Many American historians have condemned General Dearborn for not having accomplished more with the means at his disposal but they have made little or no allowance for the physical weakness which actually rendered him unfit to command at all. General Armstrong, who, as Secretary of War, was eager to justify his own conduct, declared that "if instead of concentrating his whole force, naval and military, on the water side of the enemy's defences he had divided the attack and crossed the Niagara below Lewiston and advanced on Fort George by the Queenston road, the investment of that place would have been complete and a retreat of the garrison rendered impracticable." This, however, was actually the movement which Dearborn had planned but failed to execute in time. Ingersol, a member of Congress and a leader of the war party, bitterly observed that "the British General effected his retreat (probably without Dearborn knowing it for he stayed on shipboard) to the mountain passes where he employed his troops in attacking, defeating, and capturing ours during all the rest of that year of discomfitures."
THE END.
N. B.—For the engraving, "The Taking of Fort George," we are indebted to the kindness and courtesy of the Hon. P. A. Porter, Niagara Falls. It is from the portfolio published in Philadelphia, 1817, and is particularly interesting to us as giving the appearance of the churches St. Mark's and St. Andrew's before the town was burnt down, as also the Lighthouse situated nearly where the Queen's Royal Hotel stands now.