The delivery of the fort and army of Detroit, by the
traitor Hull; the disgrace at Queenstown, under Van Rensellaer; the
massacre at Frenchtown, under Winchester; and surrender of Boerstler
in an open field to one third of his own numbers, were the inauspicious
beginnings of the first year of our warfare. The second witnessed but
the single miscarriage occasioned by the disagreement of Wilkinson and
Hampton, mentioned in my letter to you of November the 30th, 1813; while
it gave us the capture of York by Dearborn and Pike; the capture of Fort
George by Dearborn also; the capture of Proctor's army on the Thames by
Harrison, Shelby, and Johnson; and that of the whole British fleet
on Lake Erie by Perry. The third year has been a continued series of
victories; to wit, of Brown and Scott at Chippeway; of the same at
Niagara; of Gaines over Drummond at Fort Erie; that of Brown over
Drummond at the same place; the capture of another fleet on Lake
Champlain by M'Donough; the entire defeat of their army under Prevost,
on the same day, by M'Comb, and recently their defeats at New Orleans by
Jackson, Coffee, and Carroll, with the loss of four thousand men out of
nine thousand and six hundred, with their two Generals, Packingham and
Gibbs killed, and a third, Keane, wounded, mortally, as is said.
This series of successes has been tarnished only by the conflagrations
at Washington, a _coup de main_ differing from that at Richmond, which
you remember, in the revolutionary war, in the circumstance only, that
we had, in that case, but forty-eight hour's notice that an enemy had
arrived within our capes; whereas at Washington there was abundant
previous notice.
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