It was soon found that a mistake had been made in attacking Canada. That happened which might be expected where bodies of men with inflated ideas of glory and no experience attack men fighting desperately for their homes, and officers and veterans who had seen such service as the Napoleonic wars. The British, with an astuteness which is oftener the character credited to their opponents, managed to get earliest word of the Declaration sent to their own forts on the Lakes, and promptly captured the American fort Michilimackinac. They then followed with the daring capture of the stronghold of Detroit, amply equipped and garrisoned, by a little handful of men under the heroic General Brock, who simply went before it and demanded its surrender, whereupon it was given up, together with the whole Territory of Michigan. The presence of such trained British officers as Brock and of army veterans in the ranks was a very great advantage. Poor Brock soon afterwards died in his memorable charge at the victory of Queenston Heights.
That year—the first of the War—is known as a succession of fiascos for the Americans. The other conspicuous aspect of it is that the attacked points were, with the exception of a little skirmishing at St. Regis and Lacolle, all in the Province of Upper Canada.
It was only towards the close of the campaign of the next year—1813—that Lower Canada was gravely threatened.
The Americans, emboldened by several successes, and having put a great many men into the field, believed that the struggle might easily be terminated by capturing Montreal. The advance upon Lower Canada took place under General James Wilkinson in chief command, with 8,826 men and 58 guns and howitzers.[1] He had intended to attack Kingston. "At Montreal, however," wrote the Secretary of War, Armstrong, in phrases colored by the prevailing school of rhetoric, "you find the weaker place and the smallest force to encounter.... You hold a position which completely severs the enemy's line of operations, and which, while it restrains all below, withers and perishes all above itself." This great position—for it is so—Colonel Coffin[2] compares it to Vicksburg for natural strength—was to be approached by two routes: by Wilkinson himself in boats down the St Lawrence, and by Major-General Wade Hampton, his almost independent subordinate, from the Champlain border; and it was planned that the two armies should meet at the foot of Isle Perrot,[3] thence to strike together across the Lake to Lachine, and on to the city, which seems to have had not over, if as many as, a thousand regulars to defend it.
Wade Hampton, with over 5,000 men (an effective regular force of 4,053 rank and file, about 1,500 militia and ten cannon[4]), was at first on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain at Burlington[5]. He crossed to the New York side, directing his march for Caughnawaga on the St. Lawrence. His army[6], except the militia, was the same which, with a certain General Dearborn at its head, paraded irregularly across the lines and returned to Pittsburgh in the autumn of 1812. During the year since elapsed the men had been drilled by Major-General Izard, who had served in the French Army. They were all in uniform, well clothed and equipped—in short, Hampton commanded, if not the most numerous, certainly the most effective, regular army which the United States were able to send into the field during the War. Crossing the border on the 20th of September, 1813, he surprised a small picket of British at Odelltown, a Loyalist settlement afterwards celebrated for a battle in the Rebellion of 1837. He soon found himself met with what seemed to him great difficulties, for the army was plunged into an extensive swampy wood, the only road through which was rendered impracticable by fallen trees and barricades, behind which and in the gloomy forests surrounding were every here and there to be seen Indians and infantry crawling and flitting about, who fired upon them from unexpected ambushes. Hampton's men were not of a kind to face this. "The perfect rawness of the troops," writes he, "with the exception of not a single platoon, has been a source of much solicitude to the best-informed among us."[7] They were ignorant, insubordinate, and forever "falling off."[8]
Urging on the scattered defenders was, no doubt, to be seen from time to time a stout-built, vigorous officer with stripes across the breast of his dark gray uniform, dashing about from point to point giving fierce orders. This was De Salaberry.
Not reflecting—for he seems to have had the information—that the wood was only fifteen miles or so in depth, the Canadians few in number, and that a short press forward would have brought him into the open country of L'Acadie leading towards Montreal, the American General in two days withdrew along the border towards Châteauguay Four Corners, alleging the great drought of that year as a reason for wishing to descend by the River Châteauguay. At the Corners he rested his army for many days.
Wade Hampton was a type of the large slaveholders of the South. Nearly sixty years of age, self-important, fiery and over-indulgent in drink, of large, imposing figure, of some reputed service in the Revolution, and with a record as Congressman and Presidential elector, he was one whose chief virtues were not patience and humility. In 1809 he had been made a brigadier-general and stationed at New Orleans; but in consequence of continual disagreements with his subordinates, was superseded in 1812 by Wilkinson, whom he consequently hated. In the spring of 1813 he received his Major-General's commission. He had acquired his large fortune by land speculations, and at his death some time later was supposed to be the wealthiest planter in the United States, owning 3,000 slaves. He is said to have ably administered his estate.[9]
Hampton had another slave-holding South Carolinian by his side, young Brigadier-General George Izard, son and descendant of aristocrats and statesmen, well-educated in the soldier's profession, college-bred, travelled, and who had served in the French Army. Izard led the main column at the battle shortly to ensue.[10]
Another officer of the circle—who seems to have been the ablest—was Colonel James Purdy, on whom the brunt of the American work and fighting were to fall, and who seems to have done his best in a struggle against natural difficulties and against the incompetency of both his commander and men.