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:
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“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)
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)