Wade Hampton, with over 5,000 men (an effective regular force of 4,053 rank and file, about 1,500 militia and ten cannon[4]), was at first on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain at Burlington[5].  He crossed to the New York side, directing his march for Caughnawaga on the St. Lawrence.  His army[6], except the militia, was the same which, with a certain General Dearborn at its head, paraded irregularly across the lines and returned to Pittsburgh in the autumn of 1812.  During the year since elapsed the men had been drilled by Major-General Izard, who had served in the French Army.  They were all in uniform, well clothed and equipped—­in short, Hampton commanded, if not the most numerous, certainly the most effective, regular army which the United States were able to send into the field during the War.  Crossing the border on the 20th of September, 1813, he surprised a small picket of British at Odelltown, a Loyalist settlement afterwards celebrated for a battle in the Rebellion of 1837.  He soon found himself met with what seemed to him great difficulties, for the army was plunged into an extensive swampy wood, the only road through which was rendered impracticable by fallen trees and barricades, behind which and in the gloomy forests surrounding were every here and there to be seen Indians and infantry crawling and flitting about, who fired upon them from unexpected ambushes.  Hampton’s men were not of a kind to face this.  “The perfect rawness of the troops,” writes he, “with the exception of not a single platoon, has been a source of much solicitude to the best-informed among us."[7] They were ignorant, insubordinate, and forever “falling off."[8]

Urging on the scattered defenders was, no doubt, to be seen from time to time a stout-built, vigorous officer with stripes across the breast of his dark gray uniform, dashing about from point to point giving fierce orders.  This was De Salaberry.

Not reflecting—­for he seems to have had the information—­that the wood was only fifteen miles or so in depth, the Canadians few in number, and that a short press forward would have brought him into the open country of L’Acadie leading towards Montreal, the American General in two days withdrew along the border towards Chateauguay Four Corners, alleging the great drought of that year as a reason for wishing to descend by the River Chateauguay.  At the Corners he rested his army for many days.

Wade Hampton was a type of the large slaveholders of the South.  Nearly sixty years of age, self-important, fiery and over-indulgent in drink, of large, imposing figure, of some reputed service in the Revolution, and with a record as Congressman and Presidential elector, he was one whose chief virtues were not patience and humility.  In 1809 he had been made a brigadier-general and stationed at New Orleans; but in consequence of continual disagreements with his subordinates, was superseded in 1812 by Wilkinson, whom he consequently hated.  In the spring of 1813 he received his Major-General’s commission.  He had acquired his large fortune by land speculations, and at his death some time later was supposed to be the wealthiest planter in the United States, owning 3,000 slaves.  He is said to have ably administered his estate.[9]