Beginnings
In December 1837, Thomas Jefferson Sutherland was commissioned by the rebellion leaders on Navy Island in the Niagara River to head to Detroit to raise a force there. After the Navy Island base was evacuated, other Patriots came to Detroit. Public meetings were held in Detroit and an invasion force was organized. Men came to Detroit from as far away as Illinois and Kentucky to join the movement. Concerned that they would seize the U.S. arsenal at Fort Gratiot, U.S. General Hugh Brady ordered the weapons removed by boat. The steamship, however, became stuck in the ice at St. Clair, Michigan, and the journey to Detroit had to be completed by wagon. On January 5, 1838, the Detroit jail was raided and the Patriots seized the 450 muskets which had been stored there to keep them away from the rebels. The rebels were reported to have later stolen another 200 weapons from the unsecured office of the U.S. marshal in Detroit, perhaps with his help.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Windsor
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“[Many artists], even the greatest ones, are not sure of their own existence. So they search for proof, they judge, they condemn. It strengthens them, it is the beginnings of existence. They are alone!”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)