“Horrible! Most Horrible!!
“We stop the press to announce the following horrible intelligence which has just been communicated by two gentlemen direct from the bloody scene:
“The steamer Caroline, which was lying at the landing at Porter’s storehouse, was boarded this morning between the hours of twelve and one by about eighty men, who came in boats from the Canada side. The Caroline had on board from fifteen to twenty of our sleeping and defenceless citizens, who had lodgings on board. They are believed to have been mostly citizens of Buffalo, who came as lookers-on, with the expectation of witnessing the attack upon the island. Every individual was butchered except four, and three of these severely wounded. The engineer, who was thrust through and put on shore, says that after the bloody work was executed a small boy was found in a closet, who begged for mercy but found none. The Caroline was then towed out into the stream and sent over Niagara Falls. Three cheers were given, and at the same time beacon lights were raised at Chippewa. Our informant saw the lifeless body of one person who was shot upon the shore.”
For five years the question hung upon a thread whether England and the United States should go to war or not. It is always fair to give two sides of a question, but in the one given by Clio and Melpomene it will be seen their poetic license degenerates into something more than the flowery taradiddle of the average verse-maker:
“Oh, what were the dreams, as they sunk to rest,
Of that devoted band,
Who lay, as a babe on its mother’s breast,
On the shores of their native land?
Breathed they of fire, or of streaming blood,
Or the thundering cataract’s whelming flood?
Strong manhood’s godlike form was there,
With his bold and open brow,
And age, with his wearied look of care,
And his floating locks of snow;
And the agile form of the stripling boy,
With his throbbing pulse of hope and joy.
They dreamed of the happy hours of home,
Of a blessed mother’s prayer,
Of the cherished wife in that sacred dome,
Of the lisping prattlers there;
And the stripling dreamed of his young love’s smile
When he left her bound for the fatal isle.
Oh, what was that dim, ominous sound,
That struck on the sleeper’s ear,
Yet roused him not from his rest profound
Till the unsheathed blade was near?
And it seemed as the air and the rocks were riven
By the slogan of death and the wild shriek given.
Oh, vain was the strife of the struggling few
With a well-armed murderous band;
For the gallant barque, with her blood-drenched crew,
Is floating from the strand,
And the young boy’s quarter cry it bore
To the purple wave, with his own heart’s gore.
On, wildly onward, sped the craft,
As she swiftly neared the verge;
And the demon guards of the black gulf laughed,
And chanted a hellish dirge;
And the booming waters roared anew
A wail for the dead and dying crew.
As over the shelving rocks she broke
And plunged in her turbulent grave,
The slumbering Genius of Freedom woke,
Baptized in Niagara’s wave,
And sounded her warning tocsin far
From Atlantic’s shore to polar star.”
A careful computation from pages of prose, almost as flowery as the foregoing lines and oftentimes breaking into rhyme from a very luxuriousness of idea and rhythm, puts the lives aboard the Caroline at about ninety-nine in number. Thirty-three were killed and missing; thirty-three were towed into the middle of the stream when the boat was fired, and with her went over the ledge; there were also thrilling cries from “the living souls” on board, plus “wails of the dying,” presumably thirty-three cries and thirty-three wails, all gliding down the resistless rapids to perish by “the double horror of a fate inevitable.”
On the day following the cutting out five hundred men were told off to complete the work by driving the filibusters off the island, the three schooners, with boats and barges, being sufficient transport. “But what shall we do if a shot strikes our boat—we must either drown or go over the Falls,” was a query which sent Captain Drew off on another hazard. He pulled up stream in a four-oared gig, within pistol shot of the island, to see if the enemy’s field-piece was equal to hitting a boat which moved fast through the water. So far the casualties from the red-hot shot sent skipping along the Canadian shore were the death of young Smith of Hamilton, who, lying in a barn on some hay, had part of his thigh carried away and some ribs broken, and an old sailor named Millar who served Captain Luard’s guns, and had his leg taken off. Millar asked to see his leg, gave three cheers for the Queen, and died.
A twenty-four pounder, mounted on a scow, battered the point where the guns of Van Rensselaer were most active. Drew’s expedition brought upon themselves both musketry and field-pieces, at first innocent of all aim, but suddenly so improved that one shot made ducks and drakes on the water, just clearing the gunwale, and passing between Drew and his strokesman. This was from no amateur, but owed its precision to the hand of a young West Pointer—possibly of the “empty hand, stout heart, of fair military tactics” letter. Van Rensselaer has left it on record that the only moments of excitement to him in this episode were when the first gun was fired from the island, and when this boat’s crew, at early dawn, made its way in safety round them; so that Drew’s temerity was not without reward. These patriots had “kissed their rusty muskets” and vowed they would never lay them down until “the redemption of Canada was accomplished.” A “sympathetic” account tells us that the men so determined to do or die, in order to protect themselves from temptation had taken the pins out of the screws of the scows and burned their oars, resolved,
“If sons of Liberty can keep
resting-place but this,
Then here we’ll stand—or madly leap
Into the dark abyss.”
The outcome was a hurried departure by night after they heard of the arrival of the 24th Regiment. The brisk cannonade of about four hundred rounds from heavy guns and mortars, and the armed schooners which effectually kept them within their breastworks, were almost enough without the rumour of the 24th.
When the Canadian force landed not a soul was to be seen, and what had appeared formidable defence dwindled. Apparently a second Gibraltar, it was found in military parlance to be a bug-bear than which a greater never existed, a conglomeration of batteries and hovels masked with wood, a sickening spectacle of “looped and windowed” wretchedness. The vaunted blockhouse citadel, the barracks and the batteries, were but huts of trees and sods and ill-constructed embankments; the only reward for industry was an abattis of brushwood to prevent boat invasion.
A man concealed in the woods now came out, white flag in hand, and from him and two women found in a hut did the Canadians get an account of life on “the fatal isle” during the biting storms and pitiless rain of December, ’37, and January, ’38. “Peas and beans dank as a dog,” varied by feasts, the bones of which lay about with remains of bread and barrels of beans yet untouched, had been their food; the bushes about were eloquent, with bits of rag sticking to them, of the quality of clothing; these patriots, herded together like swine and sheep, left behind them evidences of some stores, boots and shoes, plenty of reading matter of the most virulent kind, all mixed up with burst shells, splintered wood and dirty straw. Some boots had the legs cut open, apparently to strip wounded limbs, some were stained with blood; and “a huge pile of unpicked bones, ... on a rough board used as a table,” and the remains of beds made of pine branches, gave further evidence.
Sir Francis paid the site a visit on the 17th, a wild and boisterous day. He had the body of one man exhumed—shot by a rifle, but his arms were pinioned. He had been suspected as a spy. The susceptible Sir Francis, light as his heart generally was, saddened at the sight of him.
Songs abounded for every part of the event, dates sometimes making way for rhyme:
“They say he murdered one Durfee,
In December, ’39, sir;
And stole some candles and old boots,
And burnt the Caroline, sir.”
On the night of evacuation the soi-disant patriot army surrendered their arms to the United States authorities and disbanded their forces. The cannon belonging to the State were returned in a scow to Fort Schlosser, and in transit with the men on board came near following the fate of the Caroline. The scow had fallen far down the current and the men had given up their case as hopeless, when a gale from the north-west sprang up, and, aided by their blankets extemporized into sails, they were wafted ashore.
A month before, when they had received these ill-gotten guns, they slaughtered the oxen which drew them, and paid for the beef and work by a due-bill on the future Canadian Republic.
“No sooner was the Caroline in flames than a sudden excitement prevailed; but it was the excitement of fear. The women fled from the villages on the coast, people who had fancied themselves bedridden decamped, and the citizens of Buffalo evinced the greatest possible consternation for the safety of their town.”
