The War With the United States by William Wood
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William Wood >> The War With the United States
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Wool now re-formed his three hundred and ordered his
gunners to drill out the eighteen-pounder and turn it
against Queenston, where the British were themselves
re-forming for a second attack. This was made by two
hundred men of the 49th and York militia, led by Colonel
John Macdonell, the attorney-general of Upper Canada,
who was acting as aide-de-camp to Brock. Again the
Americans were driven back. Again the gun was recaptured.
Again the British leader was shot at the critical moment.
Again the attack failed. And again the British retreated
into Queenston.
Wool then hoisted the Stars and Stripes over the fiercely
disputed gun; and several more boatloads of soldiers at
once crossed over to the Canadian side, raising the
American total there to sixteen hundred men. With this
force on the Heights, with a still larger force waiting
impatiently to cross, with twenty-four guns in action,
and with the heart of the whole defence known to be lying
dead in Queenston, an American victory seemed to be so
well assured that a courier was sent post-haste to announce
the good news both at Albany and at Dearborn's headquarters
just across the Hudson. This done, Stephen Van Rensselaer
decided to confirm his success by going over to the
Canadian side of the river himself. Arrived there, he
consulted the senior regulars and ordered the troops to
entrench the Heights, fronting Queenston, while the rest
of his army was crossing.
But, just when the action had reached such an apparently
victorious stage, there was, first, a pause, and then a
slightly adverse change, which soon became decidedly
ominous. It was as if the flood tide of invasion had
already passed the full and the ebb was setting in. Far
off, down-stream, at Fort Niagara, the American fire
began to falter and gradually grow dumb. But at the
British Fort George opposite the guns were served as well
as ever, till they had silenced the enemy completely.
While this was happening, the main garrison, now free to
act elsewhere, were marching out with swinging step and
taking the road for Queenston Heights. Near by, at
Lewiston, the American twenty-four-gun battery was
slackening its noisy cannonade, which had been comparatively
ineffective from the first; while the single British gun
at Vrooman's, vigorous and effective as before, was
reinforced by two most accurate field-pieces under Holcroft
in Queenston village, where the wounded but undaunted
Dennis was rallying his disciplined regulars and Loyalist
militiamen for another fight. On the Heights themselves
the American musketry had slackened while most of the
men were entrenching; but the Indian fire kept growing
closer and more dangerous. Up-stream, on the American
side of the Falls, a half-hearted American detachment
had been reluctantly sent down by the egregious Smyth;
while, on the other side, a hundred and fifty eager
British were pressing forward to join Sheaffe's men from
Fort George.
As the converging British drew near them, the Americans
on the Heights began to feel the ebbing of their victory.
The least disciplined soon lost confidence and began to
slink down to the boats; and very few boats returned when
once they had reached their own side safely. These slinkers
naturally made the most of the dangers they had been
expecting--a ruthless Indian massacre included. The
boatmen, nearly all civilians, began to desert. Alarming
doubts and rumours quickly spread confusion through the
massed militia, who now perceived that instead of crossing
to celebrate a triumph they would have to fight a battle.
John Lovett, who served with credit in the big American
battery, gave a graphic description of the scene: 'The
name of Indian, or the sight of the wounded, or the Devil,
or something else, petrified them. Not a regiment, not
a company, scarcely a man, would go.' Van Rensselaer went
through the disintegrating ranks and did his utmost to
revive the ardour which had been so impetuous only an
hour before. But he ordered, swore, and begged in vain.
Meanwhile the tide of resolution, hope, and coming triumph
was rising fast among the British. They were the attackers
now; they had one distinct objective; and their leaders
were men whose lives had been devoted to the art of war.
Sheaffe took his time. Arrived near Queenston, he saw
that his three guns and two hundred muskets there could
easily prevent the two thousand disorganized American
militia from crossing the river; so he wheeled to his
right, marched to St David's, and then, wheeling to his
left, gained the Heights two miles beyond the enemy. The
men from Chippawa marched in and joined him. The line of
attack was formed, with the Indians spread out on the
flanks and curving forward. The British in Queenston,
seeing the utter impotence of the Americans who refused
to cross over, turned their fire against the Heights;
and the invaders at once realized that their position
had now become desperate.
When Sheaffe struck inland an immediate change of the
American front was required to meet him. Hitherto the
Americans on the Heights had faced down-stream, towards
Queenston, at right angles to the river. Now they were
obliged to face inland, with their backs to the river.
