utterances of Willcocks in the _Guardian_, as the representative of the
discontented element in Upper Canada, that they would find not {321}
only sympathy but probably some active co-operation in the western
country as soon as the armies of the Republic appeared on Canadian soil
and won, as they confidently expected, an easy victory over the small
force which could be brought to check invasion and defend the province.
General Hull's proclamation, when he crossed the Detroit River at the
commencement of hostilities, was so much evidence of the belief that
was entertained in the United States with regard to the fealty of the
Canadians. Willcocks proved himself a disloyal man, for he eventually
joined the American forces and fell fighting against the country which
he and a very small disaffected class would willingly have handed to a
foreign invader. The forces at the disposal of the Canadian
authorities certainly appeared to be inadequate for the defence of a
country with so long and exposed a frontier. In the provinces of
Canada there were, in 1812, only four thousand five hundred regular
troops, and of these hardly one-third were stationed above Montreal.
The Canadian militia, however, rallied with extraordinary readiness to
the call of the authorities. The majority of the loyal population that
had come into the country had been engaged in military services, and
even the old settlers, who were exempted from active duty, voluntarily
came forward, and exercised, as General Sheaffe, said, "a happy
influence on the youth of the militia ranks." The legislative bodies
of all the provinces responded liberally to the call of the executive
and placed at the disposal of the government all their resources. Army
bills were issued to a {322} large amount, and found a most valuable
currency throughout the war.
[Illustration: Major-General Brock.]
During the first year of the war, there was a continuous record of
success for Canada. The key to the upper lakes, Michillimackinac, was
captured and held by a small force of English regulars and Canadian
voyageurs. The immediate consequence of this victory was to win the
confidence and alliance of the western Indians, then led by Tecumseh,
the famous Shawanoese chief, who had been driven from Tippecanoe by
General Harrison. Then followed the capitulation of General Hull and
his army, who had invaded Canada and were afterwards forced to retreat
to Detroit, where they surrendered to General Brock with a much
inferior force. By this capitulation, which led to the disgrace and
nearly to the execution of Hull on his return to his own country, the
whole territory of Michigan, over two thousand five hundred troops, and
a large quantity of munitions of war and provisions fell into the
possession of the British. The next important event of this memorable
year was the defeat of the attempt of Van Rensselaer to occupy
Queenston Heights, with the object of establishing there a base of
future operations against Upper Canada. The Americans were routed with
great loss and many of the men threw themselves down the precipice and
were drowned in the deep and rapid river. At the beginning of the
battle, General Brock was unhappily slain while leading his men up the
heights, and the same fate befell his chivalrous aide-de-camp, Colonel
McDonell, the attorney-general of the province. It {324} was left for
General Sheaffe to complete the victory, which gave many prisoners to
the English force, and drove the remainder of the beaten American army
across the beautiful river. General Smyth, a most incompetent man, who
succeeded to the command of the American army on the resignation of Van
Rensselaer, subsequently attempted to storm and carry Fort Erie, but
Colonel Bisshopp successfully held this important post, which
controlled the outlet of Lake Erie into the Niagara River. When the
campaign closed, in 1812, Canada was free from the invader, chiefly
through the energy and sagacity with which the gallant General Brock
had made his preparations to repel invasion.
In 1813 the campaign commenced with a signal victory by General
Procter, who was in command at Detroit, over a considerable American
force at Frenchtown, on the Raisin River, under the command of
Brigadier Winchester. Then came a successful attack by Colonel
McDonnell on Ogdensburgh (La Présentation of the French régime), in
retaliation for raids on Gananoque and Elizabethtown, subsequently
named Brockville--now a beautiful city near the Thousand Isles--in
honour of the gallant soldier who perished on the heights of Queenston.
Commodore Chauncey, in command of a small American fleet organised at
Sackett's Harbour, an important base of naval and military operations
for the Americans, attacked the little capital of York, now Toronto,
which was evacuated by General Sheaffe, then administrator of the
government, who retired to Kingston, the strongest position {325} to
the west of Montreal. The invaders burnt the legislative and other
public buildings. The small library and public records were not even
spared by the pillaging troops. No precautions had been taken by
Sheaffe to improve defences which at the best were of little strength.
