[CRUIKSHANK] HARRISON AND PROCTER 143 
He finally decided to make Upper Sandusky his principal base of 
supply and began to organize à train of two thousand oxen and pack- 
horses for that line of communication. But at the same time he gave 
orders for the construction of boats and sleds at St. Mary, Fort Jennings, 
and Fort Winchester, to take advantage of a possible rise of water in 
the river or an early fall of snow. If absolutely necessary he still 
affirmed his ability to retake Detroit at any time with a flying column 
of fifteen hundred or two thousand men without artillery, accompanied 
only by a few hundred packhorses with flour and a drove of beef cattle. 
As soon as the surrender of Detroit had become known to Governor 
Meigs he had called out two thousand militia for the defence of the 
north-western frontier of Ohio. As the blockhouse at Lower Sandusky 
had already been abandoned and destroyed, they were directed to 
occupy positions at Mansfield and the mouth of the Huron River and 
erect works of defence. One of their first acts was to make an unpro- 
voked attack upon an Indian village near the former place, which they 
burnt, after shooting several of its inhabitants. They were employed 
in building blockhouses and cutting roads through the forest in the 
direction of Sandusky. This laborious duty soon became distasteful 
to many of them. About the middle of September General Beall 
wrote that he almost despaired of obtaining the quota required from 
his brigade, and that “the unparalleled number of deserters was truly 
astonishing.”* Their working parties were occasionally annoyed by 
Indians, who cut off a few stragglers and carried away a prisoner to 
Amherstburg about the end of October, from whom Procter secured 
some important information. The attempt to build a direct road from 
Mansfield to the Miami was finally abandoned, as it was found that 
it would be necessary to lay a causeway of logs for a distance of fifteen 
miles through a continuous swamp. After a personal inspection, 
Harrison determined to concentrate the whole force, which had then 
diminished to thirteen hundred effectives, at the Huron River, and set 
them to work on the road along the lake to Lower Sandusky, which 
was not re-occupied until the middle of November. About the same 
time the Pennsylvania brigade, accompanied by twenty-eight guns 
and a baggage train of a hundred waggons, arrived at Mansfield and 
began to crawl forward at the rate of four or five miles a day to Upper 
Sandusky, whither the Virginians were also plodding through the mud 
from Wooster. 
At last Harrison was constrained to acknowledge that it would 
scarcely be possible for him to advance beyond the Miami during the 
winter, ashe considered it indispensable to accumulate at least one 
million rations there before moving farther. This would be sufficient 


! Beall to Meigs, 13 Sept., 1813. 
