Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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"What is it?" he asks.

"They are running up the stars and stripes, sir."

A smile passed over Pike's face. When the surgeon looked again, the
commander was dead. For twenty-four hours the haggle went on as to
terms of capitulation. Within that time, two or three things occurred
to inflame the invading troops. They learned that Sheaffe had slipped
away; as the American general's report put it, "They got the shell, but
the kernel of the nut got away." They learned that stores had been
destroyed after the surrender had been granted. Without more
restraint, and in defiance of orders, the American troops gave
themselves up to plunder all that night. In their rummaging through
the Parliament buildings they found hanging above the Speaker's chair
what Canadian records declare was a _wig_, what American reports say
was a _human scalp_ sent in by some ranger from the west. From what I
have read in the private papers of fur traders {355} in that period
regarding international scalping, I am inclined to think that wig may
have been an American scalp. Certainly, the fur traders of
Michilimackinac wrapped no excuses round their savagery when the canoes
all over the coasts of Lake Superior, in lieu of flags, had American
scalps flaunting from their prows. At all events, word went out that
an American scalp had been found above the Speaker's chair. It was
night. The troops were drunk with success and perhaps with the plunder
of the wine shops. All that night and all the next day and night the
skies were alight with the flames of Toronto's public buildings on
fire. Also, the army chest with ten thousand dollars in gold, which
Sheaffe had forgotten, was dug up on pain of the whole town being fired
unless the money were delivered. Private houses were untouched.
Looted provisions which the fleet cannot carry away, Chauncey orders
distributed among the poor. Then, leaving some four hundred prisoners
on parole not to serve again during the war, Chauncey sails away for
Niagara.

It is a month later. Down at Fort George on the Canadian side General
Vincent knows well what has happened at Toronto and is on the lookout
for the enemy's fleet. On the American side of the Niagara River, from
Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, are seven thousand troops eager to wipe out
the stain of last year's defeat. On the Canadian side, from Fort
George to Chippewa and Erie, are twenty-three hundred men, mostly
volunteers from surrounding farms, and powder is scarce and provisions
are scarce, for Chauncey's fleet has cut off help from St. Lawrence and
Kingston way. All the last two weeks of May, heavy hot fog lay on the
lake and on the river between the hostile lines, but there was no
mistaking what Chauncey's fleet was about. Red-hot shot showers on
Fort George in a perfect rain. Standing on the other side of the river
are thousands of spectators, among them one grand old swashbuckler
fellow in a cocked hat, whose fighting days are past, taking snuff
after the fashion of a former generation and wearing an air of grand
patronage to the American troops because _he_ has seen service in
Europe.

{356} "No, sir," says the grand old fighting cock pompously to his
auditors, "can't be done! Have seen it tried on the Continent, and you
can't do it! Lay a wager you can't do it! Can't possibly set fire to
a fort by red-hot shot!"

Then at night time, when the lurid glare of flame lights up the foggy
darkness, the old gentleman is put to his trumps. "See!" they say;
"Fort George _is_ on fire"; and over at Fort George the bucket brigade
works hard as the cannoneers. But the fog is too good a chance to be
missed by Chauncey; rowing out with muffled oars all the nights of May
24 and 25, he has his men sounding . . . sounding . . . sounding in
silence the channel, right within pistol shot of Fort George. The
night of the 26th troops and marines are bidden breakfast at two in the
morning, and be ready for action with a single blanket and rations for
one day. That is all they are told. They embark at four. The waters
are dead calm, the morning of the 27th gray as wool with fog. Sweeps
out Chauncey's fleet, circles up to Fort George with one hundred scows
in tow, carrying fifty soldiers each. Vincent takes his courage in his
teeth and gathers his one thousand men inside the walls. Then the
cannon of the frigates split fog and air and earth, and, under cover of
the fire, the scows gain the land by 9 A.M. First, Vincent's
sharpshooters sally from the fort and fire; then they fire from the
walls; then they overturn guns, retreat from the walls, throw what
powder they cannot carry into the water, and retreat, fighting, behind
stone walls and ditches. The contest of one thousand against six
thousand is hopeless. Vincent sends coureurs riding like the wind to
Chippewa and Queenston and Erie, ordering the Canadians to retire to
the Back Country. By four o'clock in the afternoon Americans are in
possession of the Canadian side from Fort George to Erie. Vincent
retreats at quick march along the lake shore towards what is now
Hamilton. June 1 General Dearborn sends his officers, Chandler and
Winder, in hot pursuit with thirty-five hundred men.

