The War With the United States by William Wood

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Not a moment was lost in following up this splendid feat
of arms. The Indians drove the American militia out of
Lewiston, which the advancing redcoats burnt to the
ground. Fort Schlosser fell next, then Black Rock, and
finally Buffalo. Each was laid in ashes. Thus, before
1813 ended, the whole American side of the Niagara was
nothing but one long, bare line of blackened desolation,
with the sole exception of Fort Niagara, which remained
secure in British hands until the war was over.

CHAPTER VI

1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND THE GREAT BLOCKADE

In the closing phase of the struggle by land and sea the
fortunes of war may, with the single exception of
Plattsburg, be most conveniently followed territorially,
from one point to the next, along the enormous irregular
curve of five thousand miles which was the scene of
operations. This curve begins at Prairie du Chien, where
the Wisconsin joins the Mississippi, and ends at New
Orleans, where the Mississippi is about to join the sea.
It runs easterly along the Wisconsin, across to the Fox,
into Lake Michigan, across to Mackinaw, eastwards through
Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, down the St Lawrence,
round to Halifax, round from there to Maine, and thence
along the whole Atlantic coast, south and west--about
into the Gulf of Mexico.

The blockade of the Gulf of Mexico was an integral part
of the British plan. But the battle of New Orleans, which
was a complete disaster for the British arms, stands
quite outside the actual war, since it was fought on
January 8, 1815, more than two weeks after the terms of
peace had been settled by the Treaty of Ghent. This
peculiarity about its date, taken in conjunction with
its extreme remoteness from the Canadian frontier, puts
it beyond the purview of the present chronicle.

All the decisive actions of the campaign proper were
fought within two months. They began at Prairie du Chien
in July and ended at Plattsburg in September. Plattsburg
is the one exception to the order of place. The tide of
war and British fortune flowed east and south to reach
its height at Washington in August. It turned at Plattsburg
in September.

Neither friend nor foe went west in 1813. But in April
1814 Colonel McDouall set out with ninety men, mostly of
the Newfoundland regiment, to reinforce Mackinaw. He
started from the little depot which had been established
on the Nottawasaga, a river flowing into the Georgian
Bay and accessible by the overland trail from York.

After surmounting the many difficulties of the inland
route which he had to take in order to avoid the Americans
in the Lake Erie region, and after much hard work against
the Lake Huron ice, he at last reached Mackinaw on the
18th of May. Some good fighting Indians joined him there;
and towards the end of June he felt strong enough to send
Colonel McKay against the American post at Prairie du
Chien. McKay arrived at this post in the middle of July
and captured the whole position--fort, guns, garrison,
and a vessel on the Mississippi.

Meanwhile seven hundred Americans under Croghan, the
American officer who had repulsed Procter at Fort Stephenson
the year before, were making for Mackinaw itself. They
did some private looting at the Sault, burnt the houses
at St Joseph's Island, and landed in full force at Mackinaw
on the 4th of August. McDouall had less than two hundred
men, Indians included. But he at once marched out to the
attack and beat the Americans back to their ships, which
immediately sailed away. The British thenceforth commanded
the whole three western lakes until the war was over.

The Lake Erie region remained quite as decisively commanded
by the Americans. They actually occupied only the line
of the Detroit. But they had the power to cut any
communications which the British might try to establish
along the north side of the lake. They had suffered a
minor reverse at Chatham in the previous December. But
in March they more than turned the tables by defeating
Basden's attack in the Longwoods at Delaware, near London;
and in October seven hundred of their mounted men raided
the line of the Thames and only just stopped short of
the Grand River, the western boundary of the Niagara
peninsula.

The Niagara frontier, as before, was the scene of desperate
strife. The Americans were determined to wrest it from
the British, and they carefully trained their best troops
for the effort. Their prospects seemed bright, as the
whole of Upper Canada was suffering from want of men and
means, both civil and military. Drummond, the British
commander-in-chief there, felt very anxious not only
about the line of the Niagara but even about the neck of
the whole peninsula, from Burlington westward to Lake
Erie. He had no more than 4,400 troops, all told; and he
was obliged to place them so as to be ready for an attack
either from the Niagara or from Lake Erie, or from both
together. Keeping his base at York with a thousand men,
he formed his line with its right on Burlington and its
left on Fort Niagara. He had 500 men at Burlington, 1,000
at Fort George, and 700 at Fort Niagara. The rest were
thrown well forward, so as to get into immediate touch
with any Americans advancing from the south. There were
300 men at Queenston, 500 at Chippawa, 150 at Fort Erie,
and 250 at Long Point on Lake Erie.

