THE
SECOND ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1813–1817

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

BY

HENRY ADAMS.

Vols. I. and II.—The First Administration of Jefferson. 1801–1805.

Vols. III. and IV.—The Second Administration of Jefferson. 1805–1809.

Vols V. and VI.—The First Administration of Madison. 1809–1813.

Vols. VII., VIII., and IX.—The Second Administration of Madison. 1813–1817. With an Index to the Entire Work.

HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF
JAMES MADISON

By HENRY ADAMS

Vol. II.

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1891

Copyright, 1890
By Charles Scribner’s Sons.

University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

CHAPTER I.

At the beginning of the year 1814, the attitude of New England pleased no one, and perhaps annoyed most the New England people themselves, who were conscious of showing neither dignity, power, courage, nor intelligence. Nearly one half the people of the five New England States supported the war, but were paralyzed by the other half, which opposed it. Of the peace party, one half wished to stop the war, but was paralyzed by the other half, which threatened to desert their leaders at the first overt act of treason. In this dead-lock every one was dissatisfied, but no one seemed disposed to yield.

Such a situation could not last. In times of revolution treason might be necessary, but inert perversity could at no time serve a useful purpose. Yet the Massachusetts Federalists professed only a wish to remain inert. Josiah Quincy, who fretted at restraints, and whose instincts obliged him to act as energetically as he talked, committed his party to the broad assertion that “a moral and religious people” could not express admiration for heroism displayed in a cause they disapproved. They would defend Massachusetts only by waiting to be invaded; and if their safety depended on their possessing the outlet of Lake Champlain, they would refuse to seize it if in doing so they should be obliged to cross the Canadian line. With one accord Massachusetts Federalists reiterated that until their territory should be actually invaded, they would not take arms. After January 1, 1814, when news of the battle of Leipzig arrived, the dreaded invasion of New England became imminent; but the Federalists, officially and privately, insisted on their doctrine of self-defence.

“In the tumult of arms,” said Governor Strong in his speech to the legislature, January 12, 1814, “the passions of men are easily inflamed by artful misrepresentations; they are apt to lose sight of the origin of a contest, and to forget, either in the triumph of victory or the mortification of defeat, that the whole weight of guilt and wretchedness occasioned by war is chargeable upon that government which unreasonably begins the conflict, and upon those of its subjects who, voluntarily and without legal obligation, encourage and support it.”

The Massachusetts Senate echoed the sentiment in language more emphatic:—

“Beyond that submission which laws enacted agreeably to the Constitution make necessary, and that self-defence which the obligation to repel hostile invasions justifies, a people can give no encouragement to a war of such a character without becoming partakers in its guilt, and rendering themselves obnoxious to those just retributions of Divine vengeance by which, sooner or later, the authors and abettors of such a war will be assuredly overtaken.”

The House of Representatives could see but one contingency that warranted Massachusetts in making voluntary exertion:—

“It is only after the failure of an attempt to negotiate, prosecuted with evidence of these dispositions on the part of our Administration, that any voluntary support of this unhappy war can be expected from our constituents.”

In thus tempting blows from both sides, Massachusetts could hardly fail to suffer more than by choosing either alternative. Had she declared independence, England might have protected and rewarded her. Had she imitated New York in declaring for the Union, probably the Union would not have allowed her to suffer in the end. The attempt to resist both belligerents forfeited the forbearance of both. The displeasure of Great Britain was shown by a new proclamation, dated April 25, 1814, including the ports of New England in the blockade; so that the whole coast of the Union, from New Brunswick to Texas, was declared to be closed to commerce by “a naval force adequate to maintain the said blockade in the most rigorous and effective manner.”[1]

However annoying the blockade might be, it was a trifling evil compared with other impending dangers from Great Britain. Invasion might be expected, and its object was notorious. England was known to regret the great concessions she had made in the definitive treaty of 1783. She wished especially to exclude the Americans from the fisheries, and to rectify the Canadian boundary by recovering a portion of Maine, then a part of Massachusetts. If Massachusetts by her neutral attitude should compel President Madison to make peace on British terms, Massachusetts must lose the fisheries and part of the District of Maine; nor was it likely that any American outside of New England would greatly regret her punishment.

The extreme Federalists felt that their position could not be maintained, and they made little concealment of their wish to commit the State in open resistance to the Union. They represented as yet only a minority of their party; but in conspiracies, men who knew what they wanted commonly ended by controlling the men who did not. Pickering was not popular; but he had the advantage of following a definite plan, familiar for ten years to the party leaders, and founded on the historical idea of a New England Confederation.[2] For Pickering, disunion offered no terrors. “On the contrary,” he wrote, July 4, 1813, “I believe an immediate separation would be a real blessing to the ‘good old thirteen States,’ as John Randolph once called them.”[3] His views on this subject were expressed with more or less fidelity and with much elaboration in a pamphlet published in 1813 by his literary representative, John Lowell.[4] His policy was as little disguised as his theoretical opinions; and in the early part of the year 1814, under the pressure of the embargo, he thought that the time had come for pressing his plan for a fourth time on the consideration of his party. Without consulting his old associates of the Essex Junto, he stimulated action among the people and in the State legislature.

The first step was, as usual, to hold town-meetings and adopt addresses to the General Court. Some forty towns followed this course, and voted addresses against the embargo and the war. Their spirit was fairly represented by one of the most outspoken, adopted by a town-meeting at Amherst, over which Noah Webster presided Jan. 3, 1814.[5] The people voted—

“That the representatives of this town in the General Court are desired to use their influence to induce that honorable body to take the most vigorous and decisive measures compatible with the Constitution to put an end to this hopeless war, and to restore to us the blessings of peace. What measures it will be proper to take, we pretend not to prescribe; but whatever measures they shall think it expedient to adopt, either separately or in conjunction with the neighboring States, they may rely upon our faithful support.”

The town of Newbury in Essex County made itself conspicuous by adopting, January 31, a memorial inviting bloodshed:—

“We remember the resistance of our fathers to oppressions which dwindle into insignificance when compared with those which we are called on to endure. The rights ‘which we have received from God we will never yield to man.’ We call on our State legislature to protect us in the enjoyment of those privileges to assert which our fathers died, and to defend which we profess ourselves ready to resist unto blood. We pray your honorable body to adopt measures immediately to secure to us especially our undoubted right of trade within our State. We are ourselves ready to aid you in securing it to us to the utmost of our power, ‘peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must;’ and we pledge to you the sacrifice of our lives and property in support of whatever measures the dignity and liberties of this free, sovereign, and independent State may seem to your wisdom to demand.”

The voters of Newbury were constituents of Pickering. Their address could not have reached him at Washington when a few days afterward he wrote to Samuel Putnam, an active member of the General Court, then in session, urging that the time for remonstrances had passed, and the time for action had come:[6]—

“Declarations of this sort by Massachusetts, especially if concurred in by the other New England States, would settle the business at once. But though made now by Massachusetts alone, you surely may rely on the co-operation of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and I doubt not of Vermont and New York. With the executives and legislatures of most, and the representatives of all of them, you can freely communicate. Ought there not to be a proposal of a convention of delegates from those six States?”

The project of a New England convention was well understood to violate the Constitution, and for that reason alone the cautious Federalists disliked and opposed it. Doubtless a mere violence done to the law did not necessarily imply a wish for disunion. The Constitution was violated more frequently by its friends than by its enemies, and often the extent of such violations measured the increasing strength of the Union. In such matters intent was everything; and the intent of the proposed New England convention was made evident by the reluctance with which the leaders slowly yielded to the popular demand.

The addresses of the towns to the General Court were regularly referred to a committee, which reported February 18,[7] in a spirit not altogether satisfactory to the advocates of action:—

“Whenever the national compact is violated and the citizens of this State are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized laws, the legislature is bound to interpose its power and wrest from the oppressor his victim. This is the spirit of our Union, and thus it has been explained by the very man who now sets at defiance all the principles of his early political life.... On the subject of a convention, the committee observe that they entertain no doubt of the right of the legislature to invite other States to a convention and to join it themselves for the great purposes of consulting for the general good, and of procuring Amendments to the Constitution whenever they find that the practical construction given to it by the rulers for the time being is contrary to its true spirit and injurious to their immediate constituents.... This was the mode proposed by Mr. Madison[8] in answer to objections made as to the tendency of the general government to usurp upon that of the States.”

The argumentum ad personam commonly proved only weakness. Madison’s authority on these points had always been rejected by the Federalists when in power; and even he had never asserted the right of States to combine in convention for resistance to measures of the national government, as the General Court was asked to do. So revolutionary was the step that the committee of both Houses shrank from it: “They have considered that there are reasons which render it inexpedient at the present moment to exercise this power.” They advised that the subject should not be immediately decided, but should be referred to the representatives soon to be returned for the next General Court, who would “come from the people still more fully possessed of their views and wishes as to the all-important subject of obtaining by future compact, engrafted into the present Constitution, a permanent security against future abuses of power, and of seeking effectual redress for the grievances and oppressions now endured.”

To the people, therefore, the subject of a New England convention was expressly referred. The issue was well understood, and excluded all others in the coming April election. So serious was the emergency, and so vital to the Administration and the war was the defeat of a New England convention, that the Republicans put forward no party candidate, but declared their intention to vote for Samuel Dexter, a Federalist,—although Dexter, in a letter dated February 14, reiterated his old opinions hostile to the embargo, and professed to be no further a Republican than that he offered no indiscriminate opposition to the war. His Federalism was that of Rufus King and Bayard.

“What good is to be expected,” he asked,[9] “from creating division when engaged in war with a powerful nation that has not yet explicitly shown that she is willing to agree to reasonable terms of peace? Why make publications and speeches to prove that we are absolved from allegiance to the national government, and hint that an attempt to divide the empire might be justified?... The ferocious contest that would be the effect of attempting to skulk from a participation of the burdens of war would not be the greatest calamity.”

Under such circumstances the load of the embargo became too heavy for the Massachusetts Republicans to carry. They tried in every manner to throw it off, as persistently as President Madison tried to hold it on. Their candidate, Dexter, argued strongly against the restrictive system in his letter consenting to stand. They drew a distinction between the restrictive system and the war; but even in regard to the war they required not active support, but only abstinence from active resistance. The Federalists used the embargo to stimulate resistance to the war, and advocated a New England convention under cover of the unpopularity of commercial restrictions.

With the pertinacity which was his most remarkable trait, Madison clung to the embargo all winter in face of overwhelming motives to withdraw it. A large majority in Congress disliked it. England having recovered her other markets could afford to conquer the American as she had conquered the European, and to wait a few months for her opportunity. The embargo bankrupted the Treasury, threatened to stop the operations of war, and was as certain as any ordinary antecedent of a consequent result to produce a New England convention. Yet the President maintained it until the news from Europe caused a panic in Congress.

The Massachusetts election took place in the first days of April, while Congress was engaged in repealing the embargo and the system of commercial restrictions. The result showed that Dexter might have carried the State and defeated the project of a New England convention, had the embargo been repealed a few weeks earlier. A very large vote, about one hundred and two thousand in aggregate, was cast. The Federalists, whose official vote in 1813 was 56,754, threw 56,374 votes; while the Republicans, who cast 42,789 votes in 1813, numbered 45,359 in 1814.