Vincent's soldiers have less than ninety rounds of powder to a man. He
has only one thousand men, for the garrisons of {357} Chippewa and
Queenston Heights and Erie have fallen back in a circle to the region
of St. David's. June 5, Vincent's Canadians are in camp at Burlington
Bay. Only seven miles away, at Stony Creek, lies the American army,
out sentries posted at a church, artillery on a height commanding a
field, officers and men asleep in the long grass. Humanly speaking,
nothing could prevent a decisive battle the next day. The two American
officers, Chandler and Winder, sit late into the night, candles alight
over camp stools, mapping out what they think should be the campaign.
It is a hot night,--muggy, with June showers lighted up by an
occasional flash of sheet lightning. Then all candles out, and pitch
darkness, and silence as of a desert! The American army is asleep,--in
the dead sleep of men exhausted from long, hard, swift marching. The
artillerymen on the hillocks, the sentries, the outposts at the
church,--they, too, are sound asleep!

[Illustration: FITZGIBBONS]

But the Canadians, too, know that, humanly speaking, nothing can
prevent a decisive battle on the morrow. The stories run--I do not
vouch for their truth, though facts seem to point to some such
explanation--that Harvey, a Canadian officer, had come back to the
American army that night disguised as a Quaker peddling potatoes, and
noted the unguarded condition of the exhausted troops; also that
Fitzgibbons, the famous scout, came through the American lines dressed
as a rustic selling butter. Whether these stories are true or not, or
whether, indeed, the Canadians knew anything about the American camp,
they plucked resolution from desperation. If they waited for the
morrow's battle, they would be beaten. Harvey proposed to Vincent that
seven {358} hundred picked men go back through the dark and raid the
American camp. Vincent left the entire matter to Harvey. Setting out
at 11.30 along what is now Main Street, Hamilton, the Canadians marched
in perfect silence. Harvey had given orders that not a shot should be
fired, not a word spoken, the bayonet alone to be used. By two in the
morning of June 6 the marchers came to the church where the sentries
were posted. Two were stabbed to death before they awakened. The
third was compelled to give the password, then bayoneted in turn. The
Canadian raiders might have come to the very midst of the American army
if it had not been for the jubilant hilarity of some young officers,
who, capturing a cannon, uttered a wild huzza. On the instant, bugles
sounded alarm; drums beat a crazy tattoo, and every man leaped from his
place in the grass, hand on pistol. The next second the blackness of
the night was ablaze with musketry; the soldiers were firing blindly;
officers were shouting orders that nobody heard; troops were dashing
here, there, everywhere, lost in the darkness, the heavy artillery
horses breaking tether ropes and stampeding over the field. Major
Plenderleath with a company of young Canadians suddenly found himself
in the midst of the American camp. One of the young raiders stabbed
seven Americans to death; a brother bayoneted four, and before daylight
betrayed the smallness of their forces the raiders came safely off with
three guns and one hundred prisoners, including the two American
officers, Winder and Chandler. The loss to the British was one hundred
and fifteen killed and wounded; but there would be no battle the next
day. The battle of Stony Creek sent the Americans retreating back down
the lake front to Fort George, harried by the English fleet under Sir
James Yeo from Kingston. A hundred episodes might be related of the
Stony Creek raid. For years it was to be the theme of camp-fire yarns.
For instance, in the flare of musketry fire a Canadian found himself
gazing straight along the blade of an American's bayonet. "Sir, the
password," demanded the American sentry. Luckily the scout, instead of
wearing an English red coat, had on a blue jacket resembling {359} that
of the American marines, and he instantly took his cue. "Rascal," he
thundered back, "what do you mean, off your line? Go back to your
post!" The sentry's bayonet dropped; there was momentary darkness, and
the Canadian literally bolted. Then ludicrous ill luck befell all the
generals. Vincent had accompanied the raiders on horseback. When the
bugles sounded "retire," he gave his horse the bit, and in the pitch
darkness the brute carried him pellmell along the wrong road, over
fences and hayfields, some fifteen miles into the Back Country. Next
day, when Vincent was missing, under flag of truce messengers went to
the retreating American army to find if he were among the dead. At
four in the afternoon his horse came limping into the Canadian camp.
Chandler, the American officer, on awakening had sprung on horseback
and spurred over the field shouting commands. In the darkness his
horse fell and threw him. When Chandler came to himself he was
prisoner among the Canadians. Winder's ill luck was equally bad. By
the flare of the firing he saw what he thought was a group of
artillerymen deserting a gun. Dashing up, he laid about him with his
pistol, shouting, "Come on! come on!" Another flare of fire, and he
found himself surrounded by a circle of Canadian bayonets. "Drop your
pistol, sir, or you are a dead man," ordered a young Canadian, and
Winder surrendered.