Captain Drew almost distanced Sir Francis in unpopularity in certain quarters; but like him, among his own was at once a hero. At St. George’s Day dinner in Toronto, Captain Marryat, an old comrade of Drew’s, gave the toast: “Captain Drew and his brave comrades who cut out the Caroline.” The day after the cutting-out, Drew, with MacNab, was burnt in effigy on the ice at Detroit, and he saw himself advertised for in a Buffalo newspaper at a reward of $500. He was hanged in effigy—a compliment kept up on the anniversary for several years; active attempts were made to assassinate him, of so determined a nature that in the end the pleasant Woodstock home was forsaken, and heroism was forgotten when, forced to leave the country to preserve life to wife and family, he found himself in England, where the preservation of Canada was of interest on a large scale but the reward of her preservers a matter of no moment. Captain Marryat’s toast brought upon him, too, attentions similar to those bestowed upon the subject of it. He was burned in effigy in every town in the United States through which his journey took him; his writings were made into a bonfire in Lewiston, and in St. Louis his effigy was decorated with a halter round the neck. Cincinnati was the first place which dared to assert a difference. The captain, whose mother was an American, had so far looked on at his own cremation and at that of his child-literary with calmness, smoking a cigar the while; but in Cincinnati, at the dinner tendered him, he spoke out like a man, a gentleman, and a person of force and humour, giving his reasons for his opinions and actions and ashamed of neither. He said that his motive in refusing private hospitality was that he might leave himself freedom of speech; and he finishes his deliverance, “If we are to burn all those who differ with us in opinion, consider, gentlemen, what a glorious bonfire would be made of the whole United States.”
What touched him most deeply was part of his mail matter,—five hundred anonymous letters which cost him on an average fifty cents each to redeem from the post, and of which he makes bitter though humorous complaint in a long, published letter, supposed to answer his five hundred correspondents in one coup-de-main and also his well-wishers, whose missives followed him so persistently from place to place, that he began to think it a combined attack upon his purse from Van Buren and the Postmaster-General.
The destruction of the Caroline surprised everyone, Americans, Canadians, even the chief actors; it let loose the tongues of ministers and diplomats, and it gave a great impulse to the outside movement of sympathisers or patriots. The success of Drew’s action made the last wary; but the howl of indignation, which for a time was allowed to have some show of reason, served as a cloak under which to add retaliation to what before had been dubbed patriotism alone. Sugar Island, Bois Blanc, and the schooner Anne followed in quick succession; but the most direct outrage as result of it was that against the Sir Robert Peel under the management of an autocrat on the other side of the warfare, handsome and distinguished looking as MacNab himself, determined as Drew, uncompromising as Prince, with an air and halo of romance over all his actions arising partly from his personality, partly from the romantic beauty of his surroundings—the redoubtable Bill Johnston, king of the Thousand Islands.
General Van Rensselaer, in sash and epaulets, with his encampment on Navy Island, backed by two or three hundred vagabonds, making war upon Great Britain, was a ridiculous person. But Bill Johnston, the buccaneer, armed to the teeth, actuated by revenge for real injuries, carrying out his threat to be a thorn in Great Britain’s side, flying from island to island, a price set upon his head, determined to sell his life at desperate cost, devoted to his daughter and adored by his children, has a touch of poetry about him which almost justified what he devoutly believed himself—that it was a glorious thing to be a pirate king. It is a come-down to have to admit that one of his occupations was robbing the Canadian mails, when he would take the clothes off the occupants of the coach and beat whoever refused him, tie the coachman to a tree—as he did between Gananoque and Kingston—and leave the man there. He once captured a dragoon carrying despatches, took the man and his horse to the lake shore, shot the horse, put the despatch-bag in his boat, and let the man find his way on foot to report himself to his captain.
This was the personage concerning whom Silas Fletcher, one of the refugees from Gallows Hill, wrote from Watertown to Navy Island, that he was a man in whom it was perfectly safe to confide, “a gentleman of intelligence, equal to fifty ordinary men,” recommended for a commission because he could “greatly annoy the Kingstonians,” his influence so great that he could raise two hundred as bold volunteers as ever drew trigger. Some of the sympathizers had a faculty for arousing admiration; for about this time a lady in Rochester, who kept a private school where some Toronto girls were sent, allowed her pupils to work a silken flag to be presented to the pirate force.
Johnston and his followers had many disguises. In their attacks on isolated farm-houses it was their pleasure to adopt the dress of ordinary sailors, and in their expedition to the island of Tanti—a Canadian possession of Lord Mountcashel, from which they took much plunder, and where they left one farmer with three fingers and part of a hand shot off—the whole mise-en-scène is absurdly like “H. M. S. Pinafore.” From island to island, from rock to the hidden fastness, keeping in the narrower channels where inclined planes were cleverly constructed by which to draw up their fast boats, the only clue to their haunts was a surprise shot from some ambush or the expiring embers of a lately deserted bivouac fire, or perhaps a couple of barrels moored in the narrowest part of Fiddler’s Elbow, innocent-looking infernal machines left ready for the unwary.
French Creek—A-ten-ha-ra-kweh-ta-re, the place where the wall fell down—Abel’s Island and some other points, were his favourites; but Fort Wallace, a small islet at the head of Wells’ Island, was his fastness, where, with a dozen men, he boasted he could withstand two hundred. The number of boats scattered up and down the islands was popularly supposed to be one hundred, and the population of this world of islets some thousand souls, all under the sway of Johnston. Rinaldo, Robert Kidd and Robert le Diable seemed centred in him. He could land at Queenston unarmed and get the guard tipsy, and with a few companions take off seventy stand of arms. But his experience as smuggler and trader, and his exploits when in the employment of the American Government during the war of 1812, when he roamed all the lakes and rivers, intercepting despatches, and when, his boat driven in by a gale on the Canadian shore and his crew captured, he could cross Ontario—at that point thirty-six miles wide—in a bark canoe after a fortnight’s dodging of British vessels, made such affairs as came to his hand in ’37 seem bagatelles. In the early days he had at his command a six-oared barge; now he and his four sons, the latter all partaking of his own nature, powers and daring, did their work in four row-boats of extraordinary speed, each boat with a crew of eight or ten men and all armed to the teeth. The boat used by Johnston himself was twelve-oared, the swiftest of the fleet, twenty-eight feet by four and a half, clinker-built and gay with paint. Black bottom, white above, with a yellow streak six inches wide below the gunwale, inside red, so light in weight that two men could carry her with ease, but capable of accommodating twenty armed men, this gay-looking craft flew his own colours.
But for special use in deceiving British vessels a Stars and Stripes lay ready to hand. Not that he was under the protection of the latter; he was harried equally by United States authorities and Canadian, his capture being finally made by the former. The most interesting member of his domestic group was his daughter, whom his ambition was to make Queen of the Thousand Isles, a handsome girl of nineteen, possessed of courage enough to manage her boat alone, armed like her brothers, and skilful enough to keep her father supplied with provisions on those exciting occasions when he had to hide.
Bill Johnston and his followers were of more consequence than all the men, Provisional Government, generals and staff, on Navy Island; in the words of an American newspaper, “This chap seems now to be conducting war on his own hook.” Wells’ Island was the scene of his reprisal for the burning of the Caroline; for all his own grievance, such as the confiscation of his property on the British side in 1812, he felt himself more than avenged. The island, part of Jefferson county, had not more than an acre of cleared land upon it, with a wharf used for wooding the vessels which called there for fuel; the sole building was one log shanty. When the Sir Robert Peel drew in on the evening so important to her, May 29th, 1838, the woodman warned the captain that suspicious-looking characters were inland. But the warning was made light of, and the usual fueling programme followed. All on board went to bed, and about ten o’clock thirteen of the erstwhile sailors of the island of Tanti appeared in their new scene as Indians, looking the part to perfection in black, red and yellow paint. Their number had been twenty-eight, but they had dropped down the river from their camp on Abel’s Island, on the opposite side to the wood station, and in crossing fifteen of the band had been temporarily lost in a swamp. The debate whether this left too small a number for the attack led to delay, but Johnston decided that a baker’s dozen was a lucky number, and that if this opportunity were lost another as favourable might not offer itself. So the warwhoop, as good an imitation as their painted semi-nudeness, was raised. One discrepancy was the absence of tomahawks, replaced by guns, and bayonets. The woods re-echoed to their howls, and it was not long until captain, crew and passengers were on deck.
