The other abortive attempt at invasion was made by the advance-guard of the commander-in-chief’s own army.  Dearborn had soon found out that his disorderly masses at Greenbush were quite unfit to take the field.  But, four months after the declaration of war, a small detachment, thrown forward from his new headquarters at Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, did manage to reach St Regis, where the frontier first meets the St Lawrence, near the upper end of Lake St Francis, sixty miles south-west of Montreal.  Here the Americans killed Lieutenant Rototte and a sergeant, and took the little post, which was held by a few voyageurs.  Exactly a month later, on November 23, these Americans were themselves defeated and driven back again.  Three days earlier than this a much stronger force of Americans had crossed the frontier at Odelltown, just north of which there was a British blockhouse beside the river La Colle, a muddy little western tributary of the Richelieu, forty-seven miles due south of Montreal.  The Americans fired into each other in the dark, and afterwards retired before the British reinforcements.  Dearborn then put his army into winter quarters at Plattsburg, thus ending his much-heralded campaign against Montreal before it had well begun.

The American government was much disappointed at the failure of its efforts to make war without armies.  But it found a convenient scapegoat in Hull, who was far less to blame than his superiors in the Cabinet.  These politicians had been wrong in every important particular —­wrong about the attitude of the Canadians, wrong about the whole plan of campaign, wrong in separating Hull from Dearborn, wrong in not getting men-of-war afloat on the Lakes, wrong, above all, in trusting to untrained and undisciplined levies.  To complete their mortification, the ridiculous gunboats, in which they had so firmly believed, had done nothing but divert useful resources into useless channels; while, on the other hand, the frigates, which they had proposed to lay up altogether, so as to save themselves from ’the ruinous folly of a Navy,’ had already won a brilliant series of duels out at sea.

There were some searchings of heart at Washington when all these military and naval misjudgments stood revealed.  Eustis soon followed Hull into enforced retirement; and great plans were made for the campaign of 1813, which was designed to wipe out the disgrace of its predecessor and to effect the conquest of Canada for good and all.

John Armstrong, the new war secretary, and William Henry Harrison, the new general in the West, were great improvements on Eustis and Hull.  But, even now, the American commanders could not decide on a single decisive attack supported by subsidiary operations elsewhere.  Montreal remained their prime objective.  But they only struck at it last of all.  Michilimackinac kept their enemy in touch with the West.  But they left it completely alone.  Their general advance ought to have been secured by winning the command of the Lakes and by the seizure of suitable positions across the line.  But they let the first blows come from the Canadian side; and they still left Lake Champlain to shift for itself.  Their plan was undoubtedly better than that of 1812.  But it was still all parts and no whole.