The Niagara River

by Archer Butler Hulbert

Before the outbreak of the war Brock wrote to his superiors concerning his province as follows:

The first point to which I am anxious to call your excellency's attention is the district of Amherstburg. I consider it the most important, and, if supplied with the means of commencing active operations, must deter any offensive attempt on this province, from Niagara westward. The American government will be compelled to secure their western frontier from the inroads of the Indians, and this cannot be effected without a very considerable force. But before we can expect an active co-operation on the part of the Indians, the reduction of Detroit and Michilimakinack must convince that people, who conceive themselves to have been sacrificed, in 1794, to our policy,[36] that we are earnestly engaged in the war. The Indians, I am made to understand, are eager for an opportunity to avenge the numerous injuries of which they complain. A few tribes, at the instigation of a Shawnese, of no particular note, have already, although explicitly told not to look for assistance from us, commenced the contest. The stand which they continue to make upon the Wabash, against about two thousand Americans, including militia and regulars, is a strong proof of the large force which a general combination of the Indians will render necessary to protect so widely extended a frontier.

Again, Brock was in a very different position from the British commanders during the Revolution; his province was being invaded and the Indians who had settled under the auspices of the British Government in that province were threatened with destruction as seriously as the loyalists or the native Englishmen transplanted from the mother-country. Surely, no one would expect Indians whose homes lay in the upper province to remain neutral when that province was invaded. Indeed, in February, 1812, we find Brock complaining to his superior of the lax attention that was paid by the Government to the Indians settled in the province he had been sent to govern.

Divisions are thus uninterruptedly sowed among our Indian friends [he wrote, meaning, of course, sowed by Americans], and the minds of many altogether estranged from our interests. Such must inevitably be the consequence of our present inert and neutral proceedings in regard to them. It ill becomes me to determine how long true policy requires that the restrictions imposed upon the Indian department ought to continue; but this I will venture to assert, that each day the officers are restrained from interfering in the concerns of the Indians, each time they advise peace and withhold the accustomed supply of ammunition, their influence will diminish, till at length they lose it altogether.

Nothing shows better the activity of the American officers in seeking to line the Indians up on the side of the fighting Republic than Brock's letters to his superiors. We have already seen that Brock had, as late as July 3d, little hope of keeping the Indians of the Grand River true to him because of the American influence exerted over them by active agents. And we have seen, in his counter-proclamation answering that issued by General Hull, that Brock places the employment of the Indians on the ground of territorial rights: "By what new principle," he asks, "are they to be prohibited from defending their property?"

The ominous words used by General Brock in his summons to Hull to surrender have, it must be admitted, all the ring of a threat; but, for one, I do not take them to be that primarily, but rather the honest, frank words of a gentleman. In case of the sacking of Detroit Brock could not have controlled those redskins of his, and he knew it. In like circumstances what general had been able to control the Indians attached to him? In the single instance of Sir William Johnson at the fall of Fort Niagara, we find an illustration of approximate control, yet nothing in the world but the power of that great man would have answered under the circumstances. I would believe that Brock knew he could not control his Iroquois allies,[37] whether in victory or in defeat, and made a plain statement to Hull to that effect. That he told the truth I think no one can doubt after examining the situation; whether he would have told the truth if the truth had not carried a threat may be questioned. The truth usually answers a gentleman's purposes, and Brock was that to the marrow of his bones.

Brock had not overestimated the effect and influence of his bloodless victory upon the English, but, by strange caprice of Fate, was not permitted to live to receive the high honours bestowed upon him. On the thirteenth of the following October, in the battle of Queenston Heights, elsewhere described, while reforming the broken British ranks for a second time, a bullet in the breast cut short a life that promised very high attainment. As was his custom the General had arisen before daybreak on this fatal day and had left Fort George at the first sound of the battle on the heights. His conspicuous presence, bright uniform, and animated deportment in attempting to reform the broken lines, made him a plain target for Wool's heroic men, who had climbed up a pathway steeper than any Wolfe's troops ever saw at Quebec. "Push on the York volunteers," were the words of the brave man's last order; but as he lay in the arms of his aides he begged that his injury might not be noticed by the troops or disconcert their advance; and with one half-understood wish concerning a token of love to be given to his sister, Isaac Brock fell dead.

It is not given to many notable men to fall in the very midst of spectacular success; it can easily be believed that General Brock, being the man we know him to have been, would have made the best use of his triumph, and that it would have been but a stepping-stone to enlarged opportunities where each duty in its turn would have received the same decent, earnest attention that the man gave to his work throughout those half-unhappy days when he felt marooned in the wilds of a dreary ocean, where no one could prove his merit, calibre, or knowledge. And so, after all is said for this fine man, I, for one, like best to go back to those days of impatient longing for opportunity amid the dull grind of routine at Fort George, and see the real spirit of Brock who, in all truth, deserves the honourable title of "Hero of Upper Canada"; and when you have caught the spirit displayed by him in those dispiriting days, realise his careful faithfulness in the humdrum life he was asked to live, while his schoolmates of war were winning great glory on the epoch-making European battlefields, join to it that sudden burst of splendid grit and heroism that provoked the Detroit attack despite the advice of the staff officers, and you have a combination that thrills the heart of friend and enemy—of all who love patient doing of duty and real displays of undiluted heroism.

Some of the best tributes to Brock, were, as should have been the case, those paid by persons who knew of his place in the hearts of the people of his adopted land of service:

The news of the death of this excellent officer [observed the Quebec Gazette] has been received here as a public calamity. The attendant circumstances of victory scarcely checked the painful sensation. His long residence in this province, and particularly in this place, had made him in habits and good offices almost a citizen; and his frankness, conciliatory disposition, and elevated demeanour, an estimable one. The expressions of regret as general as he was known, and not uttered by friends and acquaintances only, but by every gradation of class, not only by grown persons, but young children, are the test of his worth. Such, too, is the only eulogium worthy of the good and brave, and the citizens of Quebec have, with solemn emotions, pronounced it on his memory. But at this anxious moment other feelings are excited by his loss. General Brock had acquired the confidence of the inhabitants within his government. He had secured their attachment permanently by his own merits. They were one people animated by one disposition, and this he had gradually wound up to the crisis in which they were placed. Strange as it may seem, it is to be feared that he had become too important to them. The heroic militia of Upper Canada, more particularly, had knit themselves to his person; and it is yet to be ascertained whether the desire to avenge his death can compensate the many embarrassments it will occasion. It is indeed true that the spirit, and even the abilities, of a distinguished man often carry their influence beyond the grave; and the present event furnishes its own example, for it is certain notwithstanding General Brock was cut off early in the action, that he had already given an impulse to his little army, which contributed to accomplish the victory when he was no more. Let us trust that the recollection of him will become a new bond of union, and that, as he sacrificed himself for a community of patriots, they will find a new motive to exertion in the obligation to secure his ashes from the pestilential dominion of the enemy.