Colonel Fraser, Mr. Holditch of Port Robinson, and several others, had enjoyed their evening; they took wine together, and then went to bed, their berths in a row. Soon they heard a noise which they imagined to be a scuffle among the crew; but in a twinkling five men stood by the berths where they still lay, four armed with bayonets and muskets and the fifth with a sword. At the command to get up at once Mr. Holditch laid his hand upon Colonel Fraser’s military coat, and the ruffian with the sword, seeing the colour, called out, “He is a British officer—run him through!” A general disowning of Her Majesty’s uniform ensued, but a lively fight took place for possession of the pocket-book, which contained a large sum of money. After much kicking and knocking down most of the men were forced into a small cabin, lighted by a skylight through which muskets were pointed at them, keeping them quiet until a panel was broken out of the door and one by one they were allowed to leave. The women were all driven on deck in their night-clothes; their cries were distressing, but Captain Bullock, formerly of the St. George, and the stewardess, contrived to mitigate circumstances for them. The dramatic Sea-King was not going to allow such an opportunity for the tragic to escape him. As he knocked at the ladies’ cabin door a courageous female tried to stop his further entrance, begging time to dress. “Come with me,” said Bombastes, “come with me and I will save you—THE NATIONS ARE AT WAR.”
It was a most inclement night, and they took refuge in the shanty. There one of the brigands remarked that the occupants of the Peel had got their deserts, whereupon Captain Bullock knocked him down and dragged him out by the throat. The amount of booty was not inconsiderable, and as soon as the vessel was rifled of it she was set on fire and allowed to drift. The mate must have been a sound sleeper, as he knew none of the happenings until rescue was nearly past. His shrieks for help came after the pirates had departed and the passengers dispersed, but some of the latter managed to reach him in a skiff. They were barely in time, for he had to jump into the water so badly burned that he had to be tended by the half-dressed passengers all night.
It was supposed to be the intention to thus serve all British steamers, so that Johnston’s whaleboats should have no interference in St. Lawrence waters thereabouts in piracy and invasion. In this particular instance, one of the passengers, an Irishman, vigorously protested from the island:
“The divil saze the likes of ye, ye’re worse than the Connaught Rangers, wid yer injun naygur faces.”
“Remember the Caroline, Pat,” retorted a pirate.
“Is it Caroline Mahoney, ye mane?—sure it’s not at the likes of you she’d be after lookin’.”
They essayed to get Pat on board, telling him to “come and get his duds.” “Do ye think I’ll go aboard and see myself kilt?” he asked. They then tried to get near him, but with “Bad luck to ye, there’s two can play at that, me darlin’,” he sped into the woods. One of the party was a prisoner from Abel’s Island, and he was left to look after Scanlan, one of the crew, who had been badly wounded in the scuffle. By sunrise, while the Robert Peel still burned, the pirates were back at Abel’s Island, washed and clothed. The passengers were taken off Wells’ Island by the U. S. steamer Oneida and left at Kingston. After this the pirate boats were mounted with two and three-pounders, while Johnston and his followers played hide-and-seek with his pursuers, managing to elude two steamboats, one schooner and a number of gunboats which were doubling and cross-cutting in his wake.
When Governor Marcy, of New York, received information of this act, which Johnston himself allowed to be piracy, he went to the frontier and took active measures to guard his own border from the retaliation which he dreaded, and also to combine with the Canadians in offering a reward for Johnston’s arrest. Such banditti, like the cowboys of the Revolution, argued that it mattered not who was plundered, provided there was booty to be found. In the grandiloquent words of their own chronicle, the Sir Robert Peel was “a burnt-offering to the shades of the Caroline.” As to Canadian reprisals, there was much talk of firing upon United States vessels wherever found, an unjust opinion existing that they were at one with “Admiral” Johnston’s crafts. But better sense prevailed, and as one newspaper says, “Let their steamboats depart from our shores in peace.” Such a Nunc Dimittis, opening with an exhortation to high-mindedness, “Men of Chatham! the eyes of Europe are upon you!” was penned at Chatham, where the burning of an American vessel was insisted upon as retaliation for a local act of outrage.
The action taken by Sir George Arthur concerning the indictment of similar outlaws elsewhere after they were caught, treating them as prisoners of war, exasperated the Loyalists; they claimed it was establishing a precedent for all the Bill Johnstons and marauders, who were either rebels in their own country or filibusters from the one opposite: “This is, in fact, a bounty upon invasion, and taken in connection with Mackenzie’s reward of 300 acres of land, made it easy for a man to hedge with tolerable assurance of not coming to grief either way.” “These be indeed Liberal times.” What Bill Johnston thought of it all may be seen from his proclamation, issued immediately, after he had first openly paraded the streets of Ogdensburg with his belt stuck full of pistols, dirks and bowie knives:
“To all whom it may concern:
“I, William Johnston, a native-born citizen of Upper Canada, certify that I hold a commission in the Patriot service of Upper Canada as commander-in-chief of the naval forces and flotilla. I commanded the expedition that captured and destroyed the steamer Sir Robert Peel. The men under my command in that expedition were nearly all natural-born English subjects; the exceptions were volunteers for the expedition. My head-quarters was on an island in the St. Lawrence, without the jurisdiction of the United States, at a place named by me Fort Wallace. I am well acquainted with the boundary line, and know which of the islands do and do not belong to the United States; and in the selection of the island I wished to be positive, and not locate within the jurisdiction of the United States, and had reference to the decision of the Commissioners under the sixth article of the Treaty of Ghent, done at Utica, in the State of New York, 13th June, 1822. I know the number of the island, and by that decision it was British territory. I yet hold possession of that station, and we also occupy a station some twenty or more miles from the boundary line of the United States, in what was Her Majesty’s dominions until it was occupied by us. I act under orders. The object of my movement is the independence of Canada. I am not at war with the commerce or property of the people of the United States.
“Signed, this tenth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight.
“William Johnston.”
The result of the proclamation, which was published in the American newspapers, was a reward offered by Governor Marcy of $500 for the author’s arrest, $250 each for that of D. M’Leod and two others, and $100 each for the rest. The Canadian Government offered £1000 for the conviction of any of them.
But it is a long lane that has no turning. The defeat at Prescott once more sent the Johnstons and their followers to the same retreats of the river intricacies. An old soldier of the 79th was given the hazardous mission to search them out; but the only result was a shot or two from an unseen and vanishing enemy, and a specimen of the finest tourmalin to add to his geological cabinet. Bonnycastle put some of his staff with a band on board a small steamer, ostensibly to visit the militia garrisons of Gananoque, Brockville and Prescott, returning by night in the hope that Johnston would attack them. With excellent steering they escaped the infernal machines moored for them, but saw naught of the enemy.
Sir John Colborne, with his one notion of government, had a large body of sailors and marines forwarded from Quebec harbour, then full of men-of-war, steamboats and merchantmen drawn there by the arrival of Lord Durham. A company of the 1st Frontenac Militia went to the island of Tanti, and the border-town garrisons were strongly reinforced with picked men. But Johnston only laughed at them all, and scudded along in his mysterious boat. About eight feet of the after-part of this craft was decked, and on this he sat while he steered with an oar, a red carpet-bag for his cushion seat. In the sight of one party of pursuers from the steamboat Oswego they openly pulled for the wreck of the Sir Robert Peel; when the pursuers were within fifteen rods a white handkerchief was waved and Johnston majestically rose from his carpet-bag, drew from it the colours of the Sir Robert Peel, which he let wave in the breeze and then gravely returned to the bag. Another craft, evidently one of the fleet, darted up a bay; the dark blue boat was made fast, and in a moment the crew could be seen walking through the bushes, Indian file, each with a large pistol in his right hand. In an interview held at a few boat’s lengths with a deputation of two, who were old acquaintances of his, Johnston said there was one thing of which they might rest assured—he would never be taken alive; that he was a fair mark to shoot at, but not to dangle in the air. He might have quoted, “To die for treason is a common evil,
But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.”
He announced that at that moment he had two other boats well manned and armed within signal view; that he sat upon the colours of the Sir Robert Peel, and that he meant to continue sitting on them “till they rotted.” The interviewers could see for themselves that his boat was well stored with muskets and small arms. When told that his son’s wharf at French Creek was then patronized for wood by one of the steamers, “he seemed much affected,” replying, “I am glad to hear of it, or of anything else that can benefit my family.”
At this time Johnston appeared a robust, athletic man, absolutely fearless, about sixty years of age, a gray-headed, hardy veteran, “a good friend and a terror to his enemies.” He stated that whoever attacked him must bring his own coffin, as he himself had no leisure for cabinet-making.
A simultaneous movement was made on him by a party of British soldiers, and some of the 1st Regiment of American Infantry under Captain Gwynn of the American army. The men were conveyed in two steamboats, the Experiment and the Telegraph, and in a gunboat under Lieutenant Leary, R.N., the Bullfrog. They found two of the bandits fast asleep in the cave, but on account of the roughness of the surrounding country the attack was not well concerted, and the rest of the band, including Johnston, escaped. A quantity of arms and ammunition was found in the cave, but a thorough search by the soldiers, eighty in number and cutlasses in hand, revealed no trace of them.
