A PUBLIC SQUARE IN DETROIT, SHOWING THE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS' MONUMENT. council. When the Indians retired, the gates of the fort were closed upon them, and, knowing the reason, Pontiac began a siege that lasted a year. General Amherst hastily collected a small body in the East for the relief of Detroit and reinforcement of Fort Niagara, and sent them under the command of Captain Dalzell, one of his aides. Dalzell left reinforcements at Niagara, and proceeded to Detroit with the remainder of his troops and provisions in a vessel that arrived on the evening of July 30. They succeeded in entering the fort with provisions. Pontiac had already summoned Gladwin to surrender; now Dalzell proposed to make a sortie and attack the besieging Indians. Gladwin thought it would be imprudent, but Dalzell persisted, and before daylight on the morning of July 31 he sallied out with 240 chosen men to attack the Indians who lay about a mile up the river. Pontiac was on the alert, and, at a small stream on the northern verge of Detroit, the English, furiously assailed by the Indians, were forced to make a precipitate retreat in the darkness, leaving twenty of their comrades killed and forty-two wounded on the border of the brook, which has ever since been called Bloody Run. Dalzell was slain while trying to carry off some of the wounded, and his scalp became an Indian's trophy. Pontiac continued the siege of Detroit until the arrival of Colonel Bradstreet in May, 1764. The city was the scene of disastrous operations in the early part of the War of 1812-15. In August, 1812, General Brock, governor of Upper Canada, with a few regulars and 300 militia, hastened to Amherstburg to assist in turning back the invaders of Canada. He arrived there on the night of Aug. 13. Tecumseh and his Indian warriors were on an island opposite Fort Malden. On the following morning Brock held a conference with the Indians (of whom about 1,000 were present), telling them he had come to assist in driving the Americans from their rightful hunting-grounds north of the Ohio. The Indians were pleased, and, at a subsequent interview with Tecumseh that if the Indians were exasperated and the other chiefs, they assured him and the fort should be taken there that the Indians would give him all would be a general massacre of the their strength in the undertaking. Then garrison and the inhabitants, and his Brock marched from Malden to Sandwich, kindness of heart and growing caution, which the Americans had deserted, and a incident to old age, made him really battery was planted opposite Detroit, timid and fearful. When Brock's prepa rations for attack were completed (on the 15th), he sent a summons to Hull for an unconditional surrender of the post. In that demand was a covert threat of letting loose the bloodthirsty Indians in which commanded the fort there. The American artillerists begged permission to open fire upon it, and Captain Snelling asked the privilege of going over in the night to capture the British works. Hull would not allow any demonstrations case of resistance. Hull's whole effective against the enemy, and the latter pre- force at that time did not exceed 1,000 pared for assault without any molesta- men. The fort was thronged with trem tion. Hull was much deceived by letters intended to be intercepted, showing preparations for large and immediate reinforcements to Brock's army; and he had also been deceived into the belief that a large portion of the followers of the latter, who were only militia, were regulars. The militia had been dressed in scarlet uniforms, and were paraded so as to show treble their real number. Hull was hemmed in on every side; his provisions were scarce, and he saw no chance of receiving any from Ohio. He knew bling women and children and decrepit old men of the village and surrounding country, who had fled to it for protection from the Indians. He kept the flag that bore the summons waiting fully two hours, for his innate bravery and patriotism bade him refuse and fight, while his fear of dreadful consequences to his army and the people bade him surrender. His troops were confident in their ability to successfully confront the enemy, and he finally refused compliance with the demand. Ac tive preparations were then made for defence. The British opened a cannonade English after the conquest of Canada, in and bombardment from their battery, 1760. It was quadrangular in form, with which was kept up until near midnight. The firing was returned with spirit; but Hull would listen to no suggestion for the erection of a battery at Spring Wells to oppose the enemy if they should attempt to cross the river. Early on the morning of the 16th they crossed and landed unmolested; and as they moved towards the fort, in single column, Tecumseh and his Indians, 700 strong, who had crossed 2 miles below during the Charlestown, Mass., April 4, 1820; grad bastions and barracks, and covered about two acres of ground. The embankments were nearly 20 feet high, with a deep ditch, and were surrounded with a double row of pickets. The fort did not command the river. The town, also, was surrounded by pickets 14 feet in height, with loop-holes to shoot through. night, took position in the woods on their left as flankers, while the right was protected by the guns of the Queen Charlotte, in the river. They had approached to a point within 500 yards of the American line, when Hull sent a peremptory order for the soldiers to retreat within the already overcrowded fort. The infuriated soldiers reluctantly obeyed; and while the enemy were preparing to storm the fort, Hull, without consulting any of his officers, hoisted a white flag, and a capitulation for a surrender was soon agreed upon. The surrender took place at noon, Aug. 16, 1812. The fort, garrison, army, and the Territory of Michigan were included in the terms of surrender. The spoils of victory for the British were 2,500 stand of arms, twenty-five iron and eight brass pieces of ordnance, forty bar rels of gunpowder, a stand of colors, a great quantity of military stores, and the armed brig John Adams. One of the brass cannon bore the following inscription: "Taken at Saratoga on the 17th of October, 1777." General Hull and his fellow-captives were sent first to Fort George and then to Montreal, where they arrived Sept. 6, when they were paroled, and returned to their homes. Hull was tried for treason and cowardice, and sentenced to be shot, but was pardoned by the President. His character has since been fully vindicated. See HULL, WILL IAM. De Vaca. See CABEZA DE VACA. Devens, CHARLES, jurist; born in uated at Harvard University in 1838; studied at the Cambridge Law School, and practised the profession of law several years. In 1848 he was a State Senator, and from 1849 to 1853 was United States marshal for Massachusetts. He was engaged in his profession at Worcester, Mass., when the Civil War began, and was one of the earliest Union volunteers, becoming major of a rifle battalion April 16, 1861, and colonel of the 15th Massachusetts Regiment in July following. Before the arrival of Colonel Baker, he commanded at BALL'S BLUFF (q. v.), and again after that officer's death. In April, 1862, he was made brigadier-general; served on the Peninsula; was wounded at Fair Oaks; was in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam; and commanded a division in the 11th Army Corps at Chancellorsville. In the Richmond campaign of 1864-65 he was continually engaged, and in December, 1864, he was in temporary command of the 24th Army Corps. In April, 1865, he was brevetted major-general of volunteers, and in 1867 was appointed a justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts. He was United States Attorney - General in 1877-81, and justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1881 till his death, in Boston, Jan. 7, 1891. De Vries, DAVID PIETERSSEN, colonist. In December, 1630, he sent out a number of emigrants from Holland who establish Detroit, FORT. The old French village ed a settlement called Swanendal, near the of Detroit contained 160 houses in 1812, mouth of the Delaware River, where they and about 800 souls. It stretched along the river at a convenient distance from the water, and the present Jefferson Avenue was the principal street. On the high ground in the rear, about 250 yards from the river, stood Fort Detroit, built by the began the cultivation of grain and to. bacco. Two years later when De Vries arrived at the head of a second party he found that all the first settlers had been massacred by the Indians. In April, 1634, he concluded that his enterprise was un |