CLOSING SCENES OF THE WAR.
We return now to retrace the fortunes of the war of which the
culminating acts, at least in Upper Canada, had now taken place.
After the fatal fight of Lundy's Lane, as we have seen, the
American force retreated precipitately on Fort Erie, of which they
retained possession, and, working night and day, formed an
entrenched camp for their protection, strengthening a line of
abattis along the front. The victorious British columns closely
followed, and for three weeks the camp and fort occupied by the
American army were closely besieged by a force only two-thirds as
numerous. Two American armed vessels, which supported the fort on
the lake side, were very cleverly captured in a night attack by
Captain Dobbs, of the Royal Navy, by means of boats conveyed by
sheer force of human muscles twenty miles across the country in
the rear of the American lines, from the Niagara to Lake Erie.
The British forces also threw up strong entrenchments and planted
batteries; and the two armies lay watching each other like
couchant lions, waiting the opportunity to make the fatal
spring. The guns on the batteries were kept double shotted, and
through the long nights dark lanterns were kept burning, and
linstocks ready for firing lay beside every gun. Ever and anon a
live shell screamed through the air, one of which penetrating an
American magazine, caused it to explode with fearful violence.
On the 14th of August, after a vigorous bombardment, a night
attack, in three columns, was made upon the fort. At two o'clock
in the morning, the columns moved out of the trenches, with the
utmost silence, bearing scaling ladders, and crept stealthily over
the plain toward the apparently slumbering fort. Dark clouds hung
low, and the only sounds heard were the melancholy cry of the loon
and the measured dash of the waves upon the shore. At length the
American picket discovered the approach of the British columns and
gave the alarm. The bugles rang shrill in the ear of night. Every
embrasure of the seemingly sleeping fort flashed forth its tongue
of flame, revealing the position of the assailants, and the gloom
settled heavier than ever, deepened still further by the
sulphureous clouds of smoke from the cannon. The British van
hacked with their swords at the abattis, and tried, by wading
through a marsh, to enter the curtain of the fore by a flank
movement. Rent and torn by a fire of canister and grape, five
times the assailing columns were hurled back, and five times,
undaunted, they returned to the charge.
At length the wall was reached, the ladders were planted, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, with a hundred men of the Royal
Artillery, gained a footing in a bastion. The parole by which
they recognized each other in the dark was "steel"--an omen of
the desperate means used to insure their victory. With pike and
bayonet they rushed upon the garrison. Their comrades swarmed up
the scaling ladders and filled the bastion. Suddenly the ground
heaved and trembled as with the throes of an earthquake. There
came a burst of thunder sound; a volcano of fire and timber;
stones and living men were hurled two hundred feet in the air;
and the night settled down on the scene of chaos. The British
columns, utterly demoralized by this appalling disaster, fell back
precipitately on their entrenchments, leaving the mangled bodies
of two hundred of their comrades, among them the gallant leader,
Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond, in the fatal fosse and bastion.
The Americans, being strongly re-enforced, a month later made a
vigorous sally from the fort, but were driven back, with a loss
on the part of both assailants and assailed of about four hundred
men. Shortly after, General Izzard blew up the works and re-
crossed the river to United States territory. The fortress,
constructed at such a cost, and assailed and defended with such
valour, soon fell to utter ruin. Where earth-shaking war achieved
such vast exploits, to-day the peaceful waters of the placid lake
kiss the deserted strand, and a few grass-grown and mouldering
ram-mounds alone mark the grave of so much military pomp, power,
and unavailing valour. [Footnote: Engravings of these are given
in Lossing's "Field Book of the War."]
Nor were the ravages of the war confined alone to the Niagara
frontier. Far otherwise. They extended from the upper waters of
the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard, and to the Gulf of
Mexico. In the West, Michilimackinac was re-enforced, and Prairie
du Chien, a fort on the Mississippi, was captured by a body of six
hundred and fifty Canadians and Indians, without the loss of a
single man. An American attempt to recapture Michilimackinac, by a
force of a thousand men, was a total failure, the only exploit of
the expedition being the inglorious pillage and destruction of the
undefended trading-post of Ste. Marie.