Brown, the American general who had beaten Prevost at
Sackett's Harbour and who had now superseded Wilkinson,
had made his advanced field base at Buffalo. His total
force was not much more than Drummond's. But it was all
concentrated into a single striking body which possessed
the full initiative of manoeuvre and attack. On July 3
Brown crossed the Niagara to the Canadian side. The same
day he took Fort Erie from its little garrison; and at
once began to make it a really formidable work, as the
British found out to their cost later on. Next day he
advanced down the river road to Street's Creek. On hearing
this, General Riall, Drummond's second-in-command, gathered
two thousand men and advanced against Brown, who had
recommenced his own advance with four thousand. They met
on the 5th, between Street's Creek and the Chippawa river.
Riall at once sent six hundred men, including all his
Indians and militia, against more than twice their number
of American militia, who were in a strong position on
the inland flank. The Canadians went forward in excellent
style and the Americans broke and fled in wild confusion.
Seizing such an apparently good chance, Riall then attacked
the American regulars with his own, though the odds he
had to face here were more than three against two. The
opposing lines met face to face unflinchingly. The
Americans, who had now been trained and disciplined by
proper leaders, refused to yield an inch. Their two
regular brigadiers, Winfield Scott and Ripley, kept them
well in hand, manoeuvred their surplus battalions to the
best advantage, overlapped the weaker British flank, and
won the day. The British loss was five hundred, or one
in four: the American four hundred, or only one in ten.

Brown then turned Riall's flank, by crossing the Chippawa
higher up, and prepared for the crowning triumph of
crushing Drummond. He proposed a joint attack with Chauncey
on Forts Niagara and George. But Chauncey happened to be
ill at the time; he had not yet defeated Yeo; and he
strongly resented being made apparently subordinate to
Brown. So the proposed combination failed at the critical
moment. But, for the eighteen days between the battle of
Chippawa on the 5th of July and Brown's receipt of
Chauncey's refusal on the 23rd, the Americans carried
all before them, right up to the British line that ran
along the western end of Lake Ontario, from Fort Niagara
to Burlington. During this period no great operations
took place. But two minor incidents served to exasperate
feelings on both sides. Eight Canadian traitors were
tried and hanged at Ancaster near Burlington; and Loyalists
openly expressed their regret that Willcocks and others
had escaped the same fate. Willcocks had been the
ring-leader of the parliamentary opposition to Brock in
1812; and had afterwards been exceedingly active on the
American side, harrying every Loyalist he and his raiders
could lay their hands on. He ended by cheating the gallows,
after all, as he fell in a skirmish towards the end of
the present campaign on the Niagara frontier. The other
exasperating incident was the burning of St David's on
July 19 by a Colonel Stone; partly because it was a 'Tory
village' and partly because the American militia mistakenly
thought that one of their officers, Brigadier-General
Swift, had been killed by a prisoner to whom he had given
quarter.

When, on the 23rd of July, Brown at last received Chauncey's
disappointing answer, he immediately stopped manoeuvring
along the lower Niagara and prepared to execute an
alternative plan of marching diagonally across the Niagara
peninsula straight for the British position at Burlington.
To do this he concentrated at the Chippawa on the 24th.
But by the time he was ready to put his plan into execution,
on the morning of the 25th, he found himself in close
touch with the British in his immediate front. Their
advanced guard of a thousand men, under Colonel Pearson,
had just taken post at Lundy's Lane, near the Falls.
Their main body, under Riall, was clearing both banks of
the lower Niagara. And Drummond himself had just arrived
at Fort Niagara. Neither side knew the intentions of the
other. But as the British were clearing the whole country
up to the Falls, and as the Americans were bent on striking
diagonally inland from a point beside the Falls, it
inevitably happened that each met the other at Lundy's
Lane, which runs inland from the Canadian side of the
Falls, at right angles to the river, and therefore between
the two opposing armies.

