The key to controlling Upper Canada in the War of 1812 was gaining naval mastery of the Great Lakes, especially Lakes Erie and Ontario. Given the lack of adequate roads in that area, neither side could hope to sustain an army of any size in the field without the ability to deliver supplies and reinforcements via these lakes. As 1813 opened, the British were in firm control of both and, despite the clamor of the Madison administration and Americans living west of the Appalachians to invade Canada, General William Henry Harrison, commander of the western army, was painfully aware that he must wait for a situational change on Lake Erie before beginning his advance.

Following the American disaster at Frenchtown, General William Henry Harrison gathered another force to turn the tide in the West. On February 1, 1813, Harrison returned to the rapids of the Maumee with 1,800 Pennsylvania and Virginia militiamen and tasked Major Eleazer D. Wood of the Engineers, an early graduate of West Point, to construct Fort Meigs. Wood finished the fort by the end of the month, but unfortunately the enlistments of most of the men expired at the same time and Harrison was left with a formidable fort but a garrison of less than 500 soldiers.

Following General William Hull’s ignominious surrender of Fort Detroit, the outlook for the United States in Upper Canada was bleak. The western army essentially had been eliminated with Hull’s surrender, and a new army had to be raised. But perhaps more importantly, a new commander had to be found, and that man would be William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory and acclaimed in the West as the hero of Tippecanoe.