nac practically erased American dominion from the western
empire of the Great Lakes. Visions of the conquest of Canada were thus
rudely dimmed in the opening actions of the war.

General Hull was tried by court-martial on charges of treason,
cowardice, and neglect of duty. He was convicted on the last two charges
and sentenced to be shot, with a recommendation to the mercy of the
President. The verdict was approved by Madison, but he remitted the
execution of the sentence because of the old man's services in the
Revolution. Guilty though he was, an angry and humiliated people also
made him the scapegoat for the sins of neglect and omission of which
their Government stood convicted. In the testimony offered at his trial
there was a touch, rude, vivid, and very human, to portray him in the
final hours of the tragic episode at Detroit. Spurned by his officers,
he sat on the ground with his back against the rampart while "he
apparently unconsciously filled his mouth with tobacco, putting in quid
after quid more than he generally did; the spittle colored with tobacco
juice ran from his mouth on his neckcloth, beard, cravat, and vest."

Later events in the Northwest Territory showed that the British
successes in that region were gained chiefly because of an unworthy
alliance with the Indian tribes, whose barbarous methods of warfare
stained the records of those who employed them. "Not more than seven or
eight hundred British soldiers ever crossed the Detroit River," says
Henry Adams, "but the United States raised fully twenty thousand men and
spent at least five million dollars and many lives in expelling them.
The Indians alone made this outlay necessary. The campaign of
Tippecanoe, the surrender of Detroit and Mackinaw, the massacres at Fort
Dearborn, the river Raisin, and Fort Meigs, the murders along the
frontier, and the campaign of 1813 were the prices paid for the Indian
lands in the Wabash Valley."

Before the story shifts to the other fields of the war, it seems
logical to follow to its finally successful result the bloody, wasteful
struggle for the recovery of the lost territory. This operation required
large armies and long campaigns, together with the naval supremacy of
Lake Erie, won in the next year by Oliver Hazard Perry, before the
fugitive British forces fell back from the charred ruins of Detroit and
Amherstburg and were soundly beaten at the battle of the Thames--the one
decisive, clean-cut American victo