At that time the population of Lower Canada was 225,000 souls—200,000 of whom were French; the population of Upper Canada was 75,000; the population of the United States was upwards of 8,000,000: so that the population of the two Canadas was to that of the United States as one to twenty-seven; and the population of Upper Canada was to that of the United States as one to one hundred and six.
Yet the Canadas, with a frontier of more than 1,000 miles, and aided by a few regiments of regular soldiers, sent as a mere guard for the principal cities, from Halifax to Amherstburg, resisted the whole military power of the United States for two years, at the end of which not an inch of Canadian ground was in possession of the invaders; and within six months after England had given freedom and peace to Europe—chaining its Tyrant to the island rock of Elba, sweeping with its fleet the coasts of the United States, and sending 16,000 veteran soldiers to aid the struggling Canadas—the boasting Madison and his Government sued for peace, without even mentioning the original pretexts of war, which Great Britain generously granted.
It does not come within our purpose to write a history of this war; we present only such phases and events of it as will illustrate the Loyalist spirit and courage of the Canadians, French as well as English, and even true Americans; for the American settlers in Canada were, with few exceptions, as loyal subjects and as bold defenders of their adopted country as the U.E. Loyalists themselves; and even the most virtuous and intelligent part of the citizens of the United States protested against the alliance of the Democratic rulers at Washington with the tyrant and scourge of Europe.
We shall notice, in the first place, the alleged and real causes of the war; secondly, the preparations for it made by the Governments and Legislatures of the two Canadas; thirdly, the invasions of each province, each year, separately, and the battles fought. There were no less than eleven invasions of the Canadas by the American armies during the three years of the war, besides naval engagements, and various incursions of marauding and plundering parties.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Alleged and Real Causes of the War.
From the first—from the treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States in 1783—there was a large party in the United States bitterly and actively hostile to England and its colonies; that party had persecuted and driven the Loyalists from the United States, and compelled them to seek homes in the Canadian wilderness, and had even followed them with its enmities in their new abodes; that party had sympathized with the revolutionists of France, who crimsoned the streets of Paris with the blood of their Sovereign and fellow-citizens, and who sent emissaries to Canada to subvert legal authority, and excite the strife of anarchy and bloodshed. The base of the operations of all the emissaries of French revolutionists in Canada was for twenty years the United States, aided directly and indirectly by American sympathizers; that same party sympathized and even leagued with Napoleon against England while she was defending the liberties of Europe and of mankind; it was the same party that in subsequent years aided the rebel Mackenzie and the rabble Fenians to invade Canada, allowing the United States to be the base of their organizations, and opening to them the American arsenals of arms and ammunition; it was the same party that, in conspiracy with the Tyrant of France and the enemy of human freedom, declared war against Great Britain in 1812, in order to wrest Canada from her possession, and make it an appendage of France and the United States.[176]
The American Government alleged two reasons as the ground of its declaration of war against Britain: the one was, that the British Government had issued Orders in Council which injured the American commerce with other countries; the other was, that the British Government had infringed the rights of the United States by authorizing the boarding of American vessels in search of deserters from the English army and navy, and seizing them.
As to the first of these reasons, namely, the English Orders in Council, the facts are as follow: "After the annihilation of the naval power of France at Trafalgar in 1805, by Lord Nelson, the principal transactions of France at sea were the fitting out and arming of privateers to prey upon the English merchant vessels and commerce. To accomplish his purpose more effectually, Napoleon promulgated the following year after the destruction of his fleet what is called the Berlin Decree."[177]