It will be recalled that the garrisons of Queenston below the Falls,
and Chippewa above, and Erie at the head of the river, had retreated
from the invading Americans to the Back Country now traversed by
Welland Canal. From different posts beyond what was known as the Black
Swamp, these bands of the dispersed Canadian army swooped down on the
American outposts, harrying the whole American line from Lake Ontario
to Lake Erie. Of all the raiders none was more daring than Lieutenant
Fitzgibbons, posted beyond the Beaver Dams, at a stone house near De
Ceu's Falls. Space forbids more than one episode of his raids. Once,
while riding along Lundy's Lane alone, he was recognized by the wife of
a Canadian captain, who dashed from {360} the cottage, warning him to
retreat, as a hundred and fifty Americans had just passed that way.
Standing in front of the roadside inn was the cavalry horse of an
American. Fitzgibbons could n't resist the temptation for a bout with
the foe, and dismounting, was entering the door when a soldier in blue
dashed at him with leveled musket. Naturally not keen to create alarm,
Fitzgibbons knocked the weapon from the man's hand, and without a sound
had thrown him on the ground, when another American rifleman dashed
from behind. Strong as a lion, Fitzgibbons threw the first man
violently against the second, and was holding both at bay beneath his
leveled rifle when one of the downed men snatched the Irishman's sword
from the scabbard. He was in the very act of thrusting the sword point
into Fitzgibbons, when the innkeeper's wife, with a dexterous kick,
sent the weapon whirling out of his hand. Fitzgibbons disarmed the
men, tied them, threw them across his horse, and himself mounting,
galloped to the woods with a laugh, though one hundred and fifty
Americans were within a quarter of a mile.

