In default of the control of Lake Erie, measures were taken by the British to supply the remote and isolated posts of Mackinac and St. Joseph's by land carriage from Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a distance of only forty miles, and thence across the ice to Matchedash Bay, on Lake Huron; where also were being built batteaux and gunboats, to transport the stores to their destination when navigation opened. As far as Huron this land route was out of reach of probable molestation, but from there it was necessary to proceed at the earliest moment; for, although there was no American naval force then on that lake, one might be expected to arrive from Erie early in the season. To this cross-country line there was an alternative one still more remote, from Montreal up the Ottawa River, and thence by other water communication, striking Lake Huron much higher up. It was practicable only for canoes with light lading, and in other respects not satisfactory. The maintenance of Mackinac therefore must depend upon armed control of the upper lakes; and to this the destruction of the prizes at the islands would doubtless have contributed, morally and materially.
On the American side as little was accomplished during the winter. Wilkinson's army, which at the end of 1813 was cantoned at French Mills, on the Salmon River, just within the New York boundary, was withdrawn from that position February 13. The greater part marched to Lake Champlain, where they again took winter quarters in two divisions; one at Burlington, Vermont, the other at Plattsburg. The third contingent, under the command of General Brown, was sent to Sackett's Harbor, where it arrived February 24.
The Secretary of War, General Armstrong, despite his vacillating course the previous year, had never lost sight of his perfectly accurate conviction that Kingston, if not Montreal, was the true objective for the northern army. Convinced that he had been misled in the spring of 1813 by the opinions of the commanders on the spot, Chauncey and Dearborn, he was again anxious, as he had been in the intervening autumn, to retrieve the error. On February 28 he issued to Brown two sets of instructions;[272] the one designed to transpire, in order to mislead the enemy, the other, most secret, conveying the real intention of the Department. In the former, stress was laid upon the exposure of western New York, and the public humiliation at seeing Fort Niagara in the hands of the British. Brigadier-General Scott accordingly had been sent there to organize a force for the capture of the fort and the protection of the frontier; but, as his numbers were probably insufficient, Brown was directed to march to Batavia, and thence to Buffalo, with the two thousand troops he had just brought from French Mills. This letter was meant to reach the enemy's ears. The other, embodying the true object aimed at, read thus: "It is obviously Prevost's policy, and probably his intention, to re-establish himself on Lake Erie during the ensuing month. But to effect this other points of his line must be weakened, and these will be either Kingston or Montreal. If the detachment from the former be great, a moment may occur in which you may do, with the aid of Commodore Chauncey, what I last year intended Pike should have done without aid, and what we now all know was very practicable, viz.: to cross the river, or head of the lake, on the ice, and carry Kingston by a coup de main." The letter ended by making the enterprise depend upon a concurrence of favorable conditions; in brief, upon the discretion of the general, with whom remained all the responsibility of final decision and action.
These instructions were elicited, immediately, by recent information that the effective garrison in Kingston was reduced to twelve hundred, with no prospect of increase before June, when re-enforcements from Europe were expected. Certainly, Drummond at this time thought the force there no stronger than it should be, and early in April was apprehensive on that account for the safety of the place.[273] Brown and Chauncey, however, agreed that less than four thousand men was insufficient for the undertaking. Singularly enough, this number was precisely that fixed upon by Yeo and Drummond, in consultation, as necessary for the reduction of Sackett's Harbor; which they concurred with Prevost in considering the quickest and surest solution of the difficulty attending their situation about Niagara, owing to the exhaustion of local resources upon the peninsula.[274] The scarcity thus experienced was aggravated by the number of dependent Indian warriors, who with their families had followed the British retreat from Malden and Detroit, and now hung like lead upon the movements and supplies of the army. "Nearly twelve hundred barrels of flour monthly to Indians alone," complained the commanding officer, who had long since learned that for this expenditure there was no return in military usefulness. In the felt necessity to retain the good-will of the savages, no escape from the dilemma was open, except in the maintenance of a stream of supplies from Lower Canada by keeping command of the Lake;[275] to secure which nothing was so certain as to capture Sackett's and destroy the shipping and plant.
