5 OCT--This Day in US Military History

2015-10-05T08:42:47-04:00

1813 – The Battle of the Thames was decisive in the War of 1812.

The U.S. victory over British and Indian forces near Ontario at the village of Moraviantown on the Thames River is known in Canada as the Battle of Moraviantown. Some 600 British regulars and 1,000 Indian allies under the command of Colonel Henry Procter and Shawnee leader Tecumseh were greatly outnumbered and quickly defeated by U.S. forces, an army of 3,500 troops, under the command of Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison.
The British army was retreating from Fort Malden, Ontario after Oliver Hazard Perry’s victory in the Battle of Lake Erie. Tecumseh convinced Colonel Procter to make a stand at Moraviantown.
The site of the battle, near the present-day town of Thamesville, Ontario, is described thus in the Pictorial Field-book of The War of 1812: ‘The ground chosen–was well selected. On his [Proctor’s] left was the River Thames, with a high and precipitous bank, and on his right, a marsh running almost parallel with the river for about two miles. Between these, and two and three hundred yards from the river, was a small swamp, quite narrow, with a strip of solid ground between it and the large marsh. The ground over which the road [to Detroit] lay, indeed the whole space between the river and the great swamp, was covered with beech, sugar-maple, and oak trees with very little undergrowth.’
Moraviantown, to the east of the battle site, had been established in 1792 by the Delaware Indians who had been converted to the Christian faith by Moravian missionaries. A year after the initial settlement, the provincial government gave the Indians 50,000 acres of land upon which they built their village. By October 1813, the village had some 100 homes, a meetinghouse, a schoolhouse and a common garden.
On October 5, the day of the battle, Proctor placed his single battalion of the 41st on his left, across the road, between the river and the smaller swamp. The Indians were on his right and on the road was a single brass 6-pound field gun, Proctor’s only artillery.
The Redcoats were commanded by Lt. Col. Augustus Warburton, who had served as a captain with the elite 60th Foot, known as the Royal American Regiment prior to the Revolution. There were also some 20 Canadian light dragoons under the command of Captain Thomas Coleman who served as couriers, a dozen men of the 10th Foot, and some provincial dragoons.
The Indians were under command of Tecumseh and his deputy, Oshawahnah, chief of the Chippewa. On hand for this battle were braves from the Shawnee, Ottawa, Delaware and Wyandot, as well as the Sac, Fox, Kickapoo, Winnebag, Potawatomi and Creek tribes–some 500 in all.
The total forces under Proctor’s command numbered between 950 and 1,000; the American forces facing him outnumbered his men 3-to-1.
Harrison had about 120 regulars of the newly raised 27th U.S. Infantry Regiment, 260 Indians, and a corps of Kentucky volunteers–foot soldiers and mounted men–under the command of the governor of Kentucky, 66-year-old Maj. Gen. Isaac Shelby. Shelby was nicknamed ‘Old Kings Mountain’ for his role in the Revolutionary War Battle of Kings Mountain, where he commanded a regiment of ‘over-mountain’ men from what is now Sullivan County, Tenn.
Shelby’s forces included five brigades of buckskin-clad infantrymen and the 3rd Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, commanded by a former ‘War Hawk’ congressman from Kentucky, Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson. The Johnsons were well represented in that battle. On hand also were Colonel Johnson’s brother, Lt. Col. James Johnson, and James Johnson’s two sons, 17-year-old Edward and 15-year-old William. All survived the battle. Another luminary among the Kentuckians was Brig. Gen. Simon Kenton. A renowned frontiersman, scout and, like Harrison, a veteran of Wayne’s Legion, Kenton had fought against Tecumseh in 1792 and 1793. On this occasion, however, the old soldier would arrive on the scene too late to fight his old adversary.
One of the most colorful Kentuckians at the battle was William Whitley, builder of the first brick house in Kentucky. He had enlisted as a private at age 64 to fight in this war. Whitley was to die in action and, like Tecumseh, had a premonition of death. Years later, his kin would claim that it was Whitley who killed Tecumseh in the battle.
One of Shelby’s major generals was Joseph Desha, who later served as governor of Kentucky and who, like Harrison and Kenton, had served with Wayne. Like Colonel Johnson, General Desha had served in Congress. Also on hand on the American side was Brig. Gen. Lewis Cass, first colonel of the 27th Infantry, who, when he learned of Hull’s surrender of Detroit, angrily broke his sword. The 27th’s commander was Ohio-born Colonel George Paull. Also present was Master Commandant Perry, the hero of Lake Erie.
Harrison placed his cavalry on his right; on his left he placed Shelby’s infantry brigades. Harrison and his staff remained on the far right, along the road. Shelby’s divisions were commanded by Maj. Gen. William Henry and General Desha. His brigades were commanded by Brig. Gens. John E. King, David Chiles, James Allen, Samuel Caldwell and Colonel George Trotter. At first, Harrison planned an infantry attack, but changed his mind when he found out that the 41st had deployed as skirmishers. As he reported later, ‘I determined to refuse my left to the Indians, and to break the British lines at once by a charge of the mounted infantry.’ Harrison had full confidence in his Kentucky troopers. As he wrote later, ‘The American backwoodsmen ride better in the woods than any other people….’
The Redcoats of the 41st’s 1st Battalion were in two ranks to the Americans’ right. They were tired, they distrusted their commander, they had received no provisions for two days, and they were desperately short of ammunition. But they were regulars, and they were ready to fight.
Colonel Richard M. Johnson formed his regiment into two battalions. The 1st, under his command, would engage Tecumseh’s tribes on the Americans’ left. He ordered his brother James to lead the 2nd Battalion in a charge against the Redcoats on the right.
