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8. Was Hull’s Surrender Justified?
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[ 8 ] Was Hull’s Surrender Justified? Given the circumstances that Hull faced in conducting the Detroit campaign , his surrender should have been foreseen. William Henry Harrison had made that very prediction to the secretary of war, but the administration was too enamored with the conviction that Canada could be captured easily. Initially it seemed that would be the case—Hull’s march to Detroit in very difficult conditions had been conducted so effectively and efficiently that it held promise for an early victory. Perhaps that is why the news of the surrender came as such a shock to the nation and the condemnation of Hull grew so bitter. Yet consider the conditions in which Hull found himself conducting his campaign, conditions not normally faced by military commanders: an extremely difficult supply transportation problem exacerbated by the British control of the river and lake, a fort that was inextricably nested within a town and burdened with the defense of a civilian population, an Indian threat that was a physical as well as a psychological menace, and junior officers who disputed virtually every command he issued. Hull’s fear of not being provided with sufficient supplies to weather a campaign was justified. The War Department lacked the organization to forward the necessary food, medical supplies, and arms once Hull arrived in Detroit. The contractor it had selected to arrange for the supplies never followed through, forcing Hull to make his own piecemeal arrangements. Simply providing sufficient rations to maintain an army of 1,500 to 2,000 men in a country chronically short of food was no small matter. Not being able to transport supplies to Hull by water created enormous difficulty for his Ohio contractor. It forced him to move them down Was Hull’s Surrender Justified? 129 200 miles of wilderness trail by pack train, which at any point could be assaulted and captured by roving Indian bands unless it were heavily guarded. Historians who fail to recognize negative impact this had on the campaign do Hull a disservice. The actions of British Brigadier General Procter, for example, testify to the vital importance of controlling the waterways in supplying the Detroit area: when Commodore Perry took command of Lake Erie and shut down the shipment of supplies from Niagara to his command by water, Procter immediately abandoned Fort Malden. Nor was the urgency of maintaining a reliable supply system lost on General Harrison when he was given the responsibility of recapturing Detroit in the fall of 1812. Understanding the difficulty of being forced to maintain a supply route by land once his army was in motion, he set about setting up supply depots along his intended line of march. No doubt from experience, he was aware that the maximum distance that a wagon train could be extended from its base was about 90 miles, or six to seven days’ travel time if road conditions were good. Without such depots a supply train could travel nor more than about 135 miles without having to carry food for its animals as well as for the troops.1 Harrison further pointed out to Secretary of War Eustis at the outset of his campaign that it would take an army twice the size of the British force at Malden to hold Fort Detroit, and another equal to its size to guard the 200-mile overland supply route from Ohio against Indian and British attack.2 Hull had none of the resources Harrison considered requisite at his disposal; therefore, it is conceivable that the shortage of food would have forced his surrender not too long after the British besieged the fort—but only after untold military and civilian casualties had been suffered. Fort Detroit itself was an anomaly. It was originally designed to withstand Indian attacks by land and to protect the citizens of Detroit from them, which is why the town’s homes and other buildings were located between the south side of the fort and the river. But in that position they obstructed the fire from the fort’s guns. In fact, those structures that had been built along Main Street (Jefferson Avenue) sat on a rise that placed them in jeopardy of being struck by the fort’s own guns. Even had the buildings been torn down to give the fort’s cannon a clear range of fire over the river into Canada, the guns’ effectiveness would have been questionable. Although...