At another time, General MacNab with some fifty United States soldiers, cruising about in search of this will-o’-the-wisp, found the home but its occupant gone. It proved to be a spacious cavern, into which they penetrated about thirty feet, part natural cavity, part excavated by labour, fit for dwelling-place for a large body of men, and in the several rooms which it contained there were signs of recent occupation.
Mr. James, an artillery officer of Ogdensburg, had met with the loss of a brass six-pounder, pressed into the patriot service during the excitement of the battle of the Windmill. At the end of that affair, so disastrous to the sympathisers, Bill Johnston suddenly disappeared from the streets of Ogdensburg. Not long after this Mr. James’ wife was doing her marketing as usual, being one of the few ladies who were not intimidated by the scare at the waterfront. While chatting with friends whom she met in the course of her morning’s walk, one said, “If you knew where your husband is you would not be so full of laughter.” Word had been brought into town that Bill Johnston was in hiding in the woods near by, and two parties, hurriedly got together, had gone off in search. One party was composed of Charles T. Burwell and James, on horseback, the other of United States soldiers who were to meet the first at a given rendezvous. On arriving at the place the two horsemen found young Johnston sitting by the shore waiting for his father. After some resistance young Johnston was taken, his boat seized and the oars hidden. The capture of the father was not so easy. When he caught sight of the three he rushed to where he expected to find the boat, warning the townsmen to keep off. Had he thought of it in time it would have been like him to exclaim, “A boat! a boat! my kingdom for a boat!” He had a pistol in each hand, but demurred to use them, as his pursuers were “fellow-Americans.” After considerable parley, when he realized that the second party, momentarily expected by boat, would put him beyond hope, he surrendered. But he stipulated that his son should receive his arms, he himself to retain only four small pistols and his bowie knife; he then quietly fell in with James and Burwell for the return to Ogdensburg. A very short walk brought them to the other party just arrived, United States soldiers, a sheriff and deputy marshall, to whom Bill Johnston was delivered. In spite of the large sums offered as reward for his capture, the testimony is that James’ share no more than reimbursed the latter for the loss of the brass six-pounder, for the safe custody of which he had been responsible. They placed Johnston on a steamboat in government employ under Colonel Worth, and so he disappears.
It was an epoch in the history of the peninsula of Essex and Kent when Mr. Prince arrived in Canada. Formerly these counties, “together with as much of this province as is not included within any other district,” extended northward to the boundary line of Hudson Bay. Neighbourhoods were not then congested. Prince was the first man of fortune who came to the district, which he did in ’33, accompanied by wife, family and servants. A man of fine presence and most genial manners, an eloquent speaker, a sportsman and lover of agriculture, he took to farming like the average Englishman, full of good intentions and enthusiasm. He imported thoroughbred stock and kept the finest of dogs. Although much opposed to the stringent game laws of England he introduced a bill for the preservation of game; it passed, but came back amended, one of the additions being that at no time should any animal be killed on the Lord’s Day. Later, alluding to the discussions induced by his summary proceedings with rebels and the hot debates on the battle of Windsor, he never doubted but that the shooting of such rancorous animals as wolves and Yankee pirates on the Lord’s Day could be justified; whereat there was laughter. For Sabbath-keeping in those exciting times was more after the manner of Gwirzi, whose allowance was a male and female daily, but who on Saturday night killed two of each so that he might not profane the Sabbath.
Prince had the true patriarchal spirit; was born to be a leader of men, if withal, like Bottom, he could say, “My chief humour is for a tyrant.” It was a time when a tyrant or two did not come amiss on the Canadian border, however unworthily at the metropolis th’ oppressor ruled tyrannic when he durst. Prince came not long after the time when the Western District gave sentence for manslaughter, “to be burned in the hand and accordingly put in execution before the court.” If this was justice in times of peace there was not much room for the animadversions with which he was covered—but not overwhelmed—when, the Constitution suspended, revolutionary crimes could scarce be put down save by revolutionary methods. “MacNab and Drew, Arthur, Prince, Hagerman and Robinson, are still alive,” said the press; each one of them agreed with Blackstone that obedience is an empty word if every man may decide how far he shall obey. There is no doubt that the Sandwich-Windsor locality was in ’37-38 a seething caldron of unrest, distrust and dissatisfaction; but above it all rides this overpowering personality: “For the brave Prince still lives, and so do his men,
Who triumphed before and can do it again.”
“(Toast) ‘That brave, intrepid officer whose promptitude of action turned the revelry of Yankee pirates in the western frontier into a post mortem examination. May the sad lesson prove a caution to the followers of Blue Beard.’ (Tune—‘The Brave Old English Gentleman’).”
“Of politics,” said he himself in one of the hundreds of speeches which did much towards making his fame, “of politics I shall say but little here. Mine have been before you and the people of Upper Canada for the last five sessions. I am in the true sense of the word a Constitutional Reformer.” How far Brougham and others of his old country critics agreed with him shall be seen hereafter. His record in the Canadian House shows that he was never amenable to party discipline himself, was classed as “doubtful” by both parties, had hot fits of Liberalism and Conservatism by turns; like a stiff old Englishman, said he was prepared, as the barons at Runnymede, to maintain his rights at all risks; with John Henry Boulton came out as Independent, was a veritable Thorough in his opposition to the Rebellion Losses Bill, and capped the climax of his many-sided character by printing a petition signed by “many respectable Canadians” to move an address to Her Majesty praying that Canada might be relieved from her “dependent state and allowed to become an independent sovereignty.” By the time the last transpired it behooved Robert Baldwin to stigmatize the petition borne by the hero of ’37 as “quasi treasonable.”
In the neighbourhood of his home, the Park Farm, lay, for some thirty or forty miles, the French village form of settlement—the decent church, the pious priest, the civil habitant; the French windmill, where habitant and U. E. Loyalist took their grist in amity, still stood; the river road had on its fringed border the pear trees of the Jesuit fathers, standing like sentinels, to remind of Hennepin and La Salle, and to keep alive the first explorer’s saying, “Those who in the future will have the good fortune to own this lovely and fruitful strait will feel very thankful to those who have shown them the way.”
Every one knows how a carpenter, with foot each side of a log, brings his adze down, first on one side with an emphatic “Hah!” then on the other, with a second emphasis, each stroke on alternate sides getting the same syllabic ejaculation. In Lower Canada, tight in a box, most precious of relics, some of the habitants—it is said—had this most emphemeral of saintly leavings. Whether the habitant of the Detroit and St. Clair brought with him from the St. Lawrence the Hah of St. Joseph we do not know; but he did bring with him most of the attributes which make him the pleasant, interesting fellow he is, on each river; good Catholic, good friend; true to his title, for he came “habiter le pays,” no transient dweller he. Nor does the spirit of “noblesse oblige” ever die. Long after ’37 a court dignitary found himself in a remote St. Clair neighbourhood where tavern accommodation was not; his host for the night was advised of the arrival, and the dignitary drew up at the door of an unpretending house whose owner was apparently a small farmer of simple habit. The hall-door, opened wide in welcome, disclosed an old man in antique jacket, small clothes and buckles, whose fine white hair, lying on his collar, was stirred by the night breeze. The dark hall-way made a fading background for the old man and his ancient silver candlesticks, as, with a light in either hand, he bowed profoundly, walking backwards as his guest entered. The latter remonstrated at the attention so shown him, but the courteously spoken answer, in refined French, was, “Sir, I but follow the custom of my fathers.”
Can the people in any part of Canada object to those who remind them that this country has a history. Mr. Prince was one of those who thanked Providence the land was large enough for both. Almost without exception the St. Clair French were Loyalist, and as sign of their good faith were upholders of him. “What will the Government think of us,” says Baptiste, in a skit issued during an election contest, when Prince, an English Protestant, was opposed by a Canadian Catholic, “when it will be known in Toronto that we preferred any to Prince!!! We shall all be looked upon as asses, who have selected one of their own species in preference to any other.” When he voted for Cuvillier as Speaker of the House, Prince trusted the members of Lower Canada to hold out the hand of friendship; and in perusing the records of many years’ proceedings one finds continually that he seconds or is seconded by the French members. He had a firm hold on the affections of the people, the pleasant voice, smooth accent and manly, handsome presence of more weight as an opponent than any uniqueness in principle; his speeches owed as much to their melody as to their matter.
