Still Smoking At Sackets Harbor

"Colonel Macomb received orders to return with four companies of his Regiment, with all despatch, to Sackett's Harbour."

Source of 1849 Map...Sacket's Harbor, New York, and Kingston, Ontario, Canada was LOC

Map exhibiting the rail road, canal, lake, and river routes from New York and Boston to the west : via Ocdensburgh [sic] and Sacket's [sic] Harbor, N.Y.

"The magazine of stores, fired by our own officers to prevent its falling into the enemy's hands, was still smoking. But the precautions taken, and the instructions given, by Colonel Macomb, prior to his departure for Fort George, had produced their desired effect, and the enemy was defeated."

"Colonel Macomb relieved General Brown, then Brigadier General of the Militia. Colonel Backus he found in his quarters, who was suffering from a wound in the action, and died a few days after."

Source Of Text: Memoirs Of Alexander Macomb...

Lieutenant-Colonel Bouchette

Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bouchette, son of the Commodore, began his career in the provincial navy under his father. He made the first survey of the harbor of Toronto in May, 1793, received his appointment as second lieutenant in the following year, serving in the navy until 1796. In 1797, he commanded an armed row-galley which cruised between Montreal and Quebec. His reports seem to have led to the arrest of Colonel McLean, afterwards executed as a spy. He took a military course in 1800. In 1804, he was appointed Surveyor-General of Lower Canada, raised a regiment, Quebec Volunteers, in 1812, and in 1813 was appointed lieutenant-colonel and transferred to staff and intelligence service.

Try To Become A Seargeant Or Corporal

From The Sherrard Family Of Steubenville:

"After Captain Peck got home, my brother John wrote to us from camp at Fort Stephenson, suggesting that if any of us were drafted we had better try to secure a position as sergeant, or even as corporal, rather than come out as a private soldier, and under this persuasion I rode over to see Captain Peck, and inquired of him if there were any openings in his company for. sergeants." 

View Of The Fort's Remains

From The Sherrard Family Of Steubenville:


The next day [in 1824] I and Colonel Chambers went down to the town of Lower Sandusky, which was my first view of it, and it was a poor-looking town. It had two middling stores in it at the time, — one kept by a man named Umstead, and the other by a man named Sears. These stores carried on a constant trade with the Seneca Indians both on Sunday and every day in the week. As we went around the town, I was shown the place where Fort Stephenson once stood, at which place and around it my brother John and his comrades had spent three months in the campaign from the middle of February to the middle of May, 1813. But I could now see little signs of a fort, for the pickets had been cut down, and nothing remained but the stumps of them to show where the fort had been.

News That's Fit To Print

"On the morning after the commodore sailed the following appeared in the New York Columbian: 'It is undoubtedly a fact that dispatch boats with information have been sent off to the British vessels which were cruising off the harbor since the declaration of war. By whom they were sent off it is not necessary at present to mention."'

Source

"But this much may and ought to be said: that if it was done by an American citizen, he has committed treason by the laws of the United states, and deserves, and may receive, hanging for it. There is no suspicion, however, entertained that such an infamous act has been done by an American. As it has, therefore, been the act of the subjects of the king of England, whether they are in or out of office, the act is a violation of the hospitality which tolerates their residence in our city, and calls loudly upon the constituted authorities to put the laws immediately in force against alien enemies, and to rid the city of spies, or at least such as disgrace their character by acting in so infamous a capacity."' [Source]

The First Expedition

The First Expedition.

So emboldened had the Indians become, and so grave the fear of an invasion by the British and Indians upon our northwestern frontier, that Ninian Edwards, Territorial Governor of Illinois, on March 27, 1813, wrote the Secretary of War: "If the British erect a fort at the mouth of the Wisconsin, and should be able to retain it two years, this, and Missouri Territory will be totally deserted ; in other words, conquered."

Mississippi River Near Moline, Illinois

At the beginning of the year 1814, it was decided to take measures whereby the Indians of the upper Mississippi river could be controlled.

The first operation decided on, was to build a fort at the village of Prairie du Chien. General Howard being absent. Governor Clark of Missouri, fitted out an expedition of one hundred and forty men, mostly of the Seventh Regiment of Rangers, and sent them up the Mississippi in five armed barges or keel boats. [Source]