Wadsworth, the American militia brigadier, a very gallant
member of a very gallant family, immediately waived his
rank in favour of Colonel Winfield Scott, a well-trained
regular. Scott and Wadsworth then did all that men could
do in such a dire predicament. But most of the militia
became unmanageable, some of the regulars were comparatively
raw; there was confusion in front, desertion in the rear,
and no coherent whole to meet the rapidly approaching shock.
On came the steady British line, with the exultant Indians
thrown well forward on the flanks; while the indomitable
single gun at Vrooman's Point backed up Holcroft's two
guns in Queenston, and the two hundred muskets under
Dennis joined in this distracting fire against the American
right till the very last moment. The American left was
in almost as bad a case, because it had got entangled in
the woods beyond the summit and become enveloped by the
Indians there. The rear was even worse, as men slank off
from it at every opportunity. The front stood fast under
Winfield Scott and Wadsworth. But not for long. The
British brought their bayonets down and charged. The
Indians raised the war-whoop and bounded forward. The
Americans fired a hurried, nervous, straggling fusillade;
then broke and fled in wild confusion. A very few climbed
down the cliff and swam across. Not a single boat came
over from the 'petrified' militia. Some more Americans,
attempting flight, were killed by falling headlong or by
drowning. Most of them clustered among the trees near
the edge and surrendered at discretion when Winfield
Scott, seeing all was lost, waved his handkerchief on
the point of his sword.
The American loss was about a hundred killed, two hundred
wounded, and nearly a thousand prisoners. The British
loss was trifling by comparison, only a hundred and fifty
altogether. But it included Brock; and his irreparable
death alone was thought, by friend and foe alike, to have
more than redressed the balance. This, indeed, was true
in a much more pregnant sense than those who measure by
mere numbers could ever have supposed. For genius is a
thing apart from mere addition and subtraction. It is
the incarnate spirit of great leaders, whose influence
raises to its utmost height the worth of every follower.
So when Brock's few stood fast against the invader's
many, they had his soaring spirit to uphold them as well
as the soul and body of their own disciplined strength.
Brock's proper fame may seem to be no more than that
which can be won by any conspicuously gallant death at
some far outpost of a mighty empire. He ruled no rich
and populous dominions. He commanded no well-marshalled
host. He fell, apparently defeated, just as his first
real battle had begun. And yet, despite of this, he was
the undoubted saviour of a British Canada. Living, he
was the heart of her preparation during ten long years
of peace. Dead, he became the inspiration of her defence
for two momentous years of war.
CHAPTER V
1813: THE BEAVER DAMS, LAKE ERIE, AND CHATEAUGUAY
The remaining operations of 1812 are of quite minor
importance. No more than two are worthy of being mentioned
between the greater events before and after them. Both
were abortive attempts at invasion--one across the upper
Niagara, the other across the frontier south of Montreal.
After the battle of Queenston Heights Sheaffe succeeded
Brock in command of the British, and Smyth succeeded Van
Rensselaer in command of the Americans. Sheaffe was a
harsh martinet and a third-rate commander. Smyth, a
notorious braggart, was no commander at all. He did,
however, succeed in getting Sheaffe to conclude an
armistice that fully equalled Prevost's in its disregard
of British interests. After making the most of it for a
month he ended it on November 19, and began manoeuvring
round his headquarters at Black Rock near Buffalo. After
another eight days he decided to attack the British posts
at Red House and Frenchman's Creek, which were respectively
two and a half and five miles from Fort Erie. The whole
British line of the upper Niagara, from Fort Erie to
Chippawa, a distance of seventeen miles by the road along
the river, was under the command of an excellent young
officer, Colonel Bisshopp, who had between five and six
hundred men to hold his seven posts. Fort Erie had the
largest garrison--only a hundred and thirty men. Some
forty men of the 49th and two small guns were stationed
at Red House; while the light company of the 41st guarded
the bridge over Frenchman's Creek. About two o'clock in
the morning of the 28th one party of Americans pulled
across to the ferry a mile below Fort Erie, and then,
sheering off after being fired at by the Canadian militia
on guard, made for Red House a mile and a half lower
down. There they landed at three and fought a most confused
and confusing action in the dark. Friend and foe became
mixed up together; but the result was a success for the
Americans. Meanwhile, the other party landed near
Frenchman's Creek, reached the bridge, damaged it a
little, and had a fight with the 41st, who could not
drive the invaders back till reinforcements arrived. At
daylight the men from Chippawa marched into action,
Indians began to appear, and the whole situation was
re-established. The victorious British lost nearly a
hundred, which was more than a quarter of those engaged.
