FROM 1812 TO 1820
Hearne surrenders--Cook on the west coast--Vancouver on
Pacific--Discovery of Mackenzie River--Across to the Pacific--A smash
in bad rapids--Down Fraser River--Cause of war--The Chesapeake
outrage--War declared--Hull surrenders at Detroit--The fight round
Niagara--Soldiers exchange jokes across gorge--The traverse at
Queenston--The surrender at Queenston--1813 A dark year--Raid on
Ogdensburg--Attack on Toronto--Toronto burned--Vincent's soldiers at
Burlington Bay--Ill hap of all the generals--Laura Secord's
heroism--Campaign in the west--Moraviantown Disaster--Chrysler's
farm--De Salaberry's buglers--The charge at Chippewa--Final action at
Lundy's Lane--Great heroism on both sides--Assault at Fort Erie--End of
futile war
While Canada waged war for her national existence against her border
neighbors to the south, as in the days of the bushrovers' raids of old,
afar in the west, in the burnt-wood, iron-rock region of Lake Superior,
on the lonely wind-swept prairies, at the foothills where each night's
sunset etched the long shadows of the mountain peaks in somber replica
across the plains, in the forested solitude of the tumultuous Rockies
was the ragged vanguard of empire blazing a path through the
wilderness, voyageur and burnt-wood runner, trapper, and explorer,
pushing across the hinterlands of earth's ends from prairie to
mountains, and mountains to sea.
It was but as a side clap of the great American Revolution that the
last French cannon were pointed against the English forts on Hudson
Bay. When France sided with the American colonies a fleet of French
frigates was dispatched under the great Admiral La Pérouse against the
fur posts of the English Company. One sleepy August afternoon in 1782,
when Samuel Hearne, governor of Fort Churchill, was sorting furs in the
courtyard, gates wide open, cannon unloaded, guards dispersed, the fort
was electrified by the sudden apparition of three men-of-war, sails
full blown, sides bristling with cannon, plowing over the waves
straight for the harbor gate. French colors fluttered from the
masthead. Sails rattled down. Anchors were cast, and in a few minutes
small boats were out sounding the channel for position to attack the
fort. Hearne had barely forty men, and the most of them were
decrepits, unfit for the hunting field. As sunset merged into the long
white light of northern midnight, four hundred French mariners landed
on the sands outside Churchill. {319} Hearne had no alternative. He
surrendered without a blow. The fort was looted of furs, the Indians
driven out, and a futile attempt made to blow up the massive walls.
Hearne and the other officers were carried off captives. Matonabbee,
the famous Indian guide, came back from the hunt to find the wooden
structures of Churchill in flame. He had thought the English were
invulnerable, and his pagan pride could not brook the shame of such
ignominious defeat. Withdrawing outside the shattered walls,
Matonabbee blew his brains out. A few days later Port Nelson, to the
south, had suffered like fate. The English officers were released by
La Pérouse on reaching Europe. As for the fur company servants, they
waited only till the French sails had disappeared over the sea. Then
they came from hiding and rebuilt the burnt forts. Such was the last
act in the great drama of contest between France and England for
supremacy in the north.
For two hundred years explorers had been trying to find a northern
passage between Europe and Asia by way of America, from east to west.
Now that Canada has fallen into English hands; now, too, that the
Russian sea-otter hunters are coasting down the west side of America
towards that region which Drake discovered long ago in California,
England suddenly awakens to a passion for discovery of that mythical
Northwest Passage. Instead of seeking from east to west she sought
from west to east, and sent her navigator round the world to search for
opening along the west coast of America. To carry out the exploration
there was selected as commander that young officer, James Cook, who
helped to sound the St. Lawrence for Wolfe, and had since been cruising
the South Seas. On his ships, the _Resolution_ and the _Discovery_,
was a young man whose name was to become a household word in America,
Vancouver, a midshipman.
March of 1778 the _Resolution_ and _Discovery_ come rolling over the
long swell of the sheeny Pacific towards Drake's land of New Albion,
California. Suddenly, one morning, the dim sky line resolved into the
clear-cut edges of high land, but by night such a roaring hurricane had
burst on the ships as drove them {320} far out from land, too far to
see the opening of Juan de Fuca, leading in from Vancouver Island,
though Cook called the cape there "Flattery," because he had hoped for
an opening and been deluded. Clearer weather found Cook abreast a
coast of sheer mountains with snowy summits jagging through the clouds
in tent peaks. A narrow entrance opened into a two-horned cove. Small
boats towed the ships in amid a flotilla of Indian dugouts whose
occupants chanted weird welcome to the echo of the surrounding hills.
Women and children were in the canoes. That signified peace. The
ships were moored to trees, and the white men went ashore in that
harbor to become famous as the rendezvous of Pacific fur traders,
Nootka Sound, on the sea side of Vancouver Island.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN COOK]
Presently the waters were literally swarming with Indian canoes, and in
a few days Cook's crews had received thousands of dollars' worth of
sea-otter skins for such worthless baubles as tin mirrors and brass
rings and bits of red calico. This was the beginning of the fur trade
in sea otter with Americans and English. Some of the naked savages
were observed wearing metal ornaments of European make. Cook did not
think of the Russian fur traders to the north, but easily persuaded
himself these objects had come from the English fur traders of Hudson
Bay, and so inferred there _must_ be a Northeast Passage. By April,
Cook's ships were once more afloat, {321} gliding among the sylvan
channels of countless wooded islands up past Sitka harbor, where the
Russians later built their fort, round westward beneath the towering
opal dome of Mount St. Elias, which Bering had named, to the waters
bordering Alaska; but, as the world knows, though the ships penetrated
up the channels of many roily waters, they found no open passage. Cook
comes down to the Sandwich Islands, New Year of 1779. There the vices
of his white crew arouse the enmity of the pagan savages. In a riot
over the theft of a rowboat, Cook and a few men are surrounded by an
enraged mob. By some mistake the white sailors rowing out from shore
fire on the mob surrounding Cook. Instantly a dagger rips under Cook's
shoulder blade. In another second Cook and his men are literally
hacked to pieces. All night the conch shells of the savages blow their
war challenge through the darkness and the signal fires dance on the
mountains. By dint of persuasion and threats the white men compel the
natives to restore the mangled remains of the commander. Sunday,
February 21, amid a silence as of death over the waters, the body of
the dead explorer is committed to the deep.
[Illustration: FORT CHURCHILL, AS IT WAS IN 1777]
[Illustration: TOTEM POLES, BRITISH COLUMBIA]
The chance discovery of the sea-otter trade by Cook's crew at Nootka
brings hosts of English and American adventurers to the Pacific Coast
of Canada. There is Meares, the English officer from China, who builds
a rabbit hutch of a barracks at Nootka and almost involves England and
Spain in war because the Spaniards, having discovered this region
before Cook, knock the log barracks into kindling wood and forcibly
seize an English trading ship. There is Robert Gray, the Boston
trader, who pushes the prow of his little ship, _Columbia_, up a
spacious harbor south of Juan de Fuca in May of 1792 and discovers
Columbia River, so giving the United States flag prior claim here.
There is George Vancouver, the English commander, sent out by his
government in 1791-1793 to receive Nootka formally back from the
Spaniards of California and to explore every inlet from Vancouver
Island to Alaska. As luck would have it, Vancouver, the Englishman,
and Gray, the American, are both hovering off {322} the mouth of the
Columbia in April of 1792, but a gale drives the ships offshore, though
turgid water plainly indicates the mouth of a great river somewhere
near. Vancouver goes on up north. Gray, the American, comes back, and
so Vancouver misses discovering the one great river that remains
unmapped in America. Up Puget Sound, named after his lieutenant, up
Fuca Straits, round Vancouver Island, past all those inlets like seas
on the mainland of British Columbia, coasts Vancouver, rounding south
again to Nootka in August. In Nootka lie the Spanish frigates from
California, bristling with cannon, the red and yellow flag blowing to
the wind above the palisaded fort. In solemn parade, with Maquinna,
the Nootka chief, clad in a state of nature, as guest of the festive
board, Don Quadra, the Spanish officer, dines and wines Vancouver; but
when it comes to business, that is another matter! Vancouver
understands that Spain is to surrender _all_ sovereignty north of San
Francisco. Don Quadra, with pompous bow, maintains that the
international agreement was to surrender rights only north of Juan de
Fuca, leaving the rest of the northwest coast free to all nations for
trade. Incidentally, it may be mentioned, Don Quadra was right, but
the two commanders agree to send home to their respective governments
for {323} instructions. Meanwhile Robert Gray, the American, comes
rolling into port with news he has discovered Columbia River.
Vancouver is skeptical and chagrined. Having failed to discover the
river, he goes down coast to explore it. It may be added, he sends his
men higher up the river than Gray has gone, and has England's flag of
possession as solemnly planted as though Robert Gray had never entered
Columbia's waters. The next two years Vancouver spends exploring every
nook and inlet from Columbia River to Lynn Canal. Once and for all and
forever he disproves the myth of a Northeast Passage. His work was
negative, but it established English rights where America's claims
ceased and Russia's began, namely between Columbia River and Sitka, or
in what is now known as British Columbia.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN GEORGE VANCOUVER]
[Illustration: NOOTKA SOUND (From an engraving in Vancouver's journal)]
As the beaver had lured French bushrovers from the St. Lawrence to the
Rockies, so the sea otter led the way to the exploration of the Pacific
Coast. Artist's brush and novelist's pen have drawn all the romance
and the glamour and the adventure of the beaver hunter's life, but the
sea-otter hunter's life is {324} almost an untold tale. Pacific Coast
Indians were employed by the white traders for this wildest of hunting.
The sea otter is like neither otter nor beaver, though possessing
habits akin to both. In size, when full-grown, it is about the length
of a man. Its pelt has the ebony shimmer of seal tipped with silver.
Cradled on the waves, sleeping on their backs in the sea, playful as
kittens, the sea otters only come ashore when driven by fierce gales;
but they must come above to breathe, for the wave wash of storm would
smother them. Their favorite sleeping grounds used to be the kelp beds
of the Alaskan Islands. Storm or calm, to the kelp beds rode the
Indian hunters in their boats of oiled skin light as paper. If heavy
surf ran, concealing sight and sound, the hunters stood along shore
shouting through the surf and waiting for the wave wash to carry in the
dead body; if the sea were calm, the hunters circled in bands of twenty
or thirty, spearing the sea otter as it came up to breathe; but the
best hunting was when hurricane gales churned sea and air to spray.
Then the sea otter came to the kelp beds in herds, and through the
storm over the wave-dashed reefs, like very spirits of the storm
incarnate, rushed the hunters, spear in hand. It is not surprising
that the sea-otter hunters perished by tens of thousands every year, or
that the sea otter dwindled from a yield of 100,000 a year to a paltry
200 of the present day.
Meanwhile Nor'west traders from Montreal and Quebec, English traders
from Hudson Bay, have gone up the Saskatchewan far as the Athabasca and
the Rockies. What lies beyond? Whither runs this great river from
Athabasca Lake? Whence comes the great river from the mountains? Will
the river that flows north or the river that comes from the west,
either of them lead to the Pacific Coast, where Cook's crews found
wealth of sea otter? The lure of the Unknown is the lure of the siren.
First you possess it, then it possesses you! Cooped up in his fort on
Lake Athabasca, Alexander MacKenzie, the Nor'wester, begins wondering
about those rivers, but you can't ask business men to bank on the
Unknown, to write blank checks for profits on what {325} you may not
find. And the Nor'westers were all stern business men. For every
penny's outlay they exacted from their wintering partners and clerks
not ten but a hundredfold. And Alexander MacKenzie received no
encouragement from his company to explore these unknown rivers. The
project got possession of his mind. Sometimes he would pace the little
log barracks of Fort Chippewyan from sunset to day dawn, trying to work
out a way to explore those rivers; or, sitting before the huge hearth
place, he would dream and dream till, as he wrote his cousin Roderick,
"I did not know what I was doing or where I was." Finally he induced
his cousin to take charge of the fort for a summer. Then, assuming all
risk and outlay, he set out on his own responsibility June 3, 1789, to
follow the Great River down to the Arctic Ocean. "English Chief," who
often went down to Hudson Bay for the rival company, went as
MacKenzie's guide, and there were also in the canoes two or three white
men, some Indians as paddlers, and squaws to cook and make moccasins.
