore of the lake, and immediately after Perry's victory
embarked on his fleet, and was conveyed to the vicinity of Malden, the central
point of the British movements in the West. The disaster to their fleet seem to
have demoralized the British troops, or at least to have frightened their
commander, General Proctor, who displayed a cowardice equal to that of Hull. He
hastily retreated from Malden, after destroying the navy-yard and barracks.
Tecumseh, the Indian chief, who was with him, strongly remonstrated against this
flight, as unwise and unmilitary, but without success. Everything was burned
that could not be carried off, and the retreat of the army was the precipitate
flight of a panic-struck host, being conducted so rapidly that no effort was
made to impede pursuit by burning bridges and obstructing roads. The story of
the succeeding events we select from the "Historical Sketch of the Second War
with Great Britain," by Charles J. Ingersoll, a member of Congress at that
period.]
General Harrison almost despaired of overtaking the fugitives. On the 27th
September, 1813, he wrote to the Secretary of War that he would pursue them next
day, but that there was no probability of overtaking them. But the Kentuckians
were resolved on the revenge of, at any rate, a battle with their murderers at
Raisin.. They were not to be disappointed by any irresolution or deterred by any
obstacle. Harrison, therefore, with Commodore Perry, General Cass, General Green
Clay, and an army eager for action, pushed forward without delay or hesitation,
by forced marches, over rivers, morasses, through broken countries, attended by
some boats and water-craft; continually finding Proctor's stores, provisions,
ammunition and arms, either deserted by the way, or so weakly guarded, by small
detachments of the enemy, as to offer no resistance. Seldom was flight more
mismanaged than that of the English.. The whole way from Malden to the Thames
betrayed their extreme perturbation..
At length, on the morning of the 5th October, 1813, near an Indian settlement
called the Moravian towns, on the river Thames, Harrison came up with the
English, eight hundred regular troops under Major-General Proctor, and twelve
hundred Indians headed by Tecumseh. By this time Colonel Johnson's regiment of
twelve hundred mounted men, armed with guns, without either pistols or sabres,
had joined General Harrison, having, by forced marches, followed from the moment
they got his orders to do so..
The night before the battle of the Thames, Walk-in-the-water, with sixty
followers, deserted Proctor, and threw themselves in General Harrison's arms.
Large quantities of English stores fell into our possession continually. Late at
night Proctor and Tecumseh descended the river clandestinely, and made a
reconnoissance, with a view to attack Harrison, which was Tecumseh's desire, and
probably Proctor's best plan for escape; but the English general did not choose
to risk what would have been not only less dishonorable, but much safer, than
the battle he was forced to accept.
When all General Harrison's dispositions for attack, on the 5th of October,
1813, had been made, and the army was advancing against the enemy, well posted
among woods, marshes, and streams, Colonel Wood, who had approached close to the
English, - concealed to reconnoitre, - returned to General Harrison and told him
that Proctor's men were drawn up in open lines; that is, each man somewhat
separated from the next, instead of standing close together, as is the strongest
and safest method. With considerable felicity of prompt adaptation to
circumstances, Harrison instantly changed his order of attack. He inquired of
Colonel Johnson if his horsemen could charge infantry. "Certainly," said the
colonel. His men had been trained and practised to charge in the woods, just as
they were to do. General Harrison then gave Colonel Johnson the order to charge;
and in an instant that battalion of the mounted regiment which Colonel Richard
Johnson committed to his brother, the lieutenant-colonel, James, charged through
and through the English infantry, who then threw down their arms and cried for
quarters in a much more craven mood than had yet been betrayed in that war.
