On Lake Ontario, May 31, Chauncey insisted, not without cause, on returning to Sackett’s Harbor. Dearborn, instead of moving with his whole force, ordered Brigadier-General Winder, June 1, to pursue Vincent. Winder, with eight hundred or a thousand men marched twenty miles, and then sent for reinforcements. He was joined, June 5, by General Chandler with another brigade. Chandler then took command, and advanced with a force supposed to number in the aggregate two thousand men[177] to Stony Creek, within ten miles of Vincent’s position at Hamilton, where sixteen hundred British regulars were encamped. There Chandler and Winder posted themselves for the night, much as Winchester and his Kentuckians had camped at the river Raisin four months earlier.[178]
Vincent was not to be treated with such freedom. Taking only seven hundred rank-and-file,[179] he led them himself against Chandler’s camp. The attack began, in intense darkness, at two o’clock in the morning of June 6. The British quickly broke the American centre and carried the guns. The lines became mixed, and extreme confusion lasted till dawn. In the darkness both American generals, Chandler and Winder, walked into the British force in the centre, and were captured.[180] With difficulty the two armies succeeded in recovering their order, and then retired in opposite directions. The British suffered severely, reporting twenty-three killed, one hundred and thirty-four wounded, and fifty-five missing, or two hundred and twelve men in all; but they safely regained Burlington Heights at dawn.[181] The American loss was less in casualties, for it amounted only to fifty-five killed and wounded, and one hundred missing; but in results the battle at Stony Creek was equally disgraceful and decisive. The whole American force, leaving the dead unburied, fell back ten miles, where Major-General Lewis took command in the afternoon of June 7. An hour later the British fleet under Sir James Yeo made its appearance, threatening to cut off Lewis’s retreat. Indians hovered about. Boats and baggage were lost. Dearborn sent pressing orders to Lewis directing him to return, and on the morning of June 8 the division reached Fort George.[182]
These mortifications prostrated Dearborn, whose strength had been steadily failing. June 8 he wrote to Armstrong: “My ill state of health renders it extremely painful to attend to the current duties; and unless my health improves soon, I fear I shall be compelled to retire to some place where my mind may be more at ease for a short time.”[183] June 10, his adjutant-general, Winfield Scott, issued orders devolving on Major-General Morgan Lewis the temporary command not only of the Niagara army but also of the Ninth Military district.[184] “In addition to the debility and fever he has been afflicted with,” wrote Dearborn’s aid, S. S. Connor, to Secretary Armstrong, June 12,[185] “he has, within the last twenty-four hours, experienced a violent spasmodic attack on his breast, which has obliged him to relinquish business altogether.” “I have doubts whether he will ever again be fit for service,” wrote Morgan Lewis to Armstrong, June 14;[186] “he has been repeatedly in a state of convalescence, but relapses on the least agitation of mind.” June 20 Dearborn himself wrote in a very despondent spirit both in regard to his health and to the military situation: “I have been so reduced in strength as to be incapable of any command. Brigadier-General Boyd is the only general officer present.”[187]
The sudden departure of Morgan Lewis, ordered to Sackett’s Harbor, left General Boyd for a few days to act as the general in command at Niagara. Boyd, though well known for his success at Tippecanoe, was not a favorite in the army. “A compound of ignorance, vanity, and petulance,” wrote his late superior, Morgan Lewis,[188] “with nothing to recommend him but that species of bravery in the field which is vaporing, boisterous, stifling reflection, blinding observation, and better adapted to the bully than the soldier.”
Galled by complaints of the imbecility of the army, Boyd, with Dearborn’s approval,[189] June 23, detached Colonel Boerstler of the Fourteenth Infantry with some four hundred men and two field-pieces, to batter a stone house at Beaver Dam, some seventeen miles from Fort George.[190] Early in the morning of June 24 Boerstler marched to Beaver Dam. There he found himself surrounded in the woods by hostile Indians, numbering according to British authority about two hundred. The Indians, annoying both front and rear, caused Boerstler to attempt retreat, but his retreat was stopped by a few militia-men, said to number fifteen.[191] A small detachment of one hundred and fifty men came to reinforce Boerstler, and Lieutenant Fitzgibbon of the British Forty-ninth regiment, with forty-seven men, reinforced the Indians. Unable to extricate himself, and dreading dispersion and massacre, Boerstler decided to surrender; and his five hundred and forty men accordingly capitulated to a British lieutenant with two hundred and sixty Indians, militia, and regulars.
Dearborn reported the disaster as “an unfortunate and unaccountable event;”[192] but of such events the list seemed endless. A worse disaster, equally due to Dearborn and Chauncey, occurred at the other end of the Lake. Had they attacked Kingston, as Armstrong intended, their movement would have covered Sackett’s Harbor; but when they placed themselves a hundred and fifty miles to the westward of Sackett’s Harbor, they could do nothing to protect it. Sackett’s Harbor was an easy morning’s sail from Kingston, and the capture of the American naval station was an object of infinite desire on the part of Sir George Prevost, since it would probably decide the result of the war.
Prevost, though not remarkable for audacity, could not throw away such an opportunity without ruining his reputation. He came to Kingston, and while Dearborn was preparing to capture Fort George in the night of May 26–27, Prevost embarked his whole regular force, eight hundred men all told,[193] on Yeo’s fleet at Kingston, set sail in the night, and at dawn of May 27 was in sight of Sackett’s Harbor.[194]
Had Yeo and Prevost acted with energy, they must have captured the Harbor without serious resistance. According to Sir George’s official report, “light and adverse winds” prevented the ships from nearing the Fort until evening.[195] Probably constitutional vacillation on the part of Sir James Yeo caused delay, for Prevost left the control wholly to him and Colonel Baynes.[196]
At Sackett’s Harbor about four hundred men of different regular regiments, and about two hundred and fifty Albany volunteers were in garrison; and a general alarm, given on appearance of the British fleet in the distance, brought some hundreds of militia into the place; but the most important reinforcement was Jacob Brown, a brigadier-general of State militia who lived in the neighborhood, and had been requested by Dearborn to take command in case of an emergency. Brown arrived at the Harbor in time to post the men in order of battle. Five hundred militia were placed at the point where the British were expected to land; the regulars were arranged in a second line; the forts were in the rear.
