River Raisin (Frenchtown)

Also called the Battle of the River Raisin or the River Raisin Massacre, this clash unfolded across two separate engagements during the War of 1812. Brigadier General James Winchester led American troops against a combined British and allied force under Colonel Henry Procter, with combat erupting on January 18 and again on January 22, 1813. The site was Frenchtown in Michigan Territory, known today as Monroe, Michigan, situated along the River Raisin about 35 miles (56 km) southwest of Detroit.

On the eighteenth of January, militia from the American side pushed back a British and Indigenous force that had been holding Frenchtown. This assault fit into a broader strategy aimed at reclaiming Detroit, which had fallen after the previous summer's siege of that city. But the calm proved brief. Four days later, on January 22, British troops and their Indigenous allies struck back with a surprise counterattack. Caught unprepared, American forces suffered 397 dead in this second clash, and another 547 fell into enemy hands as prisoners. The following morning brought further tragedy, as a group of Indigenous warriors killed a number of the wounded captives, and several more prisoners lost their lives during the march to Fort Amherstburg. No other conflict on Michigan soil has claimed more lives than this one, and it stands as the single deadliest battle for American forces throughout the entire War of 1812.

Portions of the battlefield later received recognition as a state historic park and earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places. Congress went further in 2009, establishing the River Raisin National Battlefield Park as one of only four national battlefield parks in the country. Among these, it shares a unique distinction with just one other site, the Chalmette Battlefield and National Cemetery, as the sole parks dedicated to preserving the memory of the War of 1812.

Naming

The clash near Frenchtown unfolded around a settlement established in 1784 along the River Raisin in Michigan Territory, ground that today lies within Monroe. Naming conventions for this fighting vary considerably among historians. Some writers reserve the Frenchtown label exclusively for what happened on January 22, 1813, treating the earlier clash of January 18 as a separate event called the First Battle of the River Raisin, or dismissing it as merely a warm-up to the larger fight four days later. Others prefer the plural Battles of Frenchtown when discussing the whole span of combat from January 18 to January 22. Though shots were exchanged on the eighteenth, it was the confrontation on the twenty-second that produced the bulk of the casualties and fiercest combat. Because both dates of fighting occurred so close to the waterway itself, they are sometimes grouped together under the single title Battle of the River Raisin.

Under this alternate scheme, the overall engagement splits into two parts: the First Battle of the River Raisin on January 18 and a Second Battle of the River Raisin on January 22. Separate from either naming system is the phrase "River Raisin Massacre," reserved specifically for what transpired on January 23. On that day, following the second battle, Indigenous warriors killed a number of wounded American captives whom British forces had left behind after pulling out of Frenchtown.

First Battle of the River Raisin

On the tenth of January, 1813, Winchester and his force of about 1,300 regulars and Kentucky militiamen reached the Maumee Rapids. He had been instructed to remain there until Harrison could bring reinforcements down from Upper Sandusky, after which the combined force would move on Detroit. Three days later, a pair of Frenchtown residents, whose settlement lay some 35 miles (56 km) to the north, brought Winchester a letter from a local merchant warning that the British already knew the Americans were camped at the rapids. The same letter noted that Frenchtown held 3,000 barrels of wheat and flour in storage. In the days that followed, additional settlers from the River Raisin community came to Winchester with word that Frenchtown was held by two companies of militia and roughly 200 Indigenous warriors. They also claimed, mistakenly, that the British intended to burn the village.

Winchester consulted his officers and then dispatched Lieutenant Colonel William Lewis toward Frenchtown with 570 Kentucky militiamen. Lieutenant Colonel John Allen soon followed with another 110 men and joined Lewis's column. The two officers marched their troops to where the Maumee met the lake, then turned north along Erie's ice-bound shore. Reaching the southern bank of the River Raisin by the middle of the afternoon on January 18, they were met there by several French-speaking inhabitants of the settlement who threw in with the Americans.

Facing them, sheltered among the village's houses, barns, and fences, stood 50 members of the Essex militia under Major Ebenezer Reynolds. A single 3-inch howitzer backed the militia, along with somewhere between 100 and 200 Potawatomi and Wyandot fighters.

Once Reynolds's howitzer opened up, Lewis answered by ordering his men across the frozen river straight into the settlement, quickly driving the defenders back. One account describes how, at this moment, the habitants rushed from their homes with weapons in hand to fall upon the scattered warriors. For a time the Essex militia held firm at the tree line beyond the village. Lewis tried to turn their flank, but the attempt collapsed as Reynolds withdrew his men into the woods, fighting a stubborn retreat step by step. Decades afterward, Robert Reynolds remembered that his brother's men had fought bravely, falling back gradually from one log to the next.

William Atherton, a rifleman under Allen who took a wound to the right shoulder in the fighting, later published a memoir in 1842 recounting the enemy's methods. He wrote that the militia would pull back swiftly until vanishing from view, something easily done in the tangled brush, and that while the Americans advanced, the retreating men would ready themselves to fire again, forcing the pursuers to shoot at their backs as they withdrew.

The chase continued until darkness fell, at which point Lewis and Allen broke off and returned their men to Frenchtown. The clash had cost the Americans heavily at the hands of the Essex militia and their Potawatomi allies. Lewis recorded twelve Americans dead and fifty-five wounded, two of whom later died of their injuries. The Essex militia, by contrast, suffered but a single loss. Lewis also noted that two of his militiamen and one Potawatomi warrior had been taken prisoner, and that at least fifteen warriors had fallen.

To the north, in the Sandy Creek settlement, two inhabitants named René LaBeau and Jean-Baptiste Solo were killed after Solo mocked the retreating Potawatomi. Two of LaBeau's children fled two and a half miles to Frenchtown in search of the army's protection. In response, Lewis ordered the Sandy Creek settlement abandoned.