He was a law unto himself when he came to be a constitutional Reformer in military tactics—not unlike a Lower Canadian legal contemporary who, told by the presiding judge to refer to Pigéon, returned, “I do not need to refer to Pigéon, Perrault” (himself) “is worth Pigéon any day.” Perhaps, to take even higher comparisons, Prince had a touch of Durham, and more than a touch of Colborne, in him.
In the little town of Sandwich, since fitly named by a local Rip Van Winkle the “City of the Dead,” an oldest inhabitant will point out an unpretentious flat stone raised from the ground by a few bricks. Underneath it lie the mangled remains of the man over whose death and the avenging of it a stir only second to the Caroline was made.
“Sacred to the memory,” says the stone, “of Jno. James Hume, Esq., staff assistant surgeon, who was inhumanly murdered and his body afterwards brutally mangled by a gang of armed ruffians from the United States, styling themselves Patriots, who committed this cowardly and shameful outrage on the morning of the 4th December, 1838, having intercepted the deceased while proceeding to render professional assistance to Her Majesty’s gallant militia engaged at Windsor, U.C., in repelling the invasions of this rebel crew more properly styled Pirates.”
During the first year of the rebellion the dwellers on the St. Clair frontier felt themselves aggrieved, as not of sufficient interest at military headquarters. They were particularly open to attacks from those who were called pirates, brigands, outlaws and robbers, from across the border, while singularly free from “rebels” among themselves. They were so convinced that the punishments meted out to offenders were not heavy or frequent enough that they emphasized the opinion in meetings called for the purpose of recording them, en passant displaying a rich sense of their own heavy sufferings “both by day and night, which can scarcely be described and perhaps never be surpassed,” and they were incensed at the respite accorded Theller and Sutherland, the two aggressors at whose hands they had suffered most. They were not to be conciliated by Sir George Arthur’s answer, giving legal reasons for the kind of justice dealt to such prisoners. That Lord Glenelg cautioned that every precaution should be taken against any semblance of retaliation upon the people who by their deeds were brought within the operation of martial law; that in courts-martial regular and not militia officers should preside; and that great circumspection be exercised in regard to capital punishment, had no weight with them. They deemed their own “the circumstances of peculiar and pressing urgency” which alone justified extreme measures, in Lord Glenelg’s opinion, and differed from him heartily in “the extent of punishment to which it may be necessary to subject them, will be more safely estimated at a distance from the scene of action.” They did entirely concur with him in that “it was impossible for him at that distance to give specific instructions.” Nor could they agree with Sir George Arthur, that in spite of prearranged plunder, and spontaneous outrages committed, the rebellion had political motives only for its raison d’être. Those who had been the plundered and were victims of outrage were for shooting first and trying after; and at a public meeting called to denounce past action of the patriots and lay down rules for the future it was decided that all invaders—ruffians who had not even the alleged right of being Canadians who were rebelling for what seemed to them good reason, but who came to murder, pillage and burn, under pretence of “liberating” a country unwilling to be liberated—should be treated as pirates; no quarter should be given, and any commander who found himself in such a position would be more than justified in acting on the publicly expressed opinion of that meeting. When occasion occurred and the right man for such work was on the spot a certain portion of those who previously represented public opinion found they could not endorse their own words. Attorney-General Hagerman approved; but then Lord Brougham said that although he might be a good soldier the Attorney-General could not have been much of a lawyer, or he never would have dared to say so.
The truly patriotic citizens of Windsor and Sandwich recognized that God helps those who help themselves. When Sir Francis sent all the forces out of the country they began a good local militia organization, in which Col. Prince took the lead. No portion of country could have been more self-helpful and more patriotic than this section found itself throughout. At the first meeting of magistrates called, Mr. William Anderton, Collector of Customs, was appointed commissary, and to James Dougall was assigned the supervision of ferries. For arms and stores there were no public moneys, but Mr. Dougall providentially had a large sum put by in the Bank of Michigan to make English purchase of goods for his next year’s trade. This he freely placed at the public disposal, and flour and pork, and all the arms available from Detroit friends, were brought across, as secretly as might be, but the transport was discovered just in time to allow Theller and one hundred followers to see the boats move off. Cordwood sticks were the only weapons available, and these were thrown freely after the boats, which, however, they failed to strike.
By December 3rd, ’38, the people on the Canadian side had been for many nights in constant fear of another invasion; horses were kept harnessed and saddled, arms lay conveniently near those who dared go to bed, and some prepared to turn night into day and made it their most watchful time. The attitude of the whole place was that of a modern fire-station, alert, ready, apprehensive. The place was full of the usual internecine squabbles and jealousies, only kept down by sense of a common danger; Colonel Airey had been applied to for a company of regulars, Major Reid of the 32nd had been sent to London, and Colonel Prince in command, while on the alert himself, thought that too many applications for assistance savoured of cowardice, and contented himself with night patrols and sentinels. The watch-fires of the patriots could be seen at the bivouacs on the farms below Detroit; friends, two of whom were to be among the killed, came across to warn them, and watchfulness was redoubled.
That night was cold and dark, no moon, the very time for the enemy’s purpose, and word was passed from tavern to tavern on the American side to rendezvous at the wharf—with arms and ammunition, “but to take no heed to provisions.” They expected to find food in plenty. The captain and crew of the Champlain did not care to violate the neutrality laws, and kept out of the way; so a crew selected from the patriots took the vessel across the river, through many patches of drift ice, to a point about four miles above Windsor. The command on landing was that no noise should be made, the farmers were not to be wakened, and to make for the barracks, which were guarded by only a small force. Patriotic Mr. Dougall, bank manager as well as trader, writes that he was roused from his not too sound sleep by the sound of shots, saw the flames of already burning barracks, hurried his wife and family to a place of safety, and made his way to the safe, where $20,000 was locked up. The old-fashioned receptacle bristled with knobs, three of which had to be shoved aside before the keyhole could be uncovered. He shoved every knob on its entire surface and the keyhole was lost; but eventually he got the money, secured it about him, seized his gun, and went off towards Sandwich. Those who were the dupes among the invaders believed that once the protection of their presence was announced the people would rise up to meet their deliverers half-way in the effort to overthrow an obnoxious form of government. The first man they saw in the early morning light was hastening towards the barracks, evidently someone from Detroit who had rowed over to give the alarm. They fired and he fell, but the shot alarmed the sleeping town, and there was an end to the intended surprise. After that the old nine-pounder in the barrack square, opposite St. John’s Church, gave a resounding alarm, and as usual shattered the glass in the church and Court House windows. In a short time a gallant resistance had been made, and ammunition had given out; burning brands were thrust inside the torn siding of the wooden barracks by the brigands, who served themselves materially by getting under the eaves of the building and so out of range from the guns at the loopholes. Many within made escape by a door at the back unknown to the invaders, and those whom the heat forced to the other entrance sold their lives dearly; some, shot or wounded, were thrust back into the fire—in all a work of carnage and atrocity. Four brigands were told off to take burning brands from the barracks to set fire to the steamboat Thames, which lay at the wharf. They did so, to the slogan of “Remember the Caroline.” Never was there so much trouble in lighting a fire. She was more obstinate than the Caroline herself, but from bow to stern the flames shot up, and the four incendiaries ran back to the barracks to take their stand in the line, which prepared to place itself in an orchard hard by, under Captains Putnam and Harvell. Putnam, six feet four and hailing from Middlesex, was said to be a grandson of the old general, Israel Putnam; Harvell was known as the Big Kentuckian, a man six feet two in height, weighing over two hundred pounds, and with hair long on his collar; he was a remarkable figure as he bore an enormous flag adorned with “a large white star in a blue field—the lone star of Canada.” The “lone star” is evidently poetic license; the flag bore the ordinary two stars and crescent, as described by those of each side. Those who had chief honour in routing this band were Captain Sparkes and his company, who, uniformed in scarlet, were little inferior to regulars. The patriots aimed at the bits of bright colour, but in their trepidation fired too high, and the balls went whistling overhead; in a moment their own ranks were broken, and the hundred under the pear trees dispersed in disorder, as Captain Sparkes and his men came over an intervening fence to let them taste the bayonet. The huge figure of the lone star standard-bearer made surprising time considering his own weight and the cumbersome colours, which trailed behind him on the ground. “A hundred dollars to whoever shoots the standard-bearer,” shouted Mr. Jimmy Dougall in great excitement, and more than one bullet tried for the reward.