The reduction of the Federalist majority from fourteen thousand to eleven thousand was not the only reason for believing that Dexter might have carried Massachusetts but for the embargo. At the same time William Plumer, supported like Dexter by the Republicans, very nearly carried New Hampshire, and by gaining a majority of the executive council, precluded the possibility that New Hampshire as a State could take part in a New England convention. The President’s Message recommending a repeal of the embargo was sent to Congress March 31, and the Act of Repeal was signed April 14. Two weeks later, April 28, the New York election took place. To this election both parties anxiously looked. The Administration press admitted that all was lost if New York joined Massachusetts,[10] and the New England Federalists knew that a decisive defeat in New York would leave them to act alone. The returns were watched with such anxiety as had seldom attended a New York election, although no general State officer was to be chosen.

In May, 1813, Governor Tompkins carried the State by a majority of only 3,506, and the Federalists in the House of Assembly numbered sixty, while the Republicans numbered fifty-two. The city of New York and the counties of Queens, Westchester, Dutchess, Columbia, Rensselaer, and Washington—the entire range of counties on the east shore of the Hudson—were then Federalist. The counties of Albany, Montgomery, Oneida, Otsego, Madison, and Ontario in the centre of the State were also Federalist. At the congressional election of 1812, twenty Federalists and six Republicans had been chosen. The May election of 1814 was for the State Assembly and for Congress. No opportunity was given for testing the general opinion of the State on a single issue, but no one could mistake what the general opinion was. City and State reversed their political character. The Republicans recovered possession of the Assembly with a large majority of seventy-four to thirty-eight, and the Congressional delegation numbered twenty-one Republicans and only six Federalists.

The result was supposed to be largely due to a dislike of the New England scheme and to a wish among New York Federalists that it should be stopped. The energy of the demonstration in New York marked the beginning of an epoch in national character; yet the change came too late to save Massachusetts from falling for the first time into the hands of the extreme Federalists. The towns of Massachusetts chose as their representatives to the General Court a majority bent on taking decisive action against the war. Connecticut and Rhode Island were controlled by the same impulse, and the discouraged Republicans could interpose no further resistance. A New England convention could be prevented only by a treaty of peace.

The effect of the attitude of New England was felt throughout the Union, and, combined with the news from Europe, brought a general conviction that peace must be made. No man in the Union was more loyal to the war than Governor Shelby of Kentucky, but Shelby already admitted that peace had become necessary.

“I may in confidence confess to you,” wrote Shelby, April 8,[11] “that I lament over my country that she has in her very bosom a faction as relentless as the fire that is unquenchable, capable of thwarting her best interests, and whose poisonous breath is extending to every corner of the Union. There is but one way to cure the evil, and that is an awful and desperate one; and in the choice of evils we had better take the least. Were we unanimous I should feel it less humiliating to be conquered, as I verily believe that the Administration will be driven to peace on any terms by the opposition to the war.”

If Governor Shelby had reached this conclusion before he knew the result of the Massachusetts election, the great mass of citizens who had been from the first indifferent to the war felt that peace on any terms could no longer be postponed. Mere disunion was not the result chiefly to be feared. That disunion might follow a collapse of the national government was possible; but for the time, Massachusetts seemed rather disposed to sacrifice the rest of the Union for her own power than to insist on a separation. Had the Eastern States suffered from the hardships of war they might have demanded disunion in despair; but in truth New England was pleased at the contrast between her own prosperity and the sufferings of her neighbors. The blockade and the embargo brought wealth to her alone. The farming and manufacturing industries of New England never grew more rapidly than in the midst of war and commercial restrictions.[12] “Machinery for manufactures, etc., and the fruits of household industry increase beyond calculation,” said a writer in the “Connecticut Herald” in July, 1813. “Wheels roll, spindles whirl, shuttles fly. We shall export to other States many more productions of industry than ever were exported in any one former season.” Manufactures were supposed to amount in value to fifteen or twenty million dollars a year. The Federalists estimated the balance due by the Southern States to New England at six million dollars a year.[13] The New England banks were believed to draw not less than half a million dollars every month from the South.

“We are far from rejoicing at this state of things,” wrote a Connecticut Federalist;[14] “and yet we cannot but acknowledge the hand of retributive justice in inflicting the calamities of war with so much more severity on that section of the Union which has so rashly and so unmercifully persisted in their determination to commence hostilities. The pressure of this balance is sensibly felt, and will continue to increase as long as the war continues.”

John Lowell declared[15] that “the banks are at their wits’ end to lend their capital, and money is such a drug ... that men against their consciences, their honor, their duty, their professions and promises, are willing to lend it secretly to support the very measures which are intended and calculated for their ruin.” To avoid the temptation of lending money to support Madison’s measures, many investors bought British government bills of exchange at twenty to twenty-two per cent discount. These bills were offered for sale in quantities at Boston; and perhaps the most legitimate reason for their presence there was that they were taken by New England contractors in payment for beef and flour furnished to the British commissariat in Canada.

While New England thus made profits from both sides, and knew not what to do with the specie that flowed into her banks, the rest of the country was already insolvent, and seemed bent on bankruptcy. In March, 1814, the legislature of Pennsylvania passed a bill for the creation of forty-one new banks. March 19 Governor Snyder vetoed it.[16]

“It is a fact well ascertained,” said Governor Snyder, “that immense sums of specie have been withdrawn from the banks in Pennsylvania and certain other States to pay balances for British goods which Eastern mercantile cupidity has smuggled into the United States. The demand for specie has in consequence been and is still so great that the banks in Philadelphia and in some other parts have stopped discounting any new paper. I ask a patriotic legislature, Is this an auspicious era to try so vast an experiment? Shall we indirectly aid our internal and external enemies to destroy our funds and embarrass the government by the creating of forty-one new banks which must have recourse for specie to that already much exhausted source? Is there at this time an intelligent man in Pennsylvania who believes that a bank-note of any description is the representative of specie?”

The Pennsylvania legislature instantly overrode Governor Snyder’s veto and chartered the new banks, which were, according to the governor, insolvent before they had legal existence. In ordinary times such follies punished and corrected themselves in regular course; but in 1814 the follies and illusions of many years concentrated their mischiefs on the national government, which was already unequal to the burden of its own. The war was practically at an end as far as the government conducted it. The army could not show a regiment with ranks more than half full.[17] The first three months of the year produced less than six thousand recruits.[18] The government could defend the frontier only at three or four fortified points. On the ocean, government vessels were scarcely to be seen. The Treasury was as insolvent as the banks, and must soon cease even the pretence of meeting its obligations.

The Secretary of the Treasury, authorized by law to borrow twenty-five millions and needing forty, offered a loan for only ten millions shortly before Congress adjourned. In Boston the government brokers advertised that the names of subscribers should be kept secret,[19] while the Boston “Gazette” of April 14 declared that “any man who lends his money to the government at the present time will forfeit all claim to common honesty and common courtesy among all true friends to the country.” The offers, received May 2, amounted to thirteen millions, at rates varying from seventy-five to eighty-eight. Jacob Barker, a private banker of New York, offered five million dollars on his single account. The secretary knew that Barker’s bid was not substantial, but he told the President that if it had been refused “we could not have obtained the ten millions without allowing terms much less favorable to the government.”[20] The terms were bad at best. The secretary obtained bids more or less substantial for about nine millions at eighty-eight, with the condition that if he should accept lower terms for any part of the sixteen millions still to be offered, the same terms should be conceded to Barker and his associates. The operation was equivalent to borrowing nine millions on an understanding that the terms should be fixed at the close of the campaign. Of this loan Boston offered two millions, and was allotted about, one million dollars.

The event proved that Campbell would have done better to accept all solid bids without regard to rate, for the government could have afforded to pay two dollars for one within a twelve-month, rather than stop payments; but Campbell was earnest to effect his loan at eighty-eight, and accordingly accepted only four million dollars besides Barker’s offer. With these four millions, with whatever part of five millions could be obtained from Barker, with interest-bearing Treasury notes limited to ten million dollars,[21] and with the receipts from taxes, the Treasury was to meet demands aggregating about forty millions for the year; for the chance was small that another loan could succeed, no matter what rate should be offered.

For this desperate situation of the government New England was chiefly responsible. In pursuing their avowed object of putting an end to the war the Federalists obtained a degree of success surprising even to themselves, and explained only by general indifference toward the war and the government. No one could suppose that the New England Federalists, after seeing their object within their grasp, would desist from effecting it. They had good reason to think that between Madison’s obstinacy and their own, the national government must cease its functions,—that the States must resume their sovereign powers, provide for their own welfare, and enter into some other political compact; but they could not suppose that England would forego her advantages, or consent to any peace which should not involve the overthrow of Madison and his party.

In such conditions of society morbid excitement was natural. Many examples in all periods of history could be found to illustrate every stage of a mania so common. The excitement of the time was not confined to New England. A typical American man-of-the-world was Gouverneur Morris. Cool, easy-tempered, incredulous, with convictions chiefly practical, and illusions largely rhetorical, Morris delivered an oration on the overthrow of Napoleon to a New York audience, June 29, 1814.

“And thou too, Democracy! savage and wild!” began Morris’s peroration,—“thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous and wise to the level of folly and guilt! thou child of squinting envy and self-tormenting spleen! thou persecutor of the great and good!—see! though it blast thine eyeballs,—see the objects of thy deadly hate! See lawful princes surrounded by loyal subjects!... Let those who would know the idol of thy devotion seek him in the island of Elba!”

The idea that American democracy was savage and wild stood in flagrant contrast to the tameness of its behavior; but the belief was a part of conservative faith, and Gouverneur Morris was not ridiculed, even for bad taste, by the society to which he belonged, because he called by inappropriate epithets the form of society which most of his fellow-citizens preferred. In New England, where democracy was equally reviled, kings and emperors were not equally admired. The austere virtue of the Congregational Church viewed the subject in a severer light, and however extreme might be the difference of conviction between clergymen and democrats, it was not a subject for ridicule.

To men who believed that every calamity was a Divine judgment, politics and religion could not be made to accord. Practical politics, being commonly an affair of compromise and relative truth,—a human attempt to modify the severity of Nature’s processes,—could not expect sympathy from the absolute and abstract behests of religion. Least of all could war, even in its most necessary form, be applauded or encouraged by any clergyman who followed the precepts of Christ. The War of 1812 was not even a necessary war. Only in a metaphysical or dishonest sense could any clergyman affirm that war was more necessary in 1812 than in any former year since the peace of 1783. Diplomacy had so confused its causes that no one could say for what object Americans had intended to fight,—still less, after the peace in Europe, for what object they continued their war. Assuming the conquest of Canada and of Indian Territory to be the motive most natural to the depraved instincts of human nature, the clergy saw every reason for expecting a judgment.

In general, the New England clergy did not publicly or violently press these ideas. The spirit of their class was grave and restrained rather than noisy. Yet a few eccentric or exceptional clergymen preached and published Fast-day sermons that threw discredit upon the whole Congregational Church. The chief offenders were two,—David Osgood, of the church at Medford, and Elijah Parish, a graduate of Dartmouth College, settled over the parish of Byfield in the town of Newbury, where political feeling was strong. Parish’s Fast-day sermon of April 7, 1814, immediately after the election which decided a New England convention, was probably the most extreme made from the pulpit:—

“Israel’s woes in Egypt terminated in giving them the fruits of their own labors. This was a powerful motive for them to dissolve their connection with the Ancient Dominion. Though their fathers had found their union with Egypt pleasant and profitable, though they had been the most opulent section in Egypt, yet since the change of the administration their schemes had been reversed, their employments changed, their prosperity destroyed, their vexations increased beyond all sufferance. They were tortured to madness at seeing the fruit of their labors torn from them to support a profligate administration.... They became discouraged; they were perplexed. Moses and others exhorted them not to despair, and assured them that one mode of relief would prove effectual. Timid, trembling, alarmed, they hardly dared to make the experiment. Finally they dissolved the Union: they marched; the sea opened; Jordan stopped his current; Canaan received their triumphant banners; the trees of the field clapped their hands; the hills broke forth into songs of joy; they feasted on the fruits of their own labors. Such success awaits a resolute and pious people.”

