“When they arrive,” he wrote September 17 to Van Rensselaer,[297] “with the regular troops and militia from the southward and such additional numbers of militia as I reckon on from this State, the aggregate force will I presume amount to upward of six thousand. It is intended to have a force sufficient to enable you to act with effect, though late.”
The alarm still continued; and even a week afterward Dearborn wrote as though he expected disaster:[298]
“A strange fatality seems to have pervaded the whole arrangements. Ample reinforcements of troops and supplies of stores are on their way, but I fear their arrival will be too late to enable you to maintain your position.... By putting on the best face that your situation admits, the enemy may be induced to delay an attack until you will be able to meet him and carry the war into Canada. At all events we must calculate on possessing Upper Canada before winter sets in.”
In Dearborn’s letters nothing was said of the precise movement intended, but through them all ran the understanding that as soon as the force at Niagara should amount to six thousand men a forward movement should be made. The conditions supposed to be needed for the advance were more than fulfilled in the early days of October, when some twenty-five hundred militia, with a regiment of Light Artillery without guns, and the Thirteenth U. S. Infantry were in the neighborhood of Lewiston; while a brigade of United States troops, sixteen hundred and fifty strong, commanded by Brigadier-General Alexander Smyth, were on the march to Buffalo. October 13 Dearborn wrote to Van Rensselaer:[299] “I am confidently sure that you will embrace the first practicable opportunity for effecting a forward movement.” This opportunity had then already arrived. Smyth reached Buffalo, September 29, and reported by letter to General Van Rensselaer; but before seeing each other the two generals quarrelled. Smyth held the opinion that the army should cross into Canada above the Falls, and therefore camped his brigade at Buffalo. Van Rensselaer had made his arrangements to cross below the Falls. October 5 Van Rensselaer requested Smyth to fix a day for a council of war, but Smyth paid no attention to the request; and as he was independent of Van Rensselaer, and could not be compelled to obey the orders of a major-general of New York militia, Van Rensselaer decided to act, without regard to Smyth’s brigade or to his opinions. He knew that the force under his immediate orders below the Falls was sufficient for his purpose.[300]
Van Rensselaer’s decision was supported by many different motives,—the lateness of the season, the weather, the sickness and the discontent of the militia threatening actual disbandment, the jealousy of a militia officer toward the regular service, and the additional jealousy of a Federalist toward the Government; for Van Rensselaer was not only a Federalist, but was also a rival candidate against Tompkins for the governorship of New York, and the Republicans were eager to charge him with intentional delay. A brilliant stroke by Lieutenant Elliott at the same moment added to the restlessness of the army. On the night of October 8 Elliott and Captain Towson of the Second Artillery, with fifty sailors and fifty soldiers of Smyth’s brigade, cut out two British vessels under the guns of Fort Erie.[301] One of these vessels was the “Adams,” captured by Brock at Detroit, the other had belonged to the Northwestern Fur Company, and both were of great value to the British as a reinforcement to their fleet on Lake Erie. The larger was destroyed; the smaller, named the “Caledonia,” was saved, and served to increase the little American fleet. Brock felt keenly the loss of these two vessels, which “may reduce us to incalculable distress,” he wrote to Prevost, October 11. He watched the progress of Elliott’s and Chauncey’s naval preparations with more anxiety than he showed in regard to Dearborn’s military movements, although he spared no labor in fortifying himself against these.
General Van Rensselaer conceived a plan for a double attack by throwing one body of troops across the river to carry Queenston, while a strong force of regulars should be conveyed in boats by way of the Lake and landed on the Lake shore in the rear of Fort George to take the fort by storm,—a movement afterward successfully made; but owing to Smyth’s conduct the double attack was abandoned, and Van Rensselaer decided to try only the simpler movement against Queenston. Brock with less than two thousand men guarded nearly forty miles of front along the Niagara River, holding at Queenston only two companies of the Forty-ninth Regiment with a small body of militia,—in all about three hundred men. Brock was himself at Fort George, some five miles below Queenston, with the greater part of the Forty-first Regiment, which he had brought back from Detroit, and a number of Indians. The rest of his force was at Chippawa and Fort Erie, opposite Buffalo, where the real attack was expected.