The American commanders at Niagara determined to clean out this nest of
raiders from the Back Country, and Lieutenant Boerstler was ordered to
march from Fort George with some six hundred men. Leaving Fort George
secretly at night, Boerstler came to Queenston at eleven on the night
of June 23. Here all Canadian soldiers free on parole were seized, to
prevent word of the attack reaching the Back Country. The troops were
not even permitted to light camp fire or candles. The great secrecy of
the American marchers at once roused suspicion among the Canadians
between Queenston and the village of St. David's that the expedition
was directed against Fitzgibbons' scouts. At his home, between
Queenston and St. David's, dwelt a United Empire Loyalist, James
Secord, recovering from dangerous wounds received in the battle of
Queenston Heights. He was too weak himself to go by night and forewarn
Fitzgibbons, but his wife, Laura Ingersoll, a woman of some thirty
years, was also of the old United Empire Loyalist stock. She
immediately set out alone for the Back Country to warn Fitzgibbons.
{361} Many and contradictory stories are told of her march. Whether
she tramped two nights and two days, or only one night and one day,
whether her march led her twenty or only twelve miles, matters little.
She succeeded in passing the first sentry on the excuse she was going
out to milk a cow, and she eluded a second by telling him she wished to
visit a wounded brother, which was true. Then she struck away from the
beaten path through what was known as the Black Swamp. It had rained
heavily. The cedar woods were soggy with moisture, the swamp swollen,
and the streams running a mill race. Through the summer heat, through
the windfall, over the quaking forest bog, tramped Laura Secord. It
may be supposed that the most of wild animals had been frightened from
the woods by the heavy cannonading for almost a year; but the hoot of
screech owl, the eldritch scream of wild cat, the far howl of the wolf
pack hanging on the trail of the armies for carrion, were not sounds
quieting to the nerves of a frightened woman flitting through the
forest by moonlight. It was clear moonlight when she came within range
of Beaver Dam and De Ceu's house. She had just emerged in an open
field when she was assailed with unearthly yells, and a thousand
ambushed Indians rose from the grass.

[Illustration: LAURA SECORD]

"Woman! A woman! What does a white woman here?" demanded the chief,
seizing her arm. She answered that she was a friend and it was matter
of life and death for her to see {362} Fitzgibbons at once. So Laura
Secord delivered her warning and saved the Canadian army. The episode
has gone down to history one of the national legends, like the story of
Madeline Vercheres on the St. Lawrence. Fitzgibbons posts his forty
men in place, and Ducharme, commander of the Indians, scatters his one
thousand redskins in ambush along the trail. Also, word is sent for
two other detachments to come with all speed.

June 24, at seven in the morning, Boerstler is moving along a narrow
forest trail through the beech woods of Beaver Dams. The men are
advancing single file, mounted infantrymen first with muskets slouched
across saddle pommels, then the heavy wagons, then cavalry to rear.
The timber is heavy, the trail winding. Here the long line deploys out
from the trail to avoid jumping windfall; there halt is made to cut a
way for the wagons; then the long line moves sleepily forward, yellow
sunlight shafted through the green foliage across the riders' blue
uniforms. Suddenly a shot rings out, and another, and another! The
forest is full of unseen foes, before, behind, on all sides, the
cavalry forces breaking rank and dashing forward among the wagons.
Boerstler sees it will be as unsafe to retreat as to go on. Sending
messengers back to Fort George for aid, he pushes forward into an open
wheat field. Fifty-six men have fallen, and the bullets are still
raining from an invisible foe. Looking back he sees mounted men in
green coats passing and repassing across his trail, filing and
refiling. It is a trick of Fitzgibbons to give an impression he has
ten times forty men, but the Americans do not know. There is no
retreat, and Indians are to the fore. In the midst of confusion
Fitzgibbons comes forward with a white handkerchief on his sword point
and begs Boerstler to prevent bloodshed by instant surrender.
Boerstler demands to see the number of his enemies. Fitzgibbons says
he will repeat the request to his commanding officer. Luck is with
Fitzgibbons, for just as he goes back a small party of reenforcements
arrives, and one of its captains acts the part of commanding officer,
telling Boerstler's messenger haughtily that the demand to see the
enemy is an insult, and answer must be given in five minutes {363} or
the Canadians will not be responsible for the Indians. The fight has
lasted three hours. Boerstler surrenders with his entire force. Such
was the battle of Beaver Dams.

