III
The War of 1812 and After
The years of peace which followed the surrender of the English along the Lakes were not ones of rapid development. It was as if this vast country, bathed in blood for more than a hundred and fifty years, had fallen into a restful sleep. Until 1800 there was almost no emigration west. By the new nation, the shores of Lake Erie were still regarded as in the far wilderness. The fur-trade, it is true, increased in volume, but not until after 1805 did the traffic of the Lakes begin to show any decided growth. From then on conditions brightened. Settlers began going into Ohio. Lake Ontario developed a considerable shipping-trade, and both the United States and Great Britain began to strengthen their naval forces, the American ships being almost entirely on Lake Ontario. At the time of the breaking out of the War of 1812, American interests on Lake Erie were almost entirely unguarded, the only vessel patrolling it being a small brig armed with six-pounders which, after its capture by the British, was named the Detroit. To make the situation of the Americans still worse a curious change had been working among the Indians and French. The bitter enemies of the English only a few years before, they now became their staunchest allies, and the first blow struck was largely by the Ottawas and Chippewas, who joined Captain Roberts at St. Joseph in an attack upon Mackinac. Lieutenant Hanks, who was in command of the fort, had no knowledge of the declaration of war and fell an easy victim to the strategy of Roberts and his Indians and French. Not a gun was fired in the capture of this important post, which gave to the victors the key to the entire North, and at once placed them in a commanding position for the approaching struggle.
Mackinac Island, Showing Old Fort Mackinac.
Events now began to assume a more warlike aspect along the Lakes. At Detroit, the Americans had been assembling in force, and on July 12, 1812, General Hull crossed the river into Canada at the head of twenty-two hundred men, his object being to prevent further construction on British fortifications which were in progress near Sandwich. Seven days later, Commodore Earle, in command of the British naval forces on Lake Ontario, made a futile bombardment of Sacketts Harbour. Meanwhile at York, now Toronto, Major-General Brock was assembling his forces, and before Hull crossed the river, he had established himself at Fort Niagara and had sent reinforcements under Colonel Proctor to Amherstburg, a few miles down the river from Detroit, where the British were to act as a check to Hull. The latter had prepared to march upon Malden when General Brock’s appearance at the head of a large body of British and Indian troops sent him in precipitate retreat to Detroit.
Before his attack upon the Americans, Brock sought an interview with the Indian chief Tecumseh and succeeded in winning his friendship to the British cause. On August 15th, the attack upon Detroit was made, beginning with a bombardment from guns situated across the river. The Americans in their trenches were eager for battle. Never had a garrison been more confident of repulsing an enemy. As the British and Indians swept up to the attack, the men stood behind their shotted guns with lighted matches in their hands. When the enemy was less than five hundred yards away, and as his men, anxiously awaiting the order to fire, were sighting along their guns, General Hull suddenly commanded the white flag to be hoisted above the fort. Never were two combatants more thoroughly astounded. With a powerful force, strongly entrenched, Hull had surrendered without firing a shot. Two thousand men longing for battle and with the odds all in their favour became the prisoners of less than eight hundred British and six hundred Indians. It was a humiliating defeat. In an hour the prowess of the Americans had dropped to the lowest ebb. Hull’s cowardice not only placed the British in supreme control of the Upper Lake region but added greatly to the foes of the Americans. Those Indian tribes that had remained neutral at once turned to the British, and the disaffected militia of Canada were moved into enthusiastic support of Brock. On this same day Hull was directly responsible for one of the most horrible massacres of the Lake country. The commander at Fort Dearborn, which stood on the present site of Chicago, had received orders from Hull to evacuate his position, and, on the morning of Brock’s bombardment of Detroit, the fort’s entire garrison of seventy soldiers, together with many women and children, set out from its protection. They had gone as far as what is now Eighteenth Street when they were attacked from the rear by Miami Indians and a merciless slaughter followed. When only twenty men remained, the little force surrendered, and the captives were distributed among the savages.
At about this time there occurred an event on Lake Erie which somewhat lightened the gloom occasioned by the American reverses. Commodore Chauncey, in command of the American naval forces on Ontario, had sent Commander Jesse D. Elliott up to Erie to begin the construction of a navy. Elliott was a born fighter and not slow to grasp opportunities that came his way, and when he learned that the British ships Detroit and Caledonia were anchored under Fort Erie, he set out from Black Rock with one hundred and twenty-eight men, ran his boats alongside the two ships, and captured them in a fierce hand-to-hand conflict which began at three o’clock in the morning. The two vessels were at once got under way and the Caledonia was brought within the protection of an American battery near Black Rock. The Detroit was less fortunate and was compelled to haul to within a few hundred yards of a British battery. Elliott refused to abandon her until his ammunition gave out, and even then succeeded in bringing his prize to Squaw Island, where she was within the range of both American and British batteries. No sooner would one side gain possession of her than her captors would be driven off by the guns of the other, and in these attacks and counter-attacks the vessel was destroyed. Elliott, however, had the nucleus for his new fleet in the captured Caledonia.
At the beginning of the war, it was believed by both British and American officers that at least one of the decisive battles for the mastery of the Lakes would be fought somewhere on the Niagara frontier, and no sooner had Brock arranged civil and military matters in the West after the fall of Detroit than he hastened back to this scene of action. Meanwhile the Americans had been preparing to attack Queenston, near Niagara Falls, and from that point begin their invasion of Canada. The British were strongly entrenched upon the Heights but their force was considerably inferior in number to that of Colonel Van Rensselaer, who was in command of the Americans. On the evening of October 12th, a dozen boats began ferrying the troops across the river, while at the same time, Colonel Chrystie, with three hundred men, and Colonels Stranahan, Mead, and Bloom were marching to Lewiston. Early on the morning of the 13th, the British opened fire, in the face of which the Americans began scaling the Heights, driving the enemy back as they advanced. At the time of the crossing of the Americans, Brock was at Fort George but lost no time in hastening to the field of battle. In a little marshy plot at the foot of the summit on which the final struggle occurred, now marked by a small stone monument and overgrown with long grass and weeds, a bullet struck him through the body and he fell mortally wounded. This was a terrible blow to the British, but, in the face of the calamity, they gallantly mustered their forces for the recapture of the Heights. There were still about fifteen hundred Americans across the river, and if once they were allowed to join Colonel Van Rensselaer a position would be achieved of even greater importance than that of the British at Detroit and Mackinac. With one thousand men, the British began a furious attack of the Heights, which were defended by not more than three hundred of the Americans who had crossed the river. The battle was one of the most desperate and at the same time one of the most picturesque of the war, parties of the combatants being at times on ground so precipitous that it was difficult to maintain a footing. The Americans were gradually beaten back, and, notwithstanding the fact that a superior force was only a short distance away, they were compelled to surrender, those surrendered including all that had crossed the river, the majority of whom took no part in this last battle of the Heights. Ninety Americans were killed, about one hundred wounded, and over eight hundred became prisoners of war. The British lost less than one hundred and fifty men killed and wounded.
Once the Scene of Bloodshed and Strife, these Old Trees Stand where French, Indian, and British Fought Years ago.