Porter Hanks

Porter Hanks (c. 1785–August 16, 1812) was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812. He is best known for having been the commanding officer at Fort Mackinac, which fort he surrendered without bloodshed on July 17, 1812 in one of the opening movements of the war.

War of 1812
Hanks, who joined the army as an artillery lieutenant in 1805, was the commander at Mackinac Island in the spring of 1812. Fort Mackinac was a highly strategic location during the opening weeks of the War of 1812, being the westernmost U.S. military post on the Upper Great Lakes. Its location, however, made communications between the U.S. War Department and the fort difficult. Although the United States had declared war against the British Empire on June 18, 1812, as of mid-July no news of the conflict had been transmitted to northern Michigan.

By contrast across the border in the British post of Fort St. Joseph, Hanks' opposite number had been informed of the outbreak of conflict. Captain Charles Roberts learned on July 8, 1812 that the United States had declared war upon the United Kingdom and, by implication, upon British Canada. Although Roberts' own command numbered scarcely forty men, he was able to recruit approximately 580 First Nations and Native American warriors and fur traders into becoming members of an amphibious assault column. On July 16, a British flotilla made up of one schooner and a fleet of war canoes set sail from Fort St. Joseph to Fort Mackinac. That night, Roberts and his men landed without opposition at Mackinac Island's British Landing, and the small British-Canadian column brought a 6-pound fieldpiece cannon ashore and set it up on a high point that commanded the helpless, uninformed U.S. fort. On the morning of July 17, the British demanded that the Americans surrender their fortification without bloodshed. The American commander Porter Hanks, with only 61 men facing the British-Canadian-First Nations force of more than 600, decided to accept the British request.

Porter had to sign terms of surrender. His men were granted the "honors of war" as they marched out of the surrendered fort, with right of passage off Mackinac Island. Hanks signed these terms even though he knew that he would face a court martial for surrendering his command, and (even behind American lines again) he and his men would be legally barred from active service in an American uniform until distance-exchanged; these pre-prisoner of war conditions being part of what was then a code of honor observed by army officers in the English-speaking world.

Porter Hanks, with his men, was shipped to the American lines at Fort Detroit. At Detroit, Lt. Hanks reported to overall theater commander Gen. William Hull. Hull was reported to have been much disturbed by Hanks' report that the British army was successfully implementing kinship alliances with Native warriors. Soon after Hanks's arrival, another British column attacked Fort Detroit. On the morning of August 16, while Hanks was a paroled prisoner of war inside Fort Detroit awaiting court-martial, he was killed by the random flight of a British artillery cannonball aimed at the American fort's personnel. The decapitation of Hanks completed the task of discouraging the American general, and later in the same day he surrendered the Detroit strongpoint.