Although Parish’s rhetoric was hardly in worse taste than that of Gouverneur Morris, such exhortations were not held in high esteem by the great body of the Congregational clergy, whose teachings were studiously free from irreverence or extravagance in the treatment of political subjects.[22] A poor and straitened but educated class, of whom not one in four obtained his living wholly from his salary, the New England ministers had long ceased to speak with the authority of their predecessors, and were sustained even in their moderate protest against moral wrong rather by pride of class and sincerity of conviction than by sense of power. Some supported the war; many deprecated disunion; nearly all confined their opposition within the limits of non-resistance. They held that as the war was unnecessary and unjust, no one could give it voluntary aid without incurring the guilt of blood.

The attitude was clerical, and from that point of view commanded a degree of respect such as was yielded to the similar conscientiousness of the Friends; but it was fatal to government and ruinous to New England. Nothing but confusion could result from it if the war should continue, while the New England church was certain to be the first victim if peace should invigorate the Union.

CHAPTER II.

After the close of the campaign on the St. Lawrence, in November, 1813, General Wilkinson’s army, numbering about eight thousand men, sick and well, went into winter-quarters at French Mills, on the Canada line, about eight miles south of the St. Lawrence. Wilkinson was unfit for service, and asked leave to remove to Albany, leaving Izard in command; but Armstrong was not yet ready to make the new arrangements, and Wilkinson remained with the army during the winter. His force seemed to stand in a good position for annoying the enemy and interrupting communications between Upper and Lower Canada; but it lay idle between November 13 and February 1, when, under orders from Armstrong, it was broken up.[23] Brigadier-General Brown, with two thousand men, was sent to Sackett’s Harbor. The rest of the army was ordered to fall back to Plattsburg,—a point believed most likely to attract the enemy’s notice in the spring.[24]

Wilkinson obeyed, and found himself, in March, at Plattsburg with about four thousand effectives. He was at enmity with superiors and subordinates alike; but the chief object of his antipathy was the Secretary of War. From Plattsburg, March 27, he wrote a private letter to Major-General Dearborn,[25] whose hostility to the secretary was also pronounced: “I know of his [Armstrong’s] secret underworkings, and have therefore, to take the bull by the horns, demanded an arrest and a court-martial.... Good God! I am astonished at the man’s audacity, when he must be sensible of the power I have over him.” Pending the reply to his request for a court-martial, Wilkinson determined to make a military effort. “My advanced post is at Champlain on this side. I move to-day; and the day after to-morrow, if the ice, snow, and frost should not disappear, we shall visit the Lacolle, and take possession of that place. This is imperiously enjoined to check the reinforcements he [Prevost] continues to send to the Upper Province.”[26]

The Lacolle was a small river, or creek, emptying into the Sorel four or five miles beyond the boundary. According to the monthly return of the troops commanded by Major-General de Rottenburg, the British forces stationed about Montreal numbered, Jan. 22, 1814, eight thousand rank-and-file present for duty. Of these, eight hundred and eighty-five were at St. John’s; six hundred and ninety were at Isle aux Noix, with outposts at Lacadie and Lacolle of three hundred and thirty-two men.[27]

Wilkinson knew that the British outpost at the crossing of Lacolle Creek, numbering two hundred men all told,[28] was without support nearer than Isle aux Noix ten miles away; but it was stationed in a stone mill, with thick walls and a solid front. He took two twelve-pound field-guns to batter the mill, and crossing the boundary, March 30, with his four thousand men, advanced four or five miles to Lacolle Creek. The roads were obstructed and impassable, but his troops made their way in deep snow through the woods until they came within sight of the mill. The guns were then placed in position and opened fire; but Wilkinson was disconcerted to find that after two hours the mill was unharmed. He ventured neither to storm it nor flank it; and after losing more than two hundred men by the fire of the garrison, he ordered a retreat, and marched his army back to Champlain.

With this last example of his military capacity Wilkinson disappeared from the scene of active life, where he had performed so long and extraordinary a part. Orders arrived, dated March 24, relieving him from duty under the form of granting his request for a court of inquiry. Once more he passed the ordeal of a severe investigation, and received the verdict of acquittal; but he never was again permitted to resume his command in the army.

The force Wilkinson had brought from Lake Ontario, though united with that which Wade Hampton had organized, was reduced by sickness, expiration of enlistments, and other modes of depletion to a mere handful when Major-General Izard arrived at Plattsburg on the first day of May. Izard’s experience formed a separate narrative, and made a part of the autumn campaign. During the early summer the war took a different and unexpected direction, following the steps of the new Major-General Brown; for wherever Brown went, fighting followed.

General Brown marched from French Mills, February 13, with two thousand men. February 28, Secretary Armstrong wrote him a letter suggesting an attack on Kingston, to be covered by a feint on Niagara.[29] Brown, on arriving at Sackett’s Harbor, consulted Chauncey, and allowed himself to be dissuaded from attacking Kingston. “By some extraordinary mental process,” Armstrong thought,[30] Brown and Chauncey “arrived at the same conclusion,—that the main action, an attack on Kingston, being impracticable, the ruse, intended merely to mask it, might do as well.” Brown immediately marched with two thousand men for Niagara.

When the secretary learned of this movement, although it was contrary to his ideas of strategy, he wrote an encouraging letter to Brown, March 20:[31]

“You have mistaken my meaning.... If you hazard anything by this mistake, correct it promptly by returning to your post. If on the other hand you left the Harbor with a competent force for its defence, go on and prosper. Good consequences are sometimes the result of mistakes.”

The correspondence showed chiefly that neither the secretary nor the general had a distinct idea, and that Brown’s campaign, like Dearborn’s the year before, received its direction from Chauncey, whose repugnance to attacking Kingston was invincible.

Brown was shown his mistake by Gaines, before reaching Buffalo March 24, and leaving his troops, he hurried back to Sackett’s Harbor, “the most unhappy man alive.”[32] He resumed charge of such troops as remained at the Harbor, while Winfield Scott formed a camp of instruction at Buffalo, and, waiting for recruits who never came, personally drilled the officers of all grades. Scott’s energy threw into the little army a spirit and an organization strange to the service. Three months of instruction converted the raw troops into soldiers.

Meanwhile Brown could do nothing at Sackett’s Harbor. The British held control of the Lake, while Commodore Chauncey and the contractor Eckford were engaged in building a new ship which was to be ready in July. The British nearly succeeded in preventing Chauncey from appearing on the Lake during the entire season, for no sooner did Sir James Yeo sail from Kingston in the spring than he attempted to destroy the American magazines. Owing to the remote situation of Sackett’s Harbor in the extreme northern corner of the State, all supplies and war material were brought first from the Hudson River to Oswego by way of the Mohawk River and Oneida Lake. About twelve miles above Oswego the American magazines were established, and there the stores were kept until they could be shipped on schooners, and forwarded fifty miles along the Lake-shore to Sackett’s Harbor,—always a hazardous operation in the face of an enemy’s fleet. The destruction of the magazines would have been fatal to Chauncey, and even the capture or destruction of the schooners with stores was no trifling addition to his difficulties.

Sir James Yeo left Kingston May 4, and appeared off Oswego the next day, bringing a large body of troops, numbering more than a thousand rank-and-file.[33] They found only about three hundred men to oppose them, and having landed May 6, they gained possession of the fort which protected the harbor of Oswego. The Americans made a resistance which caused a loss of seventy-two men killed and wounded to the British, among the rest Captain Mulcaster of the Royal Navy, an active officer, who was dangerously wounded. The result was hardly worth the loss. Four schooners were captured or destroyed, and some twenty-four hundred barrels of flour, pork, and salt, but nothing of serious importance.[34] Yeo made no attempt to ascend the river, and retired to Kingston after destroying whatever property he could not take away.

Although the chief American depot escaped destruction, the disgrace and discouragement remained, that after two years of war the Americans, though enjoying every advantage, were weaker than ever on Lake Ontario, and could not defend even so important a point as Oswego from the attack of barely a thousand men. Their coastwise supply of stores to Sackett’s Harbor became a difficult and dangerous undertaking, to be performed mostly by night.[35] Chauncey remained practically blockaded in Sackett’s Harbor; and without his fleet in control of the Lake the army could do nothing effectual against Kingston.

In this helplessness, Armstrong was obliged to seek some other line on which the army could be employed against Upper Canada; and the idea occurred to him that although he had no fleet on Lake Ontario he had one on Lake Erie, which by a little ingenuity might enable the army to approach the heart of Upper Canada at the extreme western end of Lake Ontario. “Eight or even six thousand men,” Armstrong wrote[36] to the President, April 30, “landed in the bay between Point Abino and Fort Erie, and operating either on the line of the Niagara, or more directly if a more direct route is found, against the British post at the head of Burlington Bay, cannot be resisted with effect without compelling the enemy so to weaken his more eastern posts as to bring them within reach of our means at Sackett’s Harbor and Plattsburg.”

Armstrong’s suggestion was made to the President April 30. Already time was short. The allies had entered Paris March 31; the citadel of Bayonne capitulated to Wellington April 28. In a confidential despatch dated June 3, Lord Bathurst notified the governor-general of Canada that ten thousand men had been ordered to be shipped immediately for Quebec.[37] July 5, Major-General Torrens at the Horse-guards informed Prevost that four brigades,—Brisbane’s, Kempt’s, Power’s, and Robinson’s; fourteen regiments of Wellington’s best troops,—had sailed from Bordeaux for Canada.[38] Prevost could afford in July to send westward every regular soldier in Lower Canada, sure of replacing them at Montreal by the month of August.

“A discrepancy in the opinions of the Cabinet,” according to Armstrong,[39] delayed adoption of a plan till June, when a compromise scheme was accepted,[40] but not carried out.

“Two causes prevented its being acted upon in extenso,” Armstrong afterward explained,[41]—“the one, a total failure in getting together by militia calls and volunteer overtures a force deemed competent to a campaign of demonstration and manœuvre on the peninsula; the other, an apprehension that the fleet, which had been long inactive, would not yet be found in condition to sustain projects requiring from it a vigorous co-operation with the army.”

Brown might have been greatly strengthened at Niagara by drawing from Detroit the men that could be spared there; but the Cabinet obliged Armstrong to send the Detroit force—about nine hundred in number—against Mackinaw. Early in July the Mackinaw expedition, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Croghan, started from Detroit, and August 4 it was defeated and returned. Croghan’s expedition did not even arrive in time to prevent a British expedition from Mackinaw crossing Wisconsin and capturing, July 19, the distant American post at Prairie du Chien.[42]

Armstrong did not favor Croghan’s expedition, wishing to bring him and his two batteries to reinforce Brown, but yielded to the Secretary of the Navy, who wished to capture Mackinaw,[43] and to the promises of Commodore Chauncey that on or before July 1 he would sail from Sackett’s Harbor, and command the Lake. In reliance on Chauncey, the Cabinet, except Monroe, decided that Major-General Brown should cross to the Canadian side, above the Falls of Niagara, and march, with Chauncey’s support, to Burlington Heights and to York.[44]

This decision was made June 7, and Armstrong wrote to Brown, June 10, describing the movement intended.[45] The Secretary of the Navy, he said, thought Chauncey could not be ready before July 15:

“To give, however, immediate occupation to your troops, and to prevent their blood from stagnating, why not take Fort Erie and its garrison, stated at three or four hundred men? Land between Point Abino and Erie in the night; assail the Fort by land and water; push forward a corps to seize the bridge at Chippawa; and be governed by circumstances in either stopping there or going farther. Boats may follow and feed you. If the enemy concentrates his whole force on this line, as I think he will, it will not exceed two thousand men.”

