Dearborn had soon found out that his disorderly masses
at Greenbush were quite unfit to take the field. But,
four months after the declaration of war, a small
detachment, thrown forward from his new headquarters at
Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, did manage to reach St
Regis, where the frontier first meets the St Lawrence,
near the upper end of Lake St Francis, sixty miles
south-west of Montreal. Here the Americans killed Lieutenant
Rototte and a sergeant, and took the little post, which
was held by a few voyageurs. Exactly a month later, on
November 23, these Americans were themselves defeated
and driven back again. Three days earlier than this a
much stronger force of Americans had crossed the frontier
at Odelltown, just north of which there was a British
blockhouse beside the river La Colle, a muddy little
western tributary of the Richelieu, forty-seven miles
due south of Montreal. The Americans fired into each
other in the dark, and afterwards retired before the
British reinforcements. Dearborn then put his army into
winter quarters at Plattsburg, thus ending his much-heralded
campaign against Montreal before it had well begun.

The American government was much disappointed at the
failure of its efforts to make war without armies. But
it found a convenient scapegoat in Hull, who was far less
to blame than his superiors in the Cabinet. These
politicians had been wrong in every important particular
--wrong about the attitude of the Canadians, wrong about
the whole plan of campaign, wrong in separating Hull from
Dearborn, wrong in not getting men-of-war afloat on the