The Battle of Longwoods took place during the Anglo-American War of 1812. On 4 March 1814, a mounted American raiding party defeated an attempt by British regulars, volunteers from the Canadian militia and Native Americans to intercept them near Wardsville, in present-day Southwest Middlesex, Ontario.
In October, 1813, in the aftermath of the American naval victory of the Battle of Lake Erie, an American army under Major General William Henry Harrison recovered Detroit (which the British had captured early in the war), captured the abandoned British post at Fort Malden at Amherstburg, and defeated a retreating British and Native American force at the Battle of Moraviantown, killing the Indigenous leader and British ally Tecumseh in the process. The British feared that the Americans might follow up their victory and strike at their position at Burlington at the western end of Lake Ontario, but the period of enlistment of most of the militia troops in Harrison's army was about to expire, and the Americans withdrew.
During the subsequent months, there was a "no man's land" stretching almost 200 miles (320 km) between Amherstburg and Burlington, where Canadian militia skirmished with occasional American raiding or scouting parties. Late in December, 1813, the British established an outpost at Delaware, roughly halfway between these two positions, and another at Port Talbot on the shore of Lake Erie. On 23 December, the garrison of the post at Delaware surprised and captured a small American outpost near Chatham.
The American commander at Amherstburg was Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Butler of the 28th U.S. Infantry. He sent an expedition under Captain Andrew Holmes to capture one of these two British posts, as circumstances allowed. The expedition consisted of mounted detachments from the 24th, 26th, 27th and 28th U.S. Regiments of Infantry and two six-pounder cannon, and was later joined by some rangers and militia dragoons from Michigan. The raiders, including the regulars, were dressed in buckskins against the cold and were armed with rifles and tomahawks.
Holmes left Amherstburg on 21 February, moving along the shore of Lake Erie. The ground was soft, and he was forced to abandon his two guns near Pointe au Pelee. After a clash with some Canadian militia who escaped, Holmes decided that the militia would warn the defenders of Port Talbot, and he determined therefore to make for Delaware instead. On 2 March, he was within 15 miles (24 km) of Delaware, but cold, hunger and sickness had reduced his force from 180 to 164 men. The British had indeed been warned of his presence, and Holmes learned from a Canadian renegade that 300 men had sallied from Delaware and were within an hour's march of him. Holmes left the Michigan Rangers as a rearguard while his main body retreated five miles to the Twenty Mile Creek. The Michigan troops also fell back after a skirmish with Caldwell's Rangers, who were leading the British advance.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
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