Brown had left Sackett’s Harbor, and was at Buffalo when these orders reached him. He took immediate measures to carry them out. Besides his regular force, he called for volunteers to be commanded by Peter B. Porter; and he wrote to Chauncey, June 21,[46] an irritating letter, complaining of having received not a line from him, and giving a sort of challenge to the navy to meet the army before Fort George, by July 10. The letter showed that opinion in the army ran against the navy, and particularly against Chauncey, whom Brown evidently regarded as a sort of naval Wilkinson. In truth, Brown could depend neither upon Chauncey nor upon volunteers. The whole force he could collect was hardly enough to cross the river, and little exceeded the three thousand men on whose presence at once in the boats Alexander Smyth had insisted eighteen months before, in order to capture Fort Erie.

So famous did Brown’s little army become, that the details of its force and organization retained an interest equalled only by that which attached to the frigates and sloops-of-war. Although the existence of the regiments ceased with the peace, and their achievements were limited to a single campaign of three or four months, their fame would have insured them in any other service extraordinary honors and sedulous preservation of their identity. Two small brigades of regular troops, and one still smaller brigade of Pennsylvania volunteers, with a corps of artillery, composed the entire force. The first brigade was commanded by Brigadier-General Winfield Scott, and its monthly return of June 30,1814, reported its organization and force as follows:[47]—

Strength of the First, or Scott’s, Brigade.

The Ninth regiment came from Massachusetts, and in this campaign was usually commanded by its lieutenant-colonel, Thomas Aspinwall, or by Major Henry Leavenworth. The Eleventh was raised in Vermont, and was led by Major John McNeil. The Twenty-second was a Pennsylvania regiment, commanded by its colonel, Hugh Brady. The Twenty-fifth was enlisted in Connecticut, and identified by the name of T. S. Jesup, one of its majors. The whole brigade, officers and privates, numbered thirteen hundred and eighty-four men present for duty on the first day of July, 1814.

The Second, or Ripley’s, brigade was still smaller, and became even more famous. Eleazar Wheelock Ripley was born in New Hampshire, in the year 1782. He became a resident of Portland in Maine, and was sent as a representative to the State legislature at Boston, where he was chosen speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Jan. 17, 1812, on the retirement of Joseph Story to become a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. A few weeks afterward, March 12, 1812, Ripley took the commission of lieutenant-colonel of the Twenty-first regiment, to be enlisted in Massachusetts. A year afterward he became colonel of the same regiment, and took part in the battle of Chrystler’s Field. Secretary Armstrong made him a brigadier-general April 15, 1814, his commission bearing date about a month after that of Winfield Scott. Both the new brigadiers were sent to Niagara, where Scott formed a brigade from regiments trained by himself; and Ripley was given a brigade composed of his old regiment, the Twenty-first, with detachments from the Seventeenth and Nineteenth and Twenty-third. The strength of the brigade, July 1, 1814, was reported in the monthly return as follows:—

Strength of the Second, or Ripley’s, Brigade.

Ripley’s old regiment, the Twenty-first, was given to Colonel James Miller, who had served in the Tippecanoe campaign as major in the Fourth Infantry, and had shared the misfortune of that regiment at Detroit. The other regiment composing the brigade—the Twenty-third—was raised in New York, and was usually commanded by one or another of its majors, McFarland or Brooke. Ripley’s brigade numbered one thousand and twenty-seven men present for duty, on the first day of July.

The artillery, under the command of Major Hindman, was composed of four companies.

Strength of Hindman’s Battalion of Artillery.

The militia brigade was commanded by Peter B. Porter, and consisted of six hundred Pennsylvania volunteer militia, with about the same number of Indians, comprising nearly the whole military strength of the Six Nations.[48]

Strength of Major-General Brown’s Army, Buffalo, July 1, 1814.

Thus the whole of Brown’s army consisted of half-a-dozen skeleton regiments, and including every officer, as well as all Porter’s volunteers, numbered barely thirty-five hundred men present for duty. The aggregate, including sick and absent, did not reach five thousand.

The number of effectives varied slightly from week to week, as men joined or left their regiments; but the entire force never exceeded thirty-five hundred men, exclusive of Indians.

According to the weekly return of June 22, 1814, Major-General Riall, who commanded the right division of the British army, had a force of four thousand rank-and-file present for duty; but of this number the larger part were in garrison at York, Burlington Heights, and Fort Niagara. His headquarters were at Fort George, where he had nine hundred and twenty-seven rank-and-file present for duty. Opposite Fort George, in Fort Niagara on the American side, five hundred and seventy-eight rank-and-file were present for duty. At Queenston were two hundred and fifty-eight; at Chippawa, four hundred and twenty-eight; at Fort Erie, one hundred and forty-six. In all, on the Niagara River Riall commanded two thousand three hundred and thirty-seven rank-and-file present for duty. The officers, musicians, etc., numbered three hundred and thirty-two. At that time only about one hundred and seventy men were on the sick list. All told, sick and well, the regular force numbered two thousand eight hundred and forty men.[49] They belonged chiefly to the First, or Royal Scots; the Eighth, or King’s; the Hundredth, the Hundred-and-third regiments, and the Artillery, with a few dragoons.

As soon as Porter’s volunteers were ready, the whole American army was thrown across the river. The operation was effected early in the morning of July 3; and although the transport was altogether insufficient, the movement was accomplished without accident or delay. Scott’s brigade with the artillery landed below Fort Erie; Ripley landed above; the Indians gained the rear; and the Fort, which was an open work, capitulated at five o’clock in the afternoon. One hundred and seventy prisoners, including officers of all ranks,[50] being two companies of the Eighth and Hundredth British regiments were surrendered by the major in command.

The next British position was at Chippawa, about sixteen miles below. To Chippawa Major-General Riall hastened from Fort George, on hearing that the American army had crossed the river above; and there, within a few hours, he collected about fifteen hundred regulars and six hundred militia and Indians, behind the Chippawa River, in a position not to be assailed in front. The American army also hastened toward Chippawa. On the morning of July 4 Scott’s brigade led the way, and after an exhausting march of twelve hours, the enemy tearing up the bridges in retiring, Scott reached Chippawa plain toward sunset, and found Riall’s force in position beyond the Chippawa River. Scott could only retire a mile or two, behind the nearest water,—a creek, or broad ditch, called Street’s Creek,—where he went into camp. Brown and Ripley, with the second brigade and artillery, came up two or three hours later, at eleven o’clock in the night.[51] Porter followed the next morning.

Brown, knowing his numbers to be about twice those of Riall, was anxious to attack before Riall could be reinforced; and on the morning of July 5, leaving Ripley and Porter’s brigades encamped in the rear, he reconnoitred the line of the Chippawa River, and gave orders for constructing a bridge above Riall’s position. The bridge was likely to be an affair of several days, and Riall showed a disposition to interfere with it. His scouts and Indians crossed and occupied the woods on the American left, driving in the pickets and annoying the reconnoitring party, and even the camp. To dislodge them, Porter’s volunteers and Indians were ordered forward to clear the woods; and at about half-past four o’clock in the afternoon, Porter’s advance began to drive the enemy’s Indians back, pressing forward nearly to the Chippawa River. There the advancing volunteers and Indians suddenly became aware that the whole British army was in the act of crossing the Chippawa Bridge on their flank. The surprise was complete, and Porter’s brigade naturally broke and fell back in confusion.[52]

PLAN
OF THE
BATTLE OF CHIPPAWA

STRUTHERS & CO., ENGR’S, N. Y.

No one could have been more surprised than Brown, or more incredulous than Scott, at Riall’s extraordinary movement. The idea that a British force of two thousand men at most should venture to attack more than three thousand, with artillery, covered by a deep, miry creek, had not entered their minds. Riall drew up his little army in three columns on the Chippawa plain,—the King’s regiment four hundred and eighty strong in advance, supported by the Royal Scots five hundred strong, and the Hundredth four hundred and fifty strong, with a troop of dragoons and artillerists; in all about fifteen hundred regular troops, with two twenty-four-pound field-pieces and a five-and-a-half inch howitzer. Six hundred militia and Indians occupied the woods.[53] The whole force advanced in order of battle toward Street’s Creek.

Brown was at the front when this movement was made. Porter was routed. Ripley with the second brigade was in the rear. Scott, having rested his brigade in the morning and given them a dinner to celebrate the Fourth of July, had ordered a grand parade “to keep his men in breath,” as he said; and while Riall’s regular force, fifteen hundred strong, formed on the Chippawa plain a mile away, Scott’s brigade—which a week before had been reported as containing thirteen hundred men present for duty, and if all its details had been called in could hardly have exceeded thirteen hundred men in the ranks on the afternoon of July 5—was forming, before crossing the little bridge over Street’s Creek to parade on the plain already occupied by the British. Owing to the brushwood that lined the creek Scott could not see the plain, and received no notice of danger until he approached the bridge at the head of his brigade. At that moment General Brown in full gallop from the front rode by, calling out in passing, “You will have a battle!”[54] Scott remarked that he did not believe he should find three hundred British to fight, and crossed the bridge.

If Riall was unwise to attack, Scott tempted destruction by leaving his secure position behind the creek; but at that moment he was in his happiest temper. He meant to show what he and his brigade could do. As his thin column crossed the bridge, the British twenty-four-pound guns opened upon it; but the American line moved on, steady as veterans, and formed in order of battle beyond. Towson’s three twelve-pounders were placed in position near the river on the extreme right, and opened fire on the heavier British battery opposite. The infantry deployed in three battalions,—the right, under Major Leavenworth of the Ninth; the centre, under Major McNeil of the Eleventh; the left, under Major Jesup of the Twenty-fifth. Throwing the flanks obliquely forward, and extending Jesup’s battalion into the woods on the left to prevent outflanking, Scott ordered an advance; and at the same time Riall directed the Royal Scots and the Hundredth to charge.[55] The two lines advanced, stopping alternately to fire and move forward, while Towson’s guns, having blown up a British caisson, were turned on the British column. The converging American fire made havoc in the British ranks, and when the two lines came within some sixty or seventy paces of each other in the centre, the flanks were actually in contact. Then the whole British line broke and crumbled away.[56] Ripley’s brigade, arriving soon afterward, found no enemy on the plain. The battle had lasted less than an hour.

Riall’s report made no concealment of his defeat.[57]

“I placed two light twenty-four-pounders and a five-and-a-half inch howitzer,” he said, “against the right of the enemy’s position, and formed the Royal Scots and Hundredth regiment with the intention of making a movement upon his left, which deployed with the greatest regularity and opened a very heavy fire. I immediately moved up the King’s regiment to the right, while the Royal Scots and Hundredth regiments were directed to charge the enemy in front, for which they advanced with the greatest gallantry under a most destructive fire. I am sorry to say, however, in this attempt they suffered so severely that I was obliged to withdraw them, finding their further efforts against the superior numbers of the enemy would be unavailing.”