During the summer, the American army was so much superior to the
English forces that they were able to occupy the whole Niagara frontier
from Fort Erie to Fort George, both of which were captured by General
Dearborn. Major-General Vincent, the English commander, was compelled
to retire to Burlington Heights, overlooking the present city of
Hamilton. Sir George Prevost, who proved himself a most irresolute and
incapable commander-in-chief, retreated ignominiously from Sackett's
Harbour, although Commodore Chauncey and his fleet were absent and the
post was defended by only a small garrison. This discreditable
failure, which cannot be in any way excused, was soon forgotten when
the news came of the success of Colonel Harvey, afterwards a
lieutenant-governor of the maritime provinces, at Stoney Creek, quite
close to Burlington Bay. With an insignificant detachment from
Vincent's main body, Harvey succeeded in surprising at night a large
American force, commanded by Brigadiers Chandler and Winder, both of
whom, as well as one hundred officers and men, were taken prisoners.
This serious disaster and the approach of Admiral Yeo's fleet from the
eastward forced the invading army to retire to Fort George, where they
concentrated their strength, after abandoning Fort {326} Erie and other
posts on the frontier. It was during the campaign of this year that
Laura Secord, the courageous daughter of a sturdy loyalist stock which
has given the name of Ingersoll to a Canadian town, afforded a
memorable example of the devotion which animated Canadian women in
these years of trial. General Dearborn had ordered Colonel Boerstler
to surprise and attack the Canadian outposts at Twelve Mile Creek, now
St. Catharine's, and at De Ceu's farm, close to the present town of
Thorold. Lieutenant Fitzgibbon, with a picket of thirty men, was
stationed at De Ceu's. A Canadian militiaman, James Secord, who lived
at Queenston, heard of the proposed attack, but as he had been severely
wounded in the attack on Queenston Heights in the previous October, he
was unable to warn Fitzgibbon. His wife, a woman of nearly forty
years, volunteered for the hazardous duty, and started at dawn for a
journey of twenty miles, through dense woods, where the paths were few
and had to be avoided for fear of meeting American marauders or
suspicious Indians who might take her for a spy. It took her all day
to reach her destination, where she first disturbed an encampment of
Indians who received her with yells, which dismayed her for the moment.
However, she was taken to the commanding officer, who made his
arrangements immediately to surprise Boerstler, who soon made his
appearance with five hundred men at least. The Americans were forced
to surrender to what they believed was a vastly superior force, so
cleverly had Fitzgibbon succeeded in deceiving them. In fact, he had
only at first {327} thirty soldiers, and two hundred and forty Indians,
and when a captain and twenty troopers of the Chippewa cavalry came up
Boerstler was quite ready to surrender.
All the successes in the west, however, were now rendered worthless by
the unfortunate defeat at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie of the English
flotilla under Captain Barclay, by Commodore Perry, who had command of
a large number of vessels, with a superior armament and equipment. The
result of this victory was to give the control of Lake Erie and of the
State of Michigan to the Americans. Procter retreated from Detroit,
and was defeated near Moraviantown, an Indian village, about sixty
miles from Sandwich, by General Harrison, who had defeated Tecumseh in
the northwest, and now added to his growing fame by his victory over
the English army, who were badly generalled on this occasion.
Tecumseh, the faithful ally of the Canadians, fell in the battle, and
his body was treated with every indignity, his skin, according to
report, having been carried off to Kentucky as a trophy. Procter fell
into disgrace, and was subsequently replaced by Colonel de Rottenburg.
On his return to England, Procter was tried, by court-martial,
suspended from his rank for six months, and censured by the
commander-in-chief.
Passing by such relatively unimportant affairs as a successful attack
on Black Rock, near Buffalo, by Colonel Bisshopp, and a second attack
on York by Chauncey, who took some prisoners and a quantity of stores,
we have now to state other facts in the {328} history of the campaign
of 1813 which compensated Canada for Procter's disasters in the west.
The Americans had decided to make an attack on Montreal by two
forces--one coming by the St. Lawrence and the other by Lake
Champlain--which were to form a junction at Châteauguay on Lake St.
Louis. General Wilkinson, with eight thousand men, descended the river
from Sackett's Harbour, landed below Prescott, and then proceeded
towards Cornwall. Some two thousand five hundred men, under Colonel
Boyd, protected the rear of the main body, and was compelled to fight a
much inferior force, under Colonel Morrison, on Chrystler's farm, near
what is now known as Cook's Point on the north bank of the St.
Lawrence. The Americans gave way in all directions, and sustained a
heavy loss. Boyd rejoined Wilkinson at the foot of the Long Sault
rapids, in the neighbourhood of the present town of Cornwall, and here
the news arrived that General Hampton had received a serious repulse.
