Fort Shelby (Michigan)

Fort Shelby (Fort Lernoult, Fort Detroit)
Detroit, Michigan
Tecumseh and Isaac Brock at Detroit in 1812
Type	Fort
Site information
Controlled by	British (1779-1796) Americans (1796-1812) British (1812-1813) Americans (1813-1826)
Site history
Built	1778–1779
Built by	British
In use	1779–1826
Materials	Wood, earth
Demolished	1827
Garrison information
Past commanders	Richard B. Lernoult, Jean François Hamtramck, William Hull

Fort Shelby was a military fort in Detroit, Michigan that played a significant role in the War of 1812 (1812-1815). It was built by the British Army in 1779 as Fort Lernoult, and was ceded to the United States by the terms of the Jay Treaty in 1796, following up on the original terms of the peace agreement of the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), 13 years earlier when the British held on to continuing occupying several fortifications on the new American-Canadian international border. It was renamed Fort Detroit by the U.S. Secretary of War Henry Dearborn in 1805.^[1]

The then American commander William Hull of the United States Army, surrendered the fort in 1812, shortly after War was declared in June 1812 by the United States Congress and approved by the fourth President, James Madison (17xx-1836, served 1809-1817). But it was reclaimed by the U.S. military forces the following year in 1813. The Americans renamed it Fort Shelby then in 1813, but occasional references to "Fort Detroit" relating to the War of 1812 period of 1812-1815, are to this fort.

The earlier Fort Detroit, built by the Royal French for their New France colony from Quebec city in the interior of North America, around the Great Lakes, as part of their then world-wide First French Empire and occupied by them during the Seven Years' War / French and Indian War of 1753-1763 in America, After the loss of French territories and their New France and Louisiana and Canada possessions in North America in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the British Army reoccupied all the fortifications and reigned supreme on the continent for the next two decades. But Detroit was later abandoned by the British 16 years later in 1779, during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), in favor of Fort Lernoult. Fort Shelby was later returned to and occupied finally by the United States after Jay's Treaty of 1796, negotiations and ratification further settled outstanding issues with the former Mother Country, including continued British occupation of border fortifications on American soil, a decade after the Revolutionary War ended, despite the terms of the subsequent peace of the second Treaty of Paris of 1783, recognizing the Independence of the United States. The site was given later to the surrounding city of Detroit in 1826 and was dismantled the following year in 1827.