Nathaniel G. S. Hart

Nathaniel Gray Smith Hart[A] (c. 1784 – January 23, 1813) was a Lexington, Kentucky lawyer and businessman, who served with the state's volunteer militia during the War of 1812.

As Captain of the Lexington Light Infantry from Kentucky, Hart and many of his men were killed in the River Raisin Massacre of January 23, 1813, after being taken prisoner the day before following the Battle of Frenchtown in Michigan Territory.

[15][16][17] At the start of the War of 1812, Hart was commissioned as Captain of the Lexington Light Infantry Company (aka "The Silk Stocking Boys")[7] [18] a volunteer unit of the Fayette County, Kentucky militia.

The British commander of the Fort Malden garrison in Amherstburg, Colonel Henry Procter,[22] made plans to take back Frenchtown and he ordered troops to the area.

[29] William Elliott, Hart's former Princeton classmate who had become a Captain in the British Army, promised the wounded man safe passage to Fort Malden,[C] but did not carry out his pledge.

[30] Acting American captain William Caldwell wrote the next month that he heard Elliott tell General Winchester and Major Madison that "the Indians were very excellent surgeons (and ought to kill all the officers and men).

[2][34] Hart and an estimated 30–100 unarmed prisoners were killed by Indians on January 23, the day after the battle, in what became known as the River Raisin Massacre.

[D] The high fatalities of the Americans in the Battle of Frenchtown and the subsequent Massacre of prisoners became fuel for pro-war political factions known as War Hawks, and for anti-British sentiment of the era.

entered the lexicon of the day as a flashpoint for popular sentiment, becoming a battle cry for American troops, especially the ones on the western frontier.

Among the dead was Colonel John Allen, Henry Clay's law-partner and co-counsel in Aaron Burr's conspiracy trial at Frankfort.

"[41] Major Benjamin Franklin Graves of Lexington was another officer apparently killed while a prisoner of the Potawatomi, who were overseeing him and others marching to Detroit.

Some writers state that those skeletons, along with the City Cemetery remains, were returned to Kentucky for final and proper burial that year.

[50] Matthew Harris Jouett, a man who painted noted portraits of Thomas Jefferson, George Rogers Clark and Lafayette, was one of the Kentucky volunteers and among the survivors of the River Raisin Massacre.