[Illustration: FORT CHIPPEWYAN, ATHABASCA LAKE (From a recent
photograph)]
{326} The canoes passed Peace River pouring down from the mountains;
then six dangerous rapids, where many a Nor'west voyageur had perished,
one of MacKenzie's canoes going smash over the falls with a squaw, who
swam ashore; then rampart shores came, broader and higher than the St.
Lawrence or the Hudson, the boats skimming ahead with blankets hoisted
for sails through foggy days and nights of driving rain. Cramped and
rain-soaked, bailing water from the canoes with huge sponges, the
Indians began to whine that the way was "hard, white man, hard." Then
the river lost itself in a huge lagoon, Slave Lake, named after
defeated Indians who had taken refuge here; and the question was, which
way to go through the fog across the marshy lake! Poking through
rushes high as a man, MacKenzie found a current, and, hoisting a sail
on his fishing pole, raced out to the river again on a hissing tide.
Here lived the Dog Rib Indians, and they frightened MacKenzie's men
cold with grewsome tales of horrors ahead, of terrible waterfalls, of a
land of famine and hostile tribes. The effect was instant. MacKenzie
could not obtain a guide till "English Chief" hoisted a Slave Lake
Indian into the canoe on a paddle handle. Though MacKenzie himself
nightly slept with the vermin-infested guide to prevent desertion, the
fellow escaped one night during the confusion of a thunder-storm.
Again a chance hunter was forcibly put into the canoe as guide; and the
explorer pushed on for another month. North of Bear Lake, Indian
warriors were seen flourishing weapons along shore, and MacKenzie's men
began to remark that the land was barren of game. If they became
winter bound, they would perish. MacKenzie promised his men if he did
not find the sea within seven days, he would turn back. Suddenly the
men lost track of day, for they had come to the region of long light.
The river had widened to swamp lands. Between the 13th and 14th of
July the men asleep on the sand were awakened by a flood of water
lapping in on their baggage. What did it mean? For a minute they did
not realize. Then they knew. It was the tide. They had found the
sea. Hilarious as boys, they jumped from bed to man their canoes and
chase whales.
{327} September 12, all sails up before a driving wind, the canoes
raced across Athabasca Lake to the fort landing, Roderick, his nephew,
shouting a welcome. MacKenzie had laid one of the two ghosts that
haunted his peace. Now he must lay the other. Where did Peace River
come from? His achievement on MacKenzie River had been greeted by the
other Nor'west partners with a snub. Nevertheless MacKenzie asked for
leave of absence that he might go to London and study the taking of
astronomic observations in order to explore that other river flowing
from the mountains; and in London, though poor and obscure, he heard
all about Cook's voyages and Meare's brush with the Spaniards at
Nootka, and plans for Captain Vancouver to make a final exploration of
the Pacific Coast. Hurrying back to the Nor'wester's fort on Peace
River, he was beset by the blue devils of despondency. What if Peace
River did _not_ lead to the Pacific Ocean at all? What if he were
behind some other discoverer? What if the venture proved a fool's trip
leading to a blind nowhere? He was only a junior partner and could ill
afford either money or time for failure.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER MACKENZIE]
Nevertheless, when the furs have been dispatched for Montreal,
MacKenzie launches out on May 9 of 1793 with a thirty-foot birch canoe,
six voyageurs, and Alexander Mackay as lieutenant, for the hinterland
beyond the Rockies. This time the going was _against_ stream,--hard
paddling, but safer than with a {328} swift current in a river with
dangerous rapids. Ten days later the river has become a canyon of
tumbling cascades, the mountains sheer wall on each side, with snowy
peaks jagging up through the clouds. To portage baggage up such cliffs
was impossible. Yet it was equally impossible to go on up the canyon,
and MacKenzie's men became so terrified they refused to land. Jumping
to foothold on the wall, a towrope in one hand, an ax in the other,
MacKenzie cut steps in the cliff, then signaled above the roar of the
rapids for the men to follow. They stripped themselves to swim if they
missed footing, and obeyed, trembling in every limb. The towrope was
warped round trees and the loaded canoe tracked up the cascade. At the
end of that portage the men flatly refused to go on. MacKenzie ignored
the mutiny and ordered the best of provisions spread for a feast.
While the crew rested, he climbed the face of a rocky cliff to
reconnoiter. As far as eye could see were cataracts walled by mighty
precipices. The canoe could not be tracked up such waters. Mackay,
who had gone prospecting a portage, reported that it would be nine
miles over the mountain. MacKenzie did not tell his men what was ahead
of them, but he led the way up the steep mountain, cutting trees to
form an outer railing, and up this trail the canoe was hauled, towline
round trees, the men swearing and sweating and blowing like whales.
Three miles was the record that day, the voyageurs throwing themselves
down to sleep at five in the afternoon, wrapped in their blanket coats
lying close to the glacier edges. Three days it took to cross this
mountain, and the end of the third day found them at the foot of
another mountain. Here the river forked. MacKenzie followed the south
branch, or what is now known as the Parsnip. Often at night the men
would be startled by rocketing echoes like musketry firing, and they
would spring to their feet to keep guard with backs to trees till
morning; but presently they learned the cause of the pistol-shot
reports. They were now on the Uplands among the eternal snows. The
sharp splittings, the far boomings, the dull breaking thuds were frost
cornices of overhanging snow crashing down in avalanches that swept the
mountain slopes clear of forests.
{329}
[Illustration: CAUSE OF A PORTAGE]
A short portage from the Parsnip over a low ridge to a lake, and the
canoe is launched on a stream flowing on the far side of the Divide,
Bad River, a branch of the Fraser, though MacKenzie mistakes it for an
upper tributary of the great river discovered by Gray, the Columbia.
Then, before they realize it, comes the danger of going _with_ the
current on a river with rapids. The stream sweeps to a torrent, mad
and unbridled. The canoe is as a chip in a maelstrom, the precipices
racing past in a blur, the Indians hanging frantically to the gunnels,
bawling aloud in fear, the terrified voyageurs reaching, . . .
grasping, . . . snatching at trees overhanging from the banks. The
next instant a rock has banged through bottom, tearing away the stern.
The canoe reels in a swirl. Bang goes a rock through the bow. The
birch bark flattens like a shingle. Another swirl, and, to the
amazement of all, instead of the death that had seemed impending,
smashed canoe, baggage, and voyageurs are dumped on the shallows of a
sandy reach. One can guess the gasp of relief that went up. Nobody
uttered a word for some {330} time. One voyageur, who had grasped at a
branch and been hoisted bodily from the canoe, now came limping to the
disconsolate group, and had stumbled with lighted pipe in teeth across
the powder that had been spread out to dry, when a terrific yell of
warning brought him to his senses, and relieved the tension. MacKenzie
spread out a treat for the men and sent them to gather bark for a fresh
canoe. Other adventures on Bad River need not be given. This one was
typical. The record was but two miles a day; and now there was no
turning back. The difficulties behind were as great as any that could
be before. June 15 Bad River led them westward into the Fraser, but
somewhere in the canyon between modern Quesnel and Alexandria the way
became impassable. Besides, the river was leading too far south.
MacKenzie struck up Blackwater River to the west. _Caching_ canoe and
provisions on July 4, he marched overland. The Pacific was reached on
July 22, 1793, near Bella Coola. By September, after perils too
numerous to be told, MacKenzie was back at his fur post on Peace River.
As his discoveries on this trip blazed the way to new hunting ground
for his company, they brought both honor and wealth to MacKenzie. He
was knighted by the English King for his explorations, and he retired
to an estate in Scotland, where he died about 1820.
Meanwhile, Napoleon has sold Louisiana to the United States. The
American explorers, Lewis and Clark, have crossed from the Missouri to
the Columbia; and now John Jacob Astor, the great fur merchant of New
York, in 1811 sends his fur traders overland to build a fort at the
mouth of Columbia River. The Northwest Company in frantic haste
dispatches explorers to follow up MacKenzie's work and take possession
of the Pacific fur trade before Astor's men can reach the field. It
becomes a race for the Pacific.
[Illustration: SIMON FRASER]
Simon Fraser is sent in 1806 to build posts west of the Rockies in New
Caledonia, and to follow that unknown river which MacKenzie mistook for
the Columbia, on down to the sea. Two years he passed building the
posts, that exist to this {331} day as Fraser planned them: Fort
MacLeod at the head of Parsnip River, on a little lake set like an
emerald among the mountains; Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, a reach of
sheeny green waters like the Trossachs, dotted with islands and
ensconced in mountains; Fraser Fort on another lake southward; Fort St.
George on the main Fraser River. Then, in May of 1808, with four
canoes Fraser descends the river named after him, accompanied by Stuart
and Quesnel and nineteen voyageurs. This was the river where the
rapids had turned MacKenzie back, canyon after canyon tumultuous with
the black whirlpools and roaring like a tempest. Before essaying the
worst runs of the cascades Fraser ordered a canoe lightened at the prow
and manned by the five best voyageurs. It shot down the current like a
stone from a catapult. "She flew from one danger to another," relates
Fraser, who was watching the canoe from the bank, "till the current
drove her on a rock. The men disembarked, and we had to plunge our
daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river as we went
down to their aid, our lives hanging on a thread." Like MacKenzie,
Fraser was compelled to abandon canoes. Each with a pack of eighty
pounds, the voyageurs set out on foot down that steep gorge where the
traveler to-day can see the trail along the side of the precipice like
basket work between Lilloet and Thompson River. In Fraser's day was no
{332} trail, only here and there bridges of trembling twig ladders
across chasms; and over these swinging footholds the marchers had to
carry their packs, the river rolling below, deep and ominous and
treacherous. At Spuzzum the river turned from the south straight west.
Fraser knew it was not the Columbia. His men named it after himself.
Forty days was Fraser going from St. George to tide water. Early in
August he was back at his fur posts of New Caledonia.
[Illustration: ASTORIA IN 1813]
Yet another explorer did the Nor'westers send to take possession of the
region beyond the mountains. David Thompson had been surveying the
bounds between the United States and what is now Manitoba, when he was
ordered to explore the Rockies in the region of the modern Banff. Up
on Canoe River, Thompson and his men build canoes to descend the
Columbia. Following the Big Bend, they go down the rolling milky tide
past Upper and Lower Arrow Lakes, a region of mountains sheer on each
side as walls, with wisps of mist marking the cloud line. Then a
circular sweep westward through what is now Washington, pausing at
Snake River to erect formal claim of possession for England, then a
riffle on the current, a {333} smell of the sea, and at 1 P.M. on July
15, 1811, Thompson glides within view of a little raw new fort,
Astoria. In the race to the Pacific the Americans have gained the
ground at the mouth of the Columbia just two months before Thompson
came. In Astor's fort Thompson finds old friends of the Northwest
Company hired over by Astor.
[Illustration: MAP OF THE WEST COAST, SHOWING THE OGDEN AND ROSS
EXPLORATIONS]
After war has broken out in open flame it is easy to ascribe the cause
to this, that, or the other act, which put the match to the
combustibles; but the real reason usually lies far behind the one act
of explosion, in an accumulation of ill feeling that provided the
combustibles.
So it was in the fratricidal war of 1812 between Canada and the United
States. The war was criminal folly, as useless as it was unnecessary.
What caused it? What accumulated the ill feeling lying ready like
combustibles for the match? Let us see.
The United Empire Loyalists have, by 1812, increased to some 100,000 of
Canada's population, cherishing bitter memories of ruin and
confiscation and persecution because Congress failed to carry out the
pledge guaranteeing protection to the losing side in the Revolution.
Then, because Congress failed to carry out _her_ guarantee, England
delayed turning over the western fur posts to the United States for
almost ten years; and whether true or false, the suspicion became an
open charge that the hostility of the Indians to American frontiersmen
was fomented by the British fur trader.
Here, then, was cause for rankling anger on both sides, and the
bitterness was unwittingly increased by England's policy. It was hard
for the mother country to realize that the raw new nation of the United
States, child of her very flesh and blood, kindred in thought and
speech, was a power to be reckoned with, on even ground, looking on the
level, eye to eye; and not just a bumptious, underling nation, like a
boy at the hobbledehoy age, to be hectored and chaffed and bullied and
badgered and licked into shape, as a sort of protectorate appended to
English interests.
I once asked an Englishman why the English press was so virulently
hostile to one of the most brilliant of her rising men.
"Oh," he answered, "you must be English to understand that. We never
think it hurts a boy to be well ragged when he 's at school."