The beaten Americans lost more; but, being in superior
numbers, they could the better afford it.
Smyth was greatly disconcerted. But he held a boat review
on his own side of the river, and sent over a summons to
Bisshopp demanding the immediate surrender of Fort Erie
'to spare the effusion of blood.' Bisshopp rejected the
summons. But there was no effusion of blood in consequence.
Smyth planned, talked, and manoeuvred for two days more,
and then tried to make his real effort on the 1st of
December. By the time it was light enough for the British
to observe him he had fifteen hundred men in boats, who
all wanted to go back, and three thousand on shore, who
all refused to go forward. He then held a council of war,
which advised him to wait for a better chance. This closed
the campaign with what, according to Porter, one of his
own generals, was 'a scene of confusion difficult to
describe: about four thousand men without order or
restraint discharging their muskets in every direction.'
Next day 'The Committee of Patriotic Citizens' undertook
to rebuke Smyth. But he retorted, not without reason,
that the affair at Queenston is a caution against relying
on crowds who go to the banks of the Niagara to look at
a battle as on a theatrical exhibition.'
The other abortive attempt at invasion was made by the
advance-guard of the commander-in-chief's own army.
Dearborn had soon found out that his disorderly masses
at Greenbush were quite unfit to take the field. But,
four months after the declaration of war, a small
detachment, thrown forward from his new headquarters at
Plattsburg on Lake Champlain, did manage to reach St
Regis, where the frontier first meets the St Lawrence,
near the upper end of Lake St Francis, sixty miles
south-west of Montreal. Here the Americans killed Lieutenant
Rototte and a sergeant, and took the little post, which
was held by a few voyageurs. Exactly a month later, on
November 23, these Americans were themselves defeated
and driven back again. Three days earlier than this a
much stronger force of Americans had crossed the frontier
at Odelltown, just north of which there was a British
blockhouse beside the river La Colle, a muddy little
western tributary of the Richelieu, forty-seven miles
due south of Montreal. The Americans fired into each
other in the dark, and afterwards retired before the
British reinforcements. Dearborn then put his army into
winter quarters at Plattsburg, thus ending his much-heralded
campaign against Montreal before it had well begun.
The American government was much disappointed at the
failure of its efforts to make war without armies. But
it found a convenient scapegoat in Hull, who was far less
to blame than his superiors in the Cabinet. These
politicians had been wrong in every important particular
--wrong about the attitude of the Canadians, wrong about
the whole plan of campaign, wrong in separating Hull from
Dearborn, wrong in not getting men-of-war afloat on the
Lakes, wrong, above all, in trusting to untrained and
undisciplined levies. To complete their mortification,
the ridiculous gunboats, in which they had so firmly
believed, had done nothing but divert useful resources
into useless channels; while, on the other hand, the
frigates, which they had proposed to lay up altogether,
so as to save themselves from 'the ruinous folly of a
Navy,' had already won a brilliant series of duels out
at sea.
There were some searchings of heart at Washington when
all these military and naval misjudgments stood revealed.
Eustis soon followed Hull into enforced retirement; and
great plans were made for the campaign of 1813, which
was designed to wipe out the disgrace of its predecessor
and to effect the conquest of Canada for good and all.
John Armstrong, the new war secretary, and William Henry
Harrison, the new general in the West, were great
improvements on Eustis and Hull. But, even now, the
American commanders could not decide on a single decisive
attack supported by subsidiary operations elsewhere.
Montreal remained their prime objective. But they only
struck at it last of all. Michilimackinac kept their
enemy in touch with the West. But they left it completely
alone. Their general advance ought to have been secured
by winning the command of the Lakes and by the seizure
of suitable positions across the line. But they let the
first blows come from the Canadian side; and they still
left Lake Champlain to shift for itself. Their plan was
undoubtedly better than that of 1812. But it was still
all parts and no whole.
The various events were so complicated by the overlapping
of time and place all along the line that we must begin
by taking a bird's-eye view of them in territorial
sequence, starting from the farthest inland flank and
working eastward to the sea. Everything west of Detroit
may be left out altogether, because operations did not
recommence in that quarter until the campaign of the
following year.