Nothing but the gift of second sight can let one account for the difference between the patriots’ tale of the Windsor affair and the somewhat less hysterical loyalist one. The latter chronicle says Harvell died at once, as indeed he had every right to do; the former, which credits him with being a veritable Davy Crockett, brave, honest, impulsive and kind-hearted—very probably all true—says that he dropped on one knee and fired at his pursuers; that the fire was not returned, as no doubt they were anxious to secure alive so handsome and formidable a foe. When his ammunition was exhausted he drew a bowie knife, “or more properly speaking, tremendous butcher cleaver,” from his collar, which he brandished menacingly. This act brought the order to fire; he was far too formidable in appearance to be allowed to live, and he fell retaining his hold on his staff. The enemy approached, says the patriot historian, and demanded surrender. “Never!” said this modern Fitz-James; “I have sworn never to fly mine enemy, and never to surrender my neck to be broke upon the scaffold. Come on—come one, come all!” At any rate, to Ensign Rankin belonged the honour of capturing the flag; that seems the one point upon which there is unanimity of opinion. Many of the actors in this tragicomedy of invasion and war shed their stage properties as they fled, parting company with arms, accoutrements, ammunition, even clothing.
Colonel Prince, who had been on the watch at the Park Farm, passing an anxious night with a terrified and ailing wife, had by now got word of what was happening. He made his appearance in fustian shooting-jacket and wolf-skin cap, no bad dress for the work before him, as he had not time to assume his ordinary uniform. He at once ordered the pursuit discontinued, upon which one shamming dead man got up and ran into the woods. Some stragglers in the militia fired at and killed him, and one of them, a negro of a thrifty turn like the Scotchman in Galt, pulled off the brigand’s boots and slung them over his gun; the negro, in his turn, was to be taken by straggling pirates, and again rescued. The retreat did not stop until the place where the Champlain had been left was reached; she had disappeared, and the heroes of the orchard were constrained to drift about in canoes without paddles like so many Mrs. Aleshines. They used the stocks of their guns to sweep themselves ashore on Hog Island. But the river was full of drifting ice, and Lieutenant Airey and Captain Broderick, who had arrived from Amherstburg with some of the 34th, a field-piece and twenty mounted Indians from the Reserve, soon had the gun trained on the canoes. Airey himself took aim; the first ball plunged at the stern of a canoe, the second took off a man’s arm, and the arm could be seen spinning over the water. One patriot was killed outright; his comrades threw themselves flat, with the exception of the steersman, who, bending as low as he could, poled the unlucky canoe to shore. They imagined that the third shot shattered the last canoe, but its load was destined to illustrate the value of a neutrality law. The men in it were captured by the Brady Guards; were hailed, fired at and surrounded, in due order; dropped their guns overboard and were found unarmed; were taken on board the Guards’ vessel, dried themselves, and were questioned by the officer as to what they did in Canada, who set fire to the Thames—questions easily evaded; went through the farce of a second interrogation, were threatened with confinement, were called some hard names, answered boldly, were cheered by the onlookers; in a stern tone were ordered ashore, where they were met by “amazingly cordial” shouts; were escorted to public places of refreshment by an ex-Senator, and, in a word, received the freedom of the city of Detroit. Happy men to be there; for there was a terrible retribution going on while their exciting canoe race and triumphant entry were transpiring.
On the evening before this 3rd of December, a Dr. Hume, assistant staff-surgeon—only child of Dr. John Hume, of Almada Hill, Lanark, Scotland, in whose family the medical profession was hereditary, the father being in Egypt under Abercrombie, and a cousin-german surgeon to the Duke of Wellington—dined at the house of a friend in Sandwich. He wore his undress uniform, and during the evening went to the Park Farm, partly to see the Colonel, as times were exciting; partly to give professional advice for Mrs. Prince, who was ill to distraction from nervous fever; partly to prescribe for the Colonel himself, who “was extremely ill and worn out by fatigue both night and day;” and chiefly to see the third ill person in this afflicted family, Miss Rudyard. Hume was a fair-complexioned fellow, of easy and gentlemanly manner, with a look and countenance peculiarly mild; altogether a pleasing personality, handsome and distinguished-looking. On the morning of the attack, he and Commissary Morse directed their steps from the Park Tavern to where the sounds of firing came, the former to tender his professional services. They rode, the staff-surgeon still in uniform, and the horse in its usual military trappings. Someone suggested that to be in plain clothes might be safer, but he laughingly replied that no one would touch a doctor. As the incendiaries returned from burning the Thames they met the two. Hume mistook them for Loyalists. A woman came out from her house and warned him that they were a detachment of patriots, but she was too late. The patriot account is that their captain demanded Hume’s surrender. To his question, “To whom shall I surrender?” came the answer, “To the Patriots.” He then quickly dismounted, with the uncomplimentary rejoinder, “Never, to a —— set of rebels!” Then a dozen bullets pierced him. “Only part of our force fired—the rest, among whom I was one, thinking it quite unnecessary to go to extremes with so brave a man.” The surgeon’s body told a different story. Colonel Prince’s official despatch says that, not content with firing several balls into him, the savages stabbed him in many places with their bowie knives and mangled his body with an axe. Another Loyalist appears to have been near enough to call out, “Don’t shoot that man—he is the doctor!” This interruption and their absurd query, “Then why does he not surrender?” enabled him to slip past the corner of a house under cover of which he tried to reach a friend’s. The first man who fired must have been satisfied with his aim, for he turned to a companion and said, “You may go and take the sword, he won’t run farther.” At any rate, he retreated, pistol in hand, facing his enemies. The legends of the time say he was barbarously mutilated, dismembered, and his heart cut out, and preparations made to skin him, with a view to drumheads. It was said that these barbarities were committed under the impression that he was the dreaded Prince himself; this is now contradicted by many, as are also some of the details of the atrocities. There are those still alive who say they saw his quarters hung on the fence pickets by these human shrikes, and yet others who saw his body intact, as it lay in Mrs. Hawkins’ store. Hume’s companion fared better; he was shot at, but the balls passed through his hair.
Again to quote from the despatch: “Of the brigands and pirates, 21 were killed, besides 4 who were brought in just at the close and immediately after the engagement, all of whom I ordered to be shot upon the spot, and which was done accordingly.” Over the last thirteen words were innumerable articles written, controversies begun which nearly ended in bloodshed; they led to twelve challenges to the duello from Colonel Prince to his detractors; to debates in the Houses of Commons and Lords, where Pakington, Labouchere, Brougham, the Duke of Wellington, Melbourne and Normanby were to fight over again the famous battle of Windsor; a reward was offered on the other side of the river, for Prince’s body $800, for him alive $1,000; the much beset Colonel had notices displayed on his farm that none should venture there after dark, as he had spring-guns and man-traps set to protect himself; and lastly there was the court-martial.
Naturally such a story, horrible at first, grew as it travelled and as time progressed. “John Bishop of St. Albans, in a fit of jealousy, shot his wife and then himself,” once wrote a French newspaper. “Jean, évêque de St. Albans, dans un accès de jalousie a tué sa femme,” said the first exchange; the next editor supposed that a married bishop must be an Episcopalian—and next “The Protestant bishop of St. Albans has killed his wife and then himself.” In like manner ran the prisoner stories. One unfortunate was commanded by an onlooker to run for his life, the order to shoot having been already given. He did so, with results that are sickening in detail. Before long the four prisoners had developed into nine, who were represented as running the gauntlet, Indian fashion, with additions of further horror.
A prisoner of war is one captured in the course of acknowledged and honourable warfare, and the legality or illegality of the contest makes him a hero or a ruffian. Previous to the fourth of December, ’38, in connection with recent affairs a subject of frequent debate in the Sandwich-Windsor neighbourhood was the hanging on the spot, without the slightest form of trial, of a gang of pirates, by Sir Thomas Maitland, in the island of Malta. However, this summary proceeding on the marooners took place a couple of days after the battle with them, and what was sought for by the Canadians was a precedent for shooting on the field without allowing time for justice to mellow.
As the “Curiæ Canadenses” tells us, formerly “These legal seats of divers ranks
Have limit to St. Laurent’s banks;”
by ’37, “... all beyond, down to Detroit,
Becomes new ground for fresh exploit.”
