A prisoner of war is one captured in the course of acknowledged and honourable warfare, and the legality or illegality of the contest makes him a hero or a ruffian. Previous to the fourth of December, ’38, in connection with recent affairs a subject of frequent debate in the Sandwich-Windsor neighbourhood was the hanging on the spot, without the slightest form of trial, of a gang of pirates, by Sir Thomas Maitland, in the island of Malta. However, this summary proceeding on the marooners took place a couple of days after the battle with them, and what was sought for by the Canadians was a precedent for shooting on the field without allowing time for justice to mellow.
As the “Curiæ Canadenses” tells us, formerly “These legal seats of divers ranks
Have limit to St. Laurent’s banks;”
by ’37, “... all beyond, down to Detroit,
Becomes new ground for fresh exploit.”
The exploit of which these debaters, and Colonel Prince in particular, complained was the decision made under the “discouraging shade cast by Whig conciliation;” for at the last court held in Sandwich, when he was prepared to prosecute nine prisoners for murder, he found they, through some point of law which he never could be brought to understand, had become dignified as prisoners of war. As to American citizenship and neutrality laws, it was asked “What avail the speeches, messages, proclamations and paper measures of the President, when unprovoked aggressions of his people remain unpunished.” It was small satisfaction to hear their friends in the neighbouring Republic term the invaders but the roughscuffs of their people; people—they had no people, they were the repudiated of either shore. To term them prisoners of war legalized the cause of the marauders and added hundreds to their ranks. The Tories upheld Prince in his action anent the Pelee Island prisoners “who escaped their just deserts under the nickname of prisoners of war.” Never had he appeared to better advantage than in his address to the court as he declaimed, “I deny also the right of any person of the Executive Council, the right of the Lieutenant-Governor, the right of even Majesty itself, to step between the accuser and those accused of murder, and to prevent the incipient proceeding of an inquiry into the matter by the grand inquest of the country.” But a few hours before his eyes had been filled with the horror of Hume’s body the young surgeon had been in his house, in full possession of youth, health, strength and intelligence; he turned over in the barracks the smoking remains of what he believed to be his fellow-townsmen; he saw the murdered negro; he was distracted with thoughts of one very dear to him whose reason he feared would be unhinged; arson and murder, rifle and torch, the bowie-knife and axe of those whom he considered barbarians, “a cowardly and scampering set of pirates,” merited but one reward. He was in command, and he set about putting his ideas into effect. The details of the “shooting” are so shocking that it is better to omit them here; and shocking or entirely justifiable, the tale as told by historian or eye-witness differs throughout. If more brutality than the case demanded was exercised, it was rebuked by the mounted Indians who soon afterwards brought in seven prisoners from the woods where an escape had been attempted. The first cry was, “Bayonet them!” “No,” said Martin, the Indian leader, “we are Christians, we will not murder them—we will deliver them to our officers to be treated as they think proper.” When Prince saw them he ordered the waggon in which they sat to be wheeled off the road, and as soon as it reached an open spot in rear of the barracks, which still smoked, he ordered that the prisoners should be shot. “For God’s sake, don’t let a white man murder what an Indian has spared!” was the entreaty, and Colonel Prince yielded to it.
Head, once controverting the British idea that Indian warfare was inadmissible in Canada, gave a supposititious reply: “Our Indians never scalp us, never scalp each other; and they have only scalped you because, in defiance of the laws of nations, you invaded their territory to rob them of their lands. If you think their habits of war barbarous, learn in future to leave them in the placid enjoyment of peace.” But the Indians were wiser than Sir Francis in his rounded periods. The Hurons of Detroit had seen the ships of Jacques Cartier, and reported great dark animals with broad white wings spitting out fire and uttering thunder—their first experience of cannon. The cross planted at Gaspé had sent its lesson far inland by 1837, and the warrior in feathers and wampum could teach the controllers of gunpowder by example.
Harvell, the tall Kentuckian, and twelve others were buried in one grave in the lower corner of Colonel Baby’s orchard; the body of General Putnam found a grave until his wife and daughter came, had it exhumed, and took it away.
Of the survivors who scattered themselves in the woods some were discovered frozen, sitting at the roots of trees and evidently famished ere they froze; some were found round the miserable remains of a camp-fire, remnants of potatoes, their only food, scattered about. Many had been wounded, suffering tortures beyond hunger and cold. Of those taken alive most were sent to Van Diemen’s Land, among them a farmer who had joined the expedition haphazard at the last moment when he was both drunk and reckless. His wife and family could not trace what became of him; but after the lapse of twenty years he made his escape to the South Sea Islands, whence he returned to his former home, to find his wife again married, his children grown up, and his estate in due course of law divided among them. Hardship and old age had so told on him there was small fear of recognition; he obtained some small appointment, never troubled his family, and worked an Enoch Arden end to an existence spoiled by the sad freak of having been a pirate for a day.
