130 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
The leader thus chosen was only forty years of age, active, robust 
and masterful. He had been governor of Indiana for a dozen years 
and knew the frontier and its people thoroughly. He was a most 
persuasive and voluble speaker and an adept in the arts of gaining and 
retaining personal popularity. Throughout his first campaign he wore 
an ordinary hunting shirt and conversed freely with all ranks. His 
short but fervid speeches from the top of a stump or tail of a waggon 
went straight to the hearts of his men and never failed to rouse them to 
renewed efforts. The Cabinet at this time seriously contemplated the 
appointment to this command of James Monroe,,the Secretary of State, 
who was eager to display his military talents; but when their hand was 
thus forced by the unexpected action of Clay and his friends they could 
not well refuse their assent.* 
One regiment had already begun its march for Vincennes, and 
Harrison wrote a lengthy letter to the Secretary advocating the forma- 
tion of a chain of blockhouses along the Illinois River from its mouth 
to Chicago as a barrier against Indian raids and the concentration of 
five thousand men at Fort Wayne. But while on the road to Cincinnati 
on August 26th he learned with dismay that both Detroit and Chicago 
had fallen and that Fort Wayne was closely invested. The military 
situation was wholly changed. Next day he crossed the Ohio with 
the 17th United States Infantry, the 1st and 5th Kentucky Volunteers, 
the Ist Kentucky riflemen, and a troop of dragoons, making a force of 
2,100 men. Three other regiments of infantry volunteers, five troops 
of dragoons and five hundred mounted infantry were a few days’ 
march in rear.? He described these troops as “the best material for 
forming an army that the world has produced,” but qualified this by 
the statement “that no equal number of men was ever collected who 
knew so little of military discipline.” Nearly the whole of his men 
were armed with rifles; but he had no sabres for his cavalry and possessed 
but a single field-gun. He then requested Shelby to call into service 
an additional body of mounted riflemen for the protection of Indiana 
and appealed to Meigs to support him with the entire military strength 
of Ohio. 
He assumed control of-all military affairs and put his own column 
in motion for Fort Wayne. At the ford of St. Mary’s River he was 
overtaken by Johnson’s regiment of mounted riflemen from Kentucky 
and a day later by seven hundred horsemen from Ohio, increasing 
his force to three thousand, of whom thirteen hundred were mounted. 
In fact every road intersecting his line of march was thronged with 


1 Colton, Letters of Henry Clay. 
2 Harrison to Eustis, Aug. 28 and 29, 1812. 