The exploit of which these debaters, and Colonel Prince in particular, complained was the decision made under the “discouraging shade cast by Whig conciliation;” for at the last court held in Sandwich, when he was prepared to prosecute nine prisoners for murder, he found they, through some point of law which he never could be brought to understand, had become dignified as prisoners of war. As to American citizenship and neutrality laws, it was asked “What avail the speeches, messages, proclamations and paper measures of the President, when unprovoked aggressions of his people remain unpunished.” It was small satisfaction to hear their friends in the neighbouring Republic term the invaders but the roughscuffs of their people; people—they had no people, they were the repudiated of either shore. To term them prisoners of war legalized the cause of the marauders and added hundreds to their ranks. The Tories upheld Prince in his action anent the Pelee Island prisoners “who escaped their just deserts under the nickname of prisoners of war.” Never had he appeared to better advantage than in his address to the court as he declaimed, “I deny also the right of any person of the Executive Council, the right of the Lieutenant-Governor, the right of even Majesty itself, to step between the accuser and those accused of murder, and to prevent the incipient proceeding of an inquiry into the matter by the grand inquest of the country.” But a few hours before his eyes had been filled with the horror of Hume’s body the young surgeon had been in his house, in full possession of youth, health, strength and intelligence; he turned over in the barracks the smoking remains of what he believed to be his fellow-townsmen; he saw the murdered negro; he was distracted with thoughts of one very dear to him whose reason he feared would be unhinged; arson and murder, rifle and torch, the bowie-knife and axe of those whom he considered barbarians, “a cowardly and scampering set of pirates,” merited but one reward. He was in command, and he set about putting his ideas into effect. The details of the “shooting” are so shocking that it is better to omit them here; and shocking or entirely justifiable, the tale as told by historian or eye-witness differs throughout. If more brutality than the case demanded was exercised, it was rebuked by the mounted Indians who soon afterwards brought in seven prisoners from the woods where an escape had been attempted. The first cry was, “Bayonet them!” “No,” said Martin, the Indian leader, “we are Christians, we will not murder them—we will deliver them to our officers to be treated as they think proper.” When Prince saw them he ordered the waggon in which they sat to be wheeled off the road, and as soon as it reached an open spot in rear of the barracks, which still smoked, he ordered that the prisoners should be shot. “For God’s sake, don’t let a white man murder what an Indian has spared!” was the entreaty, and Colonel Prince yielded to it.
Head, once controverting the British idea that Indian warfare was inadmissible in Canada, gave a supposititious reply: “Our Indians never scalp us, never scalp each other; and they have only scalped you because, in defiance of the laws of nations, you invaded their territory to rob them of their lands. If you think their habits of war barbarous, learn in future to leave them in the placid enjoyment of peace.” But the Indians were wiser than Sir Francis in his rounded periods. The Hurons of Detroit had seen the ships of Jacques Cartier, and reported great dark animals with broad white wings spitting out fire and uttering thunder—their first experience of cannon. The cross planted at Gaspé had sent its lesson far inland by 1837, and the warrior in feathers and wampum could teach the controllers of gunpowder by example.
Harvell, the tall Kentuckian, and twelve others were buried in one grave in the lower corner of Colonel Baby’s orchard; the body of General Putnam found a grave until his wife and daughter came, had it exhumed, and took it away.
Of the survivors who scattered themselves in the woods some were discovered frozen, sitting at the roots of trees and evidently famished ere they froze; some were found round the miserable remains of a camp-fire, remnants of potatoes, their only food, scattered about. Many had been wounded, suffering tortures beyond hunger and cold. Of those taken alive most were sent to Van Diemen’s Land, among them a farmer who had joined the expedition haphazard at the last moment when he was both drunk and reckless. His wife and family could not trace what became of him; but after the lapse of twenty years he made his escape to the South Sea Islands, whence he returned to his former home, to find his wife again married, his children grown up, and his estate in due course of law divided among them. Hardship and old age had so told on him there was small fear of recognition; he obtained some small appointment, never troubled his family, and worked an Enoch Arden end to an existence spoiled by the sad freak of having been a pirate for a day.
Some found shelter with the Irish and French peasants, for although on the whole Loyalist both these nationalities had quickly-moved sympathies. One of the escaping “officers” threw himself on the protection of a big Irish woman. “Are yez a Patriarch?” He told her he was a Patriot. “Thin it’s yourself is safe enough; just hide in the cellar and kape aisy.” It is said her husband was in Prince’s employ to deliver all such up; “but bad luck to me if ivvir he sets his eye on wan o’ thim.” This peasant is said to have kept four such refugees for six weeks, so well cared for that when they arrived in Detroit they were “hale, fat and hearty as porkers.” “Now, my lads,” he remarked to his guests, “you have a taste of how the English use us poor Irish.” “Bad luck to thim,” chimed in his wife; “my own dear fader was twelve years hid in a rock for the fear av thim after the battle of Vinegar Hill, and it’s meself carried his vittles till he died.” As for Baptiste, his fine address was equal to the occasion. One hunted creature, some troopers in hot pursuit, burst into a neat little cabin where the Frenchman had risen but madame had not. Taking in the situation at a glance, he clapped a night-cap on the patriot’s head, popped him into bed beside the astonished wife, and when the soldiers entered, with elbows well in and palms extended he shrugged his ignorance of any rebels—no one but his two women-kind, les voilà! He gave the searchers directions towards the bush, and in a short time had his patriot in a canoe, well out in the river, bound for Detroit.
Next morning a large concourse of people, the officers of the militia, Captain Sparkes’ company and a division of Captain Bell’s under Ensign Powell, all in full uniform and with arms reversed, preceded the corpse of the murdered Hume to the churchyard. The Grenadier company of the 34th, drawn up before the Court House, presented arms, so remaining until the procession had passed. The moaning of the wind, the naked branches of the trees above the open grave, the falling snow, were in unison with the sadness of the onlookers; “Suffer us not for any pain of death to fall away from Thee” came with a new meaning to the hearers’ hearts; the words of the ever beautiful ritual for the burial of the dead rose and fell from the rector’s lips on the wintry atmosphere; “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” a volley of musketry, and the family name of Hume was extinct. His fortune of some £20,000, derived from his mother, passed to distant relatives.
The uproar which ensued after this series of tragedies was not by any means all Loyalist-Rebel, nor yet pure righteous indignation; party feeling, private spleen, and the complexity of motives good and bad which enter into any similar demonstration where the actors are human, all had place. A man of extraordinary popularity is generally a mark for jealousy. Across the river hatred of him culminated in the action of “the waddling, twaddling Theller,” who announced that he was coming over at the head of two thousand men and would wash his hands in the blood of John Prince. The patriots who had been saved in the canoes told crowds of “Detroit’s most intelligent citizens” the details of their truly thrilling escape, not only by canoe, but from “the Indian and negro volunteers in the Royal service, or from the more brutal Orangemen.” After he was taken prisoner on the Anne, this Theller had experienced the weight of Colonel Prince’s foot and knew the measure of his speech. In the middle of what he terms a refreshing and invigorating sleep he was waked by a kick from “an individual of the name of John Prince, who had run away from London, England, with plenty of golden means to secure himself a retreat in the western wilds of Canada,” where he strove to “imitate the manners of the artificial nobility of his native land.” This individual Prince “was thirsting for knighthood,” was dark, mysterious, cruel, vindictive, plausible but to deceive, and—herein lay his greatest crime and was the only item of truth in Theller’s impeachment—spared no time, money, act, to crush the hopes of the friends of Canadian rebellion. “His friendly salute aroused me,” writes Theller; “he was armed to the teeth. A brace of pistols and a tomahawk graced his girdle; on his back was slung a double-barrelled gun; a long cavalry sword dangled at his side, a wide-mouthed blunderbuss in his right hand. His whole appearance betokened malignity and determined vengeance.”
Under these circumstances Colonel Prince must be excused for using his foot; clearly it was the only free part of his anatomy. Some months before this trying pedal performance, Theller on the dock at Windsor had taken upon himself to lecture the Colonel, his “blessed privilege as an American citizen” so to do, after Prince had been similarly engaged with a French-Canadian whom he suspected of disaffection. Theller knew, “by the restless brilliancy of his eye, dastardly flashing like the electricity of an approaching thunderstorm,” what he had to expect. He quietly enough stepped on the ferry ready to leave for Detroit, concluding, “Thus was I rescued for the first time from the cherished revenge of this man!”