Meanwhile, Sir John Sherbrooke, the Governor of Nova Scotia,
despatched several hostile expeditions from Halifax against the
coast of Maine.
Eastport, Castine, Bangor, Machias, and the whole region from the
Penobscot to the St. Croix, surrendered to the British, and were
held by them to the close of the war.
The arrival, in August, of sixteen thousand of Wellington's
Peninsular troops, the heroes of so many Spanish victories, placed
at the command of Sir George Prevost the means of vigorously
undertaking offensive operations. A well-appointed force of eleven
thousand men advanced from Canada to Lake Champlain. Captain
Downie, with a fleet on which the ship carpenters were still at
work as he went into action, was to co-operate with the army in an
attack on Plattsburg, which was defended by five well-armed
vessels and by fifteen hundred regulars and as many militia, under
General Macomb. The British fleet gallantly attacked the enemy,
but after a desperate battle, in which Captain Downie was slain,
and nine of the ill-manned gunboats fled, it was compelled to
surrender to a superior force. Prevost, notwithstanding that his
strength was ten times greater than that of the enemy, had awaited
the assistance of the fleet. As he tardily advanced his storming
columns, the cheers from the fort announced its capture. Although
on the verge of an easy victory, Prevost, fearing the fate of
Burgoyne, and humanely averse to the shedding of blood, to the
intense chagrin of his soldiers gave the signal to retreat. Many
of his officers for very shame broke their swords, and vowed that
they would never serve again. While an able civil governor,
Prevost was an incompetent military commander. He was summoned
home by the Horse Guards to stand a court-martial, but he died the
following year, before the court sat.
The launch at Kingston of the "St. Lawrence," an "oak leviathan"
of a hundred guns, gave the British complete naval supremacy of
Lake Ontario, and enabled them strongly to re-enforce General
Drummond with troops and stores.
We will now trace very briefly the further events of the war,
which lay altogether outside of Canada. Along the Atlantic
seaboard the British maintained a harassing blockade. The close of
the Continental war enabled Great Britain to throw more vigour
into the conflict with the United States. Her giant navy was,
therefore, free from service in European waters, and Admiral
Cockburn, with a fleet of fifty vessels, about the middle of
August, arrived in Chesapeake Bay with troops destined for the
attack on the American capital. Tangier Island was seized and
fortified, and fifteen hundred negroes of the neighbouring
plantations were armed and drilled for military service. They
proved useful but very costly allies, as, at the conclusion of the
war, the Emperor of Russia, who was the referee in the matter,
awarded their owners an indemnity of a million and a quarter of
dollars, or over eight hundred dollars each for raw recruits for
a six weeks' campaign.
There are two rivers by which Washington may be approached--the
Potomac, on which it is situated, and the Patuxent, which flows in
its rear. The British commander chose the latter, both on account
of the facility of access, and for the purpose of destroying the
powerful fleet of gunboats which had taken refuge in its creeks.
This object was successfully accomplished on the 20th of August--
thirteen of the gunboats being destroyed and one captured,
together with fourteen merchant vessels. The army, under the
command of General Ross, on the following day disembarked. It
numbered, including some marines, three thousand five hundred men,
with two hundred sailors to drag the guns--two small three-
pounders.
