It was in August, 1806, while he was on his way westward, on this second expedition, that Pike was promoted to be a captain, and his promotion to a majority followed soon after his return. With successive promotions in 1809, he became lieutenant-colonel, and with the coming of the war of 1812, Pike, now a colonel, was sent to guard the northern frontier. He was appointed to be brigadier general March 12, 1813. There was some fighting, but not much; but on April 27, 1813, while leading an attack on Fort York—now Toronto—he was killed by the explosion of the magazine, which the retreating enemy had fired. As an eye-witness said: The Governor’s house, with some smaller buildings, formed a square at the centre battery, and under it the grand magazine, containing a large quantity of powder, was situated. As there were only two or three guns at this battery, and it but a short distance from the garrison, the troops did not remain in it, but retreated to the latter. When the Americans, commanded by one of their best generals, Pike, reached this small battery, instead of pressing forward, they halted, and the general sat down on one of the guns; a fatal proceeding, for, in a few minutes, his advance guard, consisting of about three hundred men and himself, were blown into the air by the explosion of the grand magazine.
“... I heard the report, and felt a tremendous motion in the earth, resembling the shock of an earthquake; and, looking toward the spot, I saw an immense cloud ascend into the air. I was not aware at the moment what it had been occasioned by, but it had an awfully grand effect; at first it was a great confused mass of smoke, timber, men, earth, etc., but as it arose, in a most majestic manner, it assumed the shape of a vast balloon. When the whole mass had ascended to a considerable height, and the force by which the timber, etc., were impelled upwards became spent, the latter fell from the cloud and spread over the surrounding plain.”
Struck by a fragment of rock, Pike was mortally wounded. As he was being taken on board the flagship “Madison,” he heard the cheering on the shore. He asked what it meant, and was told that the Stars and Stripes were being hoisted over the captured fort. A little later the captured British flag was brought to him; he motioned to have it put under his head, and soon after this had been done he died.
It is a melancholy commentary on the shortness of human fame that to-day the number of Americans who know who Pike was is very small. Few men have done more than he for their country. Few men in their time have attracted more attention. Pike’s name has been given to mountains, counties, cities, villages, and even to islands, rivers, and bays; and while, as Dr. Coues suggests, it may well enough be that not all these are named after Pike the explorer, yet we may be sure that the enthusiasm of the people for Pike at the time of his death, and for some time afterward, led to the giving his name to many natural features of the land, and to many political divisions within the States. After all, Pike’s most impressive and most enduring monument must always remain the superb mountain which bears his name. If Pike did not discover this, “the grim sentinel of the Rockies,” which towers fourteen thousand one hundred and forty-seven feet above the sea, at least he was one of the first Americans to see it. He calls it, fitly, the Grand Peak. Nearly fourteen years later, during Major Long’s expedition to the Rocky Mountains, it was named James Peak; but this name, though often mentioned in books, did not long endure, and the name Pike’s Peak, first used some time during the decade between 1830 and 1840—for example in Latrobe’s “Rambler in America”—is now firmly established, and will ever remain the mountain’s designation.
The death of Pike at the early age of thirty-four, so soon after he had attained the summit of his ambition, the rank of general and at the moment when the force under his command had won a notable victory, seems very pathetic; and yet, after all, may not this have been a happy fate? For we cannot tell what sorrows and disappointments a longer life might have brought to him. It seems almost as though he may have had a premonition of the fate in store for him, since, in his last letter to his father, written just before he set out on his expedition, he writes as follows:
“I embark to-morrow in the fleet at Sackett’s Harbor, at the head of a column of one thousand five hundred choice troops, on a secret expedition. If success attends my steps, honor and glory await my name; if defeat, still shall it be said we died like brave men, and conferred honor, even in death, on the American name.
“Should I be the happy mortal destined to turn the scale of war, will you not rejoice, O my father? May heaven be propitious, and smile on the cause of my country. But if we are destined to fall, may my fall be like Wolfe’s—to sleep in the arms of victory.”
It was so that Pike fell asleep.