The siege of Fort Meigs took place in late April to early May 1813 during the War of 1812 in northwestern Ohio, present-day Perrysburg. A small British Army unit with support from Indians attempted to capture the recently constructed fort to forestall an American offensive against Detroit, and its Fort Detroit in the Great Lakes region which the British from the north in Canada had captured the previous year. An American sortie and relief attempt failed with heavy casualties, but the British failed to capture the fort and were forced to raise the siege.
Background
In the early days of the War of 1812 (1812–1815), an American Army under Brigadier General William Hull (1753–1825), surrendered following the siege of Detroit. To recover the town of Detroit and Fort Detroit, the Americans formed the Army of the Northwest. Brigadier General James Winchester (1752–1826), briefly commanded this army before William Henry Harrison (1773–1841), Congressional delegate and then secretary of the old Northwest Territory, then first governor of the Indiana Territory and future 9th president (1841) was commissioned a major general in the regular United States Army and appointed to the command by fourth president James Madison.
Harrison's advance was hampered by bad weather and shortage of supplies. On 22 January 1813, the leading detachment of his army (commanded by Winchester) was defeated at the Battle of Frenchtown. Harrison withdrew with his main body to the Maumee or also called Miami du Lac River, and in spite of rebukes from future 5th President James Monroe, who was temporarily serving as United States Secretary of War, he declined to resume his advance immediately and instead gave orders for the construction of several forts to protect the rivers and trails which his army would use in any renewed advance. Two of the most important were Fort Meigs (named for Return J. Meigs Jr., the Governor of Ohio) on the Maumee River and Fort Stephenson on the Sandusky River in the northwest corner of the decade old state.
Harrison descended the Maumee to the proposed site of Fort Meigs with an army which ultimately numbered 4,000 men (mainly militia) and began construction of the fort on 1 February 1813. He contemplated making a hit-and-run attack across the frozen Lake Erie against the British position at Amherstburg in Upper Canada and moved to the mouth of the Maumee, but found that the ice on the frozen lake was already breaking up and returned to the half-finished fort. He found the officer he had left in charge, Joel B. Leftwich, had left with all his men because the enlistment period of the militia units assigned to the task had expired. Construction had halted, and the wood that had been cut was being used as firewood.
As the enlistments of Harrison's Ohio and Kentucky militia were also about to expire, Harrison disbanded his force and departed for Cincinnati, Ohio to the south on the Ohio River, to raise a fresh army. He left Army Corps of Engineers Major Eleazer D. Wood to complete the construction of the fort. The garrison consisted of several hundred men from the 17th and 19th Regiments, U.S. Infantry, who were inadequately clothed, plus militia from Pennsylvania and Virginia whose own enlistments were soon to expire.
The fort was on the south bank of the Maumee, near the Miami Rapids. Across the river were the ruins of the old British Fort Miami and the site of the pivotal 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers. Fort Meigs occupied an area of , the largest fortification constructed in North America to that date. The perimeter consisted of a fifteen-foot picket fence, linking eight blockhouses. The north face was protected by the Maumee, and the east and west faces by ravines. The south face was cleared of all timber to create an open glacis.
The poor weather of early spring prevented a British attack while the fort was still vulnerable. The British Army commander on the Detroit frontier, Major General Henry Procter, had been urged to attack Fort Presque Isle (present day Erie, Pennsylvania), where the Americans were constructing a flotilla intended to seize control of Lake Erie, but Procter refused unless he received substantial reinforcements. Instead, he decided upon an attack on Fort Meigs, to disrupt American preparations for a summer campaign and hopefully capture supplies. Harrison received word of Procter's preparations, and hastened down the Maumee with 300 reinforcements, increasing the garrison of the fort to a total of 1,100 men. He had persuaded Isaac Shelby, the Governor of Kentucky, to call up a brigade of 1,200 Kentucky militia under Brigadier General Green Clay. Clay's brigade followed Harrison down the Maumee, but had not reached the fort before it was besieged.