"Our men were waiting, watching the cautiously approaching foe, eager to fire upon them the moment they were in the best position to receive the most destructive onslaught--for wives, children, and feeble aged ones were in danger of becoming victims to their inhuman thirst for blood and plunder, and that foe had reached a point within five hundred yards of their line when there came a peremptory command from General Hull for them to retreat within the fort.
"The soldiers were very angry but obeyed, while the enemy drew nearer and prepared to storm the fort. The shot were coming thick and fast now from the Canadian shore. A ball came bounding over the wall of the fort and struck a group standing before one of the officer's quarters, killing two officers and a surgeon and badly wounding another. The next moment two other soldiers on the inside of the fort and two on the outside were killed.
"There were women and children in the house where the officers were killed, among them General Hull's daughter and her children. Some of the women were bespattered with the blood of the slain, and almost paralyzed with fear; some were carried senseless to the bomb-proof vault for safety.
"The general saw the effect of the ball from a distance, and did not know whether his own child was killed or not.
"Just then an officer of the Michigan militia in the town came to ask if they alone were to defend it, as he had seen the approach of the enemy without a gun being fired from the fort or the twenty-four pounders outside; also to inform Hull that the Indians were at the tan-yard, close upon the town. Hull did not answer his queries, but stepped into a room in the barracks, hastily wrote a note, and handing it to his son, Captain Hull, directed him to display a white flag immediately from the walls of the fort, where it might be seen by the British Captain Dixon, over the river.
"The order was promptly obeyed. The flag was a tablecloth. By order of General Hull it was waved from one of the bastions by Captain Burton, of the Fourth Regiment.
"The firing soon ceased, and in a few minutes Captain Hull was seen leaving the fort with a flag of truce. At the same time a boat was despatched across the river to Captain Dixon, commander of the battery on the Canada shore.