When Drummond, hurrying across from York, landed at Fort
Niagara in the early morning of the fateful 25th, he
found that the orders he had sent over on the 23rd were
already being carried out, though in a slightly modified
form. Colonel Tucker was marching off from Fort Niagara
to Lewiston, which he took without opposition. Then,
first making sure that the heights beyond were also clear,
he crossed over the Niagara to Queenston, where his men
had dinner with those who had marched up on the Canadian
side from Fort George. Immediately after dinner half the
total sixteen hundred present marched back to garrison
Forts George and Niagara, while the other half marched
forward, up-stream, on the Canadian side, with Drummond,
towards Lundy's Lane, whither Riall had preceded them
with reinforcements for the advanced guard under Colonel
Pearson. In the meantime Brown had heard about the taking
of Lewiston, and, fearing that the British might take
Fort Schlosser too, had at once given up all idea of his
diagonal march on Burlington and had decided to advance
straight against Queenston instead. Thus both the American
and the British main bodies were marching on Lundy's Lane
from opposite sides and in successive detachments throughout
that long, intensely hot, midsummer afternoon.

Presently Riall got a report saying that the Americans
were advancing in one massed force instead of in successive
detachments. He thereupon ordered Pearson to retire from
Lundy's Lane to Queenston, sent back orders that Colonel
Hercules Scott, who was marching up twelve hundred men
from near St Catharine's on Twelve Mile Creek, was also
to go to Queenston, and reported both these changes to
Drummond, who was hurrying along the Queenston road
towards Lundy's Lane as fast as he could. While the
orderly officers were galloping back to Drummond and
Hercules Scott, and while Pearson was getting his men
into their order of march, Winfield Scott's brigade of
American regulars suddenly appeared on the Chippawa road,
deployed for attack, and halted. There was a pause on
both sides. Winfield Scott thought he might have Drummond's
whole force in front of him. Riall thought he was faced
by the whole of Brown's. But Winfield Scott, presently
realizing that Pearson was unsupported, resumed his
advance; while Pearson and Riall, not realizing that
Winfield Scott was himself unsupported for the time being,
immediately began to retire.

At this precise moment Drummond dashed up and drew rein.
There was not a minute to lose. The leading Americans
were coming on in excellent order, only a musket-shot
away; Pearson's thousand were just in the act of giving
up the key to the whole position; and Drummond's eight
hundred were plodding along a mile or so in rear. But
within that fleeting minute Drummond made the plan that
brought on the most desperately contested battle of the
war. He ordered Pearson's thousand back again. He brought
his own eight hundred forward at full speed. He sent
post-haste to Colonel Scott to change once more and march
on Lundy's Lane. And so, by the time the astonished
Americans were about to seize the key themselves, they
found him ready to defend it.

Too long for a hillock, too low for a hill, this key to
the whole position in that stern fight has never had a
special name. But it may well be known as Battle Rise.
It stood a mile from the Niagara river, and just a step
inland beyond the crossing of two roads. One of these,
Lundy's Lane, ran lengthwise over it, at right angles to
the Niagara. The other, which did not quite touch it,
ran in the same direction as the river, all the way from
Fort Erie to Fort George, and, of course, through both
Chippawa and Queenston. The crest of Battle Rise was a
few yards on the Chippawa side of Lundy's Lane; and there
Drummond placed his seven field-guns. Round these guns
the thickest of the battle raged, from first to last.
The odds were four thousand Americans against three
thousand British, altogether. But the British were in
superior force at first; and neither side had its full
total in action at any one time, as casualties and
reinforcements kept the numbers fluctuating.

It was past six in the evening of that stifling 25th of
July when Winfield Scott attacked with the utmost steadiness
and gallantry. Though the British outnumbered his splendid
brigade, and though they had the choice of ground as
well, he still succeeded in driving a wedge through their
left flank, a move which threatened to break them away
from the road along the river. But they retired in good
order, re-formed, and then drove out his wedge.

By half-past seven the American army had all come into
action, and Drummond was having hard work to hold his
own. Brown, like Winfield Scott, at once saw the supreme
importance of taking Battle Rise; so he sent two complete
battalions against it, one of regulars leading, the other,
of militia, in support. At the first salvo from Drummond's
seven guns the American militia broke and ran away. But
Colonel Miller worked some of the American regulars very
cleverly along the far side of a creeper-covered fence,
while the rest engaged the battery from a distance. In
the heat of action the British artillerymen never saw
their real danger till, on a given signal, Miller's
advanced party all sprang up and fired a point-blank
volley which killed or wounded every man beside the guns.
Then Miller charged and took the battery. But he only
held it for a moment. The British centre charged up their
own side of Battle Rise and drove the intruders back,
after a terrific struggle with the bayonet. But again
success was only for the moment. The Americans rallied
and pressed the British back. The British then rallied
and returned. And so the desperate fight swayed back and
forth across the coveted position; till finally both
sides retired exhausted, and the guns stood dumb between
them.

