148 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
remained open, and thus supply the Indians in that quarter. While 
ships were being built, he proposed to occupy a position at the Miami 
Rapids with fifteen hundred men, maintain a thousand more in other 
advanced posts, and accumulate supplies. Contrary to his wishes, 
Winchester had kept the bulk of his division far advanced and thus 
immensely increased the difficulty of supplying it. But on December 
18th the prospect on the right seemed so encouraging that he wrote 
from Upper Sandusky to Winchester instructing him to advance to 
the Miami Rapids and build huts. to give the impression that he intended 
to winter there, and prepare a large number of sleds for a future 
forward movement, but giving his troops to understand that they were 
to be used for bringing forward supplies from the rear. A week later 
the miscarriage of Campbell’s expedition caused him to countermand 
this order. 
The tone of Monroe’s letter obviously irritated Harrison, and he 
wrote a lengthy and vigorous justification of his conduct. As his 
former letters had contained frequent allusions to the “monstrous 
expenditure” incident to military operations at that season, he had 
construed the silence of the late Secretary of War as an intimation 
that cost was to be disregarded in his efforts to recover the lost terri- 
tory. A thousand pack-horses were employed in supplying his right 
column alone. When a barrel of flour was delivered at the advanced 
posts it had cost the government $120.' A brigade of Ohio troops had 
been employed in road making beyond Sandusky for a month. The 
brigades from Pennsylvania and Virginia were close behind. The 
concentration of 4,500 or 5,000 men at the Miami within two or three 
weeks seemed reasonably certain. A “choice detachment” from these 
could then be selected for a demonstration against Detroit and an actual 
attack upon Amherstburg by crossing the river on the ice. He pru- 
dently based his estimate of the force necessary for this enterprise not 
upon the present strength of the British garrison, which was reported 
to be almost incredibly small, as most of the Indians had dispersed 
to their villages, but upon the numbers that might be assembled from 
other quarters in time to oppose him. He knew that troops could be 
brought forward quickly from the Niagara frontier by the “back 
route” along the Thames, and he might encounter the same regulars 
who had fought at Queenston three months before, while he said that 
a mere whistle would be sufficient to recall the Indian warriors. If 
his foree was weak, “the timid, cautious and wavering among the 
Canadians and Indians” would be encouraged to take the field against 
him, and if he was unable to carry sufficient supplies with him, he 

! Boston Gazette, 8th March, 1813. 