For completeness, Scott’s victory at Chippawa could be compared with that of Isaac Hull over the “Guerriere;” but in one respect Scott surpassed Hull. The “Constitution” was a much heavier ship than its enemy; but Scott’s brigade was weaker, both in men and guns, than Riall’s force. Even in regulars, man against man, Scott was certainly outnumbered. His brigade could not have contained, with artillerists, more than thirteen hundred men present on the field,[58] while Riall officially reported his regulars at fifteen hundred, and his irregular corps at six hundred. Scott’s flank was exposed and turned by the rout of Porter. He fought with a creek in his rear, where retreat was destruction. He had three twelve-pound field-pieces, one of which was soon dismounted, against two twenty-four-pounders and a five-and-a-half inch howitzer. He crossed the bridge and deployed under the enemy’s fire. Yet the relative losses showed that he was the superior of his enemy in every respect, and in none more than in the efficiency of his guns.

Riall reported a total loss in killed, wounded, and missing of five hundred and fifteen men,[59] not including Indians. Scott and Porter reported a total loss of two hundred and ninety-seven, not including Indians. Riall’s regular regiments and artillery lost one hundred and thirty-seven killed, and three hundred and five wounded. Scott’s brigade reported forty-eight killed and two hundred and twenty-seven wounded. The number of Riall’s killed was nearly three times the number of Scott’s killed, and proved that the battle was decided by the superior accuracy or rapidity of the musketry and artillery fire, other military qualities being assumed to be equal.

The battle of Chippawa was the only occasion during the war when equal bodies of regular troops met face to face, in extended lines on an open plain in broad daylight, without advantage of position; and never again after that combat was an army of American regulars beaten by British troops. Small as the affair was, and unimportant in military results, it gave to the United States army a character and pride it had never before possessed.

Riall regained the protection of his lines without further loss; but two days afterward Brown turned his position, and Riall abandoned it with the whole peninsula except Fort George.[60] Leaving garrisons in Fort George and Fort Niagara, he fell back toward Burlington Bay to await reinforcements. Brown followed as far as Queenston, where he camped July 10, doubtful what next to do. Fretting under the enforced delay, he wrote to Commodore Chauncey, July 13, a letter that led to much comment:[61]—

“I have looked for your fleet with the greatest anxiety since the 10th. I do not doubt my ability to meet the enemy in the field, and to march in any direction over his country, your fleet carrying for me the necessary supplies.... There is not a doubt resting in my mind but that we have between us the command of sufficient means to conquer Upper Canada within two months, if there is a prompt and zealous co-operation and a vigorous application of these means.”

Brown, like Andrew Jackson, with the virtues of a militia general, possessed some of the faults. His letter to Chauncey expressed his honest belief; but he was mistaken, and the letter tended to create a popular impression that Chauncey was wholly to blame. Brown could not, even with Chauncey’s help, conquer Upper Canada. He was in danger of being himself destroyed; and even at Queenston he was not safe. Riall had already received, July 9, a reinforcement of seven hundred regulars;[62] at his camp, only thirteen miles from Brown, he had twenty-two hundred men; in garrison at Fort George and Niagara he left more than a thousand men; Lieutenant-General Drummond was on his way from Kingston with the Eighty-ninth regiment four hundred strong, under Colonel Morrison, who had won the battle of Chrystler’s Field, while still another regiment, DeWatteville’s, was on the march. Four thousand men were concentrating on Fort George, and Chauncey, although he might have delayed, could not have prevented their attacking Brown, or stopping his advance.

Brown was so well aware of his own weakness that he neither tried to assault Fort George nor to drive Riall farther away, although Ripley and the two engineer officers McRee and Wood advised the attempt.[63] After a fortnight passed below Queenston, he suddenly withdrew to Chippawa July 24, and camped on the battle-field. Riall instantly left his camp at eleven o’clock in the night of July 24, and followed Brown’s retreat with about a thousand men, as far as Lundy’s Lane, only a mile below the Falls of Niagara. There he camped at seven o’clock on the morning of July 25, waiting for the remainder of his force, about thirteen hundred men, who marched at noon, and were to arrive at sunset.

The battle of Chippawa and three weeks of active campaigning had told on the Americans. According to the army returns of the last week in July, Brown’s army at Chippawa, July 25, numbered twenty-six hundred effectives.[64]

Strength of Major-General Brown’s Army, Chippawa, July 25, 1814.

Thus Brown at Chippawa bridge, on the morning of July 25, with twenty-six hundred men present for duty, had Riall within easy reach three miles away at Lundy’s Lane, with only a thousand men; but Brown expected no such sudden movement from the enemy, and took no measures to obtain certain information. He was with reason anxious for his rear. His position was insecure and unsatisfactory except for attack. From the moment it became defensive, it was unsafe and needed to be abandoned.

The British generals were able to move on either bank of the river. While Riall at seven o’clock in the morning went into camp within a mile of Niagara Falls, Lieutenant-General Gordon Drummond with the Eighty-ninth regiment disembarked at Fort George, intending to carry out a long-prepared movement on the American side.[65]

Gordon Drummond, who succeeded Major-General de Rottenburg in the command of Upper Canada in December, 1813, and immediately distinguished himself by the brilliant capture of Fort Niagara and the destruction of Buffalo, was regarded as the ablest military officer in Canada. Isaac Brock’s immediate successors in the civil and military government of Upper Canada were Major-Generals Sheaffe and De Rottenburg. Neither had won distinction; but Gordon Drummond was an officer of a different character. Born in 1772, he entered the army in 1789 as an ensign in the First regiment, or Royal Scots, and rose in 1794 to be lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth, or King’s regiment. He served in the Netherlands, the West Indies, and in Egypt, before being ordered to Canada in 1808. In 1811 he became lieutenant-general. He was at Kingston when his subordinate officer, Major-General Riall, lost the battle of Chippawa and retired toward Burlington Heights. Having sent forward all the reinforcements he could spare, Drummond followed as rapidly as possible to take command in person.

No sooner did Drummond reach Fort George than, in pursuance of orders previously given, he sent a detachment of about six hundred men across the river to Lewiston. Its appearance there was at once made known to Brown at Chippawa, only six or seven miles above, and greatly alarmed him for the safety of his base at Fort Schlosser, Black Rock, and Buffalo. Had Drummond advanced up the American side with fifteen hundred men, as he might have done, he would have obliged Brown to re-cross the river, and might perhaps have destroyed or paralyzed him; but Drummond decided to join Riall, and accordingly, recalling the detachment from Lewiston at four o’clock in the afternoon, he began his march up the Canadian side with eight hundred and fifteen rank-and-file to Lundy’s Lane.[66]

At five o’clock, July 25, the British army was nearly concentrated. The advance under Riall at Lundy’s Lane numbered nine hundred and fifty rank-and-file, with the three field-pieces which had been in the battle of Chippawa, and either two or three six-pounders.[67] Drummond was three miles below with eight hundred and fifteen rank-and-file, marching up the river; and Colonel Scott of the One Hundred-and-third regiment, with twelve hundred and thirty rank-and-file and two more six-pound field-pieces, was a few miles behind Drummond.[68] By nine o’clock in the evening the three corps, numbering three thousand rank-and-file, with eight field-pieces, were to unite at Lundy’s Lane.

At a loss to decide on which bank the British generals meant to move, Brown waited until afternoon, and then, in great anxiety for the American side of the river, ordered Winfield Scott to march his brigade down the road toward Queenston on the Canadian side, in the hope of recalling the enemy from the American side by alarming him for the safety of his rear. Scott, always glad to be in motion, crossed Chippawa bridge, with his brigade and Towson’s battery, soon after five o’clock, and to his great surprise, in passing a house near the Falls, learned that a large body of British troops was in sight below. With his usual audacity he marched directly upon them, and reaching Lundy’s Lane, deployed to the left in line of battle. Jesup, Brady, Leavenworth, and McNeil placed their little battalions, numbering at the utmost a thousand rank-and-file, in position, and Towson opened with his three guns. The field suited their ambition. The sun was setting at the end of a long, hot, midsummer day. About a mile to their right the Niagara River flowed through its chasm, and the spray of the cataract rose in the distance behind them.

PLAN OF THE
BATTLE
OF
LUNDY’S LANE
AT SUNSET

STRUTHERS & CO., ENGR’S, N. Y.

At the first report that the American army was approaching, Riall ordered a retreat, and his advance was already in march from the field when Drummond arrived with the Eighty-ninth regiment, and countermanded the order.[69] Drummond then formed his line, numbering according to his report sixteen hundred men, but in reality seventeen hundred and seventy rank-and-file,[70]—the left resting on the high road, his two twenty-four-pound brass field-pieces, two six-pounders, and a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer a little advanced in front of his centre on the summit of the low hill, and his right stretching forward so as to overlap Scott’s position in attacking. Lundy’s Lane, at right angles with the river, ran close behind the British position. Hardly had he completed his formation, when, in his own words, “the whole front was warmly and closely engaged.”

With all the energy Scott could throw into his blow, he attacked the British left and centre. Drummond’s left stopped slightly beyond the road, and was assailed by Jesup’s battalion, the Twenty-fifth regiment, while Scott’s other battalions attacked in front. So vigorous was Jesup’s assault that he forced back the Royal Scots and Eighty-ninth, and got into the British rear, where he captured Major-General Riall himself, as he left the field seriously wounded. “After repeated attacks,” said Drummond’s report, “the troops on the left were partially forced back, and the enemy gained a momentary possession of the road.” In the centre also Scott attacked with obstinacy; but the British artillery was altogether too strong and posted too high for Towson’s three guns, which at last ceased firing.[71] There the Americans made no impression, while they were overlapped and outnumbered by the British right.

From seven till nine o’clock Scott’s brigade hung on the British left and centre, charging repeatedly close on the enemy’s guns; and when at last with the darkness their firing ceased from sheer exhaustion, they were not yet beaten. Brady’s battalion, the Ninth and Twenty-second, and McNeil’s, the Eleventh, were broken up; their ammunition was exhausted, and most of their officers were killed or wounded. The Eleventh and Twenty-second regiments lost two hundred and thirty men killed, wounded, and missing, or more than half their number; many of the men left the field, and only with difficulty could a battalion be organized from the debris.[72] McNeil and Brady were wounded, and Major Leavenworth took command of the remnant. With a small and exhausted force which could not have numbered more than six hundred men, and which Drummond by a vigorous movement might have wholly destroyed, Scott clung to the enemy’s flank until in the darkness Ripley’s brigade came down on the run. The American line was also reinforced by Porter’s brigade; by the First regiment, one hundred and fifty strong, which crossed from the American side of the river; and by Ritchie’s and Biddle’s batteries.

At about the same time the rest of Riall’s force, twelve hundred and thirty rank-and-file, with two more six-pound guns, appeared on the field, and were placed in a second line or used to prolong the British right. If Scott had lost four hundred men from the ranks Drummond had certainly lost no more, for his men were less exposed. Brown was obliged to leave details of men for camp duty; Drummond brought three thousand rank-and-file on the field. At nine o’clock Drummond could scarcely have had fewer than twenty-six hundred men in Lundy’s Lane, with seven field-pieces, two of which were twenty-four-pounders. Brown could scarcely have had nineteen hundred, even allowing Porter to have brought five hundred of his volunteers into battle.[73] He had also Towson’s, Ritchie’s, and Biddle’s batteries,—seven twelve-pound field-pieces in all.

