The United States are sufficiently powerful to afford you every security consistent with their rights and your expectations.  I tender you the invaluable blessings of Civil, Political, and Religious Liberty...  The arrival of an army of Friends must be hailed by you with a cordial welcome.  You will be emancipated from Tyranny and Oppression and restored to the dignified station of Freemen...  If, contrary to your own interest and the just expectation of my country, you should take part in the approaching contest, you will be considered and treated as enemies and the horrors and calamities of war will Stalk before you.  If the barbarous and Savage policy of Great Britain be pursued, and the savages let loose to murder our Citizens and butcher our women and children, this war will be a war of extermination.  The first stroke with the Tomahawk, the first attempt with the Scalping Knife, will be the Signal for one indiscriminate scene of desolation.  No white man found fighting by the Side of an Indian will be taken prisoner.  Instant destruction will be his Lot...

This was war with a vengeance.  But Hull felt less confidence than his proclamation was intended to display.  He knew that, while the American government had been warned in January about the necessity of securing the naval command of Lake Erie, no steps had yet been taken to secure it.  Ever since the beginning of March, when he had written a report based on his seven years’ experience as governor of Michigan, he had been gradually learning that Eustis was bent on acting in defiance of all sound military advice.  In April he had accepted his new position very much against his will and better judgment.  In May he had taken command of the assembling militiamen at Dayton in Ohio.  In June he had been joined by a battalion of inexperienced regulars.  And now, in July, he was already feeling the ill effects of having to carry on what should have been an amphibious campaign without the assistance of any proper force afloat; for on the 2nd ten days before he issued his proclamation at Sandwich, Lieutenant Rolette, an enterprising French-Canadian officer in the Provincial Marine, had cut his line of communication along the Detroit and had taken an American schooner which contained his official plan of campaign, besides a good deal of baggage and stores.

There were barely six hundred British on the line of the Detroit when Hull first crossed over to Sandwich with twenty-five hundred men.  These six hundred comprised less than 150 regulars, about 300 militia, and some 150 Indians.  Yet Hull made no decisive effort against the feeble little fort of Malden, which was the only defence of Amherstburg by land.  The distance was nothing, only twelve miles south from Sandwich.  He sent a sort of flying column against it.  But this force went no farther than half-way, where the Americans were checked at the bridge over the swampy little Riviere aux Canards by the Indians under Tecumseh, the great War Chief of whom we shall soon hear more.