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After the defeat of Napoleon I in early 1814, the British government sent the duke of Wellington’s veterans to Canada and instructed Governor General Sir George Prevost to conquer the Lake Champlain Valley for incorporation into the British empire. British shipbuilding efforts on the lake slightly outmatched those of the Americans. However, the recently arrived Captain George Downie had little time to create unit cohesion among his hastily assembled crews. Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough’s squadron lay anchored with spring lines to each vessel’s anchor cables so each could be turned 180 degrees within its mooring lines. There were four major vessels on each side, and the British had eleven row galleys and gunboats and the Americans ten. The principal combatants were Downie’s thirty-seven-gun Confiance and Macdonough’s twenty-six-gun Saratoga. Downie fell early in the battle, leaving his fleet leaderless. With the outcome in doubt, Macdonough wound his ship so the port guns could be employed, and this fresh broadside allowed him to destroy resistance on the British flagship. Only a few gunboats escaped. Macdonough lost 52 killed and 58 seriously wounded. British casualties included 54 dead, 116 wounded, and the remainder prisoners of war. Also captured were a frigate, a brig, two sloops of war, and several gunboats.

Following the surrender of Detroit in 1812, U.S. officials sought to reclaim their control of the Old Northwest by first gaining naval dominance of Lake Erie. The U.S. Navy ordered Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry to Erie, Pennsylvania, where he supervised the construction of an American squadron. By August, 1813, his efforts provided the U.S. Navy superiority in vessels and firepower over its foe. Commander Robert H. Barclay, operating out of the small, isolated Detroit River port of Amherstburg, Ontario, could not match the American shipbuilding effort.

After the American Revolution, most Native Americans and Canadians sought to stop American settlement north of the Ohio River in accordance with the Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1768. Canadian authorities retained their forts inside United States territory at Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinac, and their Indian department agents supported resistance to the Americans. The United States was unable to use treaties to reduce indigenous control over this vast area.

President of the United States (1789–1797). As commander in chief of the Continental army during the American Revolution, president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and first president of the United States, Washington was the principal architect of the nation’s independence and its federal political system.

Following the U.S. victory at the Battle of Lake Erie (1813), the British position on the Detroit frontier became indefensible because they could no longer supply troops, civilians, and Native Americans in the area. Major General Henry Procter wasted time negotiating with Tecumseh and his allies concerning whether and when to withdraw from the Detroit River region. Consequently, most of Tecumseh’s allies deserted the British. Procter’s slow retreat allowed Major General William Henry Harrison’s force of mostly militia to catch him as the British withdrew up the Thames River.

American naval officer. Oliver Hazard Perry was born into a family of Rhode Island seamen. His father, Christopher Raymond Perry, broke with the clan’s tradition of Quaker pacifism to fight in the American Revolution. Four of Christopher’s sons served in the United States Navy, one of whom was Matthew C. Perry, the famed naval commander and diplomat who opened Japan to Western commerce and thought.