A trickle of shako-clad[4] cadets graduated from the then-tiny institution of higher military training to take up duty stations in sensitive security points up and down the young United States.

Although the Chicago River and its hinterland was officially part of the United States, the Fort Dearborn soldiers and fur traders were sharply outnumbered by adjacent bands of Native Americans.

Heald, possibly in retaliation, ordered Ronan to undertake a series of increasingly dangerous operations outside the fort walls in ultimately futile efforts to knit together the tiny band of French-speaking, English-speaking, and Native American-speaking farmers and traders who lived in cabins scattered up and down the Chicago River.

The news of the fort's evacuation, scheduled for August 15, 1812, emboldened the Chicago "British band" of Potawatomi, who took a position two miles south of the doomed stockade along the shore of Lake Michigan.

[7] Sculptor Henry Hering, in his 1928 "Defense" mounted on the Michigan Avenue Bridge adjacent to the site of Fort Dearborn, centered the bas-relief on an unnamed junior officer who was depicted performing the role — protection of civilians — that Ronan tried to carry out in reality.