As long as the British battery maintained its fire in the centre, victory was impossible and escape difficult.[74] Ripley’s brigade alone could undertake the task of capturing the British guns, and to it the order was given. Colonel Miller was to advance with the Twenty-first regiment against the British battery in front.[75] Ripley himself took command of the Twenty-third regiment on the right, to lead it by the road to attack the enemy’s left flank in Lundy’s Lane. According to the story that for the next fifty years was told to every American school-boy as a model of modest courage, General Brown gave to Miller the order to carry the enemy’s artillery, and Miller answered, “I’ll try!”[76]

The two regiments thus thrown on the enemy’s centre and left numbered probably about seven hundred men in the ranks, according to Ripley’s belief. The Twenty-first regiment was the stronger, and may have contained four hundred and fifty men, including officers; the Twenty-third could scarcely have brought three hundred into the field. In a few minutes both battalions were in motion. The Twenty-third, advancing along the road on the right, instantly attracted the enemy’s fire at about one hundred and fifty yards from the hill, and was thrown back. Ripley reformed the column, and in five minutes it advanced again.[77] While the Twenty-third was thus engaged on the right, the Twenty-first silently advanced in front, covered by shrubbery and the darkness, within a few rods of the British battery undiscovered, and with a sudden rush carried the guns, bayoneting the artillery-men where they stood.

So superb a feat of arms might well startle the British general, who could not see that less than five hundred men were engaged in it; but according to the British account[78] the guns stood immediately in front of a British line numbering at least twenty-six hundred men in ranks along Lundy’s Lane. Drummond himself must have been near the spot, for the whole line of battle was but five minutes’ walk; apparently he had but to order an advance, to drive Miller’s regiment back without trouble. Yet Miller maintained his ground until Ripley came up on his right. According to the evidence of Captain McDonald of Ripley’s staff, the battle was violent during fifteen or twenty minutes:—

“Having passed the position where the artillery had been planted, Colonel Miller again formed his line facing the enemy, and engaged them within twenty paces distance. There appeared a perfect sheet of fire between the two lines. While the Twenty-first was in this situation, the Twenty-third attacked the enemy’s flank, and advanced within twenty paces of it before the first volley was discharged,—a measure adopted by command of General Ripley, that the fire might be effectual and more completely destructive. The movement compelled the enemy’s flank to fall back immediately by descending the hill out of sight, upon which the firing ceased.”[79]

Perhaps this feat was more remarkable than the surprise of the battery. Ripley’s Twenty-third regiment, about three hundred men, broke the British line, not in the centre but on its left, where the Eighty-ninth, the Royal Scots, King’s, and the Forty-first were stationed,[80] and caused them to retire half a mile from the battle-field before they halted to reform.

When the firing ceased, Ripley’s brigade held the hill-top, with the British guns, and the whole length of Lundy’s Lane to the high-road. Porter then brought up his brigade on the left; Hindman brought up his guns, and placed Towson’s battery on Ripley’s right, Ritchie’s on his left, while Biddle’s two guns were put in position on the road near the corner of Lundy’s Lane. Jesup with the Twenty-fifth regiment was put in line on the right of Towson’s battery; Leavenworth with the remnants of the Ninth, Eleventh, and Twenty-second formed a second line in the rear of the captured artillery; and thus reversing the former British order of battle, the little army stood ranked along the edge of Lundy’s Lane, with the British guns in their rear.

PLAN OF THE
BATTLE
OF
LUNDY’S LANE
10 O’CLOCK

STRUTHERS & CO., ENGR’S, N.Y.

The British force was then in much confusion, a part of it marching into the American line by mistake, and suffering a destructive fire; a part of it firing into the regiment on its own right, and keeping up the fire persistently.[81] In order to recover their artillery they must assault, without guns, a steep hill held by an enemy with several field-pieces. Had Brown been able to put a reserve of only a few hundred men into the field, his victory was assured; but the battle and exhaustion were rapidly reducing his force. He had at ten o’clock not more than fifteen hundred men in the ranks, and almost every officer was wounded.

After a long interval the British line was reformed, and brought to the attack. General Drummond’s report said nothing of this movement, but according to the American account the two lines were closely engaged their whole length at a distance of ten or twelve yards. In the darkness the troops could aim only at the flash of the muskets. “We having much the advantage of the ground, the enemy generally fired over our heads,” said Captain McDonald of Ripley’s staff; “but the continual blaze of light was such as to enable us distinctly to see their buttons.” After a sharp combat of some twenty minutes the enemy retreated. Three times, at intervals of half an hour or more, the British line moved up the hill, and after the exchange of a hot fire retired; between the attacks, for half an hour at a time, all was darkness and silence, hardly interrupted by a breath of air. Brown and Scott were with Porter on the extreme left. In the centre, by the captured cannon, Ripley sat on his horse, ten or twelve paces in rear of his line. Two bullets passed through his hat, but he was unhurt. Captain Ritchie was killed at his battery on the left; Jesup was wounded on the right. Each attack sorely diminished the number of men in the ranks, until at the close of the third about seven hundred rank-and-file, with few officers, were believed to remain in position.[82]

Scott, with Leavenworth’s consolidated battalion, after ranging somewhat wildly the entire length of the line in the attempt to turn the enemy’s flank, and receiving the fire of both armies, joined Jesup’s Twenty-fifth regiment on the right, and was at last severely wounded.[83] At about the same time Brown was wounded on the extreme left,[84] where Porter’s volunteers held the line. Major Leavenworth, with the remnants of the first brigade, moving from the left to reinforce Jesup on the right after the third repulse of the enemy, met Scott retiring from the field, and soon afterward was hailed by General Brown, who was also returning to camp severely wounded. The time was then about eleven o’clock, and every one felt that the army must soon retreat.[85] Farther in the rear General Brown met Major Hindman of the artillery, who was bringing up his spare ammunition wagons. Brown ordered Hindman to collect his artillery as well as he could, and retire immediately; “we shall all march to camp.” He said that they had done as much as they could do; that nearly all their officers were killed or wounded; that he was himself wounded, and he thought it best to retire to camp. Hindman on arriving at the hill, firing having wholly ceased, immediately began to withdraw the guns. Ripley first learned the order to withdraw by discovering the artillery to be already gone.[86] Next came a peremptory order to collect the wounded and retire.[87] The order was literally obeyed. The enemy in no way molested the movement; and at about midnight the wearied troops marched for camp, in as good order and with as much regularity as they had marched to the battle-field.[88]

Hindman withdrew his own guns, and having with some difficulty procured horses to haul off the British pieces, on returning to the hill after Ripley’s withdrawal found the enemy again in possession, and some men and wagons captured.[89] He left the field at once, with the British in possession of their guns, and followed the retreating column.

Lieutenant-General Drummond’s report of the battle, though silent as to the repeated British repulses, declared that the Americans fought with uncommon gallantry:—

“In so determined a manner were the attacks directed against our guns that our artillery-men were bayoneted by the enemy in the act of loading, and the muzzles of the enemy’s guns were advanced within a few yards of ours. The darkness of the night during this extraordinary conflict occasioned several uncommon incidents; our troops having for a moment been pushed back, some of our guns remained for a few minutes in the enemy’s hands.”

Drummond’s “few minutes” were three hours. According to the British account, the One-Hundred-and-third regiment, with its two field-pieces, arrived on the field just at nine, and “passed by mistake into the centre of the American army now posted upon the hill.”[90] The regiment “fell back in confusion” and lost its two field-pieces, which were captured by Miller, with Riall’s five pieces. By British report, Miller was at nine o’clock “in possession of the crest of the hill and of seven pieces of captured artillery.”[91] Drummond admitted that in retiring “about midnight” the Americans carried away one of his light pieces, having limbered it up by mistake and leaving one of their own. During the entire action after nine o’clock Drummond did not fire a cannon, although, according to Canadian authority, the fighting was desperate:—

“The officers of the army from Spain who have been engaged in Upper Canada have acknowledged that they never saw such determined charges as were made by the Americans in the late actions.... In the action on the 25th July the Americans charged to the very muzzles of our cannon, and actually bayoneted the artillery-men who were at their guns. Their charges were not once or twice only, but repeated and long, and the steadiness of British soldiers alone could have withstood them.”[92]

CHAPTER III.

The battle of Lundy’s Lane lasted five hours, and Drummond believed the American force to be five thousand men. In truth, at no moment were two thousand American rank-and-file on the field.[93] “The loss sustained by the enemy in this severe action,” reported Drummond,[94] “cannot be estimated at less than fifteen hundred men, including several hundred prisoners left in our hands.” Drummond’s estimate of American losses, as of American numbers, was double the reality. Brown reported a total loss, certainly severe enough, of eight hundred and fifty-three men,—one hundred and seventy-one killed, five hundred and seventy-two wounded, one hundred and ten missing. Drummond reported a total loss of eight hundred and seventy-eight men,—eighty-four killed, five hundred and fifty-nine wounded, one hundred and ninety-three missing, and forty-two prisoners. On both sides the battle was murderous. Brown and Scott were both badly wounded, the latter so severely that he could not resume his command during the war. Drummond and Riall were also wounded. On both sides, but especially on the American, the loss in officers was very great.

The effect of the British artillery on Scott’s brigade, while daylight lasted, had been excessive, while at that period of the battle the British could have suffered comparatively little. Among Scott’s battalions the severest loss was that of Brady’s Twenty-second regiment, from Pennsylvania,—at the opening of the campaign two hundred and twenty-eight strong, officers and men. After Lundy’s Lane the Twenty-second reported thirty-six killed, ninety wounded, and seventeen missing. The Ninth, Leavenworth’s Massachusetts regiment, which was returned as numbering three hundred and forty-eight officers and men June 31, reported sixteen killed, ninety wounded, and fifteen missing at Lundy’s Lane. The Eleventh, McNeil’s Vermont battalion, which numbered three hundred and four officers and men June 30, returned twenty-eight killed, one hundred and two wounded, and three missing. The Twenty-fifth, Jesup’s Connecticut corps, numbering three hundred and seventy officers and men at the outset, reported twenty-eight killed, sixty-six wounded, and fifteen missing. These four regiments, composing Scott’s brigade, numbered thirteen hundred and eighty-eight officers and men June 30, and lost in killed, wounded, and missing at Lundy’s Lane five hundred and six men, after losing two hundred and fifty-seven at Chippawa.

Ripley’s brigade suffered less; but although, after the British guns were captured, the Americans were exposed only to musketry fire, the brigades of Ripley and Porter reported a loss of two hundred and fifty-eight men, killed, wounded, and missing. The three artillery companies suffered a loss of forty-five men, including Captain Ritchie. The total loss of eight hundred and fifty-three men was as nearly as possible one third of the entire army, including the unengaged pickets and other details.

