18121776 Club
A white sheet goes up over Detroit; Hull surrenders the fort without a fight
Some 2,200 American troops lay down arms to a British force half their size.
By mid-August 1812, General William Hull was trapped inside Fort Detroit with hundreds of civilians, his supply lines cut, and Indigenous warriors under Tecumseh massing outside the walls. British General Isaac Brock's artillery killed seven American regulars before Hull, fearing a massacre and convinced he was outnumbered, ordered a white sheet hung over the fort's bastion. He surrendered nearly 2,200 men at the fort, along with 2,500 muskets, without firing back. It was the young war's first major American defeat, and its most humiliating…