For the defence of Washington, General Winder had been assigned a
force of sixteen thousand six hundred regulars, and a levy of
ninety-three thousand militia had been ordered. Of the latter, not
one appeared; of the former, only about one-half mustered. The
Americans had, however, twenty-six guns against two small pieces
possessed by the British. General Winder took post at Bladensburg,
a few miles from Washington. His batteries commanded the only
bridge across the East Potomac. Ross determined to storm the
bridge in two columns. Not for a moment did the war-bronzed
veterans of the Peninsular war hesitate. Amid a storm of shot and
shell, they dashed across the bridge, carried a fortified house,
and charged on the batteries before the second column could come
to their aid. Ten guns were captured. The American army was
utterly routed, and fled through and beyond the city it was to
defend. The lack of cavalry and the intense heat of the day
prevented the pursuit by the British. The brilliant action was
saddened to the victors by the loss of sixty-one gallant men slain
and one hundred and eighty-five wounded.
Towards evening the victorious army occupied the city. The
destruction of the public buildings had been decreed, in
retaliation for the pillage of Toronto and the wanton burning of
Niagara. An offer was made to the American authorities to accept a
money payment by way of ransom, but it was refused. The next day,
the torch was ruthlessly applied to the Capitol, with its valuable
library, the President's house, treasury, war office, arsenal,
dockyard, and the long bridge across the Potomac. The enemy had
already destroyed a fine frigate, a twenty-gun sloop, twenty
thousand stand of arms, and immense magazines of powder. Even if
justifiable as a military retaliation, this act was unworthy of a
great and generous nation.
The town of Alexandria was saved from destruction only by the
surrender of twenty-one vessels, sixteen hundred barrels of flour,
and a thousand hogsheads of tobacco.
The city of Baltimore redeemed itself more bravely. Against that
place General Ross now proceeded with his army and the fleet. In
attacking the enemy's outposts, General Ross was slain, and the
command devolved on Colonel Brooke. Six thousand infantry, four
hundred horse, and four guns, protected by a wooden palisade,
disputed the passage of the British. With a shout and a cheer
Wellington's veterans attacked the obstructions, and, in fifteen
minutes, were masters of the field. The American army fled,
leaving behind them six hundred killed or wounded, and three
hundred prisoners, September 13. The next morning, the British
were within a mile and a half of Baltimore, but they found fifteen
thousand men, with a large train of artillery, in possession of
the heights commanding the city. Colonel Brooke, not willing to
incur the risk of attacking in daylight, with three thousand men,
a fivefold number, resolved on attempting a surprise by night. He
learned, however, that the enemy, by sinking twenty vessels in the
river, had prevented all naval co-operation. The inevitable loss
of life in an assault far counter-balancing any prospective
advantage, Brooke wisely abandoned the design, and withdrew
unmolested to his ships.
The fleet and army which had been baffled at Baltimore sailed for
New Orleans, with the object of capturing the chief cotton port of
the United States, then a city of seventeen thousand inhabitants.
The fleet arrived off the mouth of the Mississippi on the 8th of
December. It was opposed by a flotilla of gunboats, but they were
all soon captured and destroyed. Amid very great difficulties and
hardships, resulting from the severity of the weather and the
wretched condition of the roads, the army under General Packenham
advanced to within six miles of New Orleans. Here General Jackson,
the American commander, had constructed a deep ditch and an
entrenchment of earthworks, strengthened by sand-bags and cotton-
bales, a thousand yards long, stretching from the Mississippi to
an impassable swamp in the rear. Flanking batteries enfiladed the
front. Behind these formidable works was posted an army of twelve
thousand men.
Packenham resolved to send Colonel Thornton, with fourteen hundred
men, across the river by night, to storm a battery which swept the
front of the earthworks, and to menace the city of New Orleans. At
the same time, the main attack was to be made on Jackson's lines,
in two columns, under Generals Gibbs and Keane. Packenham had
only six thousand men, including seamen and marines, "to attack
twice the number, entrenched to the teeth in works bristling with
bayonets and loaded with heavy artillery." [Footnote: Allison's
"History of Europe," Chap. lxxvi., American ed., vol. iv., p.
480.] The rapid fall of the river retarded the crossing of the
troops, and prevented a simultaneous attack on the right and left
banks.
