CHAPTER vicinity, whom it was attempted to conciliate by disXXV. tributing among them the merchandise deposited in the 1812. fort. But they soon fell upon the retreating column. The Miamis fled or joined the assailants; and the whites, speedily reduced to twenty effective men, surrendered on a promise that their lives should be spared. The prisoners, many of them severely wounded, were divided among the Indians, who conveyed them to Michilimackinat, where they were ransomed by the British commander; but it was only after many months and much suffering that the survivors finally regained their homes. Hull's capitulation greatly curtailed the American frontier. The Sanduskies, Fort M'Arthur, at the head of the Scioto, lately built during Hull's advance on De troit, Fort Wayne, at the head of the Maumee, Fort Harrison, on the Wabash (Terre Haute), and Fort Madison, on the Mississippi, some twenty miles above the mouth of the Des Moines, became now the most advanced posts. A council with the Indians of Ohio and Indiana, appointed to be held at Piqua, proved a complete failure. All these tribes, with scarcely an exception, joined now in hostilities; and, in a short time, Forts Wayne and Harrison were beleagured. Great was the mortification, and even rage, of the war party, aggravated as it was by the taunts of the Federalists at this speedy result, in the loss of a large portion of our own territory, of the attempted conquest of Canada. All the difficulties and dangers of Hull's position; the smallness of his force; the rawness of his troops; the inexperience of his officers; the interception of his communications; the cloud of Indians, by which the complete devastation of the territory was threatened; the power of the enemy, by their command of the XXV. lakes, to concentrate against him an unknown force, CHAPTER were kept quite out of sight; and the unfortunate general, made the scape-goat of every body's blunders, and 1812. laden with every body's faults, was accused by a general chorus of the war party, his own officers taking the lead, not only of incapacity and want of enterprise, but even of cowardice; and, as if that were not enough, of having treacherously sold himself and his army to the British. Tried some two years afterward, before a courtmartial, on these two serious charges, Hull took the ground that to have attempted any further resistance would have exposed, not the garrison only, but the townspeople, and, in fact, the whole population of the territory, women and children included, to inevitable massacre by the Indians. Under ordinary circumstances, this defense might have been entitled to weight; but the position which Hull had voluntarily assumed did not allow him to yield, without fighting, to any merely anticipated dangers, however probable. The trade of war admits but a very modified indulgence of the feelings of humanity. What are the lives of a few women and children compared to the humiliation of a nation or the mortification of a party? We may, indeed, pity the old general, beset as he was on his trial by a host of swift witnesses, to whom it was very easy, after the smallness of the British force had become known, to promise great exploits for the army, and to hold Hull personally responsible for all the blunders and mishaps of a camp of raw recruits. Yet, it will not be easy to find fault with the sentence of the court, finding him guilty of cowardice-understanding thereby not so much fear of personal harm as that want of nerve so absolutely necessary in a general, a readiness to risk, when necessary, the lives of others as well as his own. CHAPTER Pending this luckless campaign, some hopes had been entertained on both sides that the war might yet be cut 1812. short. The president, at the moment of its declaration, had sent by Foster, the returning British minister, an authority to Russell, still at London, to agree to an armistice, preliminary to a definitive arrangement of all differences, on condition of the repeal of the orders in council, the discontinuance of impressment from Ameri can vessels, and the return of the seamen hitherto impressed. As an additional inducement, Russell was authorized to offer, if Britain would reciprocate by a similar enactment, the prohibition of the employment of British seamen in American vessels, public or private ; and by a subsequent letter, to agree to an armistice, on a tacit understanding, instead of the express stipulation first asked, as to impressments and impressed seamen. The orders in council had already been disposed of by the voluntary action of the British government, and this question of impressments remained, in fact, the only point of dispute. The ministry, as if to strengthen their position, had issued, not long after Brougham's attack, April 21. what they called a "Declaration," citing the Duke of Bassano's report of the 10th of March as complete proof that the French decrees of Berlin and Milan remained in full force, and expressing the expectation that the late renewal, as to Great Britain, of the American Non-importation Act, would not be persisted in after the clear proof thus afforded of the artifice and falsehood of the French government. To this declaration a new order in council had been appended, to the effect that, if at any time the Berlin and Milan decrees should, by some authentic act of the French government publicly promul gated, be expressly and unconditionally repealed, thereupon the orders in council of January, 1807, and April, BARLOW AND BASSANO. 345 XXV. 1809, should, without further formality, cease to be in CHAPTER force. Upon the reception of these documents, Barlow still arguing, as he all along had done, that a repeal of the 1812. French decrees as to America merely would not operate to produce a recall of the British orders (as the condition of which the total abandonment of the Continental system was demanded), and, therefore, could not lead to any reconciliation between Great Britian and the United States; admitting, also, that American vessels, so far as the final decisions of prize cases by the emperor was concerned, were, in fact, exempted from the maritime operation of those decrees; yet ventured to suggest, since that exemption had not been noticed in Bassano's May 1. late report to the emperor, that it was not only just, but urgently necessary, that the French government should now make and publish an authentic act, declaring those decrees to have ceased to operate, as against the United States, since November, 1810. In what he described, without giving the particulars, as a "pretty sharp conversation" with the Duke of Bassano, he encountered a "singular reluctance" to answer this note. No doubt he suggested, what was likely to have infinitely greater weight with Bonaparte than any claim of justice, that unless some such decree were actually issued, the American government would find it impossible longer to persist in the system of non-importation from Great Britain. Thus pressed, Bassano finally produced a decree, dated April 28th, 1811, directing that, in consideration of the resistance of the United States to the orders in council by the act of March 2d preceding, the Berlin and Milan decrees were to be considered as not having existed, as to American vessels, since November 1st, 1810. To Barlow's question whether this decree, now apparently a year old, had ever been published, Bassano answered XXV. CHAPTER no. He added, however, that it had been shown to Russell, then chargé d'affaires at Paris, and had also been 1812. sent to Serrurier at Washington, to be communicated to the American government. That this was a mere falsehood there can not be a doubt. No notice of any such communication appeared on the records of the American May 29. legation at Paris. Russell, when inquired of, expressly denied the fact. Even Serrurier confessed that the first he had heard of this decree was in a letter from Bassano, dated subsequently to this conversation with Barlow, expressing his surprise that Serrurier had never acknowledged a letter sent a year before, containing, as was pretended, a copy to be communicated to the American government of the decree now again re-inclosed. The date and tenor of this manufactured decree by which the exception of American vessels was made to rest on an act of Congress, which had itself been based, and solely based, upon the supposed previous existence of that very exception, were evidently intended to deter Barlow from insisting upon the public production of it since it would go to confirm all the charges brought against the American government by the British minis try and the American opposition, of having been duped into giving to a mere conditional promise the force and character of a positive act. Glad enough, however, to get hold of a repealing decree in any shape, Barlow insisted on a formal copy of it; and when at length it was reluctantly communicatAay 10. ed, he forthwith forwarded it to Russell, at London, by the Wasp, lately arrived with dispatches for himself. Being May 20. communicated to Castlereagh as settling the disputed question of the actual repeal, as to the United States, of the Berlin and Milan decrees, it came just in season to second the efforts of the British manufacturers, who had |