Even with this absurd plan of campaign and faulty division of the forces, we might have succeeded if the general had acted with energy, so exceedingly weak were the Canadian means of defence; but instead of taking advantage of his superiority in numbers and the favorable circumstances of the time, he entered into an armistice with the British general, and his whole army of thirteen thousand five hundred men lay inactive till the 13th of October, when the absurd project of crossing the Niagara at Lewiston failed, because the New-York militia had _constitutional scruples_ against crossing a river so long as the enemy were on the other side.
The Lake Champlain column, consisting of three thousand regulars and two thousand militia, a considerable portion of which had been collected as early as the first of August, had in four months advanced as far as La Cole river, a distance of about two hundred miles from Albany.

The unimportant action at this place terminated the campaign, and the army of the North returned to winter-quarters.
All the early part of the campaign of 1813, on the northern frontier, was spent in a war of detachments, in which our troops captured Fort George and York, and repelled the predatory excursions of the enemy.

In these operations our troops exhibited much courage and energy, and the young officers who led them, no little skill and military talent.

But nothing could have been more absurd than for a general, with superior forces in the vicinity of an enemy, to act only by detachments at a time when his opponents were daily increasing in number.

This useless war of outposts and detachments was continued till July, when General Dearborn was recalled, and General Wilkinson, another old officer of the Revolution, put in his place.