Ever since Brock had captured Detroit in 1812, General Procter, with
twenty-five hundred Canadians, had been holding the western part of
Ontario; and the defeat of the English at Fort George had placed him in
a desperate position. His men had been without pay for months; their
clothes were in tatters, and now, with the Americans in possession of
Niagara region, there was danger of Procter's food supply being cut
off. Procter himself had not been idle these six months. In fact, he
had been too active for the good of his supplies. Space forbids a
detailed account of the raids directed by him and carried out with the
aid of Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief. January of 1813 saw a
detachment of Procter's men up Raisin River, west of Detroit, where
they defeated General Winchester and captured nearly five hundred
prisoners, to be set free on parole. Harrison, the American general,
is on his way to Lake Erie to rescue Detroit. Procter hastens in May
to meet him with one thousand Canadians and fifteen hundred Indians.
The clash takes place at a barricade known as Fort Meigs on Maumee
River, south of Lake Erie, when again, by the aid of Tecumseh, Procter
captures four hundred and fifty prisoners. It was on this occasion
that the Indians broke from control and tomahawked forty defenseless
American prisoners. August sees Procter raiding Sandusky; but the
Americans refuse to come out and battle, and the axes of the Canadians
are too dull to cut down the ironwood pickets, and when at night
Procter's bugles sound retreat, he has lost nearly one hundred men. At
last, in September, the fleets being built for the Canadians at
Amherstburg and for the Americans at Presqu' Isle are completed.
Whichever side commands Lake Erie will control supplies; and though
Captain Barclay, the Canadian, is short of men, Procter cannot afford
to delay the contest for supremacy any longer. He orders Barclay to
sail out and seek Commodore Perry, the American, for decisive battle.

{364} On Barclay's boats are only such old land guns as had been
captured from Detroit. His crews consist of lake sailors and a few
soldiers, in all some three hundred and eighty-four men on six vessels.
September 10, at midday, at Put-in-Bay, Barclay finds Perry's fleet of
seven vessels with six hundred and fifty men. For two hours the
furious cannonading could be heard all the way up to Amherstburg.
Space forbids details of the fight so celebrated in the annals of the
American navy. After broadsides that tore hulls clean of masts and
decks, setting sails in flame and the waters seething in mountainous
waves, the two fleets got within pistol shot of each other, and Perry's
superior numbers won. One third of Barclay's officers were killed and
one third of his men. The Canadian fleet on Lake Erie was literally
exterminated before three in the afternoon.

[Illustration: TWO VIEWS OF THE BATTLE ON LAKE ERIE (From prints
published in 1815)]

Procter's position was now doubly desperate. He was cut off from
supplies. At a council with the Indians, though Tecumseh, the chief,
was for fighting to the bitter death, it was decided to retreat up the
Thames to Vincent's army near modern {365} Hamilton. All the world
knows the bitter end of that retreat. Procter seems to have been so
sure that General Harrison would not follow, that the Canadian forces
did not even pause to destroy bridges behind them; and behind came
Harrison, hot foot, with four thousand fighters from the Kentucky
backwoods. October first the Canadians had retreated far as Chatham,
provisions and baggage coming in boats or sent ahead on wagons.
Procter's first intimation of the foe's nearness was a breathless
messenger with word the Americans just a few miles behind had captured
the provision boats. Sending on his family and the women with a convoy
of two hundred and fifty soldiers, Procter faced about on the morning
of October the 5th, to give battle. On the left was the river Thames,
on the right a cedar swamp, to rear on the east the Indian mission of
Moraviantown. The troops formed in line across a forest road. Procter
seems to have lost both his heart and his head, for he permitted his
fatigued troops to go into the fight without breakfast. Not a
barricade, not a hurdle, not a log was placed to break the advance of
Harrison's cavalry. The American riders came on like a whirlwind.
Crack went the line of Procter's men in a musketry volley! The horses
plunged, checked up, reared, and were spurred forward. Another volley
from the Canadians! But it was too late. Harrison's fifteen hundred
riders had galloped clean through the Canadian lines, slashing swords
as they dashed past. Now they wheeled and came on the Canadians' rear.
Indians and Canadians scattered to the woods before such fury, like
harried rabbits, poor Tecumseh in the very act of tomahawking an
American colonel when a pistol shot brought him down. The brave Indian
chief was scalped by the white backwoodsmen and skinned and the body
thrown into the woods a prey to wolves. Flushed with victory and
without Harrison's permission, the Kentucky men dashed in and set fire
to Moraviantown, the Indian mission. As for Procter, he had mounted
the fleetest horse to be found, and was riding in mad flight for
Burlington Heights. It is almost a pity he had not fallen in some of
his former heroic raids, for he now became a sorry figure in history,
reprimanded {366} and suspended from the ranks of the army. The only
explanation of Procter's conduct at Moraviantown is that he was anxious
for the safety of his wife and daughters, perhaps needlessly fearing
that the rough backwoodsmen would retaliate on them for the treachery
of the Indians tomahawking American prisoners of war.