Hampton, leading an army of probably seven thousand men, had been
routed near the junction of the Châteauguay and Outarde rivers by an
insignificant force of Canadian Fencibles and Voltigeurs under Colonel
de Salaberry, a French Canadian in the English military service, with
the aid of Colonel McDonnell, in command of seven companies of Lower
Canadian militia. These combined forces did not exceed nine hundred
men, all French Canadians, with the exception of Colonel McDonnell and
several other officers. Three hundred French Canadian Voltigeurs and
Fencibles formed the front {329} of the line, and when the former gave
way to the onslaught of the four thousand men who advanced against them
Salaberry held his ground with a bugler, a mere lad, and made him sound
lustily. Colonel McDonnell, with a remarkably keen understanding of
the situation, immediately ordered his buglers to play, and to continue
doing so while they scattered in the woods. As the woods echoed {330}
to the call of the bugles, to the shouts of the soldiers, and to the
yells of the Indians, the American force halted as if they were
paralysed. Then, believing from the noises that filled the forest in
every direction that they were to be attacked in front and rear by an
overwhelming force, they broke and fled tumultuously. Salaberry and
the Canadians had won a victory that has only a few parallels in
warlike annals. Hampton retreated as rapidly as possible to
Plattsburg, while Wilkinson found his way to Salmon River. These two
victories of Chrystler's farm and Châteauguay were won almost entirely
by Canadian prowess and skill, and must be always mentioned among the
glorious episodes of Canadian history.
[Illustration: Colonel De Salaberry.]
Before the end of the year, General McClure, in command of the American
troops on the Niagara frontier, evacuated Fort George, when he heard of
the advance of the English forces under General Murray. McClure
committed the cowardly outrage of destroying the town of Newark. All
the houses except one were burned, and no pity was shown even to the
weak and helpless women, all of whom were driven from their comfortable
houses and forced to stand on the snow-clad earth, while they saw the
flames ascend from their homes and household treasures. As an act of
retribution the British troops destroyed all the posts and settlements
from Fort Niagara to Buffalo. When the campaign of 1813 closed, Lake
Erie was still in the possession of the Americans, but the Niagara
district on both sides of the river had been freed from the American
{331} forces, and not an inch of Canadian territory except Amherstburg
was in possession of the enemy.
In the following year the campaign commenced by the advance of a large
force of American troops under General Wilkinson into Lower Canada, but
they did not get beyond Lacolle Mill, not far from Isle aux Noix on the
Richelieu, where they met with a most determined resistance from the
little garrison under Colonel Handcock. Wilkinson retreated to
Plattsburg, and did not again venture upon Canadian territory. Sir
Gordon Drummond took Oswego, and succeeded in destroying a large amount
of public property, including the barracks. The greatest success of
the year was won in the Niagara country, where the English troops under
Drummond and Riall had been concentrated with the view of opposing the
advance of an American army into Upper Canada. The Americans occupied
Fort Erie, and Riall sustained a repulse at Street's Creek--now known
as Usher's--near Chippewa, although General Brown, who was in command
of a much superior force, did not attempt to follow up his advantage,
but allowed the English to retreat to Fort George. Then followed, on
the 25th of July, the famous battle of Lundy's Lane, where the English
regulars and Canadian militia, led by General Drummond, fought from six
in the evening until midnight, a formidable force of American troops,
commanded by General Brown and Brigadiers Ripley, Porter, and
Scott--the latter the future hero of the Mexican war. The darkness
through this hotly contested engagement was intense, and the English
{332} more than once seemed on the point of yielding to sheer
exhaustion as they contested every foot of ground against overpowering
numbers of well handled troops. The undaunted courage and persistence
of the British and Canadian soldiery won the battle, as the Americans
retired from the field, though with a remarkable perversion of the
facts this memorable event is even claimed by some American writers as
a success on their side. This was the last great fight of the war, and
will be always cited by Canadians as illustrating the mettle of their
own militia in old times.
[Illustration: Monument at Lundy's Lane.]
Drummond did not win other successes, and even failed to capture Fort
Erie. The American army, however, did not make another advance into
the country while he kept it so well guarded. Erie was eventually
evacuated, while the Americans concentrated their strength at Buffalo.
Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi was captured in this same summer by
the English, and the Americans were repulsed in an attempt to seize the
fort at Michillimackinac. In eastern Canada there was no such record
of victory to show as Drummond and his officers had made in the west.
Prevost again gave a signal proof of his incapacity. His fleet
sustained a complete defeat on Lake Champlain, and so great was his
dismay that he ordered the retreat to Montreal of a splendid force of
over ten thousand troops, largely composed of peninsula veterans,
though Plattsburg and its garrison must have fallen easily into his
hands had he been possessed of the most ordinary resolution. This
retreat was confessedly a disgrace to the {334} English army, which
Canadian and English writers must always record with a feeling of
contempt for Prevost.