Something of that spirit was in England's attitude to the new nation of
the United States. England was hard pressed in life-and-death struggle
with Napoleon. To recruit both army and navy, conscription was rigidly
and ruthlessly enforced. Yet more! England claimed the right to
impress British-born subjects in foreign ports, to seize deserters in
either foreign ports or on foreign ships, and, most obnoxious of all,
to search neutral vessels on the ocean highway for deserters from the
British flag. It was an era of great brutality in military discipline.
Desertions were frequent. Also thousands of immigrants were flocking
to the new nation of the United States and taking out naturalization
papers. England ignored these naturalization papers when taken out by
deserters.
Let us see how the thing worked out. A passenger vessel is coming up
New York harbor. An English frigate with cannon pointed swings across
the course, signals the American vessel on American waters to slow up,
sends a young lieutenant with some marines across to the American
vessel, searches her from stem to stern, or compels the American
captain to read the roster of the crew, forcibly seizes half a dozen of
the American crew as British deserters, and departs, leaving the
Americans gasping with wonder whether they are a free nation or a tail
to the kite of English designs. It need not be explained that the
offense was often aggravated by the swaggering insolence of the young
officers. They considered the fury of the unprepared American crew a
prime joke. In vain the government at Washington complained to the
government at Westminster. England pigeonholed the complaint and went
serenely on her way, searching American vessels from Canada to Brazil.
Or an English vessel has come to Hampton Roads to wood and water. An
English officer thinks he recognizes among the {335} American crews men
who have deserted from English vessels. Three men defy arrest and show
their naturalization papers. High words follow, broken heads and
broken canes, and the English crew are glad to escape the mob by rowing
out to their own vessel.
Is it surprising that the ill feeling on both sides accumulated till
there lacked only the match to cause an explosion? The explosion came
in 1807. H. M. S. _Leopard_, cruising off Norfolk in June, encounters
the United States ship _Chesapeake_. At 3 P.M. the English ship edges
down on the American, loaded to the water line with lumber, and signals
a messenger will be sent across. The young English lieutenant going
aboard the _Chesapeake_ shows written orders from Admiral Berkeley of
Halifax, commanding a search of the _Chesapeake_ for six deserters. He
is very courteous and pleasant about the disagreeable business: the
orders are explicit; he must obey his admiral. The American commander
is equally courteous. He regrets that he must refuse to obey an
English admiral's orders, but his own government has given _most_
explicit orders that American vessels must _not_ be searched. The
young Englishman returns with serious face. The ships were within
pistol shot of each other, the men on the English decks all at their
guns, the Americans off guard, lounging on the lumber piles. Quick as
flash a cannon shot rips across the _Chesapeake's_ bows, followed by a
broadside, and another, and yet another, that riddle the American decks
to kindling wood before the astonished officers can collect their
senses. Six seamen are dead and twenty-three wounded when the
_Chesapeake_ strikes her colors to surrender; but the _Leopard_ does
not want a captive. She sends her lieutenant back, who musters the
four hundred American seamen, picks out four men as British deserters,
learns that another deserter has been killed and a sixth has jumped
overboard rather than be retaken, takes his prisoners back to the
_Leopard_, which proceeds to Halifax, where they are tried by
court-martial and shot.
It isn't exactly surprising that the episode literally set the United
States on fire with rage, and that the American President {336} at once
ordered all American ports closed to British war vessels. The quarrel
dragged on between the two governments for five years. England saw at
once that she had gone too far and violated international law. She
repudiated Admiral Berkeley's order, offered to apologize and pension
the heirs of the victims; but _as she would not repudiate either the
right of impressment or the right of search_, the American government
refused to receive the apology.
[Illustration: GENERAL SIR JAMES HENRY CRAIG, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF
CANADA, 1807-1811]
Other causes fanned the flame of war. The United States was now almost
the only nation neutral in Napoleon's wars. To cripple English
commerce, Napoleon forbids neutral nations trading at English ports.
By way of retaliation England forbids neutral nations trading with
French ports; and the United States strikes back by closing American
ports to both nations. It means blue ruin to American trade, but the
United States cannot permit herself to be ground between the upper and
nether millstones of two hostile European powers. Then, sharp as a
gamester playing his trump card, Napoleon revokes his embargo in 1810,
which leaves England the offender against the United States. Then
Governor Craig of Canada commits an error that must have delighted the
heart of Napoleon, who always profited by his enemy's blunders. Well
meaning, but {337} fatally ill and easily alarmed, Craig sends one John
Henry from Montreal in 1809 as spy to the United States for the double
purpose of sounding public opinion on the subject of war, and of
putting any Federalists in favor of withdrawing from the Union in touch
with British authorities. Craig goes home to England to die. Henry
fails to collect reward for his ignoble services, turns traitor, and
sells the entire correspondence to the war party in the United States
for $10,000. That spy business adds fuel to fire. Then there are
other quarrels. A deserter from the American army is found teaching
school near Cornwall in Canada. He is driven out of the little
backwoods schoolhouse, pricked across the field with bayonets, out of
the children's view, and shot on Canadian soil by American soldiers, an
outrage almost the same in spirit as the British crew's outrage on the
_Chesapeake_. Also, in spite of apologies, the war ships clash again.
The English sloop _Little Belt_ is cruising off Cape Henry in May of
1811, looking for a French privateer, when a sail appears over the sea.
The _Little Belt_ pursues till she sights the commodore's blue flag of
the United States frigate _President_, then she turns about; but by
this time the _President_ has turned the tables on the little sloop,
and is pursuing to find out what the former's conduct meant. Darkness
settles over the two ships beating about the wind.
"What sloop is that?" shouts an officer through a speaking trumpet from
the American's decks.
"What ship is _that_?" bawls back a voice through the darkness from the
little Englander.
Then, before any one can tell who fired first (in fact, each accuses
the other of firing first), the cannon are pouring hot shot into each
other's hulls till thirty men have fallen on the decks of the _Little
Belt_. Apologies follow, of course, and explanations; but that does
not remedy the ill. In fact, when nations and people want to quarrel,
they can always find a cause. War is declared in June of 1812 by
Congress. It is war against England; but that means war against
Canada, though there are not forty-five hundred soldiers from Halifax
to Lake Huron. As for {338} the American forces, they muster an army
of some one hundred and fifty thousand; but their generals complain
they are "an untrained mob"; and events justified the complaints.
There is nothing for Canada to do but stand up to the war of England's
making and fight for hearth and home. Canada on the defensive, there
is nothing for the States to do but invade; and the American generals
don't relish the task with their "untrained mob."
[Illustration: WILLIAM HULL]
Upper Canada or Ontario has not four hundred soldiers from Kingston to
Detroit River; but Major General Isaac Brock calls for volunteers. The
clang of arms, of drill, of target practice, resounds in every hamlet
through Canada. At Kingston, at Toronto, at Fort George (Niagara), at
Erie where Niagara River comes from the lake, at Amherstburg, southeast
of Detroit, are stationed garrisons to repel invasion, with hastily
erected cannon and mortar commanding approach from the American side.
And invasion comes soon enough. The declaration of war became known in
Canada about the 20th of June. By July 3 General Hull of Michigan is
at Detroit with two thousand five hundred men preparing to sweep
western Ontario. July 3 an English schooner captures Hull's provision
boat coming up Detroit River, but Hull crosses with his army on July 12
to Sandwich, opposite Detroit, and issues proclamation calling on the
people to throw off the yoke of English rule. How such an invitation
fell on United Empire Loyalist ears may be guessed. Meanwhile comes
word that the Northwest {339} Company's voyageurs, with four hundred
Indians, have captured Michilimackinac without a blow. The fall of
Michilimackinac, the failure of the Canadians to rally to his flag, the
loss of his provision boat, dampen Hull's ardor so that on August 8 he
moves back with his troops to Detroit. Eight days later comes Brock
from Niagara with five hundred Loyalists and one thousand Indians under
the great chief Tecumseh to join Procter's garrison of six hundred at
Amherstburg. The Canadians have come by open boat up Lake Erie from
Niagara through furious rains; but they are fighting for their homes,
and with eager enthusiasm follow Brock on up Detroit River to Sandwich,
opposite the American fort. Indians come by night and lie in ambush
south of Detroit to protect the Canadians while they cross the river.
Then the cannon on the Canadian side begin a humming of bombs overhead.
While the bombs play over the stream at Sandwich, Brock rushes thirteen
hundred men across the river south of Detroit, and before midday of
August 16 is marching his men through the woods to assault the fort,
when he is met by an officer carrying out the white flag of surrender.
While Brock was crossing the river, something had happened inside the
fort at Detroit. It was one of those curious cases of blind panic when
only the iron grip of a strong man can hold demoralized forces in hand.
The American officers had sat down to breakfast in the mess room at day
dawn, when a bomb plunged through the roof killing four on the spot and
spattering the walls with the blood of the mangled bodies. Disgraceful
stories are told of Hull's conduct. Ashy with fright and trembling, he
dashed from the room, and, before the other officers knew what he was
about, had offered to surrender his army, twenty-five hundred arms,
thirty-three cannon, an armed brig, and the whole state of Michigan.
The case is probably more an example of nervous hysterics than treason,
though the other American officers broke their swords with rage and
chagrin, declaring they had been sold for a price. It was but the
first of the many times the lesson was taught in this war, that however
well intentioned a volunteer's courage may be, it takes a seasoned man
to make war. {340} Ten minutes later, a boy had climbed the flagstaff
and hung out the English flag over Detroit. Of the captured American
army Brock permitted the volunteer privates to go home on parole. The
regulars, including Hull, were carried back prisoners on the boats to
Niagara, to be forwarded to Montreal. At Montreal, Hull was given back
to the Americans in exchange for thirty British prisoners. He was
sentenced by court-martial to be shot for treason and cowardice, but
the sentence was commuted.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS ON
THE DETROIT RIVER]
At Niagara River, where the main troops of Ontario were centered,
Brock's victory was greeted with simply a madness of joy. From the
first it had been plain that the principal fighting in Ontario would
take place at Niagara, and along the river Brock had concentrated some
sixteen hundred volunteer troops, {341} raw farm hands most of them,
with a goodly proportion of descendants from the United Empire
Loyalists, who had furbished out their fathers' swords. But the army
was in rags and tatters; many men had no shoes; before Brock captured
the guns at Detroit there had not been muskets to go round the men, and
there were not cannon enough to mount the batteries cast up along
Niagara River facing the American defenses. As the boats came down
Lake Erie and disembarked the American prisoners on August 24, at Fort
Erie on the Canadian side, opposite Black Rock and Buffalo, wild yells
of jubilation rent the air. By nightfall every camp on the Canadian
side for the whole forty miles of Niagara River's course echoed to
shout and counter shout, and a wild refrain which some poet of the
haversack had composed on the spot:
We 'll subdue the mighty Democrats and pull their dwellings down,
And have the States inhabited with subjects of the Crown.
Take a survey of the Niagara region. South is Lake Erie, north is Lake
Ontario, between them Niagara River flowing almost straight north
through a steep dark gorge hewn out of the solid rock by the living
waters of all the Upper Lakes, crushed and cramped, carving a turbulent
way through this narrow canyon. Midway in the river's course the blue
waters begin to race. The race becomes a dizzy madness of blurred,
whirling, raging waters. Then there is the leap, the plunge, the
shattering anger of inland seas hurling their strength over the sheer
precipice in resistless force. Then the foaming whirlpool below, and
the shadowy gorge, and the undercurrent eddying away in the
swift-flowing waters of the river coming out on Lake Ontario. On one
side are the Canadian forts, on the other the American, slab-walled all
of them, with scarcely a stone foundation except in bastions used as
powder magazines. Fort Erie on the Canadian side faces Buffalo and
Black Rock on the American side. Where the old French voyageurs used
to portage past the Falls, about halfway on the Canadian side south of
the precipice, is the village of Chippewa. Here Brock has stationed
{342} a garrison with cannon. Then halfway between the Falls and Lake
Ontario are high cliffs known as Queenston Heights, in plain view of
the American town of Lewiston on the other side. Cannon line the river
cliffs on both sides here. All about Lewiston the fields are literally
white with the tents of General Van Rensselaer's army, now grown from
twenty-five hundred to almost eight thousand. On the Canadian side
cannon had been mounted on the cliffs known as Queenston Heights.
Possibly because the two hundred men would make poor showing in
tents, Brock has his soldiers here take quarters in the farmhouses.