It was now pitch-dark, and the lull that followed seemed
almost like the end of the fight. But, after a considerable
pause, the Americans--all regulars this time--came on
once more. This put the British in the greatest danger.
Drummond had lost nearly a third of his men. The effective
American regulars were little less than double his present
twelve hundred effectives of all kinds and were the
fresher army of the two. Miller had taken one of the guns
from Battle Rise. The other six could not be served
against close-quarter musketry; and the nearest Americans
were actually resting between the cross-roads and the
deserted Rise. Defeat looked certain for the British.
But, just as the attackers and defenders began to stir
again, Colonel Hercules Scott's twelve hundred weary
reinforcements came plodding along the Queenston road,
wheeled round the corner into Lundy's Lane, and stumbled
in among these nearest Americans, who, being the more
expectant of the two, drove them back in confusion. The
officers, however, rallied the men at once. Drummond told
off eight hundred of them, including three hundred militia,
to the reserve; prolonged his line to the right with the
rest; and thus re-established the defence.

Hardly had the new arrivals taken breath before the final
assault began. Again the Americans took the silent battery.
Again the British drove them back. Again the opposing
lines swayed to and fro across the deadly crest of Battle
Rise, with nothing else to guide them through the hot,
black night but their own flaming musketry. The Americans
could not have been more gallant and persistent in attack:
the British could not have been more steadfast in defence.
Midnight came; but neither side could keep its hold on
Battle Rise. By this time Drummond was wounded; and Riall
was both wounded and a prisoner. Among the Americans
Brown and Winfield Scott were also wounded, while their
men were worn out after being under arms for nearly
eighteen hours. A pause of sheer exhaustion followed.
Then, slowly and sullenly, as if they knew the one more
charge they could not make must carry home, the foiled
Americans turned back and felt their way to Chippawa.

The British ranks lay down in the same order as that in
which they fought; and a deep hush fell over the whole,
black-shrouded battlefield. The immemorial voice of those
dread Falls to which no combatant gave heed for six long
hours of mortal strife was heard once more. But near at
hand there was no other sound than that which came from
the whispered queries of a few tired officers on duty;
from the busy orderlies and surgeons at their work of
mercy; and from the wounded moaning in their pain. So
passed the quiet half of that short, momentous, summer
night. Within four hours the sun shone down on the living
and the dead--on that silent battery whose gunners had
fallen to a man--on the unconquered Rise.

The tide of war along the Niagara frontier favoured
neither side for some time after Lundy's Lane, though
the Americans twice appeared to be regaining the initiative.
On August 15 there was a well-earned American victory at
Fort Erie, where Drummond's assault was beaten off with
great loss to the British. A month later an American
sortie was repulsed. On September 21 Drummond retired
beaten; and on October 13 he found himself again on the
defensive at Chippawa, with little more than three thousand
men, while Izard, who had come with American reinforcements
from Lake Champlain and Sackett's Harbour, was facing
him with twice as many. But Yeo's fleet had now come up
to the mouth of the Niagara, while Chauncey's had remained
at Sackett's Harbour. Thus the British had the priceless
advantage of a movable naval base at hand, while the
Americans had none at all within supporting distance.
Every step towards Lake Ontario hampered Izard more and
more, while it added corresponding strength to Drummond.
An American attempt to work round Drummond's flank, twelve
miles inland, was also foiled by a heavy skirmish on
October 19 at Cook's Mills; and Izard's definite abandonment
of the invasion was announced on November 5 by his blowing
up Fort Erie and retiring into winter quarters. This
ended the war along the whole Niagara.