Their commander, after demoralizing them by guilt and encumbering them with
plunder, disheartened them by pusillanimous behavior when attacked. Colonel
Richard Johnson's order to charge was discretionary, to charge the enemy as they
stood, infantry, artillery, and some horse. Finding that the whole of his
regiment could hardly get at them between the river and the swamp where they
were drawn up, while by passing the swamp he might reach the Indians there
awaiting our onset, Colonel Johnson, in the absence of General Harrison,
exercised a judicious discretion to consign the first battalion of his regiment
to his brother for the English, while he himself, with the other battalion,
should attack the Indians. The English infantry delivered some shots as
Lieutenant-Colonel James Johnson approached, and for a moment disconcerted some
of the first horses, although drilled to that mode of charge. But, taking a
couple of volleys as they advanced, they easily recovered composure, rushed on
the infantry, pierced, broke, then wheeled upon them, poured in a destructive
fire on their rear, and brought them to instantaneous submission, without much
loss on either side.. Proctor, with a small escort of dragoons and mounted
Indians, made his escape so quickly and rapidly that no effort could overtake
him. He was pursued for many miles, abandoned his carriage and sword, lost all
his plunder and papers,.. and found his way, at last, through many tribulations,
to Burlington Heights, there to be publicly reprimanded and disgraced for
cowardice and avarice, by the Governor-General of Canada. The disaster of the
British army, said an English historian, was not palliated by those precautions
and that presence of mind which even in defeat reflect lustre on a commander.
The bridges and roads in rear of the retreating army were left entire, while its
progress was retarded with a useless and cumbersome load of baggage..
Tecumseh, with his red braves, made a very different stand against Colonel
Richard Johnson. Unlike the precipitate firing of the British infantry, these
gallant savages reserved theirs till close pressed, then delivered volleys with
deadly aim and effect. Embarrassed by the swamp, Colonel Johnson found it
necessary to dismount his men. As soon as Governor Shelby heard the musketry
from his station, the old soldier, eager for action, led up his men. After some
time of close, sharp, and mutually destructive fighting, the Indians were forced
to give way, but not without sacrificing three times as many lives as the
English, and leaving infinitely fewer prisoners as trophies to their conquerors.
Active and conspicuous, invincible and exemplary, the valiant Tecumseh fought
till he fell pierced with several balls and died a hero's death. The Indian
chief on whom the savage command devolved deplored to General Harrison, after
the battle, the treacherous cowardice of their father, General Proctor, by which
term of veneration he still mentioned that recreant superior..
Colonel Richard Johnson's task in conflict with Tecumseh was much longer,
bloodier, and more difficult, though no bolder, than his brother's vanquishing
the English. Whether with his own hand he killed the Indian chieftain is among
the disputed occurrences of a conflict in which his conduct requires no
additional celebrity. He was repeatedly shot, and desperately wounded..
The battle of the Thames was our first regular and considerable victory. I have
not attempted to describe its professional, or indeed particular, features; that
having been done by so many others. Truth, always difficult of attainment, is
hardly a rudiment of narration when involving personal animosities and vanities,
exacerbated by national prejudices. In fact, no one person witnesses much of
most battles, but must be content with various reports from others. Hence the
English proverb that falsehood glares on every French bulletin.. The result of
the Northwestern campaign was to relieve great regions from English power and
Indian devastation.
[Ingersoll proceeds to say, in justice to English soldiers, "Thousands of hard-
fought fields in every quarter and with every people of the world, by land and
sea, attest the stubborn valor of British troops. No history can deny their
characteristic courage and fortitude. But English murderers and thieves became
cowards in Canada; hard words, but true. To save themselves from retaliation,
and their ill-got plunder from recapture, they laid down their arms to an
inferior force of raw troops, while their commander fled in the first moment of
encounter."
During the period of the events above related, an Indian war was taking place in
the South which was attended with the ordinary barbarities of such outbreaks.
Tecumseh, the bitter foe of the Americans and the head of the great Indian
confederacy of the North, had used his influence to stir up the Southern tribes
to war. His efforts proved successful with the Creeks, who took up the hatchet
and made a sudden assault upon the settlements. Fort Mimms, in Alabama, in which
many families of settlers had collected for safety, was taken by surprise, and
its inmates, numbering nearly three hundred men, women, and children, were
massacred with the usual cruelty of the Indians. General Andrew Jackson, the
commander of the Tennessee militia, immediately marched into the Creek country,
and a series of battles commenced which ended in the complete subjection of the
savages. General Coffee, with nine hundred men, surrounded a body of Indians at
Tallusahatchee, and killed about two hundred, not a warrior escaping. The
battles of Talladega, Autosse, Emucfau, and others followed, with defeat to the
Indians, though with much loss to the Americans. The last fight took place at
the Horse-Shoe Bend of the Tallapoosa. Here the Indian fort was carried by
assault, and the Indians, seeing no way of escape, continued to fight until
nearly all were slain. This broke the power of the Creeks, and they soon after
submitted to the whites.]