Impatient at the delay, Packenham ordered the assault on Jackson's
lines, January 6, 1815; the columns moved steadily forward, but
the dawn of day revealed their approach, and they were met by a
concentrated and murderous fire from the batteries. Without
flinching, they advanced to the ditch, when it was found that the
fascines and scaling-ladders had been forgotten. The head of the
column, thus brought to a halt under the enemy's guns, was crushed
by the tremendous fire. Packenham now fell mortally wounded, and
Generals Gibbs and Keane were shortly after struck down.
The gallant Ninety-third Highlanders, however, undaunted by the
carnage, rushed forward, and many of them fairly climbed their way
into the works, mounting on each other's shoulders. But their rash
valour brought upon them the concentrated fire of grape, by which
the successful assailants were cut down to a man. General
Lambert, on whom the command now devolved, finding it impossible
to carry the works, and the slaughter being appalling, drew off
his troops. In this sanguinary repulse, the British lost two
thousand men killed, wounded, and prisoners. The Americans claim
that their loss was only eight killed and thirteen wounded.
Meanwhile, Colonel Thornton, on the left bank of the river, had
achieved a brilliant success. With only one-third of his command,
or less than five hundred men, he had stormed a redoubt of twenty
guns, defended by seventeen hundred men. The defeat of the main
body, however, rendered the position untenable. Lambert
successfully retreated to his ships, bringing off all his stores,
ammunition, and field artillery. On the 27th the army re-embarked,
and found a partial consolation for its defeat in the capture of
Fort Boyer, a strong fortification at the mouth of the river.
Peace had already been concluded at Ghent on the 24th of December,
and was hailed with delight by the kindred peoples, wearied with
mutual and unavailing slaughter. The calm verdict of history finds
much ground of extenuation for the revolt of 1776; but for the
American declaration of war in 1812, little or none. A reckless
Democratic majority wantonly invaded the country of an
unoffending neighbouring people, to seduce them from their lawful
allegiance and annex their territory. The long and costly conflict
was alike bloody and barren. The Americans annexed not a single
foot of territory. They gained not a single permanent advantage.
Their seaboard was insulted, their capital destroyed. Their annual
exports were reduced from L22,000,000 to L1,500,000. Three
thousand of their vessels were captured. Two-thirds of their
commercial class became insolvent A vast war-tax was incurred, and
the very existence of the Union imperilled by the menaced
secession of the New England States. The "right of search" and the
rights of neutrals--the ostensible but not the real causes of the
war--were not even mentioned in the treaty of peace. The
adjustment of unsettled boundaries was referred to a commission,
and an agreement was made for a combined effort for the
suppression of the slave-trade. The United States, however,
continued its internal slave-traffic, of a character even more
obnoxious than that which it engaged to suppress.
On Canada, too, the burden of the war fell heavily. Great Britain,
exhausted by nearly twenty years of conflict, and still engaged in
a strenuous struggle against the European despot, Napoleon, could
only, till near the close of the war, furnish scanty military aid.
It was Canadian militia, with little help from British regulars,
who won the brilliant victories of Chrysler's Farm and
Chateauguay; and throughout the entire conflict they were the
principal defence of their country. In many a Canadian home,
bitter tears were shed for son or sire left cold and stark upon
the bloody plain at Queenston Heights, or Chippewa, or Lundy's
Lane, or other hard-fought field of battle.
The lavish expenditure of the Imperial authorities, for ship-
building, transport service, and army supplies, and the free
circulation of the paper money issued by the Canadian Government,
greatly stimulated the material prosperity of the
country. [Footnote: The paper money of the United States was not
redeemed till it had greatly depreciated in value, to the often
ruinous loss of the holders.] Its peaceful industries,
agriculture, and the legitimate development of its natural
resources, however, were very much interrupted, and vast amounts
of public and private property were relentlessly confiscated or
destroyed by the enemy. [Footnote: See Withrow's "History of
Canada;" 8vo. ed., pp., 234-340.]