The battle got underway at midafternoon on October 5 with a charge by James Johnson’s battalion against the Redcoats. Bugles sounded the charge, and the troopers urged their horses on, shouting the battle cry, ‘Remember the Raisin!’ In front of them rode Major James Sugget, the chaplain, at the head of his corps of scouts, called ’spies.’
The Redcoats got only two volleys off from their ‘Brown Bess’ smoothbore flintlocks before they were overrun by the Kentuckians, riding hard at the full gallop. The scene was described by one of the British subalterns in an official report to his superiors. ‘I heard a heavy firing of musketry and shortly after saw our dragoons retreating together with the limber of the six-pounder, placed on the left of the first line,’ wrote Lieutenant Richard Bullock, commander of the Grenadier Company. ‘About a minute afterward, I observed that line retreating in confusion, followed closely by the enemy’s cavalry, who were galloping down the road. That portion of the first line which had escaped the enemy’s cavalry retreated behind the second line which stood fast and fired an irregular volley obliquing to the right and left, which appeared to check the enemy.’
Meanwhile, General Proctor was riding among his men, urging them to stand and fight. But the Kentuckians remembered the Raisin Massacre and were not at all ‘checked’ by the muskets of the 41st. The charge by the Kentuckians was one of only two such cavalry charges in the War of 1812. The other took place in March 1814, when General John Coffee’s mounted Tennesseans destroyed a Creek Indian village at Horseshoe Bend, Ala.
The fight on the Americans’ right flank was all over in less than 10 minutes. While Johnson’s troopers were going after the men of the 41st, Colonel Paull’s regulars had seized the 6-pounder, which had never fired a shot. Only 50 of the Redcoats managed to escape, led by Lieutenant Bullock of the Grenadiers. The rest, 477 in all, surrendered. Proctor also got away, fleeing toward Moraviantown, where he had left his family. Later, he was to face a court-martial and disgrace. He bitterly blamed his men for the loss to the Americans on the Thames River, but that did not save him from being suspended from rank and pay for six months.
The action on the American left, against the Indians, took longer and was more hazardous than the fight against the Redcoats, as Richard Johnson had expected it would be. Johnson’s men rode into battle with each man carrying a rifle, a hatchet and a knife. And each man rode with another soldier mounted behind him.
In front of that 500-man battalion rode William Whitley and some 20 volunteers, forming a ‘forlorn hope’–an advance party designed to draw enemy fire. Their function was much like that of the pointman in an infantry squad, the most dangerous job in an army. Of the 20 men in that party, 15 fell on the field of battle, among them Whitley, who was buried where he fell, wrapped in his blanket.
As the fighting grew fiercer and fire from the braves in the bush began to fell the Americans, Johnson ordered his troopers to dismount and fight on foot. But the gallant colonel himself remained in the saddle, mounted astride a white pony, an easy target for Indian marksmen. Johnson suffered five wounds but managed to trot back to the rear for assistance from hospital surgeon A.J. Mitchell.
Wrapped in a blanket and lying on the cold ground, Johnson told his military secretary, Major W.T. Barry: ‘Barry, I will not die. I am mightily cut to pieces, but I think my vitals have escaped.’ Indeed, Johnson would live for many more years and become vice president of the United States.
By the time Johnson made his way to the rear, the dismounted troopers were fighting the Indians hand to hand, knife to knife. Old Isaac Shelby saw what was happening and rushed forward with his sword raised, shouting to British Major John Richardson, ‘Surrender! Surrender! It’s no use resisting.’ Richardson surrendered.
Shelby then decided to commit his infantry to assist Richard Johnson’s men. He ordered the regiment commanded by Lt. Col. John Donaldson to come forward and directed General King to follow with his brigade. By that time, Tecumseh had been killed, and the Indians were retreating, pursued by Major David Thompson of Johnson’s battalion. Therefore, only a few of the infantrymen from Donaldson’s regiment actually took part in the fighting.
To this day, details of Tecumseh’s death remain unknown. Legend has it that Richard Johnson killed Tecumseh, and the colonel-congressman was to get credit for a deed he himself never claimed credit for. Johnson shot and killed an Indian who came at him with a tomahawk, but no one could say for certain that the Indian was the great Shawnee chief. Nevertheless, the following jingle became part of Johnson’s later political campaigns: ‘Rumpsey dumpsey, rumpsey dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.’
Another of the grisly legends that grew out of that battle was the skinning of Tecumseh. For years afterward, Kentucky veterans of the battle would show their friends strips of leather they claimed were made from the hide sliced from the recumbent form of Tecumseh himself. Some of Tecumseh’s braves later told a different story. His face stained with blood from a head wound, Tecumseh shouted encouragement to his warriors until he was mortally wounded by a bullet in his left breast. A few followers then carried him from the field and secretly buried him. His body was never recovered, at least not by white men.
Another bit of folklore from the Thames concerned a claim by some witnesses that Perry rode with James Johnson’s troopers in the charge against the British. If so, it must have been a first for a U.S. Navy officer.

https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/october-5/

October 5

5 October 1775 - George Washington writes a letter to the President of the Continental Congress reporting that a trusted Son of Liberty, Dr. Benjamin Church, was sending information to the British....

Response by SCPO David Lockwood made Oct 5 at 2015 8:53 AM

2015-10-05T08:53:36-04:00

Thanks for sharing!

Response by 1stSgt Private RallyPoint Member made Oct 5 at 2015 10:24 AM

2015-10-05T10:24:01-04:00

Another fine history lesson. Thank you MSG Private RallyPoint Member