For the rest it is such a rural scene as one may witness any
midsummer,--rolling yellow wheat fields surrounded by the zigzag rail
fences, with square farmhouses of stone and the fields invariably
backed by the uncleared bush land. Six miles farther down the river,
where the waters join Lake Ontario, is the English post, Fort George,
near the old capital, Newark, and just opposite the American fort of
Niagara. With the exception of the Grand Island region on the river,
it may be said that both armies are in full view of each other.
Sometimes, when to the tramp--tramp--tramp of the sentry's {343} tread
a loud "All's well" echoes across the river from Lewiston to the
Canadian side, some wag at Queenston will take up the cry through the
dark and bawl back, "All's well here too"; and all night long the two
sentries bawl back and forward to each other through the dark.
Sometimes, too, though strictest orders are issued against such ruffian
warfare by both Van Rensselaer and Brock, the sentries chance shots at
each other through the dark. Drums beat reveillé at four in the
morning, and the rub-a-dub-dub of Queenston Heights is echoed by
rat-tat-too of Lewiston, though river mist hides the armies from each
other in the morning. Iron baskets filled with oiled bark are used as
telegraph signals, and one may guess how, when the light flared up of a
night on the Canadian heights, scouts carried word to the officers on
the American side. One may guess, too, the effect on Van Rensselaer's
big untrained army, when, with the sun aglint on scarlet uniform, they
saw their fellow-countrymen of Detroit marched prisoners between
British lines along the heights of Queenston opposite Lewiston. Rage,
depression, shame, knew no bounds; and the army was unable to vent
anger in heroic attack, for England had repealed her embargo laws, and
when Brock came back from Detroit he found that an armistice had been
arranged, and both sides had been ordered to suspend hostilities till
instructions came from the governments. The truce, it may be added,
was only an excuse to enable both sides to complete preparations for
the war. In a few weeks ball and bomb were again singing their shrill
songs in mid-air.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF THE MILITARY OPERATIONS ON
THE NIAGARA FRONTIER]
Brock's victory demoralized the rabble under the American Van
Rensselaer. Desertions increased daily, and discipline was so
notoriously bad Van Rensselaer and his staff dared not punish desertion
for fear of the army--as one of them put it--"falling to pieces." Van
Rensselaer saw that he must strike, and strike at once, and strike
successfully, or he would not have any army left at all. Two thousand
Pennsylvanians had joined him; and on October 9, at one in the morning,
Lieutenant Elliott led one hundred men with muffled paddles from the
American side to two Canadian ships lying anchored off Fort Erie. One
was the {344} brig captured from Hull at Detroit, the other a sloop
belonging to the Northwest Fur Company, loaded with peltries. Before
the British were well awake, Elliott had boarded decks, captured the
fur ship with forty prisoners, and was turning her guns on the other
ship when Port Erie suddenly awakened with a belch of cannon shot. The
Americans cut the cables and drifted on the captured ship downstream.
The fur ship was worked safely over to the American side, where it was
welcomed with wild cheers. The brig was set on fire and abandoned.
Van Rensselaer decided to take advantage of the elated spirit among the
troops and invade Canada at once.
Over on the Canadian side, Brock, at Fort George, wanted to offer an
exchange of Detroit prisoners for the voyageurs on the captured fur
ship, and Evans was ordered to paddle across to Lewiston with the
offer, white handkerchief fluttering as a flag of truce. Evans could
not mistake the signs as he landed on the American shore. Sentries
dashed down to stop his advance at bayonet point. He was denied speech
with Van Rensselaer and refused admittance to the American camp; and
the reason was plain. A score of boats, capable of holding thirty men
each, lay moored at the Lewiston shore. Along the rain-soaked road
behind the shore floundered and marched troops, fresh troops joining
Van Rensselaer's camp. It was dark before Evans returned to Queenston
Heights and close on midnight when he reached Major General Brock at
Fort George. Brock thought Evans over anxious, and both went to bed,
or at least threw themselves down on a mattress to sleep. At two
o'clock they were awakened by a sound which could not be mistaken,--the
thunderous booming of a furious cannonade from Queenston Heights.
Brock realized that the two hundred Canadians on the cliff must be
repelling an invasion, but he was suspicious that the attack from
Lewiston was a feint to draw off attention from Fort Niagara opposite
Fort George, and he did not at once order troops to the aid of
Queenston Heights.
[Illustration: GENERAL BROCK]
Evans' predictions of invasion were only too true. After one attempt
to cross the gorge, which was balked by storm, Van {345} Rensselaer
finally got his troops down to the water's edge about midnight of
October 12-13. The night was dark, moonless, rainy,--a wind which
mingled with the roar of the river drowning all sound of marching
troops. Three hundred men embarked on the first passage of the boats
across the swift river, the poor old pilot literally groaning aloud in
terror. Three of the boats were carried beyond the landing on the
Canadian side, and had to come back through the dark to get their
bearings; but the rest, led by Van Rensselaer, had safely landed on the
Canadian side, when the batteries of Queenston Heights flashed to life
in sheets of fire, lighting up the dark tide of the river gorge and
sinking half a dozen boat loads of men now coming on a second traverse.
Instantly Lewiston's cannon pealed furious answer to the Canadian fire,
and in the sheet-lightning flame of the flaring batteries thousands
could be seen on the American shore watching the conflict. As the
Americans landed they hugged the rock cliff for shelter, but the
mortality on the crossing boats was terrible; and each passage carried
back quota of wounded. Van Rensselaer was shot in the thigh almost as
he landed, but still he held his men in hand. A second shot pierced
the same side. A third struck his knee. Six wounds he received in as
many seconds; and he was carried back in the boats to the Lewiston
side. Then began a mad scramble through the darkness {346} up a
fisherman's path steep as trail of mountain goat, sheer against the
face of the cliff. When day dawned misty and gray over the black tide
of the rolling river, the Canadian batterymen of Queenston Heights were
astounded to see American sharp-shooters mustered on the cliff behind
and above them. A quick rush, and the Canadian batterymen were driven
from their ground, the Canadian cannon silenced, and while wild
shoutings of triumph rose from the spectators at Lewiston, the American
boats continued to pour soldiers across the river.
It was at this stage Brock came riding from Fort George so spattered
with mud from head to heel he was not recognized by the soldiers. One
glance was enough. The Canadians had lost the day. Sending messengers
to bid General Sheaffe hurry the troops from Fort George, and other
runners to bring up the troops from Chippewa behind the Americans on
Queenston Heights, Brock charged up the hill amid shriek of bombs and
clatter of sharpshooters. He had dismounted and was scrambling over a
stone wall. "Follow me, boys!" he shouted to the British grenadiers;
then at the foot of the hill, waving his sword: "Now take a breath; you
will need it! Come on! come on!" and he led the rush of two hundred
men in scarlet coats to dislodge the Americans. A shot pierced his
wrist. "Push on, York volunteers," he shouted. His portly figure in
scarlet uniform was easy mark for the sharpshooters hidden in the brush
of Queenston Heights. One stepped deliberately out and took aim.
Though a dozen Canadian muskets flashed answer, Brock fell, shot
through the breast, dying with the words on his lips, "My fall must not
be noticed to stop the victory." Major Macdonnell led in the charge up
the hill, but the next moment his horse plunged frantically, and he
reeled from the saddle fatally wounded. For a second time the British
were repulsed, and the Americans had won the Heights, if not the day.
[Illustration: BROCK MONUMENT, QUEENSTON HEIGHTS]
The invaders were resting on their arms, snatching a breakfast of
biscuit and cheese about midday, when General Sheaffe arrived from Fort
George with troops breathless from running. A heart-shattering huzza
from the village warned the Americans {347} that help had come, and
they were to arms in a second; but Sheaffe had swept round the Heights,
Indians on one side of the hill, soldiers on the other, and came on the
surprised Americans as from the rear. There was a wild whoop, a dash
up the hill, a pause to fire, when the air was splinted by nine hundred
instantaneous shots. Then through the smoke the British rushed the
Heights at bayonet point. For three hours the contest raged in full
sight of Lewiston, a hand-to-hand butchery between Sheaffe's fresh
fighters and the Americans, who had been on their feet since midnight.
Indian tomahawk played its part, but it is a question if the scalping
knife did as deadly work as the grenadier's long bayonets. Cooped up
between the enemy and the precipice, the American sharpshooters waited
for the help that never came. In vain Van Rensselaer's officers prayed
and swore and pleaded with the volunteer troops on the Lewiston side.
The men flatly refused to cross; for boat loads of mangled bodies were
brought back at each passage. Discipline fell to pieces. It was the
old story of volunteers, brave enough at a spurt, going to pieces in
panic under hard and continued strain. Driven from Queenston Heights,
the invaders fought their way down the cliff path by inches to the
water side, and there . . . there were no boats! Pulling off his white
necktie, an officer held it up on the point of his sword as signal of
surrender. It was one of the most {348} gallant fights on both sides
in Canadian history, though officers over on the Lewiston shore were
crying like boys at the sight of nine hundred Americans surrendering.
Truce was then arranged for the burial of the dead. The bodies of
Brock and Macdonnell were laid on a gun wagon and conveyed between
lines of sorrowing soldiers, with arms reversed, to the burial place
outside Fort George. As the regimental music rang out the last march
of the two dead officers, minute guns were fired in sympathy all along
the American shore. "He would have done as much for us," said the
American officers of the gallant Brock.
Van Rensselaer at once resigns. "Proclamation" Smyth, whose addresses
resemble Fourth of July backwoods orations, succeeds as commander of
the American army; but "Proclamation" Smyth makes such a mess of a raid
on Fort Erie, retreating with a haste suggestive of Hull at Detroit,
that he is mobbed when he returns to the United States shore. But what
the United States lose by land, they retrieve by sea. England's best
ships are engaged in the great European war. From June to December,
United States vessels sweep the sea; but this is more a story of the
English navy than of Canada. The year of 1812 closes with the cruisers
of Lake Ontario chasing each other through many a wild snowstorm.
As the year 1812 proved one of jubilant victory for Canada, so 1813 was
to be one of black despair. With the exception of four brilliant
victories wrested in the very teeth of defeat, the year passes down to
history as one of the darkest in the annals of the country. The
population of the United States at this time was something over seven
millions, and it was not to be thought for one moment that a nation of
this strength would remain beaten off the field by the little province
of Ontario (Upper Canada), whose population numbered barely ninety
thousand. General Harrison hurries north from the Wabash with from six
to eight thousand men to retrieve the defeat of Detroit. At Presqu'
Isle, on Lake Erie, hammer and mallet and {349} forging iron are heard
all winter preparing the fleet for Commodore Perry that is to command
Lake Erie and the Upper Lakes for the Americans. At Sackett's Harbor
similar preparations are under way on a fleet for Chauncey to sweep the
English from Lake Ontario; and all along both sides of the St.
Lawrence, as winter hedged the waters with ice, lurk scouts,--the
Americans, for the most part, uniformed in blue, the Canadians in
Lincoln green with gold braid,--watching chance for raid and counter
raid during the winter nights. The story of these thrilling raids will
probably pass into the shadowy realm of legend handed down from father
to son, for few of them have been embodied in the official reports.
From being hard pressed on the defensive, Canada has suddenly sprung
into the position of jubilant victor, and if Brock had lived, she would
probably have followed up her victories by aggressive invasion of the
enemy's territory; but all effort was literally paralyzed by the
timidity and vacillation of the governor general, Sir George Prevost.
Prevost's one idea seems to have been that as soon as the obnoxious
embargo laws were revoked by England, the war would stop. When the
embargo was revoked and the armistice of midsummer simply terminated in
a resumption of war, this idea seems to have been succeeded by the
single aim to hold off conclusions with the United States till England
could beat Napoleon and come to the rescue. All winter long scouts and
bold spirits among the volunteers craved the chance to raid the
anchored fleets of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, but Prevost not only
forbade the invasion of the enemy's territory, but before the year was
out actually advocated the abandonment of Ontario. If his advice had
been followed, it is no idle supposition to infer that the fate of
Ontario would have been the same as the destiny of the Ohio and
Michigan.
