River Raisin, 1813: Kentucky’s winter defeat in Michigan

On August 15, 1812, Kentucky volunteers gathered on the courthouse square at Georgetown, ordered north to relieve Gen. William Hull at Detroit. Hull surrendered Detroit the next day, August 16, and the Kentuckians joined a long winter campaign to take it back. The state marker on the Georgetown courthouse lawn (opens in a new tab) marks the muster.

On the other side were the nations of the Great Lakes and Ohio country. Wyandot, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe warriors had allied with the British to stop American settlement, which had pushed onto their lands since the Treaty of Greenville (opens in a new tab), according to Grokipedia’s account of the battle (opens in a new tab). Many followed the confederacy of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh (opens in a new tab), and at the River Raisin they were led by the Wyandot chiefs Roundhead (opens in a new tab) and Walk-in-the-Water.

On January 18, 1813, Kentucky troops under Gen. James Winchester drove a small British and Canadian force, with Potawatomi warriors, out of Frenchtown on the River Raisin, today Monroe, Michigan (opens in a new tab). They had no artillery and threw up defenses from fences and buildings. At dawn on January 22, Col. Henry Procter attacked with about 600 British soldiers and Canadian militia and roughly 800 Native warriors, Grokipedia says.

Winchester was captured early, and he ordered the remaining Americans, about 500 men, to surrender. Grokipedia gives American losses in the fighting as about 359 killed and 495 captured or missing, with 24 British killed; Native losses were not recorded. Counts vary by source, and the Kentucky marker says that of about 1,050 Kentuckians, “not half reached home.”

On January 23, warriors returned to Frenchtown, where Procter had left the American wounded under a small guard without transport. They killed an estimated 30 to 60 of the wounded prisoners, Grokipedia says, and some buildings were burned.

Americans called it the River Raisin Massacre and blamed both the warriors and Procter. Later historians have weighed the warriors’ desire for vengeance against Procter’s failure to protect the prisoners he had promised to safeguard, and both the name and the numbers are still argued over.

“Remember the Raisin!” became a Kentucky rallying cry. It helped drive the state’s turnout that fall for the Battle of the Thames (opens in a new tab), where Procter’s army was routed and Tecumseh was killed.

Kentucky named nine counties for officers who were casualties of the River Raisin campaign: Allen, Ballard, Edmonson, Graves, Hart, Hickman, McCracken, Meade and Simpson. Two came from Shelby County: Bland Ballard of Tick Creek, who was captured and survived, and Capt. John Simpson, namesake of Simpsonville, who was killed.

Kentucky today

State historical marker #508, “Remember the Raisin,” stands on the Scott County courthouse lawn in Georgetown, where the volunteers mustered. The battlefield itself is in Michigan, preserved as the River Raisin National Battlefield Park (opens in a new tab), and Kentucky’s nine River Raisin counties still carry the officers’ names.