When Ripley, following the artillery, arrived in camp toward one o’clock in the morning,[95] Brown sent for him, and gave him an order to return at day-break to the battle-field with all the force he could collect, “and there to meet and beat the enemy if he again appeared.”[96] The order was impossible to execute. The whole force capable of fighting another battle did not exceed fifteen or sixteen hundred effectives, almost without officers, and exhausted by the night battle.[97] The order was given at one o’clock in the morning; the army must employ the remainder of the night to reorganize its battalions and replace its officers, and was expected to march at four o’clock to regain a battle-field which Brown had felt himself unable to maintain at midnight, although he then occupied it, and held all the enemy’s artillery. The order was futile. Major Leavenworth of the Ninth regiment, who though wounded commanded the first brigade after the disability of Scott, Brady, Jesup, and McNeil, thought it “the most consummate folly to attempt to regain possession of the field of battle,” and declared that every officer he met thought like himself.[98]

Yet Ripley at dawn began to collect the troops, and after the inevitable delay caused by the disorganization, marched at nine o’clock, with about fifteen hundred men, to reconnoitre the enemy. At about the same time Drummond advanced a mile, and took position in order of battle near the Falls, his artillery in the road, supported by a column of infantry. A month earlier Drummond, like Riall, would have attacked, and with a force greater by one half could hardly have failed to destroy Ripley’s shattered regiments; but Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane had already produced an effect on the British army. Drummond believed that the Americans numbered five thousand, and his own force in the ranks was about twenty-two hundred men. He allowed Ripley to retire unmolested, and remained at the Falls the whole day.

Ripley returned to camp at noon and made his report to Brown. The question requiring immediate decision was whether to maintain or abandon the line of the Chippawa River. Much could be said on both sides, and only officers on the spot could decide with certainty how the enemy could be placed under most disadvantage, and how the army could be saved from needless dangers. Ripley, cautious by nature, recommended a retreat to Fort Erie. With the assent, as he supposed, of Brown and Porter,[99] Ripley immediately broke up the camp at Chippawa, and began the march to Fort Erie, sixteen miles in the rear. Although complaint was made of the retreat as confused, hasty, and unnecessary, it was conducted with no more loss or confusion than usual in such movements,[100] and its military propriety was to be judged by its effects on the campaign.

The same evening, July 26, the army arrived at Fort Erie and camped. Brown was taken from Chippawa across the river to recover from his wound. Scott was also removed to safe quarters. Ripley was left with the remains of the army camped on a plain, outside the unfinished bastions of Fort Erie, where the destruction of his entire force was inevitable in case of a reverse. Ripley favored a withdrawal of the army to the American side; but Brown, from his sick bed at Buffalo, rejected the idea of a retreat, and fortunately Drummond’s reinforcements arrived slowly. The worst result of the difference in opinion was to make Brown harsh toward Ripley, who—although his record was singular in showing only patient, excellent, and uniformly successful service—leaned toward caution, while Brown and Scott thought chiefly of fighting. The combination produced admirable results; but either officer alone might have failed.

PLAN
of the Attack and Defence
of Fort Erie,
By Jn. Le Breton, Lt. Dy. Ag. Q. M. Gen’l.

Ms. British Archives.

STRUTHERS & CO., ENGR’S, N.Y.

Distrusting Ripley, and angry at losing the British cannon at Lundy’s Lane as well as at the retreat from Chippawa, Brown wrote, August 7, to the Secretary of War a report containing an improper implication, which he afterward withdrew, that Ripley was wanting either in courage or capacity.[101] He also summoned Brigadier-General Gaines from Sackett’s Harbor to command the army.[102] Gaines arrived, and as senior brigadier assumed command at Fort Erie, August 4, while Ripley resumed command of his brigade. During the week that elapsed before Gaines’s arrival, the army, under Ripley’s orders, worked energetically to intrench itself in lines behind Fort Erie; and after Gaines took command the same work was continued without interruption or change of plan, under the direction of Major McRee, Major Wood, and Lieutenant Douglass of the Engineers.

The result was chiefly decided by Drummond’s errors. Had he followed Ripley closely, and had he attacked instantly on overtaking the retreating army at Fort Erie or elsewhere, he would have had the chances in his favor. Had he crossed the river and moved against Buffalo, he would have obliged Brown to order the instant evacuation of Fort Erie, and would have recovered all the British positions without the loss of a man. Drummond took neither course. He waited two days at Chippawa before he moved up the river within two miles of Fort Erie. About August 1 his reinforcements arrived,—DeWatteville’s regiment from Kingston, and the Forty-first from Fort George,—replacing his losses, and giving him three thousand one hundred and fifty rank-and-file;[103] but he seemed still undecided what course to adopt. The battles of Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane had given the British army respect for American troops, and Drummond hesitated to assault the unfinished works at Fort Erie, although he was fully one half stronger in men than Gaines and Ripley, who had barely two thousand rank-and-file after obtaining such reinforcements as were at hand.

Strength of Scott’s Brigade, Fort Erie, July 31, 1814.

Drummond began operations by ordering a detachment of six hundred men to cross the river and destroy the magazines at Black Rock and Buffalo.[104] During the night of August 3 Colonel Tucker of the Forty-first, with four hundred and sixty rank-and-file of his own and other regiments,[105] landed two or three miles below Black Rock, and advanced against it. They were met at the crossing of a creek by two hundred and forty men of Morgan’s Rifles, then garrisoning Black Rock, with some volunteers. The effect of the rifles was so deadly that the British troops refused to face them, and Tucker returned after losing twenty-five men. This repulse, as creditable in its way to the American army as the battles at Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane, caused much annoyance to Drummond, who issued an order, August 5, expressing “the indignation excited by discovering that the failure of an expedition, the success of which... would have compelled the enemy’s forces to surrender or... encounter certain defeat, was attributable to the misbehavior of the troops employed.”[106] The only success achieved by British detachments was the cutting out of two American schooners which covered the approach to Fort Erie, near the shore.

Drummond having decided not to assault the lines of Fort Erie until he had made an impression on the works, next sent for guns of heavy calibre.[107] Ten days were passed in opening trenches and constructing batteries. Gaines and Ripley employed the time in completing their defences. Of these, the so-called Fort Erie was the smallest part, and made only the salient angle toward Drummond’s approaches. As the British had constructed the fort, it was a small, unfinished work, about one hundred and fifty yards from the Lake-shore, open in the rear, and mounting three guns. The American engineers completed its rear bastions, and constructed an earthwork seven feet high, with a ditch, to the shore, where a small stone-work completed the defence on that side, and brought the lines to the water’s edge. The stone-work was called the Douglass battery, after the lieutenant of engineers who built it. Fort Erie, Battery Douglass, and their connecting breastwork secured the camp on the right. A similar breastwork, nearly at right angles with the first, was extended three hundred and fifty yards westward parallel with the Lake-shore, then turning slightly ran three hundred and fifty yards farther till it neared the Lake-shore, where it was finished on Snake Hill by a projecting battery called Towson’s. Traverses were constructed, and a strongly intrenched camp, about seven hundred yards by two hundred and fifty, was thus formed, open on its rear to the Lake.

Hindman had general charge of the artillery. Battery Douglass mounted one gun; another was mounted on the neighboring line; Fort Erie contained six,[108] under Captain Williams; Biddle’s and Fanning’s (Ritchie’s) four guns were placed on the long line in the front; and Towson had six field-pieces at the extreme left.[109] Scott’s brigade, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Aspinwall, was posted on the right; Porter’s volunteers and the First Rifles occupied the centre; and Ripley with the Twenty-first and Twenty-third regiments defended the left.

Drummond opened with six guns, August 13, and prepared for assault the following day. His arrangements were somewhat complicated. He divided the attacking force into three columns, retaining another division in reserve. The strongest column, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Fischer of DeWatteville’s regiment, was composed of portions of four regular regiments, and numbered about thirteen hundred men; these were to assault Towson and Ripley on Snake Hill. The centre column, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond of the One-Hundred-and-fourth, numbered only one hundred and ninety rank-and-file, including a party of seamen and marines;[110] these were to attack Fort Erie. The third column, under Colonel Scott of the One-Hundred-and-third regiment, numbered six hundred and fifty rank-and-file; these were to assault the breastworks between Fort Erie and Battery Douglass.[111] According to these numbers, Drummond meant to assault with twenty-one hundred and forty rank-and-file, or about twenty-four hundred men all told. His reserve numbered one thousand men.[112] Some further number must have been detailed in camp duty.

Drummond’s instructions, dated August 14, to Colonel Fischer were minute.[113] Fischer’s column was to march immediately, in order to pass through the woods before dark, and halt for the night opposite the point of attack, with every precaution against discovery:—

“You are to advance to the attack precisely at two o’clock. You are to enter the enemy’s position betwixt Snake Hill and the Lake, which is represented to be sufficiently open; but this is not to prevent your making your arrangements for assaulting any other part of the position by means of the short ladders and hay-bags with which you will be furnished. In order to insure success, the Lieutenant-General most strongly recommends that the flints be taken out of the firelocks, with the exception of a reserve of select and steady men who may be permitted to retain their flints, if you think it necessary or advisable, not exceeding one third of your force. This reserve, with the detachment of artillery, should take post on Snake Hill.”

A demonstration was to be made a few minutes before two o’clock against the American pickets opposite the centre of the line.

Drummond’s general orders concluded by encouraging his men to consider their task easy:[114]—

“The Lieutenant-General most strongly recommends a free use of the bayonet. The enemy’s force does not exceed fifteen hundred fit for duty, and those are represented as much dispirited.”

The British general under-estimated Gaines’s force, which probably contained at least two thousand rank-and-file fit for duty August 14, who though possibly overworked and inclined to grumble, were ready to fight. Neither Gaines nor Ripley, nor any of the excellent officers of engineers and artillery who defended the lines of Fort Erie, were likely to allow themselves to be surprised or even approached by a force no greater than their own without ample resistance. They kept strong pickets far in advance of their lines, and were alive to every sign of attack. Soon after midnight of August 14 the fire of the British siege-guns slackened and ceased. At the same moment Gaines left his quarters and Ripley ordered his brigade to turn out. Both officers looked for an assault, and were not mistaken. At two o’clock the pickets fired and fell back, and at half-past two o’clock Colonel Fischer’s advancing column moved against Snake Hill.

There at the breastworks were Towson’s guns and the Twenty-first regiment commanded by Major Wood of the Engineers, only two hundred and fifty strong, but as steady as at Lundy’s Lane.[115] A part of Fischer’s brigade marched gallantly up to the abattis, bayonets charged and guns without flints, and approached within ten feet of the breastwork, but failed to reach it. The other column, DeWatteville’s regiment at its head, “marching too near the Lake,” according to Colonel Fischer’s report,[116] “found themselves entangled between the rocks and the water, and by the retreat of the flank companies were thrown in such confusion as to render it impossible to give them any kind of formation during the darkness of the night, at which time they were exposed to a most galling fire of the enemy’s battery.” A part of De Watteville’s regiment waded through the water round the American line, and came into the camp on the flank, but found there two companies posted to meet such an attempt, and were all captured, so that Colonel Fischer, writing his report the next day, seemed ignorant what had become of them.

The attack and repulse of Colonel Fischer on the extreme American left were soon over, and the story was easy to understand; but the attack on Fort Erie and the extreme right was neither quickly ended nor easily understood. There a column of more than seven hundred men, all told, under Colonel Scott of the One-Hundred-and-third, was to attack the Douglass battery. Another column, numbering somewhat more than two hundred men, all told, under Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond of the One-Hundred-and-fourth, was to assault Fort Erie. The American line between Battery Douglass and Fort Erie was held by the Ninth regiment and the volunteers, and was covered by the battery. Fort Erie was defended by about one hundred and eighteen men of the Nineteenth regiment under Major Trimble, and about sixty artillerists[117] under Captain Williams.

The most intelligible account of the battle at the eastern end of the lines was given neither in Gaines’s nor Drummond’s reports, but in some charges afterward brought against Gaines by Major Trimble, who was angry at the language of Gaines’s report. Trimble’s charges were judged to be frivolous, but his story of the battle was more precise than any other.

