A strip of land one mile wide along the American shore from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie had been exempted when New York ceded the ownership of what is now the western part of this State to Massachusetts, which ownership New York subsequently reacquired. Finally the Indians, who, in spite of their former cessions to England, still claimed an ownership, ceded to New York, for one thousand dollars and an annuity of one thousand five hundred dollars, their title to all the islands in the Niagara River. The State of New York patented the mile-strip to individuals, commencing in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
In spite of the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, as noted, neither Niagara nor Detroit was surrendered by the British until 1796. Both forts were held as English outposts and strengthened. We have shown that the boundary-line between Canada and the United States was improperly conceived; but it is a fact that during the Revolutionary War the people of the North-west had been warned from Niagara and Detroit to take up arms in behalf of the Americans. Nothing aggressive, however, had been accomplished. The wilderness of three hundred miles between Detroit and the Eastern States made an attack upon the posts by the Americans impracticable; moreover, most of the fighting in this region was done by the British and the Indians and the people of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
It is due to the statesmanship of John Jay that the posts still garrisoned by British troops in the United States, contrary to the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris, were finally evacuated in 1796. Jay had been sent by President Washington to go to Great Britain in 1794 as special envoy to settle differences growing out of the failure of that country to keep the obligations of the Treaty of 1784, differences which had aroused a strong war-spirit all over the States. It was easy to foresee, as Jay recognised, that the outcome of the situation would in all probability be unpopular with the people, but he did not hesitate to meet the responsibility that Washington believed he could meet better than any other man, partially because of the reputation he had established in England while negotiating the Treaty of 1784. Jay set sail on May 12, 1794 in the ship Ohio, with his son Peter Augustus, and with John Trumbull as secretary. On June 8th he landed at Falmouth and at once entered into relation with Lord Grenville, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, who was commissioned by the King to treat with Mr. Jay. The sincerity and candour of the two negotiators soon led to a degree of mutual confidence that both facilitated and lightened their labours. A treaty resulted known on this side of the ocean as "Jay's Treaty," which settled the eastern boundary of Maine, recovered for illegal captures by British cruisers $10,000,000, secured the surrender of the western forts still garrisoned by the British, and contained an article about the West India trade. With the exception of the latter article, the treaty was approved by the President and ratified by the Senate. But many were not satisfied, and denounced Jay with tongue and pen, and even burned him in effigy in Boston, Philadelphia, and at his own home in New York. How different was the homecoming from that after the negotiation of the other treaty, when the freedom of the city was presented to him in a golden box, and each one seemed to vie with every other in extending a welcome! In a letter to a friend, Jay said at that time, "Calumny is seldom durable, it will in time yield to truth," and he bore himself at that time as one having full confidence that he had acted both wisely and skilfully, and expected the people to realise it in time. The British, however, would not evacuate Niagara and the other forts without a semblance of fighting on paper. They held, amongst other reasons, that they were yet justified in maintaining a garrison on American soil because "it was alleged by divers merchants and others, His Majesty's subjects," that they had sustained various losses by the legal impediments they had experienced in collecting debts in America due to them before the war. Mr. Jay, however, with great diplomacy, removed this obstacle by the appointment of Commissioners of Award, and as the British finally were deprived of all pretence for maintaining the posts, it was agreed that they should be surrendered on or before the first of June, 1796. This was finally done and the third and last flag floated lazily in the Lake Ontario breezes over the historic point. The settlers and traders within the jurisdiction of the posts were permitted to remain and to enjoy their property without becoming citizens of the United States unless they should think proper to do so.
Fort Erie and the Mouth of the Niagara, by Pfister, in 1764.
From the original in the British Museum.
Anthony Wayne's army now took full possession of the Niagara region. With the exception of a small strip of land on the river and lake, all the present State of Michigan was occupied by Indians—Pottawattomies, Miamis, Wyandots, Chippewas, Winnebagoes, and Ottawas. The first American commander of the post was Colonel John Francis Hamtramck, who died in 1803. At that period Detroit was headquarters of the Western Army, but the whole garrison only consisted of three hundred men.
Niagara-on-the-Lake may be called the Plymouth Rock of upper Canada. It was once its proud capital. Variously known in the past as Loyal Village, Butlersbury, Nassau, and Newark, it had a daily paper as early as 1792, and was a military post of distinction at the same period, its real beginnings, however, being contemporaneous with the War of Independence. Here, within two short hours' ride of the most populous and busy city of western New York, typical of the material forces that have moulded the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we come upon a spot of intensest quiet, in the shadow of whose ivy-mantled church tower sleep trusted servants of the Georges, Loyalists and their Indian allies.
The place has been overtaken by none of that unpicturesque commercial prosperity which further up the frontier threatens to destroy all the natural beauties of the river-banks.