One night in February the sentry at the village of Brockville, named
after the dead hero, was surprised by two hundred American raiders
dashing up from the frozen river bed. Before bugles could sound to
arms, jails had been opened, stores looted, houses {350} plundered, and
the raiders were off and well away with fifty-two prisoners and a dozen
sleigh loads of provisions. Gathering some five hundred men together
from the Kingston region, M'Donnell and Jenkins of the Glengarrys
prepared to be revenged. Cannon were hauled out on the river from the
little village of Prescott to cross the ice to Ogdensburg. The river
here is almost two miles wide, and as it was the 23d of February, the
ice had become rotten from the sun glare of the coming spring. As the
cannon were drawn to mid-river, though it was seven in the morning, the
ice began to heave and crack with dire warning. To hesitate was death;
to go back as dangerous as to go forward. With a whoop the men broke
from quick march to a run, unsheathing musket and fixing bayonet blades
as they dashed ahead to be met with a withering cross fire as they came
within range of the American batteries. In places, the suck of the
water told where the ice had given behind. Then bullets were peppering
the river bed in a rain of fire, Jenkins and M'Donnell to the fore,
waving their swords. Then bombs began to ricochet over the ice. If
the range of the Ogdensburg cannon had been longer, the whole Canadian
force might have been sunk in mid-river; but the men were already
dashing up the American shore whooping like fiends incarnate. First a
grapeshot caught Jenkins' left arm, and it hung in bloody splinters.
Then a second shot took off his right arm. Still he dashed forward,
cheering his men, till he dropped in his tracks, faint from loss of
blood. No answer came back to the summons to surrender, and, taking
possession of an outer battery, the Canadians turned its cannon full on
the village. Under cover of the battery fire, and their own cannon now
in position, the whole force of Canadians immediately rushed the town
at bayonet point. Now the bayonet in a solid phalanx of five hundred
men is not a pleasant weapon to stand up against. As the drill
sergeants order, you not only stick the bayonet _into_ your enemy, but
you turn it round "to let the air in" so he will die; and before the
furious onslaught of bayonets, the defenders of Ogdensburg broke, and
fled for the woods. Within an hour the {351} Canadians had burnt the
barracks, set fire to two schooners iced up, and come off with loot of
a dozen cannon, stores of all sorts, and with prisoners to the number
of seventy-four.
[Illustration: YORK (TORONTO) HARBOR]
The ice had left Lake Ontario early this year, and by mid-April
Commander Chauncey slipped out of Sackett's Harbor with sixteen
vessels, having on board seventeen hundred troops, besides the crews.
It will be remembered that the capital of Ontario had been moved from
Niagara (Newark) to York (Toronto) on the north side of Lake Ontario,
then a thriving village of one thousand souls on the inner shore of
Humber Bay. On the sand reef known as the Island, in front of the
harbor, had been constructed a battery with cannon. The main village
lay east of the present city hall. Westward less than a mile was
Government House, on the site of the present residence. Between
Government House and the village was not a house of any sort, only a
wood road flanking the lake, and badly cut up by ravines. Just west of
Government House, and close to the water, was a blockhouse or tower
used as powder magazine, mounted with cannon to command the landing
from the lake. Some accounts speak of yet another little outer battery
or earthwork farther {352} westward. North of the Government House
road, or what is now King Street, were dense woods. General Sheaffe,
who had succeeded Brock at Queenston Heights, chanced to be in Toronto
in April with some six hundred men. Just where the snug quarters of
the Toronto Hunt Club now stand you may look out through the green
foliage of the woods fringing the high cliffs of Lake Ontario, and
there lies before your view the pure sky-blue surface of an inland sea
washing in waves like a tide to the watery edge of the far sky line.
Early in the morning of April 27 a forest ranger, dressed in the
customary Lincoln green, was patrolling the forested edge of
Scarborough Heights above the lake. The trees had not yet leafed out,
but were in that vernal state when the branches between earth and sky
take on the appearance of an aerial network just budding to light and
color; and in the ravines still lay patches of the winter snow. The
morning was hazy, warm, odoriferous of coming summer, with not a breath
of wind stirring the water. As the sun came up over the lake long
lines of fire shot through the water haze. Suddenly the scout paused
on his parade. Something was advancing shoreward through the mist,
advancing in a circling line like the ranks of wild birds flying north,
with a lap--lap--lap of water drip and a rap--rap--rap of rowlocks from
a multitude of sweeps. The next instant the forest rang to a musket
shot, for the scout had discovered Commodore Chauncey's fleet of
sixteen vessels being towed forward by rowers through a dead calm. The
musket shot was heard by another scout nearer the fort. The signal was
repeated by another shot, and another for the whole twelve miles, till
General Sheaffe, sitting smoking a cigar in Government House, sprang to
his feet and rushed out, followed by his officers, to scan the harbor
of Humber Bay from the tops of the fort bastions. Sure enough! there
was the fleet, led by Chauncey's frigate with twenty-four cannon poking
from its sides, a string of rowboats in tow behind to land the army,
coming straight across the harbor over water calm as silk. It has been
told how the fleet made the mistake of passing beyond the landing, but
the chances are the mistake was intentional {353} for the purpose of
avoiding the cannon of the fort bastions. At all events the report may
be believed that the most of Toronto people forgot to go back to
breakfast that morning. A moment later officers were on top of the
bastion towers, directing battery-men to take range for their cannon.
A battalion variously given as from fifty to one hundred, along with
some Indians, was at once dispatched westward to ambush the Americans
landing. Another division was posted at the battery beyond Government
House. Sheaffe saw plainly from the number of men on deck that he was
outnumbered four to one, and the flag on the commodore's boat probably
told him that General Dearborn, the commander in chief, was himself on
board to direct the land forces. Sheaffe has been bitterly blamed for
two things,--for not invading Niagara after the victory on Queenston
Heights, and for his conduct at Toronto. He now withdrew the main
forces to a ravine east of the fort, plainly preparatory for retreat.
Not thus would Brock have acted.
Meanwhile time has worn on to nine o'clock. The American ships have
anchored. The Canadian cannon are sending the bombs skipping across
the water. The rowboats are transferring the army from the schooners,
and the ambushed sharpshooters are picking the bluecoats off as they
step from ships to boats.
"By the powers!" yells Forsyth, an American officer, "I can't stand
seeing this any longer. Come on, boys! jump into our boats!" and he
bids the bugles blow till the echoes are dancing over Humber waters.
Dearborn and Chauncey stay on board. Pike leads the landing, and
Chauncey's cannon set such grape and canister flying through the woods
as clear out those ambushed shooters, the Indians flying like scared
partridges, and the advance is made along Government House road at
quick march. Just west of the Government House battery the marchers
halt to send forward demand for surrender. Firing on both sides
ceases. The smoke clears from the churned-up waters of the bay, and
Commander Pike has seated himself on an old cannon, when, before answer
can come back to the demand, a frightful accident occurs that upsets
all plans. Waiting for the signal {354} to begin firing again, a
batteryman in the near bastion was holding the lighted fuse in his
right hand, ready for the cannon, when something distracted his
attention, and he wheeled with the lighted match behind him. It
touched a box of explosives. If any proof were needed that the tragedy
was _not_ designed, it is to be found in the fact that English officers
were still on the roof of the blockhouse, and the apartment below
crowded with Canadians. A roar shook the earth. A cloud of black
flame shot into mid-air, and the next minute the ground for half a mile
about was strewn with the remains, mangled to a pulp, of more than
three hundred men, ninety of whom were Canadians, two hundred and sixty
Americans, including Brigadier Pike fatally wounded by a rock striking
his head. In the horror of the next few moments, defense was
forgotten. Wheelbarrows, trucks, gun wagons, were hurried forward to
carry wounded and dead to the hospital. Leaving his officers to
arrange the terms of surrender, at 2 P.M. Sheaffe retreated at quick
march for Kingston, pausing only to set fire to a half-built ship and
some naval stores. Lying on a stretcher on Chauncey's ship, Pike is
roused from unconsciousness by loud huzzas.
"What is it?" he asks.
"They are running up the stars and stripes, sir."
A smile passed over Pike's face. When the surgeon looked again, the
commander was dead. For twenty-four hours the haggle went on as to
terms of capitulation. Within that time, two or three things occurred
to inflame the invading troops. They learned that Sheaffe had slipped
away; as the American general's report put it, "They got the shell, but
the kernel of the nut got away." They learned that stores had been
destroyed after the surrender had been granted. Without more
restraint, and in defiance of orders, the American troops gave
themselves up to plunder all that night. In their rummaging through
the Parliament buildings they found hanging above the Speaker's chair
what Canadian records declare was a _wig_, what American reports say
was a _human scalp_ sent in by some ranger from the west. From what I
have read in the private papers of fur traders {355} in that period
regarding international scalping, I am inclined to think that wig may
have been an American scalp. Certainly, the fur traders of
Michilimackinac wrapped no excuses round their savagery when the canoes
all over the coasts of Lake Superior, in lieu of flags, had American
scalps flaunting from their prows. At all events, word went out that
an American scalp had been found above the Speaker's chair. It was
night. The troops were drunk with success and perhaps with the plunder
of the wine shops. All that night and all the next day and night the
skies were alight with the flames of Toronto's public buildings on
fire. Also, the army chest with ten thousand dollars in gold, which
Sheaffe had forgotten, was dug up on pain of the whole town being fired
unless the money were delivered. Private houses were untouched.
Looted provisions which the fleet cannot carry away, Chauncey orders
distributed among the poor. Then, leaving some four hundred prisoners
on parole not to serve again during the war, Chauncey sails away for
Niagara.
It is a month later. Down at Fort George on the Canadian side General
Vincent knows well what has happened at Toronto and is on the lookout
for the enemy's fleet. On the American side of the Niagara River, from
Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, are seven thousand troops eager to wipe out
the stain of last year's defeat. On the Canadian side, from Fort
George to Chippewa and Erie, are twenty-three hundred men, mostly
volunteers from surrounding farms, and powder is scarce and provisions
are scarce, for Chauncey's fleet has cut off help from St. Lawrence and
Kingston way. All the last two weeks of May, heavy hot fog lay on the
lake and on the river between the hostile lines, but there was no
mistaking what Chauncey's fleet was about. Red-hot shot showers on
Fort George in a perfect rain. Standing on the other side of the river
are thousands of spectators, among them one grand old swashbuckler
fellow in a cocked hat, whose fighting days are past, taking snuff
after the fashion of a former generation and wearing an air of grand
patronage to the American troops because _he_ has seen service in
Europe.
{356} "No, sir," says the grand old fighting cock pompously to his
auditors, "can't be done! Have seen it tried on the Continent, and you
can't do it! Lay a wager you can't do it! Can't possibly set fire to
a fort by red-hot shot!"
Then at night time, when the lurid glare of flame lights up the foggy
darkness, the old gentleman is put to his trumps. "See!" they say;
"Fort George _is_ on fire"; and over at Fort George the bucket brigade
works hard as the cannoneers. But the fog is too good a chance to be
missed by Chauncey; rowing out with muffled oars all the nights of May
24 and 25, he has his men sounding . . . sounding . . . sounding in
silence the channel, right within pistol shot of Fort George. The
night of the 26th troops and marines are bidden breakfast at two in the
morning, and be ready for action with a single blanket and rations for
one day. That is all they are told. They embark at four. The waters
are dead calm, the morning of the 27th gray as wool with fog. Sweeps
out Chauncey's fleet, circles up to Fort George with one hundred scows
in tow, carrying fifty soldiers each. Vincent takes his courage in his
teeth and gathers his one thousand men inside the walls. Then the
cannon of the frigates split fog and air and earth, and, under cover of
the fire, the scows gain the land by 9 A.M. First, Vincent's
sharpshooters sally from the fort and fire; then they fire from the
walls; then they overturn guns, retreat from the walls, throw what
powder they cannot carry into the water, and retreat, fighting, behind
stone walls and ditches. The contest of one thousand against six
thousand is hopeless. Vincent sends coureurs riding like the wind to
Chippewa and Queenston and Erie, ordering the Canadians to retire to
the Back Country. By four o'clock in the afternoon Americans are in
possession of the Canadian side from Fort George to Erie. Vincent
retreats at quick march along the lake shore towards what is now
Hamilton. June 1 General Dearborn sends his officers, Chandler and
Winder, in hot pursuit with thirty-five hundred men.
Vincent's soldiers have less than ninety rounds of powder to a man. He
has only one thousand men, for the garrisons of {357} Chippewa and
Queenston Heights and Erie have fallen back in a circle to the region
of St. David's. June 5, Vincent's Canadians are in camp at Burlington
Bay. Only seven miles away, at Stony Creek, lies the American army,
out sentries posted at a church, artillery on a height commanding a
field, officers and men asleep in the long grass. Humanly speaking,
nothing could prevent a decisive battle the next day. The two American
officers, Chandler and Winder, sit late into the night, candles alight
over camp stools, mapping out what they think should be the campaign.