In January the British struck successfully at Frenchtown,
more than thirty miles south of Detroit. They struck
unsuccessfully, still farther south, at Fort Meigs in
May and at Fort Stephenson in August; after which they
had to remain on the defensive, all over the Lake Erie
region, till their flotilla was annihilated at Put-in
Bay in September and their army was annihilated at Moravian
Town on the Thames in October. In the Lake Ontario region
the situation was reversed. Here the British began badly
and ended well. They surrendered York in April and Fort
George, at the mouth of the Niagara, in May. They were
also repulsed in a grossly mismanaged attack on Sackett's
Harbour two days after their defeat at Fort George. The
opposing flotillas meanwhile fought several manoeuvring
actions of an indecisive kind, neither daring to risk
battle and possible annihilation. But, as the season
advanced, the British regained their hold on the Niagara
peninsula by defeating the Americans at Stoney Creek and
the Beaver Dams in June, and by clearing both sides of
the Niagara river in December. On the upper St Lawrence
they took Ogdensburg in February. They were also completely
successful in their defence of Montreal. In June they
took the American gunboats at Isle-aux-Noix on the
Richelieu; in July they raided Lake Champlain; while in
October and November they defeated the two divisions of
the invading army at Chateauguay and Chrystler's Farm.
The British news from sea also improved as the year wore
on. The American frigate victories began to stop. The
_Shannon_ beat the _Chesapeake_. And the shadow of the Great
Blockade began to fall on the coast of the Democratic South.
The operations of 1813 are more easily understood if
taken in this purely territorial way. But in following
the progress of the war we must take them chronologically.
No attempt can be made here to describe the movements on
either side in any detail. An outline must suffice. Two
points, however, need special emphasis, as they are both
markedly characteristic of the war in general and of this
campaign in particular. First, the combined effect of
the American victories of Lake Erie and the Thames affords
a perfect example of the inseparable connection between
the water and the land. Secondly, the British victories
at the Beaver Dams and Chateauguay are striking examples
of the inter-racial connection among the forces that
defended Canada so well. The Indians did all the real
fighting at the Beaver Dams. The French Canadians fought
practically alone at Chateauguay.
The first move of the invaders in the West was designed
to recover Detroit and cut off Mackinaw. Harrison,
victorious over the Indians at Tippecanoe in 1811, was
now expected to strike terror into them once more, both
by his reputation and by the size of his forces. In
midwinter he had one wing of his army on the Sandusky,
under his own command, and the other on the Maumee, under
Winchester, a rather commonplace general. At Frenchtown
stood a little British post defended by fifty Canadians
and a hundred Indians. Winchester moved north to drive
these men away from American soil. But Procter crossed
the Detroit from Amherstburg on the ice, and defeated
Winchester's thousand whites with his own five hundred
whites and five hundred Indians at dawn on January 22,
making Winchester a prisoner. Procter was unable to
control the Indians, who ran wild. They hated the Westerners
who made up Winchester's force, as the men who had deprived
them of their lands, and they now wreaked their vengeance
on them for some time before they could be again brought
within the bounds of civilized warfare. After the battle
Procter retired to Amherstburg; Harrison began to build
Fort Meigs on the Maumee; and a pause of three months
followed all over the western scene.
But winter warfare was also going on elsewhere. A month
after Procter's success, Prevost, when passing through
Prescott, on the upper St Lawrence, reluctantly gave
Colonel Macdonell of Glengarry provisional leave to attack
Ogdensburg, from which the Americans were forwarding
supplies to Sackett's Harbour, sending out raiding parties,
and threatening the British line of communication to the
west. No sooner was Prevost clear of Prescott than
Macdonell led his four hundred regulars and one hundred
militia over the ice against the American fort. His direct
assault failed. But when he had carried the village at
the point of the bayonet the garrison ran. Macdonell then
destroyed the fort, the barracks, and four vessels. He
also took seventy prisoners, eleven guns, and a large
supply of stores.
With the spring came new movements in the West. On May
9 Procter broke camp and retired from an unsuccessful
siege of Fort Meigs (now Toledo) at the south-western
corner of Lake Erie. He had started this siege a fortnight
earlier with a thousand whites and a thousand Indians
under Tecumseh; and at first had seemed likely to succeed.
But after the first encounter the Indians began to leave;
while most of the militia had soon to be sent home to
their farms to prevent the risk of starvation. Thus
Procter presently found himself with only five hundred
effectives in face of a much superior and constantly
increasing enemy. In the summer he returned to the attack,
this time against the American position on the lower
Sandusky, nearly thirty miles east of Fort Meigs. There,
on August 2, he tried to take Fort Stephenson. But his
light guns could make no breach; and he lost a hundred
men in the assault.
