Canada

by John George Bourinot

Before the end of the year, General McClure, in command of the American troops on the Niagara frontier, evacuated Fort George, when he heard of the advance of the English forces under General Murray. McClure committed the cowardly outrage of destroying the town of Newark. All the houses except one were burned, and no pity was shown even to the weak and helpless women, all of whom were driven from their comfortable houses and forced to stand on the snow-clad earth, while they saw the flames ascend from their homes and household treasures. As an act of retribution the British troops destroyed all the posts and settlements from Fort Niagara to Buffalo. When the campaign of 1813 closed, Lake Erie was still in the possession of the Americans, but the Niagara district on both sides of the river had been freed from the American forces, and not an inch of Canadian territory except Amherstburg was in possession of the enemy.

In the following year the campaign commenced by the advance of a large force of American troops under General Wilkinson into Lower Canada, but they did not get beyond Lacolle Mill, not far from Isle aux Noix on the Richelieu, where they met with a most determined resistance from the little garrison under Colonel Handcock. Wilkinson retreated to Plattsburg, and did not again venture upon Canadian territory. Sir Gordon Drummond took Oswego, and succeeded in destroying a large amount of public property, including the barracks. The greatest success of the year was won in the Niagara country, where the English troops under Drummond and Riall had been concentrated with the view of opposing the advance of an American army into Upper Canada. The Americans occupied Fort Erie, and Riall sustained a repulse at Street's Creek—now known as Usher's—near Chippewa, although General Brown, who was in command of a much superior force, did not attempt to follow up his advantage, but allowed the English to retreat to Fort George. Then followed, on the 25th of July, the famous battle of Lundy's Lane, where the English regulars and Canadian militia, led by General Drummond, fought from six in the evening until midnight, a formidable force of American troops, commanded by General Brown and Brigadiers Ripley, Porter, and Scott—the latter the future hero of the Mexican war. The darkness through this hotly contested engagement was intense, and the English more than once seemed on the point of yielding to sheer exhaustion as they contested every foot of ground against overpowering numbers of well handled troops. The undaunted courage and persistence of the British and Canadian soldiery won the battle, as the Americans retired from the field, though with a remarkable perversion of the facts this memorable event is even claimed by some American writers as a success on their side. This was the last great fight of the war, and will be always cited by Canadians as illustrating the mettle of their own militia in old times.

Monument at Lundy's Lane.

Drummond did not win other successes, and even failed to capture Fort Erie. The American army, however, did not make another advance into the country while he kept it so well guarded. Erie was eventually evacuated, while the Americans concentrated their strength at Buffalo. Prairie du Chien on the Mississippi was captured in this same summer by the English, and the Americans were repulsed in an attempt to seize the fort at Michillimackinac. In eastern Canada there was no such record of victory to show as Drummond and his officers had made in the west. Prevost again gave a signal proof of his incapacity. His fleet sustained a complete defeat on Lake Champlain, and so great was his dismay that he ordered the retreat to Montreal of a splendid force of over ten thousand troops, largely composed of peninsula veterans, though Plattsburg and its garrison must have fallen easily into his hands had he been possessed of the most ordinary resolution. This retreat was confessedly a disgrace to the English army, which Canadian and English writers must always record with a feeling of contempt for Prevost.

It is not necessary to dwell at any length on other features of this war. The American navy, small though it was, won several successes mainly through the superiority of their vessels in tonnage, crew, and armament. The memorable fight between the British frigate Shannon, under Captain Broke, and the United States frigate Chesapeake, under Captain Lawrence, off Massachusetts Bay, illustrates equally the courage of British and American sailors—of men belonging to the same great stock which has won so many victories on the sea. The two ships were equally matched, and after a sharp contest of a quarter of an hour the Chesapeake was beaten, but not until Captain Lawrence was fatally wounded and his victorious adversary also severely injured. During the war Nova Scotia and the other maritime provinces were somewhat harassed at times by American privateers, but the presence of a large fleet constantly on their coasts—Halifax being the rendezvous of the British navy in American waters—and the hostility of New England to the war saved these sections of British America from invasion. On the other hand, all the important positions on the coast of Maine from the Penobscot to the St. Croix, were attacked and occupied by the English. The whole American coast during the last year of the war was blockaded by the English fleet with the exception of New England ports, which were open to neutral vessels. The public buildings of Washington, the federal capital, were destroyed by an English army, in retaliation for the burning of York, Newark, and Moraviantown. The attempt to take Baltimore failed, and a bold man from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson—in later years President—drove Pakenham from New Orleans. The taking of Mobile by British ships was the closing incident of the war on the Atlantic coast. In fact peace was happily declared by the Treaty of Ghent on the 24th December, 1814, or a fortnight before the defeat of the English at New Orleans. The two nations gladly came to terms. It is questionable if the heart of either was ever deeply enlisted in this unhappy war which should never have been fought between peoples so closely connected by language and race. It was mainly a war of Western and Southern politicians, and when it ended New England, whose interests had been so seriously affected, was showing signs of serious restlessness which had broken out in the Hartford convention, and might have even threatened the integrity of the Union.

Although the war ended without any definite decision on the questions at issue between the United States and Great Britain, the privileges of neutrals were practically admitted, and the extreme pretensions of Great Britain as to the right of search can never again be asserted. One important result of the war, as respects the interests of Canada, was the re-opening of the question of the British American fisheries. Certain privileges extended by the Treaty of 1783 to American fishermen on the coasts of British North America were not again conceded, and the convention of 1818, which followed the peace of 1815, is the basis of the rights which Canadians have always maintained in disputes between themselves and the United States as to the fisheries on their coasts. Looking, however, to its general results, the war gave no special advantages to the Canadian people. When peace was proclaimed not an inch of Canadian territory, except the village of Amherstburg, was held by the American forces. On the other hand, Great Britain occupied the greater part of the sea-board of Maine, and her flag flew over Michillimackinac, the key to the Northwest. Had British statesmen seized this opportunity of settling finally the western boundary of New Brunswick, Canada would have obtained a territory most useful to the commercial development of the present Dominion. England, however, was very desirous of ending the war—perhaps the humiliating affair at Plattsburg had some effect on the peace—and it was fortunate for the provinces that they were allowed in the end to control their most valuable fisheries.

The people of Canada will always hold in grateful recollection the names of those men who did such good service for their country during these momentous years from 1812 to 1815. Brock, Tecumseh, Morrison, Salaberry, McDonnell, Fitzgibbon, and Drummond are among the most honourable names in Canadian history. Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Canadians, Indians, were equally conspicuous in brilliant achievement. A stately monument overlooks the noble river of the Niagara, and recalls the services of the gallant soldiers, Brock and McDonell, whose remains rest beneath. A beautiful village, beyond which stretches historic Lundy's Lane, recalls the name and deeds of Drummond. As the steamers pass up and down the St. Lawrence they see on the northern bank the obelisk which the Canadian Government has raised on the site of the battlefield where Morrison defeated Boyd. On the meadows of Châteauguay, another monument has been erected by the same national spirit in honour of the victory won by a famous representative of the French Canadian race, who proved how courageously French Canadians could fight for the new régime under which they were then, as now, so happy and prosperous.