It is a hot night,--muggy, with June showers lighted up by an
occasional flash of sheet lightning. Then all candles out, and pitch
darkness, and silence as of a desert! The American army is asleep,--in
the dead sleep of men exhausted from long, hard, swift marching. The
artillerymen on the hillocks, the sentries, the outposts at the
church,--they, too, are sound asleep!
[Illustration: FITZGIBBONS]
But the Canadians, too, know that, humanly speaking, nothing can
prevent a decisive battle on the morrow. The stories run--I do not
vouch for their truth, though facts seem to point to some such
explanation--that Harvey, a Canadian officer, had come back to the
American army that night disguised as a Quaker peddling potatoes, and
noted the unguarded condition of the exhausted troops; also that
Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, came through the American lines dressed
as a rustic selling butter. Whether these stories are true or not, or
whether, indeed, the Canadians knew anything about the American camp,
they plucked resolution from desperation. If they waited for the
morrow's battle, they would be beaten. Harvey proposed to Vincent that
seven {358} hundred picked men go back through the dark and raid the
American camp. Vincent left the entire matter to Harvey. Setting out
at 11.30 along what is now Main Street, Hamilton, the Canadians marched
in perfect silence. Harvey had given orders that not a shot should be
fired, not a word spoken, the bayonet alone to be used. By two in the
morning of June 6 the marchers came to the church where the sentries
were posted. Two were stabbed to death before they awakened. The
third was compelled to give the password, then bayoneted in turn. The
Canadian raiders might have come to the very midst of the American army
if it had not been for the jubilant hilarity of some young officers,
who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huzza. On the instant, bugles
sounded alarm; drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his
place in the grass, hand on pistol. The next second the blackness of
the night was ablaze with musketry; the soldiers were firing blindly;
officers were shouting orders that nobody heard; troops were dashing
here, there, everywhere, lost in the darkness, the heavy artillery
horses breaking tether ropes and stampeding over the field. Major
Plenderleath with a company of young Canadians suddenly found himself
in the midst of the American camp. One of the young raiders stabbed
seven Americans to death; a brother bayoneted four, and before daylight
betrayed the smallness of their forces the raiders came safely off with
three guns and one hundred prisoners, including the two American
officers, Winder and Chandler. The loss to the British was one hundred
and fifteen killed and wounded; but there would be no battle the next
day. The battle of Stony Creek sent the Americans retreating back down
the lake front to Fort George, harried by the English fleet under Sir
James Yeo from Kingston. A hundred episodes might be related of the
Stony Creek raid. For years it was to be the theme of camp-fire yarns.
For instance, in the flare of musketry fire a Canadian found himself
gazing straight along the blade of an American's bayonet. "Sir, the
password," demanded the American sentry. Luckily the scout, instead of
wearing an English red coat, had on a blue jacket resembling {359} that
of the American marines, and he instantly took his cue. "Rascal," he
thundered back, "what do you mean, off your line? Go back to your
post!" The sentry's bayonet dropped; there was momentary darkness, and
the Canadian literally bolted. Then ludicrous ill luck befell all the
generals. Vincent had accompanied the raiders on horseback. When the
bugles sounded "retire," he gave his horse the bit, and in the pitch
darkness the brute carried him pellmell along the wrong road, over
fences and hayfields, some fifteen miles into the Back Country. Next
day, when Vincent was missing, under flag of truce messengers went to
the retreating American army to find if he were among the dead. At
four in the afternoon his horse came limping into the Canadian camp.
Chandler, the American officer, on awakening had sprung on horseback
and spurred over the field shouting commands. In the darkness his
horse fell and threw him. When Chandler came to himself he was
prisoner among the Canadians. Winder's ill luck was equally bad. By
the flare of the firing he saw what he thought was a group of
artillerymen deserting a gun. Dashing up, he laid about him with his
pistol, shouting, "Come on! come on!" Another flare of fire, and he
found himself surrounded by a circle of Canadian bayonets. "Drop your
pistol, sir, or you are a dead man," ordered a young Canadian, and
Winder surrendered.
It will be recalled that the garrisons of Queenston below the Falls,
and Chippewa above, and Erie at the head of the river, had retreated
from the invading Americans to the Back Country now traversed by
Welland Canal. From different posts beyond what was known as the Black
Swamp, these bands of the dispersed Canadian army swooped down on the
American outposts, harrying the whole American line from Lake Ontario
to Lake Erie. Of all the raiders none was more daring than Lieutenant
Fitzgibbons, posted beyond the Beaver Dams, at a stone house near De
Ceu's Falls. Space forbids more than one episode of his raids. Once,
while riding along Lundy's Lane alone, he was recognized by the wife of
a Canadian captain, who dashed from {360} the cottage, warning him to
retreat, as a hundred and fifty Americans had just passed that way.
Standing in front of the roadside inn was the cavalry horse of an
American. Fitzgibbons could n't resist the temptation for a bout with
the foe, and dismounting, was entering the door when a soldier in blue
dashed at him with leveled musket. Naturally not keen to create alarm,
Fitzgibbons knocked the weapon from the man's hand, and without a sound
had thrown him on the ground, when another American rifleman dashed
from behind. Strong as a lion, Fitzgibbons threw the first man
violently against the second, and was holding both at bay beneath his
leveled rifle when one of the downed men snatched the Irishman's sword
from the scabbard. He was in the very act of thrusting the sword point
into Fitzgibbons, when the innkeeper's wife, with a dexterous kick,
sent the weapon whirling out of his hand. Fitzgibbons disarmed the
men, tied them, threw them across his horse, and himself mounting,
galloped to the woods with a laugh, though one hundred and fifty
Americans were within a quarter of a mile.
The American commanders at Niagara determined to clean out this nest of
raiders from the Back Country, and Lieutenant Boerstler was ordered to
march from Fort George with some six hundred men. Leaving Fort George
secretly at night, Boerstler came to Queenston at eleven on the night
of June 23. Here all Canadian soldiers free on parole were seized, to
prevent word of the attack reaching the Back Country. The troops were
not even permitted to light camp fire or candles. The great secrecy of
the American marchers at once roused suspicion among the Canadians
between Queenston and the village of St. David's that the expedition
was directed against Fitzgibbons' scouts. At his home, between
Queenston and St. David's, dwelt a United Empire Loyalist, James
Secord, recovering from dangerous wounds received in the battle of
Queenston Heights. He was too weak himself to go by night and forewarn
Fitzgibbons, but his wife, Laura Ingersoll, a woman of some thirty
years, was also of the old United Empire Loyalist stock. She
immediately set out alone for the Back Country to warn Fitzgibbons.
{361} Many and contradictory stories are told of her march. Whether
she tramped two nights and two days, or only one night and one day,
whether her march led her twenty or only twelve miles, matters little.
She succeeded in passing the first sentry on the excuse she was going
out to milk a cow, and she eluded a second by telling him she wished to
visit a wounded brother, which was true. Then she struck away from the
beaten path through what was known as the Black Swamp. It had rained
heavily. The cedar woods were soggy with moisture, the swamp swollen,
and the streams running a mill race. Through the summer heat, through
the windfall, over the quaking forest bog, tramped Laura Secord. It
may be supposed that the most of wild animals had been frightened from
the woods by the heavy cannonading for almost a year; but the hoot of
screech owl, the eldritch scream of wild cat, the far howl of the wolf
pack hanging on the trail of the armies for carrion, were not sounds
quieting to the nerves of a frightened woman flitting through the
forest by moonlight. It was clear moonlight when she came within range
of Beaver Dam and De Ceu's house. She had just emerged in an open
field when she was assailed with unearthly yells, and a thousand
ambushed Indians rose from the grass.
[Illustration: LAURA SECORD]
"Woman! A woman! What does a white woman here?" demanded the chief,
seizing her arm. She answered that she was a friend and it was matter
of life and death for her to see {362} Fitzgibbons at once. So Laura
Secord delivered her warning and saved the Canadian army. The episode
has gone down to history one of the national legends, like the story of
Madeline Verchères on the St. Lawrence. Fitzgibbons posts his forty
men in place, and Ducharme, commander of the Indians, scatters his one
thousand redskins in ambush along the trail. Also, word is sent for
two other detachments to come with all speed.
June 24, at seven in the morning, Boerstler is moving along a narrow
forest trail through the beech woods of Beaver Dams. The men are
advancing single file, mounted infantrymen first with muskets slouched
across saddle pommels, then the heavy wagons, then cavalry to rear.
The timber is heavy, the trail winding. Here the long line deploys out
from the trail to avoid jumping windfall; there halt is made to cut a
way for the wagons; then the long line moves sleepily forward, yellow
sunlight shafted through the green foliage across the riders' blue
uniforms. Suddenly a shot rings out, and another, and another! The
forest is full of unseen foes, before, behind, on all sides, the
cavalry forces breaking rank and dashing forward among the wagons.
Boerstler sees it will be as unsafe to retreat as to go on. Sending
messengers back to Fort George for aid, he pushes forward into an open
wheat field. Fifty-six men have fallen, and the bullets are still
raining from an invisible foe. Looking back he sees mounted men in
green coats passing and repassing across his trail, filing and
refiling. It is a trick of Fitzgibbons to give an impression he has
ten times forty men, but the Americans do not know. There is no
retreat, and Indians are to the fore. In the midst of confusion
Fitzgibbons comes forward with a white handkerchief on his sword point
and begs Boerstler to prevent bloodshed by instant surrender.
Boerstler demands to see the number of his enemies. Fitzgibbons says
he will repeat the request to his commanding officer. Luck is with
Fitzgibbons, for just as he goes back a small party of reënforcements
arrives, and one of its captains acts the part of commanding officer,
telling Boerstler's messenger haughtily that the demand to see the
enemy is an insult, and answer must be given in five minutes {363} or
the Canadians will not be responsible for the Indians. The fight has
lasted three hours. Boerstler surrenders with his entire force. Such
was the battle of Beaver Dams.
Ever since Brock had captured Detroit in 1812, General Procter, with
twenty-five hundred Canadians, had been holding the western part of
Ontario; and the defeat of the English at Fort George had placed him in
a desperate position. His men had been without pay for months; their
clothes were in tatters, and now, with the Americans in possession of
Niagara region, there was danger of Procter's food supply being cut
off. Procter himself had not been idle these six months. In fact, he
had been too active for the good of his supplies. Space forbids a
detailed account of the raids directed by him and carried out with the
aid of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief. January of 1813 saw a
detachment of Procter's men up Raisin River, west of Detroit, where
they defeated General Winchester and captured nearly five hundred
prisoners, to be set free on parole. Harrison, the American general,
is on his way to Lake Erie to rescue Detroit. Procter hastens in May
to meet him with one thousand Canadians and fifteen hundred Indians.
The clash takes place at a barricade known as Fort Meigs on Maumee
River, south of Lake Erie, when again, by the aid of Tecumseh, Procter
captures four hundred and fifty prisoners. It was on this occasion
that the Indians broke from control and tomahawked forty defenseless
American prisoners. August sees Procter raiding Sandusky; but the
Americans refuse to come out and battle, and the axes of the Canadians
are too dull to cut down the ironwood pickets, and when at night
Procter's bugles sound retreat, he has lost nearly one hundred men. At
last, in September, the fleets being built for the Canadians at
Amherstburg and for the Americans at Presqu' Isle are completed.
Whichever side commands Lake Erie will control supplies; and though
Captain Barclay, the Canadian, is short of men, Procter cannot afford
to delay the contest for supremacy any longer. He orders Barclay to
sail out and seek Commodore Perry, the American, for decisive battle.
{364} On Barclay's boats are only such old land guns as had been
captured from Detroit. His crews consist of lake sailors and a few
soldiers, in all some three hundred and eighty-four men on six vessels.
September 10, at midday, at Put-in-Bay, Barclay finds Perry's fleet of
seven vessels with six hundred and fifty men. For two hours the
furious cannonading could be heard all the way up to Amherstburg.
Space forbids details of the fight so celebrated in the annals of the
American navy. After broadsides that tore hulls clean of masts and
decks, setting sails in flame and the waters seething in mountainous
waves, the two fleets got within pistol shot of each other, and Perry's
superior numbers won. One third of Barclay's officers were killed and
one third of his men. The Canadian fleet on Lake Erie was literally
exterminated before three in the afternoon.