[Illustration: TECUMSEH]

And it had fared almost as badly with the Canadian fleet on Lake
Ontario. The boats under Sir James Yeo, the young English commander,
were good only for close-range fighting, the boats under Commodore
Chauncey best for long-range firing. All July and August the fleets
maneuvered to catch each other off guard. Between times each raided
the coast of the other for provisions, Chauncey paying a second visit
to Toronto, Yeo swooping down on Sodus Bay. All September the game of
hide and seek went on between the two Ontario squadrons. Sunday night,
the 8th of September, in a gale, two of Chauncey's ships sank, with all
hands but sixteen. Two nights later in a squally wind, by the light of
the moon, two more of his slow sailers, unable to keep up with the rest
of the fleet, were snapped up by the English off Niagara with one
hundred captives. Again, on September 27, at eight in the evening, six
miles off Toronto harbor, Chauncey came up with the English, and the
two fleets poured broadsides into each other. Then Yeo's crippled
brigs limped into Toronto harbor, while Chauncey sailed gayly off to
block all connection with Montreal and help to convoy troops {367} from
Niagara down the St. Lawrence for the master stroke of the year. The
way was now clear for the twofold aim of the American staff,--to starve
out Ontario and concentrate all strength in a signal attack on Montreal.

The autumn campaign was without doubt marked by the most comical and
heroic episodes of the war. Wilkinson was to go down the St. Lawrence
from Lake Ontario with eight thousand men to join General Hampton
coming by the way of Lake Champlain with another five thousand men in
united attack against Montreal. November 5 Wilkinson's troops
descended in three hundred flat-boats through the Thousand Islands, now
bleak and leafless and somber in the gray autumn light. It seemed
hardly possible that the few Canadian troops cooped up in Kingston
would dare to pursue such a strong American force, but history is made
up of impossibles. Feeling perfectly secure, Wilkinson's troops
scattered on the river. By November 10, at nine in the morning, half
the Americans had run down the rapids of the Long Sault, and were in
the region of Cornwall, pressing forward to unite with Hampton, where
Chateauguay River came into Lake St. Louis, just above Montreal. The
other half of Wilkinson's army was above the Long Sault, near
Chrysler's Farm. From the outset the rear guard of the advancing
invaders had been harried by Canadian sharpshooters. November 11,
about midday, it was learned that a Canadian battalion of eight hundred
was pressing eagerly on the rear. Chance shots became a rattling
fusillade. Quick as flash the Americans land and wheel face about to
fight, posted behind a stone wall and along a dried gully with
sheltering cliffs at Chrysler's Farm. By 2.30 the foes are shooting at
almost hand-to-hand range. Then, through the powder smoke, the
Canadians break from a march to a run, and charge with all the
dauntless fury of men fighting for hearth and home. Before the line of
flashing bayonets the invaders break and run. Two hundred have fallen
on each side in an action of less than two hours. Then the boats go on
down to the other half of the army at Cornwall, and here is worse
news,--news that sends {368} Wilkinson's army back to the American side
of the St. Lawrence without attempting attack on Montreal. General
Hampton on his way from Lake Champlain has been totally discomfited.

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