Having decided that the enterprise against Kingston was not feasible, Brown fell into the not unnatural mistake of construing the Secretary's other letter to present not merely a ruse, but an alternative line of action, more consonant to his active martial temper than remaining idle in garrison. Accordingly, he left Sackett's with his two thousand, an event duly chronicled in a letter of Drummond's, that on Sunday, March 13, three thousand five hundred left Sackett's for Niagara; a statement sufficiently characteristic of the common tendency of an enemy's force to swell, as it passes from mouth to mouth. The division had progressed as far as the present city of Syracuse, sixty miles from Sackett's, and Brown himself was some forty miles in advance of it, at Geneva, when one of his principal subordinates persuaded him that he had misconstrued the Department's purpose. In considerable distress he turned about, passing through Auburn on the 23d at the rate of thirty miles a day, so said a contemporary newspaper,[276] and hurried back to Sackett's. There further consultation with Chauncey convinced him again that he was intended to go to Niagara, and he resumed his march. Before April 1 he reached Batavia, where his instructions read he would receive further orders. General Scott was already at Buffalo, and there the troops were placed under his immediate charge for organization and drill; Brigadier-General Gaines being sent back to command at Sackett's, where he arrived April 10.
At this moment Chauncey was undergoing his turn of qualms. "The enemy," he wrote the following day, "have prepared a force of three thousand troops, with gunboats and a number of small craft, to attack the harbor the moment the fleet leaves it. They may, however, be determined to make the attack at all hazards, and I am sorry to say our force is but little adapted to the defence of the place. There are not a thousand effective men besides the sailors and marines."[277] His information was substantially correct. Drummond had arranged to concentrate three thousand men from the north shore of the lake; but he wanted besides eight hundred from the peninsula, and for lack of these the project was abandoned.
The movement of Brown's small contingent to Buffalo, though contrary to the intention of the Government, may be considered to have opened the campaign of 1814; destined to prove as abortive in substantial results as that of the year before, but not so futile and inglorious to the American arms. The troops engaged had been formed under the skilful organization and training of Scott. Led by Brown, who, though not an educated soldier nor a master of the technicalities of the profession, was essentially an aggressive fighting man of masculine qualities, they failed indeed to achieve success, for which their numbers were inadequate; but there was no further disgrace.
Wilkinson, indeed, in his district, contrived to give to the beginning of operations the air of absurdity that ever hung round his path. Although he was the senior officer on the whole frontier, the Department had not notified him of Brown's orders. This vicious practice of managing the campaign from a point as distant as Washington then was, ignoring any local centre of control, drew subsequently the animadversion of the President, who in a minute to the Secretary remarked that "it does not appear that Izard,"—Wilkinson's successor,—"though the senior officer of the district, has been made acquainted with the plan of operations under Brown."[278] On the present occasion Wilkinson explained that, hearing of Brown's march by common report, and having ascertained that the enemy was sending re-enforcements up the St. Lawrence, he undertook an incursion into Lower Canada as a diversion against such increase of the force with which Brown must contend.[279] His enterprise was directed against La Colle, a few miles from Plattsburg, within the Canada boundary; but upon arriving before the position it was found that the garrison were established in a stone mill, upon which the guns brought along could make no impression. After this somewhat ludicrous experience, the division, more than three thousand strong, retreated, having lost over seventy men. The result was scarcely likely to afford Brown much relief by its deterrent influence upon the enemy.
This affair happened March 30, and in the course of the following month Wilkinson was finally superseded. He was succeeded by General Izard, who assumed command May 4, and remained in the neighborhood of Champlain, while Brown continued immediately responsible for Sackett's Harbor and for the force at Buffalo. On April 14 Yeo launched two new ships, the "Prince Regent" of fifty-eight guns and the "Princess Charlotte" of forty; and he at the same time had under construction one destined to carry one hundred and two heavy guns, superior therefore in size and armament to most of the British ocean navy, and far more formidable than any in which Nelson ever served. Fortunately for the Americans, this vessel, which Yeo undertook without authority from home, was not ready until October; but the former two, added to his last year's fleet, gave him for the moment a decided preponderance over Chauncey, who also was building but had not yet completed.
Under these circumstances the project of attacking Sackett's in force was again most seriously agitated among the British officials, military and naval, upon whom the destitution of the Niagara peninsula pressed with increasing urgency. Such an intention rarely fails to transpire, especially across a border line where the inhabitants on either side speak the same tongue and are often intimately acquainted. Desertion, moreover, was frequent from both parties. The rumor brought Brown back hastily to the place, where he arrived April 24. The enemy, however, again abandoned their purpose, and after embarking a considerable body of troops turned their arms instead against Oswego.