[Illustration: TWO VIEWS OF THE BATTLE ON LAKE ERIE (From prints
published in 1815)]
Procter's position was now doubly desperate. He was cut off from
supplies. At a council with the Indians, though Tecumseh, the chief,
was for fighting to the bitter death, it was decided to retreat up the
Thames to Vincent's army near modern {365} Hamilton. All the world
knows the bitter end of that retreat. Procter seems to have been so
sure that General Harrison would not follow, that the Canadian forces
did not even pause to destroy bridges behind them; and behind came
Harrison, hot foot, with four thousand fighters from the Kentucky
backwoods. October first the Canadians had retreated far as Chatham,
provisions and baggage coming in boats or sent ahead on wagons.
Procter's first intimation of the foe's nearness was a breathless
messenger with word the Americans just a few miles behind had captured
the provision boats. Sending on his family and the women with a convoy
of two hundred and fifty soldiers, Procter faced about on the morning
of October the 5th, to give battle. On the left was the river Thames,
on the right a cedar swamp, to rear on the east the Indian mission of
Moraviantown. The troops formed in line across a forest road. Procter
seems to have lost both his heart and his head, for he permitted his
fatigued troops to go into the fight without breakfast. Not a
barricade, not a hurdle, not a log was placed to break the advance of
Harrison's cavalry. The American riders came on like a whirlwind.
Crack went the line of Procter's men in a musketry volley! The horses
plunged, checked up, reared, and were spurred forward. Another volley
from the Canadians! But it was too late. Harrison's fifteen hundred
riders had galloped clean through the Canadian lines, slashing swords
as they dashed past. Now they wheeled and came on the Canadians' rear.
Indians and Canadians scattered to the woods before such fury, like
harried rabbits, poor Tecumseh in the very act of tomahawking an
American colonel when a pistol shot brought him down. The brave Indian
chief was scalped by the white backwoodsmen and skinned and the body
thrown into the woods a prey to wolves. Flushed with victory and
without Harrison's permission, the Kentucky men dashed in and set fire
to Moraviantown, the Indian mission. As for Procter, he had mounted
the fleetest horse to be found, and was riding in mad flight for
Burlington Heights. It is almost a pity he had not fallen in some of
his former heroic raids, for he now became a sorry figure in history,
reprimanded {366} and suspended from the ranks of the army. The only
explanation of Procter's conduct at Moraviantown is that he was anxious
for the safety of his wife and daughters, perhaps needlessly fearing
that the rough backwoodsmen would retaliate on them for the treachery
of the Indians tomahawking American prisoners of war.
[Illustration: TECUMSEH]
And it had fared almost as badly with the Canadian fleet on Lake
Ontario. The boats under Sir James Yeo, the young English commander,
were good only for close-range fighting, the boats under Commodore
Chauncey best for long-range firing. All July and August the fleets
maneuvered to catch each other off guard. Between times each raided
the coast of the other for provisions, Chauncey paying a second visit
to Toronto, Yeo swooping down on Sodus Bay. All September the game of
hide and seek went on between the two Ontario squadrons. Sunday night,
the 8th of September, in a gale, two of Chauncey's ships sank, with all
hands but sixteen. Two nights later in a squally wind, by the light of
the moon, two more of his slow sailers, unable to keep up with the rest
of the fleet, were snapped up by the English off Niagara with one
hundred captives. Again, on September 27, at eight in the evening, six
miles off Toronto harbor, Chauncey came up with the English, and the
two fleets poured broadsides into each other. Then Yeo's crippled
brigs limped into Toronto harbor, while Chauncey sailed gayly off to
block all connection with Montreal and help to convoy troops {367} from
Niagara down the St. Lawrence for the master stroke of the year. The
way was now clear for the twofold aim of the American staff,--to starve
out Ontario and concentrate all strength in a signal attack on Montreal.
The autumn campaign was without doubt marked by the most comical and
heroic episodes of the war. Wilkinson was to go down the St. Lawrence
from Lake Ontario with eight thousand men to join General Hampton
coming by the way of Lake Champlain with another five thousand men in
united attack against Montreal. November 5 Wilkinson's troops
descended in three hundred flat-boats through the Thousand Islands, now
bleak and leafless and somber in the gray autumn light. It seemed
hardly possible that the few Canadian troops cooped up in Kingston
would dare to pursue such a strong American force, but history is made
up of impossibles. Feeling perfectly secure, Wilkinson's troops
scattered on the river. By November 10, at nine in the morning, half
the Americans had run down the rapids of the Long Sault, and were in
the region of Cornwall, pressing forward to unite with Hampton, where
Chateauguay River came into Lake St. Louis, just above Montreal. The
other half of Wilkinson's army was above the Long Sault, near
Chrysler's Farm. From the outset the rear guard of the advancing
invaders had been harried by Canadian sharpshooters. November 11,
about midday, it was learned that a Canadian battalion of eight hundred
was pressing eagerly on the rear. Chance shots became a rattling
fusillade. Quick as flash the Americans land and wheel face about to
fight, posted behind a stone wall and along a dried gully with
sheltering cliffs at Chrysler's Farm. By 2.30 the foes are shooting at
almost hand-to-hand range. Then, through the powder smoke, the
Canadians break from a march to a run, and charge with all the
dauntless fury of men fighting for hearth and home. Before the line of
flashing bayonets the invaders break and run. Two hundred have fallen
on each side in an action of less than two hours. Then the boats go on
down to the other half of the army at Cornwall, and here is worse
news,--news that sends {368} Wilkinson's army back to the American side
of the St. Lawrence without attempting attack on Montreal. General
Hampton on his way from Lake Champlain has been totally discomfited.
Finding the way to the St. Lawrence barred by the old raiders' trail of
Richelieu River, Hampton had struck across westward from Lake Champlain
to join Wilkinson on the St. Lawrence, west of Montreal, somewhere near
the road of Chateauguay River. With five thousand infantry and one
hundred and eighty cavalry he has advanced to a ford beyond the fork of
Chateauguay. Uncertain where the blow would be struck, Canada's
governor had necessarily scattered his meager forces.
[Illustration: DE SALABERRY]
To oppose advance by the Chateauguay he has sent a young Canadian
officer, De Salaberry, with one hundred and fifty French Canadian
sharp-shooters and one hundred Indians. De Salaberry does not court
defeat by neglecting precautions because he is weak. Windfall is
hurriedly thrown up as barricade along the trail. Where the path
narrows between the river and the bleak forest, De Salaberry has tree
trunks laid spike end towards the foe. At the last moment comes
McDonnell of Brockville with six hundred men, but De Salaberry's three
hundred occupy the front line facing the ford. McDonnell is farther
along the river. By the night of October 25 the American army is close
on the dauntless little band hidden in the forest. On the morning of
the 26th three thousand Americans {369} cross the south bank of the
river, with the design of crossing north again farther down and
swinging round on De Salaberry's rear. At the first shot of the
bluecoats poor De Salaberry's forlorn little band broke in panic fright
and fled, but De Salaberry on the river bank had grabbed his bugle boy
by the scruff of the neck with a grip of iron, and in terms more
forcible than polite bade him "sound--sound--sound _the advance_," till
the forest was filled with flying echoes of bugle calls. McDonnell
behind hears the challenge, and mistaking the cheering call for note of
victory, bids his buglers blow, blow advance, blow and cheer like
devils! The Americans pour shot into the forest. The bugle calls
multiply till the woods seem filled with an advancing army and the
yells split the sky. Also McDonnell has ordered his men to fire
kneeling, so that few of the American shots take effect. The advancing
host became demoralized. At 2.30 they sounded retreat, and it may
truly be said that the battle of Chateauguay was won by De Salaberry's
bugle boy, held to the sticking point, not because he was brave, but
because he could not run away. It is said that Hampton simply would
not believe the truth when told of the numbers by whom he had been
defeated. It is also said that immediately after the victory De
Salaberry fell ill from a bad attack of nerves, brought on by lack of
sleep. However that may be, the Canadian governor, Prevost, did not
suffer from an attack of conscience, for in his report to the English
government he ascribed the victory to his own management and presence
on the field.
The year of 1813 closes darkly for both sides. Before withdrawing from
Niagara region the invaders ravage the country and set fire to the
village of Newark, driving four hundred women and children roofless to
December snows. Sir Gordon Drummond, who has just come to command in
Ontario, retaliates swiftly and without mercy. He crosses the Niagara
by night; the fort is carried at bayonet point, three hundred men
captured and three thousand arms taken. Next, Lewiston is burned, then
Black Rock, and on the last day of the year, Buffalo. Down {370} on
the Atlantic Coast both fleets win victories, but the English work the
greater hurt, for they blockade the entire coast south of New York. On
the English squadron are European mercenaries who have been given the
name of Canadian battalions, because their work is to harry the
American coast in order to draw off the American army from Canada.
European mercenaries have been the same the world over,--riffraff
blackguards, guilty of infamous outrages the moment they are out from
under the officers' eye. These were the troops misnamed "Canadians,"
whose infamous conduct left a heritage of hate long after the war; but
this is a story of the navy rather than of Canada.
The contest has now lasted for almost two years, and both sides are as
far from decisive victory as when war was declared in June of 1812.
Long since the embargo laws of France and England against neutral
nations have been rescinded, and the American coast has suffered more
from the blockade of this war than it ever did from the wars between
France and England. The year 1814 opens with Napoleon defeated and
England pouring aid across the Atlantic into Canada. Wilkinson's big
army hovers inactive round Lake Champlain, and Prevost is afraid to
weaken Montreal by forwarding aid to Drummond at Niagara. The British
fleet blockades Sackett's Harbor, and the American fleet blockades
Kingston. The Canadians raid Oswego on Lake Ontario for provisions.
The Americans raid Port Dover on Lake Erie, leaving the country a
blackened waste and Tom Talbot's Castle Malahide of logs a smoking
ruin, with the determined aim of cutting off all supplies in Ontario.
Drummond sends his troops scouring the country inland from Niagara for
provisions. Military law is established for the seizure of cattle and
grain, but for the latter as high a price is paid as $2.50 a bushel,
and many a pioneer farmer back from York (Toronto) and Burlington
(Hamilton) dates the foundation of his fortune from the famine prices
paid for bread during the War of 1812.
[Illustration: SIR GORDON DRUMMOND]
Of course the United States did not purpose leaving the frontier of
Niagara because Drummond had burnt the forts. By {371} May, Major
General Brown had taken command of the United States troops at Buffalo.
The next two months pass, drilling and training, and bringing forward
provisions. July 3, at day dawn, during fog thick as wool on the lake,
five thousand American troops cross to the Canadian side. Fort Erie's
English garrison capitulates on the spot, and the English retreat down
Niagara River towards Chippewa by the Falls. At Chippewa, at
Queenston, at Fort George, in all to guard the Canadian frontier are
only some twenty-eight hundred men. Three fourths of these are kept
doing garrison duty, leaving only seven hundred men free afield. Just
beside Chippewa, a creek some twenty feet wide comes into Niagara
River. The Canadians have destroyed the bridge as they retreat, but
the Americans pursue, and at midnight of the 4th the two armies are
facing each other across the brook, ominous dreadful silence through
the darkness but for the sentry's arms or the lumbering advance of
artillery wagons dragged cautiously near the Canadians. The bridge is
repaired under peppering shot from the British. By four on the
afternoon of the 5th, the Americans have crossed the stream. Their
artillery is in place, and another battalion has forded higher up and
swept round to take the Canadians on the flank. The Canadians must
either flee in such blind panic as Procter displayed at Moraviantown,
or turn and fight. Indians in ambush, reënforcements from Fort George
and Queenston formed in three solid columns, the English wheel to face
the foe. First there is the rattling clatter of musketry fire from
shooters behind in the {372} grass. Then the solid columns break from
a march to a run, and charge with their bayonets. The artillery fire
of the Americans meets the runners in a terrible death blast; but as
the front lines drop, the men behind step in their places till the
armies are not one hundred yards apart. Then another blast from the
heavy guns of the Americans literally tears the Canadian columns to
tatters. As the smoke lifts there are no columns left, only scattered
groups of men retreating across a field strewn thick with the mangled
dead. Out of twelve hundred men, the Canadians have lost five hundred.
The charge of the forlorn twelve hundred at Chippewa against the
artillery of four thousand Americans has been likened to the charge of
the Light Brigade in the Russian War. Though the Canadians were
defeated, their heroic defense had for a few days at least checked the
advance of the invaders. And now the position of the beleaguered
became desperate. At Fort George, at Queenston, and at Burlington
Heights, the men were put on half rations.