Van Rensselaer fixed the night of October 10 for his movement, and marched the troops to the river at the appointed time; but the crossing was prevented by some blunder in regard to boats, and the troops after passing the night exposed to a furious storm returned to camp. After this miscarriage Van Rensselaer would have waited for a council of war, but the tone of his officers and men satisfied him that any sign of hesitation would involve him in suspicion and injure the service.[302] He postponed the movement until the night of October 12, giving the command of the attack to Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer of the State militia, whose force was to consist of three hundred volunteers and three hundred regular troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Christie of the Thirteenth Regiment.
At three o’clock on the morning of October 13 the first body of troops embarked. Thirteen boats had been provided. Three of these lost their way, or were forced by the current down stream until obliged to return. Colonel Christie was in one of the boats that failed to land. The command of his men fell to young Captain Wool of the Thirteenth Regiment. The British were on the alert, and although after a volley of musketry they withdrew toward Queenston they quickly returned with reinforcements and began a sharp action, in which Colonel Van Rensselaer was severely wounded and the advance on Queenston was effectually stopped. Daylight appeared, and at a quarter before seven Brock himself galloped up and mounted the hill above the river to watch the contest from an 18-pounder battery on the hill-top.[303] At the same moment Captain Wool with a few men of his regiment climbed up the same heights from the riverside by a path which had been reported to Brock as impassable, and was left unguarded. Reaching the summit, Wool found himself about thirty yards in the rear of the battery from which Brock was watching the contest below. By a rapid flight on foot Brock escaped capture, and set himself immediately to the task of recovering the heights. He had early sent for the Forty-first Regiment under General Sheaffe from Fort George, but without waiting reinforcements he collected a few men—about ninety, it is said—of the Forty-ninth Regiment who could be spared below, and sent them to dislodge Wool. The first British attack was beaten back. The second, in stronger force with the York Volunteers, was led by Brock in person; but while he was still at the foot of the hill, an American bullet struck him in the breast and killed him on the spot.
At ten o’clock in the morning, Captain Wool, though painfully wounded, held the heights with two hundred and fifty men; but the heights had no value except to cover or assist the movement below, where the main column of troops with artillery and intrenching tools should have occupied Queenston, and advanced or fortified itself. When Lieutenant-Colonel Christie, at about seven o’clock, having succeeded in crossing the river, took command of the force on the river bank, he could do nothing for want of men, artillery, and intrenching tools.[304] He could not even dislodge the enemy from a stone house whence two light pieces of artillery were greatly annoying the boats. Unable to move without support he recrossed the river, found General Van Rensselaer half a mile beyond, and described to him the situation. Van Rensselaer sent orders to General Smyth to march his brigade to Lewiston “with every possible despatch,” and ordered Captain Totten of the Engineers across the river, with intrenching tools, to lay out a fortified camp.
Toward noon General Van Rensselaer himself crossed with Christie to Queenston and climbed the hill, where Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott had appeared as a volunteer and taken the command of Captain Wool’s force. Toward three o’clock Lieutenant-Colonel Christie joined the party on the hill. Brigadier-General William Wadsworth of the New York militia was also on the ground, and some few men arrived, until three hundred and fifty regulars and two hundred and fifty militia are said to have been collected on the heights. From their position, at two o’clock, Van Rensselaer and Scott made out the scarlet line of the Forty-first Regiment advancing from Fort George. From Chippawa every British soldier who could be spared hurried to join the Forty-first, while a swarm of Indians swept close on the American line, covering the junction of the British forces and the turning movement of General Sheaffe round the foot of the hill. About one thousand men, chiefly regulars, were concentrating against the six hundred Americans on the heights.[305] General Van Rensselaer, alarmed at the sight, hastened to recross the river to Lewiston for reinforcements.