Fort Meigs: Gibraltar of the Northwest
Near Toledo, Ohio
Just south of Toledo, on a bluff above the Maumee River rapids, stands the site of what was once called the Gibraltar of the Northwest. Fort Meigs was the largest wooden fortification ever erected on American soil, and in the spring of eighteen thirteen, it was the last thing standing between the British Army and the interior of Ohio.
The War of eighteen twelve had gone badly for the United States in the northwest. Detroit had fallen. American forces at Frenchtown, now Monroe, Michigan, had been massacred on the Raisin River. General William Henry Harrison, the future president, was given command of the Army of the Northwest with orders to reclaim what had been lost. He chose this bluff at the Maumee rapids as his supply depot and forward base, naming the fort after Ohio's governor, Return Jonathan Meigs. Construction began in February of eighteen thirteen, in brutal winter conditions, and the nine-acre enclosure of log walls and seven blockhouses was barely finished when the British came.
In late April of eighteen thirteen, a British force under General Henry Procter arrived, supported by Tecumseh and a large force of allied Native warriors. British artillery opened fire on May first. The bombardment ran for five days. Harrison's men burrowed earth traverses, mounded walls of dirt across the interior of the fort that absorbed cannonballs almost as fast as the British fired them. The dirt walls saved the garrison.
May fifth was the bloodiest day. A relief column of roughly eight hundred sixty Kentucky militia arrived but was ambushed outside the walls. Only about one hundred fifty made it back to the fort, meaning more than seven hundred were killed or captured. The fort itself held.
The British came back in July and were repulsed a second time. Both failed sieges shifted the momentum of the western war. By September of eighteen thirteen, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry had destroyed the British fleet on Lake Erie, and Harrison had driven Procter's army back into Canada. Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames. The Maumee Valley, and the future city of Toledo, was secured.