Why did the Americans not advance at once against Queenston and Fort
George? For three weeks they awaited Chauncey's fleet to attack from
the water side, so the army could rush the fort from the land side; but
Chauncey was ill and could not come, and the interval gave the
hard-pressed Canadians their chance. Drummond comes from Kingston with
four hundred fresh men; also he calls on the people to leave their
farms and rally as volunteers to the last desperate fight. This
increased his troops by another thousand, though many of the volunteers
were mere boys, who scarcely knew how to hold a gun. Then, from a
dozen signs, Drummond's practiced eye foresaw that a forward movement
was being planned by the enemy without Chauncey's coöperation. All the
American baggage was being ordered to rear. False attacks to draw off
observation are made on Fort George outposts. American scouts are seen
reconnoitering the Back Country. Drummond rightly guessed that the
attack was being planned in one of two directions,--by rounding through
the Back Country, either to fall in great numbers on Fort George, or to
cut between the {373} Canadian army of Hamilton region and of Niagara
region, taking both battalions in the rear. From Fort George to
Queenston Canadian troops are posted by Drummond, and where the road
called Lundy's Lane runs from the Falls at right angles to the Back
Country more battalions are ordered on guard against the advance of the
invaders. Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, climbing to a tree on top of
a high hill, sees the Americans, five thousand of them, gray coats,
blue coats, white trousers, moving up from Chippewa towards Lundy's
Lane. Quickly sixteen hundred Canadian troops under General Riall take
possession of a hill fronting Lundy's Lane and the Falls. On the hill
is a little brown church and an old-fashioned graveyard. In the midst
of the graves the Canadian cannon are posted. Round the cemetery runs
a stone wall screened by shrubbery, and on both sides of Lundy's Lane
are endless orchards of cherry and peach and apples, the fruit just
beginning to redden in the summer sun. Whether the enemy aim at Fort
George or Hamilton, the Canadian position on Lundy's Lane must be
passed and captured. As soon as Drummond had Fitzgibbons' report, he
sent messengers galloping for Hercules Scott, who had been ordered to
retreat to the lake, to come back to Lundy's Lane with his twelve
hundred men. It may be imagined that the Americans guessed what
message the horseman, in the slather of foam was bearing back to
Hercules Scott; for they at once attacked the Canadians in Lundy's Lane
with fury, to capture the guns on the hill before Hercules Scott's
reënforcements could come.
It was now six o'clock in the evening of July 25, a sweltering hot
night, and the troops on both sides were parched for water, though the
roar of whole inland oceans of water could be heard pouring over the
Falls of Niagara. As the Canadians had charged against the American
guns at Chippewa, so now the Americans charged uphill against the guns
of the Canadians, hurling their full strength against the enemy's
center. Creeping under shelter of the cemetery stone walls, the
bluecoats would fire a volley of musketry, jump over the fence, dash
through the smoke, {374} bayonet in hand, to capture the Canadian guns.
Time, time again, the rush was dauntlessly made, and time, time again
met by the withering blast. Before nine o'clock the attacking lines
had lost more than five hundred men, and as many Canadians had fallen
on the hill. The dead and mangled lay literally in heaps. As darkness
deepened, lit only by the wan light of a fitful moon and the awesome
flare of volley after volley, the fearful screams of the dying could be
heard above the roar of the Falls and the whistle of cannon ball.
Riall, the commander of the Canadians, had been wounded and captured.
Of his sixteen hundred Canadians, Drummond had now left only one
thousand, and he was himself bleeding from a deep wound in the neck.
Half the American officers had been carried from the field injured, and
still the command was repeated to rush the hill before Scott's
reënforcements came, and each time the advancing line was driven back
shattered and thinned, Canadians dashing in pursuit, cheering and
whooping, till both armies were so inextricably mixed it was impossible
to hear or heed commands. It was in one of these mêlées that Riall,
the Canadian, found himself among the American lines and was captured
to the wild and jubilant shouting of the boys in blue and gray. Pause
fell at nine o'clock. The Americans were mustering for the final
terrible rush. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the darkness was
inky. Then a shout from the Canadian side split the very welkin.
Hercules Scott had arrived with his twelve hundred men on a run,
breathless and tired from a march and countermarch of twenty miles.
The Americans took up the yell; for fresh reserves had joined them,
too, and Lundy's Lane became a bedlam of ear-shattering sounds,--heavy
artillery wagons forcing up the hill at a gallop over dead and dying,
bombs from the Canadian guns exploding in the darkness, horses taking
fright and bolting from their riders, carrying American guns clear
across the lines among the Canadians. A wild yell of triumph told that
the Americans had captured the hill. For the next two hours it was a
hand-to-hand fight in pitchy darkness. Drummond, the Englishman, could
be heard right in the midst of the {375} American lines, shouting,
"Stick to them, men! stick to them! Don't give up! Don't turn! Stick
to them! You 'll have it!" And American officers were found amidst
Canadian battalions, shouting stentorian command: "Level low! Fire at
their flashes! Watch the flash, and fire at their flashes!"
[Illustration: MONUMENT AT LUNDY'S LANE]
The Americans have captured the Canadian guns, but in the darkness they
cannot carry them off. Each side thinks the other beaten, and neither
will retreat. In the confusion it is impossible to rally the
battalions, and men are attacking their own side by mistake. Both
sides claim victory, and each is afraid to await what daylight may
reveal; for it is no exaggeration to say that at the battle of Lundy's
Lane the blood of one third of each side dyed the field. The Canadians
as defenders of their own homes, fighting in the last ditch, dare not
retire. The Americans, having more to risk in numbers, withdraw their
troops at two in the morning. Of her twenty-eight hundred men Canada
had lost nine hundred; and the American loss is as great. Too
exhausted to retire, Drummond's men flung themselves on the ground and
slept lying among the dead, heedless alike of the drenching rain that
follows artillery fire, of the roaring cataract, of the groans from the
wounded. Men awakened in the gray dawn to find themselves
unrecognizable from blood and powder smoke, to find, {376} in some
cases, that the comrade whose coat they had shared as pillow lay cold
in death by morning. While Drummond's men bury the dead in heaps and
carry the wounded to Toronto, the invaders have retreated with their
wounded to Fort Erie.
It now became the dauntless Drummond's aim to expel the enemy from Fort
Erie. Five days after the battle of Lundy's Lane he had moved his camp
halfway between Chippewa and Fort Erie; but in addition to its garrison
of two thousand, Fort Erie is guarded by three armed schooners lying at
anchor on the lake front. Captain Dobbs of Drummond's forces makes the
first move. At the head of seventy-five men, he deploys far to the
rear of the fort through the woods, carrying five flatboats over the
forest trail eight miles, and on the night of the 12th of August slips
out through the water mist towards the American schooners.
"Who goes?" challenges the ships' watchman.
"Provision boats from Buffalo," calls back the Canadian oarsman; and
the rowboats pass round within the shadow of the schooner. A moment
later the American ships are boarded. A trampling on deck calls the
sailors aloft; but Dobbs has mastered two vessels before the fort wakes
to life with a rush to the rescue.
Delay means almost inevitable loss to Drummond; for Prevost will send
no more reënforcements, and the Americans are daily strengthening Fort
Erie. Bastions of stone have been built. Outer batteries command
approach to the walls, and along the narrow margin between the fort and
the lake earthworks have been thrown up, mounted with cannon elbowing
to the water's edge. Taking advantage of the elation over Dobbs' raid
on the schooners, Drummond plans a night assault on the 15th of August.
Rain had been falling in splashes all day. The fort trenches were
swimming like rivers, and it may be mentioned that Drummond's camp was
swimming too, boding ill for his men's health. One of the foreign
regiments was to lead {377} the assault round by the lake side, while
Drummond and his nephew rushed the bastions. It will be remembered
these foreign regiments of Napoleonic wars were composed of the
offscourings of Europe. The fighters were to depend "on bayonet alone,
giving no quarter." Splashing along the rain-soaked road in silence
and darkness, scaling ladders over shoulders, bayonets in hand, the
foreign troops came to the earthwork elbowing out into the lake. This
was passed by the men wading out in the lake to their chins; but the
noise was overheard by the fort sentry, and a perfect blaze of musketry
shattered the darkness and drove the mercenaries back pellmell,
bellowing with terror. A few of the English and Canadian troops
pressed forward, only to find that they could not reach within ladder
distance of the walls at all, for spiked trees had been placed above
the trenches in a perfect crisscross hurdle of sharpened ends. In old
letters of the period one reads how the trenches were literally heaped
with a jumbled mass of the dead. The other attacking columns fared
almost as badly. One of the bastions had been entered by the cannon
embrasures, Drummond, Junior, shouting to "give no quarter--give no
quarter," when, from the cross firing in the courtyards, the powder
magazine below this bastion was set on fire, and exploded with a
terrific crash, killing the assailants almost to a man. In
all,--killed, wounded, missing,--the assault cost Drummond's army nine
hundred men. September proved a rainy month. Drummond's camp became
almost a marsh, and the health of the troops compelled a move to higher
ground. It was then the Americans sallied out in assault. Neither
side could claim victory, but the skirmish cost each army more than
five hundred men. Sir James Yeo now comes sailing up Lake Ontario with
some of the sixteen thousand troops sent from England. The weather
became unfavorable to movement on either side,--rain and sleet
continuously. Drummond foresaw that the season would compel the
abandonment of Fort Erie, and on November 5, a scout came in with word
that the invaders had crossed to the American side and Fort Erie had
been blown up.
{378} While Drummond is fighting for the very life of Canada along the
Niagara frontier, the war continues in desultory fashion elsewhere.
Kentucky riflemen raid western Ontario from Detroit to Port Dover. Up
on the lakes is a story of the war that reads like a page from border
raiders. American fur traders destroy Sault Ste. Marie. Canadian fur
traders retaliate by swooping on Mississippi fur posts. Out on the
Pacific Coast an English gunboat has captured John Jacob Astor's fur
post on the Columbia; and now in the fall of 1814 the Northwest Fur
Company of Montreal are conveying from Astor's fort the furs, worth
millions of dollars, in canoes across the Upper Lakes to Ottawa River.
Two armed American schooners, hiding on the north shore of Lake Huron,
lie in wait for the gay raiders of the Northwest Company; but at the
Sault the Nor'west voyageurs get wind of the danger. They, in turn,
hide their canoes in some of the blue coves of the north shore. Then,
stealing out at night, in canoes with muffled paddles, the Nor'westers
come on one schooner while the watch is asleep. They board her,
bayonet the crew, "pinion some of the wounded to the decks," and with
the captured vessel sidle up to the other vessel, and, before she is
aware of the new masters on board, have captured her too. Then, scalps
flaunting at the prows of their canoes, the Nor'west fur traders gayly
go their way. Down at Lake Champlain occurs the great fiasco of the
war,--the blot on Canada's escutcheon. Prevost with ten thousand
reënforcements has been ordered by the English Governor to proceed from
Montreal against the Americans by both water and land. While an
English fleet attacks the Americans, Prevost is to lead the troops
against Plattsburg. But the Canadian fleet meets terrible disaster.
The commander is killed by a rebounding cannon ball just as the action
begins; and twelve of the gunboats manned by the hired foreigners
desert _en masse_. The rest of the fleet is literally destroyed.
Instead of seconding attack by a battle on land, Prevost sits behind
his trenches waiting for the little fleet to win the battle for him;
and when the fleet is defeated, Prevost's courage sinks with the {379}
sinking ships. He gathers up his troops and retreats in a scare of
haste,--such a fright of unseemly, unsoldierly haste that nearly one
thousand of his soldiers desert in sheer disgust. Down at Nova Scotia
are raid and counter-raid too. The British and American fleets wage
fierce war that is not part of Canada's story; but in the contest the
public buildings of Washington are burned in retaliation for the
burning of Newark; and down at New Orleans the English suffer a
crushing defeat.
Meanwhile the peace commissioners have been at work; and the war that
ought never to have taken place, that settled not one jot of the
dispute which caused it, was closed by the Treaty of Ghent, Christmas
Eve of 1814. All captured forts, all plunder, all prisoners, are to be
restored. Michilimackinac and Fort Niagara and Astoria on the Columbia
go back to the United States; but of "impressment" and "right of
search" and "embargo of neutrals" not a word. The waste of life and
happiness accomplished not a feather's weight unless it were the lesson
of the criminal folly of a war between nations akin in aim and speech
and blood.
{380}