Meanwhile Dearborn, having first moved up from Plattsburg
to Sackett's Harbour, had attacked York on April 27 with
the help of the new American flotilla on Lake Ontario.
This flotilla was under the personal orders of Commodore
Chauncey, an excellent officer, who, in the previous
September, had been promoted from superintendent of the
New York Navy Yard to commander-in-chief on the Lakes.
As Chauncey's forte was building and organization, he
found full scope for his peculiar talents at Sackett's
Harbour. He was also a good leader at sea and thus a
formidable enemy for the British forces at York, where
the third-rate Sheaffe was now in charge, and where
Prevost had paved the way for a British defeat by allowing
the establishment of an exposed navy yard instead of
keeping all construction safe in Kingston. Sheaffe began
his mistakes by neglecting to mount some of his guns
before Dearborn and Chauncey arrived, though he knew
these American commanders might come at any moment, and
though he also knew how important it was to save a new
British vessel that was building at York, because the
command of the lake might well depend upon her. He then
made another mistake by standing to fight in an untenable
position against overwhelming odds. He finally retreated
with all the effective regulars left, less than two
hundred, burning the ship and yard as he passed, and
leaving behind three hundred militia to make their own
terms with the enemy. He met the light company of the
8th on its way up from Kingston and turned it back. With
this retreat he left the front for good and became a
commandant of bases, a position often occupied by men
whose failures are not bad enough for courts-martial and
whose saving qualities are not good enough for any more
appointments in the field.
The Americans lost over two hundred men by an explosion
in a British battery at York just as Sheaffe was marching
off. Forty British had also been blown up in one of the
forts a little while before. Sheaffe appears to have been
a slack inspector of powder-magazines. But the Americans,
who naturally suspected other things than slack inspection,
thought a mine had been sprung on them after the fight
was over. They consequently swore revenge, burnt the
parliament buildings, looted several private houses, and
carried off books from the public library as well as
plate from the church. Chauncey, much to his credit,
afterwards sent back all the books and plate he could
recover.
Exactly a month later, on May 27, Chauncey and Dearborn
appeared off Fort George, after a run back to Sackett's
Harbour in the meantime. Vincent, Sheaffe's successor in
charge of Upper Canada, had only a thousand regulars and
four hundred militia there. Dearborn had more than four
times as many men; and Perry, soon to become famous on
Lake Erie, managed the naval part of landing them. The
American men-of-war brought the long, low, flat ground
of Mississauga Point under an irresistible cross-fire
while three thousand troops were landing on the beach
below the covering bluffs. No support could be given to
the opposing British force by the fire of Fort George,
as the village of Newark intervened. So Vincent had to
fight it out in the open. On being threatened with
annihilation he retired towards Burlington, withdrawing
the garrison of Fort George, and sending orders for all
the other troops on the Niagara to follow by the shortest
line. He had lost a third of the whole force defending
the Niagara frontier, both sides of which were now
possessed by the Americans. But by nightfall on May 29
he was standing at bay, with his remaining sixteen hundred
men, in an excellent strategical position on the Heights,
half-way between York and Fort George, in touch with
Dundas Street, the main road running east and west, and
beside Burlington Bay, where he hoped to meet the British
flotilla commanded by Yeo.
Captain Sir James Lucas Yeo was an energetic and capable
young naval officer of thirty, whom the Admiralty had
sent out with a few seamen to take command on the Lakes
under Prevost's orders. He had been only seventeen days
at Kingston when he sailed out with Prevost, on May 27,
to take advantage of Chauncey's absence at the western
end of the lake. Arrived before Sackett's Harbour, the
attack was planned for the 29th. The landing force of
seven hundred and fifty men was put in charge of Baynes,
the adjutant-general, a man only too well fitted to do
the 'dirty work' of the general staff under a weak
commander-in-chief like Prevost. All went wrong at
Sackett's Harbour. Prevost was 'present but not in
command'; Baynes landed at the wrong place. Nevertheless,
the British regulars scattered the American militiamen,
pressed back the American regulars, set fire to the
barracks, and halted in front of the fort. The Americans,
thinking the day was lost, set fire to their stores and
to Chauncey's new ships. Then Baynes and Prevost suddenly
decided to retreat. Baynes explained to Prevost, and
Prevost explained in a covering dispatch to the British
government, that the fleet could not co-operate, that
the fort could not be taken, and that the landing party
was not strong enough. But, if this was true, why did
they make an attack at all; and, if it was not true, why
did they draw back when success seemed to be assured?
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