After subduing these difficulties, this small party appeared before the town, which was completely surprised, and readily consented to change its master.
Hamilton, after defending the fort a short time, surrendered himself and his garrison prisoners of war.

With a few of his immediate agents and counsellors, who had been instrumental in the savage barbarities he had encouraged, he was, by order of the executive of Virginia, put in irons, and confined in a jail.
This expedition was important in its consequences.

It disconcerted a plan which threatened destruction to the whole country west of the Alleghany mountains; detached from the British interest many of those numerous tribes of Indians south of the waters immediately communicating with the great lakes; and had, most probably, considerable influence in fixing the western boundary of the United States.
[Sidenote: Congress determine to attack Canada, and the other British possessions in North America.] We have already seen that congress, actuated by their wishes rather than governed by a temperate calculation of the means in their possession, had, in the preceding winter, planned a second invasion of Canada, to be conducted by the Marquis de Lafayette; and that, as the generals only were got in readiness for this expedition, it was necessarily laid aside.

The design, however, seems to have been suspended, not abandoned.

The alliance with France revived the latent wish to annex that extensive territory to the United States.