The respectable people of the neighborhood were not wholly discouraged by this call or by a second proclamation, November 17, as little military as the first; or even by an address of Peter B. Porter offering to lead his neighbors into Canada under the command of the “able and experienced officer” who within a few days could and would “occupy all the British fortresses on the Niagara River.” A certain number of volunteers offered themselves for the service, although not only the attack but also its details were announced in advance. The British responded by bombarding Black Rock and Fort Niagara; and although their cannon did little harm, they were more effective than the proclamations of the American generals.
November 25 General Smyth issued orders for the invasion, which were also unusual in their character, and prescribed even the gestures and attitudes of the attacking force:[309] “At twenty yards distance the soldiers will be ordered to trail arms, advance with shouts, fire at five paces distance, and charge bayonets. The soldiers will be silent above all things.” In obedience to these orders, everything was prepared, November 27, for the crossing, and once more orders were issued in an inspiring tone:[310]
“Friends of your country! ye who have ‘the will to do, the heart to dare!’ the moment ye have wished for has arrived! Think on your country’s honors torn! her rights trampled on! her sons enslaved! her infants perishing by the hatchet! Be strong! be brave! and let the ruffian power of the British king cease on this continent!”
Two detachments were to cross the river from Black Rock before dawn, November 28, to surprise and disable the enemy’s batteries and to destroy a bridge five miles below; after this should be done the army was to cross. The British were supposed to have not more than a thousand men within twenty miles to resist the attack of three thousand men from Buffalo. Apparently Smyth’s calculations were correct. His two detachments crossed the river at three o’clock on the morning of November 28 and gallantly, though with severe loss, captured and disabled the guns and tore up a part of the bridge without destroying it. At sunrise the army began to embark at the navy yard, but the embarkation continued so slowly that toward afternoon, when all the boats were occupied, only twelve hundred men, with artillery, were on board. “The troops thus embarked,” reported Smyth,[311] “moved up the stream to Black Rock without sustaining loss from the enemy’s fire. It was now afternoon, and they were ordered to disembark and dine.”
This was all. No more volunteers appeared, and no other regulars fit for service remained. Smyth would not cross without three thousand men, and doubtless was right in his caution; but he showed want of courage not so much in this failure to redeem his pledges, as in his subsequent attempt to throw responsibility on subordinates, and on Dearborn who had requested him to consult some of his officers occasionally, and be prepared if possible to cross into Canada with three thousand men at once.[312] Smyth consulted his officers at the moment when consultation was fatal.
“Recollecting your instructions to cross with three thousand men at once, and to consult some of my principal officers in ‘all important movements,’ I called for the field officers of the regulars and twelve-months volunteers embarked.”
The council of war decided not to risk the crossing. Winder, who was considered the best of Smyth’s colonels, had opposed the scheme from the first, and reported the other officers as strongly against it. Smyth was aware of their opinions, and his appeal to them could have no object but to shift responsibility. After receiving their decision, Smyth sent a demand for the surrender of Fort Erie, “to spare the effusion of blood,” and then ordered his troops to their quarters. The army obeyed with great discontent, but fifteen hundred men still mustered in the boats, when two days afterward Smyth issued another order to embark. Once more Smyth called a council of war, and once more decided to abandon the invasion. With less than three thousand men in the boats at once, the General would not stir.
Upon this, General Smyth’s army dissolved. “A scene of confusion ensued which it is difficult to describe,” wrote Peter B. Porter soon afterward,[313]—“about four thousand men without order or restraint discharging their muskets in every direction.” They showed a preference for General Smyth’s tent as their target, which caused the General to shift his quarters repeatedly. A few days afterward Peter B. Porter published a letter to a Buffalo newspaper, attributing the late disgrace “to the cowardice of General Smyth.”[314] The General sent a challenge to his subordinate officer, and exchanged shots with him. Smyth next requested permission to visit his family, which Dearborn hastened to grant; and three months afterward, as General Smyth did not request an inquiry into the causes of his failure, the President without express authority of law dropped his name from the army roll.
When Dearborn received the official report of Smyth’s grotesque campaign, he was not so much annoyed by its absurdities as he was shocked to learn that nearly four thousand regular troops sent to Niagara in the course of the campaign could not supply a thousand for crossing the river.[315] Further inquiry explained that sickness had swept away more than half the army. The brigade of regulars at Buffalo, which with the exception of Winder’s regiment had never fired a musket, was reduced to less than half its original number, and both officers and men were unfit for active duty.[316] Only rest and care could restore the army to efficiency.
The failures of Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Smyth created a scandal so noisy that little was thought of General Dearborn; yet Dearborn still commanded on Lake Champlain the largest force then under arms, including seven regiments of the regular army, with artillery and dragoons. He clung to the idea of an attack on Montreal simultaneous with Smyth’s movement at Niagara.[317] November 8, he wrote from Albany to Eustis that he was about to join the army under General Bloomfield at Plattsburg.[318]