“Porter’s volunteers were not excelled by the regulars during this charge. They were soon precipitated by their heroic commander upon the enemy’s line, which they broke and dispersed, making many prisoners. The enemy now seemed to be effectually routed; they disappeared....
“At the commencement of the action, Col. Jesup was detached to the left of the enemy, with the discretionary order, to be governed by circumstances.—The commander of the British forces had committed a fault by leaving a road unguarded on his left. Col. Jesup, taking advantage of this, threw himself promptly into the rear of the enemy, where he was enabled to operate with brilliant enterprise and the happiest effect. The capture of Gen. Riall, with a large escort of officers of rank, was part of the trophies of his intrepidity and skill. It is not, we venture to assert, bestowing on him too much praise to say, that to his achievements, more than to those of any other individual, is to be attributed the preservation of the first brigade from utter annihilation.
“Among the officers captured by Col. Jesup, was Capt. Loring, one of General Drummond’s aid-de-camps, who had been despatched from the front line to order up the reserve, with a view to fall on Scott with the concentrated force of the whole army and overwhelm him at a single effort. Nor would it have been possible to prevent this catastrophe, had the reserve arrived in time; the force with which General Scott would have been obliged to contend being nearly quadruple that of his own. By the fortunate capture, however, of the British aid-de-camp, before the completion of the service on which he had been ordered, the enemy’s reserve was not brought into action until the arrival of Gen. Ripley’s brigade, which prevented the disaster that must otherwise have ensued, and achieved, in the end, one of the most honourable victories that ever shed lustre upon the arms of a nation....”
Note to Lundy’s Lane.—Rainbow of the Cataract.—The afternoon of the action presented one of those delicious summer scenes in which all nature appears to be breathing in harmony and beauty.—As General Scott’s brigade came in view, and halted in the vicinity of the cataracts, the mist rising from the falls, was thrown in upon the land, arching the American force with a vivid and gorgeous rainbow, the left resting on the cataract, and the right lost in the forest. Its brilliance and beauty was such, that it excited not only the enthusiasm of the officers, but even the camp followers were filled with admiration.
Note to Lundy’s Lane.—The day after the battle.—“I rode to the battle-ground about day-light on the following morning, without witnessing the presence of a single British officer or soldier. The dead had not been removed through the night, and such a scene of carnage I never before beheld.—Red coats, blue, and grey, promiscuously intermingled, in many places three deep, and around the hill where the enemy’s artillery was carried by Colonel Miller, the carcasses of sixty or seventy horses added to the horror of the scene.”—Private Letter of an Officer.
The dead were collected and burnt in funeral piles, made of rails, on the field where they had fallen.