Here, on December 13th, was run up the patriot flag, with its twin stars supposed to represent “the Canadas—two pretty provinces, like two pretty daughters kept in durance vile by an old and surly father; they will either soon elope, or be carried off nolens volens.”
The Provisional Government, set up on this Juan Fernandez, where Mackenzie hoped soon to be monarch of all he surveyed, had also its seal, which showed, besides the twin stars, a new moon breaking through the surrounding darkness—the Egyptian night of Canadian thraldom—with the legend, “Liberty—Equality.” Luckily, the third word from their French model was missing, for they did fall out and scratch and fight in a way to serve any local Watts with themes. At Gallows Hill nothing would satisfy Mackenzie but the Governor’s head. So now there was an issue of money, and a proclamation, the latter offering five hundred pounds for the apprehension of Sir Francis Bond Head, “so that he may be dealt with as appertains to justice.” “Would you as it were dethrone him and bring him to the block,” had queried Rolph some time before, in his well-known and clever serio-comic supposititious trial of that dignitary. The commissions issued were embellished with an eagle and other insignia of patriotism, the eagle lifting a lion in his claws and evidently about to fly away with him, the legend “Liberty or Death.”
It looked as if the would-be Cromwell, after he had “Come in with a rout, kicked Parliament out,
Would finish by wearing the Crown.”
His coadjutor from the United States was Rensselaer van Rensselaer. Together, they were dubbed Tom Thumb and Jack-the-Giant-Killer. Van Rensselaer, a naturally handsome man, under thirty, looked much older from dissipation, “A lean and bloated dram-drinker, a spectacle his nose,” called by his countrymen Rip van Winkle the Second, who spent his time on Navy Island in the double occupation of drinking brandy, of which he always had a bottle under his head at night, and writing love-letters. By his own account he spent his days plodding “four weary miles through mud and water” round their little republic to dispose of recruits and to erect defences; was prostrate, haggard and careworn, and, when about to partake of a much-needed meal, would be called away to receive a boat-load of visitors and leave it untouched. By the account of others, he bade fair, like Lord Holland in his epitaph, to be drowned sitting in his elbow-chair, or properly speaking camp-stool, for furnishings were meagre on Navy Island. The New York Courier and Enquirer had the honesty, in the recapitulatory articles which all border events called out, to say, “It is idle in this matter to affect concealment of the fact that the present Canadian rebellion receives its chief impulse and encouragement from the United States.” No wonder then that a Canadian sheet should say: “Marshals, governors and generals were on the look-out for patriots; but one such in charge met a number of the last en route to Navy Island hauling a piece of ordnance. ‘Where are you bound for?’ said the gentle general. ‘Oh, we are only going to shoot ducks,’ said they, and they were allowed to proceed.”
The Attorney-General said that the wording of Marcy’s and other messages deprecated the invasion of Canada in an “Oh-now-don’t” kind of appeal, which, read between the lines, meant “Go on like good fellows—do just as you like.”
“The doors were opened,” writes a patriot, “and the patriots told to help themselves.” Ten pieces of State artillery were given up on the strength of the following note, a fine compliment to General Winfield Scott’s literary reputation—than whom no finer military man in any service ever stepped:
“Buffalo Head Qr., Jan. 18, 1838.
“Col. H. B. Ransom, Commander-in-chief, Tonawanda.
“Pleas sen on those pieces of Canon which are at your place; let the same teams come on with them.
“Your in hase,
“W Scott Commander in Chief on the
“Frontier of Niagara.”