Some found shelter with the Irish and French peasants, for although on the whole Loyalist both these nationalities had quickly-moved sympathies. One of the escaping “officers” threw himself on the protection of a big Irish woman. “Are yez a Patriarch?” He told her he was a Patriot. “Thin it’s yourself is safe enough; just hide in the cellar and kape aisy.” It is said her husband was in Prince’s employ to deliver all such up; “but bad luck to me if ivvir he sets his eye on wan o’ thim.” This peasant is said to have kept four such refugees for six weeks, so well cared for that when they arrived in Detroit they were “hale, fat and hearty as porkers.” “Now, my lads,” he remarked to his guests, “you have a taste of how the English use us poor Irish.” “Bad luck to thim,” chimed in his wife; “my own dear fader was twelve years hid in a rock for the fear av thim after the battle of Vinegar Hill, and it’s meself carried his vittles till he died.” As for Baptiste, his fine address was equal to the occasion. One hunted creature, some troopers in hot pursuit, burst into a neat little cabin where the Frenchman had risen but madame had not. Taking in the situation at a glance, he clapped a night-cap on the patriot’s head, popped him into bed beside the astonished wife, and when the soldiers entered, with elbows well in and palms extended he shrugged his ignorance of any rebels—no one but his two women-kind, les voilà! He gave the searchers directions towards the bush, and in a short time had his patriot in a canoe, well out in the river, bound for Detroit.
Next morning a large concourse of people, the officers of the militia, Captain Sparkes’ company and a division of Captain Bell’s under Ensign Powell, all in full uniform and with arms reversed, preceded the corpse of the murdered Hume to the churchyard. The Grenadier company of the 34th, drawn up before the Court House, presented arms, so remaining until the procession had passed. The moaning of the wind, the naked branches of the trees above the open grave, the falling snow, were in unison with the sadness of the onlookers; “Suffer us not for any pain of death to fall away from Thee” came with a new meaning to the hearers’ hearts; the words of the ever beautiful ritual for the burial of the dead rose and fell from the rector’s lips on the wintry atmosphere; “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” a volley of musketry, and the family name of Hume was extinct. His fortune of some £20,000, derived from his mother, passed to distant relatives.
The uproar which ensued after this series of tragedies was not by any means all Loyalist-Rebel, nor yet pure righteous indignation; party feeling, private spleen, and the complexity of motives good and bad which enter into any similar demonstration where the actors are human, all had place. A man of extraordinary popularity is generally a mark for jealousy. Across the river hatred of him culminated in the action of “the waddling, twaddling Theller,” who announced that he was coming over at the head of two thousand men and would wash his hands in the blood of John Prince. The patriots who had been saved in the canoes told crowds of “Detroit’s most intelligent citizens” the details of their truly thrilling escape, not only by canoe, but from “the Indian and negro volunteers in the Royal service, or from the more brutal Orangemen.” After he was taken prisoner on the Anne, this Theller had experienced the weight of Colonel Prince’s foot and knew the measure of his speech. In the middle of what he terms a refreshing and invigorating sleep he was waked by a kick from “an individual of the name of John Prince, who had run away from London, England, with plenty of golden means to secure himself a retreat in the western wilds of Canada,” where he strove to “imitate the manners of the artificial nobility of his native land.” This individual Prince “was thirsting for knighthood,” was dark, mysterious, cruel, vindictive, plausible but to deceive, and—herein lay his greatest crime and was the only item of truth in Theller’s impeachment—spared no time, money, act, to crush the hopes of the friends of Canadian rebellion. “His friendly salute aroused me,” writes Theller; “he was armed to the teeth. A brace of pistols and a tomahawk graced his girdle; on his back was slung a double-barrelled gun; a long cavalry sword dangled at his side, a wide-mouthed blunderbuss in his right hand. His whole appearance betokened malignity and determined vengeance.”
Under these circumstances Colonel Prince must be excused for using his foot; clearly it was the only free part of his anatomy. Some months before this trying pedal performance, Theller on the dock at Windsor had taken upon himself to lecture the Colonel, his “blessed privilege as an American citizen” so to do, after Prince had been similarly engaged with a French-Canadian whom he suspected of disaffection. Theller knew, “by the restless brilliancy of his eye, dastardly flashing like the electricity of an approaching thunderstorm,” what he had to expect. He quietly enough stepped on the ferry ready to leave for Detroit, concluding, “Thus was I rescued for the first time from the cherished revenge of this man!”