Between their last meeting and the battle of Windsor Theller had made his wonderful leap for life from the citadel at Quebec and was back in Detroit, ready to inaugurate more mischief just when the attack was the theme of every tongue there.
Perhaps the unkindest mention of the battle was the report given, as the events progressed, by the Detroit Morning Post, fresh from the wonderful spy-glass of the reporter: “The infantry are evidently citizens and, as near as we can judge by means of a spy-glass, are like men employed in an unwilling service. They move at the rate of two miles an hour, and have several times stopped, as though irresolute about proceeding.”
In his own country Colonel Prince was more of a hero than ever. His journeys were ovations. Hamilton, Oakville, Chatham, and London testified to a general appreciation. In Chatham “the incorporated companies saluted him not only with arms, but with hearty cheers;” at London the Union Jack was run up on his hotel, and fire balls were thrown about to make the night brilliant; the volunteers, under Colonel Burwell, came out to do him honour, drawing from him a short, pithy address in which he announced that should a similar opportunity occur a similar result would follow, and his only regret was he had given the much-talked-of prisoners a soldier’s death; addresses, signed by hundreds of the District’s best residents, testified to approval and continued respect; and by the time he reached the House of Assembly he was greeted with a burst of enthusiasm which was supposed to and did represent the feelings of the majority of constituents as well as of members.
“Let the journalists who can in their consciences vindicate the conduct of Colonel Prince ... come out boldly and say so,” was the challenge of those who did not approve. It was taken up. The approval became more emphatic, the friendly sheets were only sorry that he had not shot “every single miscreant of the batch,” and it was proposed to raise £50 to present him with a sword. The Park Farm had a New Year visitation from Captain Leslie and the officers of the Colonel’s battalion, Mr. Ross carrying the ensign; healths were drunk, and Prince’s came second only to Her Majesty in fervour, and continued three times three. In his response the Colonel told them that the disposition of those who were against him was resolving itself into a conspiracy upon his fame, but he meant to treat them as Sir Francis Bond Head had treated the rebels—allow them to go the whole length of their vain, inglorious and ungrateful measures, and “then he would destroy them.”
Prince promised not a whit more than it turned out he was able to perform.
About this time his Excellency Sir George Arthur took the Erie border towns in one of his tours. Prior to his arrival in Sandwich it was said that he was one of those who disapproved of Prince. To fire the first shot, the Colonel drew up the address which it was proposed to present, and, assuming the possibility of fresh trouble, foreshadowed results: “Certain, instant and inevitable death at our hands will be their fate, without any recognition of them as prisoners of war, or as any other sort of prisoners.” Some delay occurred in the time of arrival, and the address was sent to Toronto. When the Governor did arrive, another, expressing very different sentiments, was presented—which he demurred at receiving. The people found he had nothing prepossessing in appearance, “indeed, he is as indifferent a looking person as can be imagined,” and all waited to see the result of the interview with their beloved Colonel.
Immediately afterwards there appeared in Detroit papers, and in large, closely printed hand-bills, an anonymous and detailed narrative called “The Battle of Windsor,” written on this side and printed across the river. A copy signed by a militia colonel and twelve others was sent to the Governor in Toronto, accompanied by affidavits vouching for the truth of the charges therein contained. At once a court-martial or court of inquiry was instituted, composed of Lieutenant-Colonel Airey, Major French of the 85th, and Major Deedes, of the 34th. Never did people more speedily occupy a pit which they had digged for others. The militia colonel had been proud to preside at the meeting where summary measures and no quarter were proposed and ratified; he was now proved to have made bad feeling in the service by his literary composition; to have exaggerated, and thereby lowered the character of the service; to have aggravated the feelings of hostility already rampant on either border—and he was relieved of his commission. A meeting at once took place between Prince and one of his late libellers, at “A gentlemanly distance, but not too near,
If you have got your former friend for foe;”
shots were exchanged, the Colonel’s bullet lodged in his adversary’s cheek, the latter’s weapon was discharged in the air; and some dozen other challenges ensued. There was also the duello by correspondence, when sharp things were penned. Prince shook off his quondam friends, and one of them smartly replied, “You are at perfect liberty to cast off your quondam friends, as it may save them the unpleasant trouble of doing the same by you.”
The huzzas of the triumphant after all this may be easily imagined. His former townsmen in England set about getting up a testimonial; he was dined in Toronto, and made his usual triumphal progress home. The 85th were ready to draw him to the Park Farm, substituting themselves for his horses, and immediate preparation was made to dine and wine him in Sandwich. A carriage with the Dinner Committee was despatched to the Park Farm, preceded by another carriage containing a band of music, all under escort of the brave and loyal 2nd Essex Cavalry. The “flag of our country” and the green and gold colours of the Windsor volunteers floated over them; and on their return with the guest the carriage was brought up by a peremptory “Halt!” the cheering 85th set the horses free, and in the midst of the shouting populace, and to the inspiriting sounds of “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” took him to the officers’ quarters. Here “God Save the Queen” was struck up; and from the officers’ quarters the way was led to the dinner, set in an arbour of oak boughs.
Then—the Queen, God bless her, nine times nine; the Queen Dowager, Lord Hill of the army, and Lord Minto of the navy, all lesser fry who had to be content with three times three. The President called upon a hundred guests “to fill to the very brim—which was done accordingly;” John Prince, may long life and prosperity attend him—nineteen times nine, and one cheer more.
So far so good; from Halifax to Amherstburg every newspaper exploited him, every mail recorded fresh triumphs; he had only to show himself to be cheered to the echo. But he had yet to pass through the hands of Lord Brougham.
The ex-Chancellor was ready to fight any number of duels, rhetorical or conversational, of black-letter law or black-mouthed insinuation, upon any conceivable occasion. He now pounced upon the word outlaw and twisted it through all the maze of meaning. The “mealy-mouthed” Sir George Arthur’s opinion and the exculpation by court-martial availed not; nothing but insanity could excuse Colonel Prince. In his opinion he, Prince, was guilty of murder; he had made assurance doubly sure by anticipation of legal proceedings and results. That there was great support given Colonel Prince throughout Canada, advanced as a mitigating circumstance by Lord Ellenborough, seemed but to justify the ex-Chancellor in his sweeping condemnation. The Duke of Wellington drew attention to the fact that it was not Colonel Prince’s commission that was involved, or even his life alone, but the conduct of the Upper Canadian government; that if all alleged were true, another gallant friend of his, Sir John Colbome, whose duty it was to have brought Colonel Prince at once to court-martial and punish him, would have been remiss, and (evidently) warming to his subject, his Grace predicted that a system of retaliation would be followed, that if Her Majesty had not the power to protect her Canadian subjects the colony ought to be abandoned. “Is there a single spot,” he asks, “except that on which a soldier stands, in which Her Majesty’s authority is enforced?”
Brougham’s reputation when travelling was that at Inverness he was Conservative, but, changing his opinions as often as his horses, he was downright revolutionary by the time he reached Dundee; there at the full, at Edinburgh he waned. By the time the Duke of Wellington had finished Brougham’s sympathies were modified, and he ends with an opinion that if the Government of the United States had not power to repress such warfare they could hardly be called a civilized nation.
Upheld by the Duke, with the approval of the Imperial Parliament, rewarded by a commission in the 71st for his son—a gift straight from the hand of the great man himself—Colonel Prince held his head high for the rest of his life, took good care to keep out of Detroit, fought his remaining enemies to the last, and might well have said, “Honour and policy, like unsevered friends, i’ the war do grow together.” Always manly, he was ready to meet his former vilifiers half-way in a reconciliation in which Sir Allen MacNab, the Rector of Sandwich, Major Lachlan and John Hillyard Cameron undertook the rôle of mediators. All reflections contained in the skit upon the colonel’s valour were withdrawn, and on his side he expressed, in writing, his regret for his many hasty expressions. It was, in fact, a true amnesty, in which each party had to pay its own costs, for more than one bit of litigation had begun.
Well might a temperate New York newspaper say, “With all our hearts we wish those who feel themselves oppressed in Canada might have the liberty they seek, if they could get it without resorting to measures endangering the peace of the whole Anglo-Saxon race.”
“Come, Mighty Must!
Inevitable Shall!
In Thee I trust;
Time weaves my coronal.”