The campaign on Lake Ontario was very different. It opened
two months earlier. The naval competition consisted rather
in building than in fighting. The British built ships in
Kingston, the Americans in Sackett's Harbour; and reports
of progress soon travelled across the intervening space
of less than forty miles. The initiative of combined
operations by land and water was undertaken by the British
instead of by the Americans. Yeo and Drummond wished to
attack Sackett's Harbour with four thousand men. But
Prevost said he could spare them only three thousand;
whereupon they changed their objective to Oswego, which
they took in excellent style, on May 6. The British
suffered a serious reverse, though on a very much smaller
scale, on May 30, at Sandy Creek, between Oswego and
Sackett's Harbour, when a party of marines and bluejackets,
sent to cut out some vessels with naval stores for
Chauncey, was completely lost, every man being either
killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

From Lake Ontario down to the sea the Canadian frontier
was never seriously threatened; and the only action of
any consequence was fought to the south of Montreal in
the early spring. On March 30 the Americans made a last
inglorious attempt in this direction. Wilkinson started
with four thousand men to follow the line of Lake Champlain
and the Richelieu river, the same that was tried by
Dearborn in 1812 and by Hampton in 1813. At La Colle,
only four miles across the frontier, he attacked Major
Handcock's post of two hundred men. The result was like
a second Chateauguay. Handcock drew in three hundred
reinforcements and two gunboats from Isle-aux-Noix.
Wilkinson's advanced guard lost its way overnight. In
the morning he lacked the resolution to press on, even
with his overwhelming numbers; and so, after a part of
his army had executed some disjointed manoeuvres, he
withdrew the whole and gave up in despair.

From this point of the Canadian frontier to the very end
of the five-thousand-mile loop, that is, from Montreal
to Mexico, the theatre of operations was directly based
upon the sea, where the British Navy was by this time
undisputedly supreme. A very few small American men-of-war
were still at large, together with a much greater number
of privateers. But they had no power whatever even to
mitigate the irresistible blockade of the whole coast-line
of the United States. American sea-borne commerce simply
died away; for no mercantile marine could have any
independent life when its trade had to be carried on by
a constantly decreasing tonnage; when, too, it could go
to sea at all only by furtive evasion, and when it had
to take cargo at risks so great that they could not be
covered either by insurance or by any attainable profits.
The Atlantic being barred by this Great Blockade, and
the Pacific being inaccessible, the only practical way
left open to American trade was through the British lines
by land or sea. Some American seamen shipped in British
vessels. Some American ships sailed under British colours.
But the chief external American trade was done illicitly,
by 'underground,' with the British West Indies and with
Canada itself. This was, of course, in direct defiance
of the American government, and to the direct detriment
of the United States as a nation. It was equally to the
direct benefit of the British colonies in general and of
Nova Scotia in particular. American harbours had never
been so dull. Quebec and Halifax had never been so
prosperous. American money was drained away from the
warlike South and West and either concentrated in the
Northern States--which were opposed to the war--or paid
over into British hands.

Nor was this all. The British Navy harried the coast in
every convenient quarter and made effective the work of
two most important joint attacks, one on Maine, the other
on Washington itself. The attack on Maine covered two
months, altogether, from July 11 to September 11. It
began with the taking of Moose Island by Sir Thomas Hardy,
Nelson's old flag-captain at Trafalgar, and ended with
the surrender, at Machias, of 'about 100 miles of
sea-coast,' together with 'that intermediate tract of
country which separates the province of New Brunswick
from Lower Canada.' On September 21 Sir John Sherbrooke
proclaimed at Halifax the formal annexation of 'all the
eastern side of the Penobscot river and all the country
lying between the same river and the boundary of New
Brunswick.'

The attack on Maine was meant, in one sense at least, to
create a partial counterpoise to the American preponderance
on Lake Erie. The attack on Washington was made in
retaliation for the burning of the old and new capitals
of Upper Canada, Newark and York.

The naval defence of Washington had been committed to
Commodore Barney, a most expert and gallant veteran of
the Revolution, who handled his wholly inadequate little
force with consummate skill and daring, both afloat and
ashore. He was not, strictly speaking, a naval officer,
but a privateersman who had made the unique record of
taking eleven prizes in ten consecutive days with his
famous Baltimore schooner _Rossie_. The military defence
was committed to General Winder, one of the two generals
captured by Harvey's '704 firelocks' at Stoney Creek the
year before. Winder was a good soldier and did his best
in the seven weeks at his disposal. But the American
government, which had now enjoyed continuous party power
for no less than thirteen years, gave him no more than
four hundred regulars, backed by Barney's four hundred
excellent seamen and the usual array of militia, with
whom to defend the capital in the third campaign of a
war they had themselves declared. There were 93,500
militiamen within the threatened area. But only fifteen
thousand were got under arms; and only five thousand were
brought into action.

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