It is not necessary to dwell at any length on other features of this
war. The American navy, small though it was, won several successes
mainly through the superiority of their vessels in tonnage, crew, and
armament. The memorable fight between the British frigate _Shannon_,
under Captain Broke, and the United States frigate _Chesapeake_, under
Captain Lawrence, off Massachusetts Bay, illustrates equally the
courage of British and American sailors--of men belonging to the same
great stock which has won so many victories on the sea. The two ships
were equally matched, and after a sharp contest of a quarter of an hour
the _Chesapeake_ was beaten, but not until Captain Lawrence was fatally
wounded and his victorious adversary also severely injured. During the
war Nova Scotia and the other maritime provinces were somewhat harassed
at times by American privateers, but the presence of a large fleet
constantly on their coasts--Halifax being the rendezvous of the British
navy in American waters--and the hostility of New England to the war
saved these sections of British America from invasion. On the other
hand, all the important positions on the coast of Maine from the
Penobscot to the St. Croix, were attacked and occupied by the English.
The whole American coast during the last year of the war was blockaded
by the English fleet with the exception of New England ports, which
were open to neutral vessels. The public buildings of Washington,
{335} the federal capital, were destroyed by an English army, in
retaliation for the burning of York, Newark, and Moraviantown. The
attempt to take Baltimore failed, and a bold man from Tennessee, Andrew
Jackson--in later years President--drove Pakenham from New Orleans.
The taking of Mobile by British ships was the closing incident of the
war on the Atlantic coast. In fact peace was happily declared by the
Treaty of Ghent on the 24th December, 1814, or a fortnight before the
defeat of the English at New Orleans. The two nations gladly came to
terms. It is questionable if the heart of either was ever deeply
enlisted in this unhappy war which should never have been fought
between peoples so closely connected by language and race. It was
mainly a war of Western and Southern politicians, and when it ended New
England, whose interests had been so seriously affected, was showing
signs of serious restlessness which had broken out in the Hartford
convention, and might have even threatened the integrity of the Union.
Although the war ended without any definite decision on the questions
at issue between the United States and Great Britain, the privileges of
neutrals were practically admitted, and the extreme pretensions of
Great Britain as to the right of search can never again be asserted.
One important result of the war, as respects the interests of Canada,
was the re-opening of the question of the British American fisheries.
Certain privileges extended by the Treaty of 1783 to American fishermen
on the coasts of British North America were not again conceded, {336}
and the convention of 1818, which followed the peace of 1815, is the
basis of the rights which Canadians have always maintained in disputes
between themselves and the United States as to the fisheries on their
coasts. Looking, however, to its general results, the war gave no
special advantages to the Canadian people. When peace was proclaimed
not an inch of Canadian territory, except the village of Amherstburg,
was held by the American forces. On the other hand, Great Britain
occupied the greater part of the sea-board of Maine, and her flag flew
over Michillimackinac, the key to the Northwest. Had British statesmen
seized this opportunity of settling finally the western boundary of New
Brunswick, Canada would have obtained a territory most useful to the
commercial development of the present Dominion. England, however, was
very desirous of ending the war--perhaps the humiliating affair at
Plattsburg had some effect on the peace--and it was fortunate for the
provinces that they were allowed in the end to control their most
valuable fisheries.
The people of Canada will always hold in grateful recollection the
names of those men who did such good service for their country during
these momentous years from 1812 to 1815. Brock, Tecumseh, Morrison,
Salaberry, McDonnell, Fitzgibbon, and Drummond are among the most
honourable names in Canadian history. Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen,
Canadians, Indians, were equally conspicuous in brilliant achievement.
A stately monument overlooks the noble river of the Niagara, and
recalls {337} the services of the gallant soldiers, Brock and McDonell,
whose remains rest beneath. A beautiful village, beyond which
stretches historic Lundy's Lane, recalls the name and deeds of
Drummond. As the steamers pass up and down the St. Lawrence they see
on the northern bank the obelisk which the Canadian Government has
raised on the site of the battlefield where Morrison defeated Boyd. On
the meadows of Châteauguay, another monument has been erected by the
same national spirit in honour of the victory won by a famous
representative of the French Canadian race, who proved how courageously
French Canadians could fight for the new régime under which they were
then, as now, so happy and prosperous.
{338}
XXIV.
POLITICAL STRIFE AND REBELLION.
(1815-1840.)