According to Major Trimble, Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond’s column was directed against the north curtain of the fort, and was repulsed, but continued the assault. Colonel Scott’s column at the same time advanced within about sixty yards of the Douglass battery, but deterred by the fire of the guns served under the direction of Major McRee and Lieutenant Douglass of the Engineers, and by the loss of its commanding officer Colonel Scott, who fell before the American line, the column moved quickly to the right, gained the ditch of the northeast bastion of Fort Erie, and under cover of the smoke and darkness entered the bastion. There they were joined by Drummond’s men. They surprised the artillerists, and in the scuffle Captain Williams and his lieutenants—McDonough, Fontaine, and Watmough—were killed or disabled.

Without support the British columns could do no more, and Lieutenant-General Drummond did not come to their support. None of the reports mentioned the time at which the bastion was captured; but the small British force, which could not have exceeded six or seven hundred men, remained for more than two hours in or about the bastion, exposed to the American fire, to which they could not reply with effect, and waiting for Drummond and the reserve, which the Americans also expected and trained their guns to enfilade. The British in the bastion repeatedly attempted to advance from the bastion to gain possession of the Fort, and twice tried to force the door of the stone mess-house from which the men of the Nineteenth regiment kept up a destructive fire. They repulsed the attacks made by reinforcements ordered by Gaines into the Fort to recover the bastion; yet their destruction was inevitable as soon as the dawn should arrive, for they could neither advance nor escape, nor remain where they were, under the guns of the garrison.

After maintaining themselves till five o’clock in this difficult position, the British soldiers and sailors in the bastion were panic-struck by the explosion of an ammunition-chest under the platform. According to General Drummond’s official report, “Some ammunition, which had been placed under the platform, caught fire from the firing of guns in the rear, and a most tremendous explosion followed, by which almost all the troops which had entered the place were dreadfully mangled. Panic was instantly communicated to the troops, who could not be persuaded that the explosion was accidental; and the enemy at the same time pressing forward and commencing a heavy fire of musketry, the Fort was abandoned, and our troops retreated toward the battery.”

The explosion merely hastened the rout. Probably the attacking columns would have fared still worse, had they remained. Even their panic-stricken flight saved only a remnant. Of Drummond’s column, said to number one hundred and ninety rank-and-file, one hundred and eighty-eight officers and men were reported as missing, wounded, or killed. Of Scott’s column, said to number six hundred and fifty rank-and-file,—the Royal Scots and the One-Hundred-and-third regiments,—four hundred and ninety-six officers and men were returned as killed, wounded, or missing. Of the whole rank-and-file engaged under Fischer, Scott, and Drummond, numbering two thousand one hundred and fifty men, if the British report was correct, seven hundred and eighty were officially reported among the casualties. The loss in officers was equally severe. Colonel Scott was killed before the lines. Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond was killed in the bastion. One major, ten captains, and fifteen lieutenants were killed, wounded, or missing. The total British loss was nine hundred and five among some twenty-four hundred engaged. The total American loss was eighty-four men.[118]

General Drummond was excessively mortified by his failure, in truth the severest blow that British arms could suffer at that moment. For the fourth time in six weeks a large body of British troops met a bloody and unparalleled check, if not rout, from an inferior force. In a private letter to Prevost, dated August 16, Drummond attributed the disaster to the misconduct of DeWatteville’s regiment, a foreign corps, which was struck by panic:[119]—

“It appears that part of the forlorn hope and about half of Watteville’s Light Company, by wading through the water, though the footing was excessively rough and rocky along the Lake-shore, turned the left flank of an abattis which extended from the enemy’s battery on Snake Hill, the left of their position, to the Lake, and part penetrated through the abattis itself, and thereby gained the rear of the enemy’s works. The fire of the enemy at this time being extremely heavy both from artillery and musketry, it would seem as if a simultaneous shock of panic pervaded the greater part of those not in immediate advance; and the forlorn hope, not finding itself sufficiently supported, was reluctantly under the necessity of relinquishing the advantages they had gained, and of retiring again through the water under a most galling fire. They lost many men, and DeWatteville’s Light Company nearly half their number. The Light Company of the Eighty-ninth, notwithstanding they were almost overwhelmed by the grenadiers of DeWatteville in the precipitancy of their retreat, was the only body that preserved its order and remained firm upon its ground. By this act of steadiness they fortunately lost scarcely a man. The main body of DeWatteville’s regiment retreated in such confusion that they carried the King’s regiment before them like a torrent. Thus by the misconduct of this foreign corps has the opportunity been totally lost.”

The mortification of Drummond was acute in having to charge both his attacking columns with being panic-stricken: “The agony of mind I suffer from the present disgraceful and unfortunate conduct of the troops committed to my superintendence, wounds me to the soul!” Yet he offered no evidence to show that his troops fled before they were beaten, nor did he explain why he had thought it useless to order the reserve to their support after they had captured the bastion. In reality the battle of Fort Erie was more creditable to the British than the battles of Chippawa or Lundy’s Lane, and the Americans could not admit that in either of the three the conduct of Drummond’s troops was “disgraceful.”

The defeat so much weakened Drummond that he could no longer keep the field without support, and immediately sent for two more regiments,—the Sixth and the Eighty-second from Burlington and York,—numbering about one thousand and forty rank-and-file, and making good his losses.[120]

At that time Chauncey was in control of Lake Ontario. The anxieties and delays in fitting out his new ship had ended in a fever, under which he was still suffering when he received General Brown’s challenge of July 13 to meet him opposite Fort George. Chauncey did not immediately reply except by message through General Gaines. July 31, everything being at last ready, he was carried on board his ship, and the next day he sailed, arriving August 5 off Fort George. Brown’s army was then besieged in Fort Erie, and could not approach the fleet. This situation gave to Chauncey the opportunity of writing a letter to Brown, repaying the harshness that Brown had shown to him.

“Was it friendly or just or honorable,” asked Chauncey,[121] “not only to furnish an opening for the public, but thus to assist them to infer that I had pledged myself to meet you on a particular day at the head of the Lake, for the purpose of co-operation, and in case of disaster to your army, thus to turn their resentment from you, who are alone responsible, upon me, who could not by any possibility have prevented, or retarded even, your discomfiture? You well know, sir, that the fleet could not have rendered you the least service during your late incursion upon Upper Canada. You have not been able to approach Lake Ontario on any point nearer than Queenston.”

Brown’s quarrel with Chauncey made much noise in its day, and, like the less defensible quarrel with Ripley, proved that Brown was unnecessarily aggressive; but in the situation of the United States, aggressiveness was the most valuable quality in the service. That Brown might have become a great general was possible, had his experience been larger; but whatever was his merit as a general, his qualities as a fighter were more remarkable than those of any other general officer in the war. Except immediately after receiving his wound at Lundy’s Lane, when his army was exhausted by four hours of extreme effort, he never seemed satiated with fighting. Among all the American major-generals, he alone made raw troops as steady as grenadiers, and caused militia to storm entrenched lines held by British regulars.

Brown might have been well satisfied to let Drummond exhaust his strength in attacking Fort Erie. From a military point of view, Fort Erie was worthless for any other purpose than to draw the enemy to the extreme end of their line, where they could with difficulty obtain supplies, and could take no part in the serious campaigning intended on Lake Champlain. For that object, no more pitched battles were needed. Drummond’s force was wasting away by sickness and exposure.[122]

After the battle of August 15, the British continued to bombard Fort Erie. No great damage was done; but a shell exploded in Gaines’s quarters August 29, injuring him severely and obliging him to relinquish command. Brown was still unfit for service, but was bent upon more fighting, and knew that Ripley preferred to abandon Fort Erie altogether. Accordingly he resumed command at Buffalo, September 2, and set himself to study the situation.

The situation was uncomfortable, but in no way perilous. The lines of Fort Erie were stronger than ever, and beyond danger of capture from any British force that could be brought to assault them, until Drummond should discover some new means of supplying troops with subsistence. The army return of August 31 gave the precise strength of the garrison.

Strength of the Army at Fort Erie, Aug. 31, 1814.

The regular force in Fort Erie numbered two thousand and thirty-three effectives[123] September 4, and though annoyed by the enemy’s fire and worn by hard work, they were in both these respects better situated than the besiegers. Sooner or later the British would be obliged to retreat; and Brown was informed by deserters that Drummond was then contemplating withdrawal.[124] Brown estimated the British force very loosely at three or four thousand;[125] and it was in fact about the smaller number.

Drummond’s situation was told in his reports to Sir George Prevost. September 8 be wrote[126] that he should not fail to seize any favorable opportunity to attack; “but should no such opportunity present itself, I feel it incumbent on me to prepare your Excellency for the possibility of my being compelled by sickness or suffering of the troops, exposed as they will be to the effects of the wet and unhealthy season which is fast approaching, to withdraw them from their present position to one which may afford them the means of cover. Sickness has, I am sorry to say, already made its appearance in several of the corps.” Three days afterward, September 11,[127] Drummond was warned by several signs that his lines were to be attacked by Brown, although “whether the account which is invariably given by deserters of his intention to act offensively ... be correct, I have not yet been able accurately to ascertain.” Drummond’s batteries had been almost silent for several days for want of ammunition, and he could do nothing till the arrival of reinforcements,—the Ninety-seventh regiment,—unaccountably delayed. Rain had begun, and he dreaded its effect on the troops. In his next despatch, dated September 14,[128] he said that the rain had been incessant, and “as the whole of the troops are without tents, and the huts in which they are placed are wholly incapable of affording shelter against such severe weather, their situation is most distressing.” The roads were impassable; the nearest depot of supplies was Fort George, and Drummond had not cattle enough to move a third of his heavy ordnance if a sudden movement should be necessary. The enemy seemed about to cross the river in his rear, and the Ninety-seventh regiment had not yet arrived:—

“In the mean time I have strong grounds for thinking that the enemy will risk an attack,—an event which though from the necessity of defending my batteries in the first instance with the pickets alone I shall have to meet under every possible disadvantage, yet I am very much disposed to hope may be the most fortunate circumstance which can happen, as it will bring us in contact with the enemy at a far cheaper rate than if we were to be the assailants.”

While Drummond struggled between the necessity of retreat and the difficulty of retreating, Brown was bent on attacking his lines. The plan was open to grave objections, and a council of war, September 9, discouraged the idea. Brown was much disappointed and irritated at the result of the council, especially with Ripley; but while giving the impression that he acquiesced, he brought over all the volunteers he could obtain.[129] The number was never precisely given, but according to the official reports of General Peter B. Porter who commanded them, and of General Brown himself, they did not exceed one thousand.[130] With these, and an equal number of regular troops, Brown undertook to assault Drummond’s entrenchments.

The nearest British line was about six hundred yards from old Fort Erie. From the first British battery on the Lake-shore, to Battery No. 3 in the woods, the line extended nearly half a mile, covered by abattis, but defended only by the brigade of troops on actual duty. If carried, the first line could not be held without capturing the second line, about fifty yards distant, and a third line, farther in the rear; while the main British force was encamped, for reasons of health and comfort, a mile behind, and was supposed to number at least three thousand six hundred men, or quite sufficient to recover their works. Brown professed no intention of fighting the British army. He proposed only “to storm the batteries, destroy the cannon, and roughly handle the brigade upon duty, before those in reserve could be brought into action.”[131]

Although Drummond expected and wished to be attacked, he kept no proper pickets or scouts in the woods, and all day of September 16 American fatigue parties were at work opening a path through the forest the distance of a mile, from Snake Hill on the extreme left to the extremity of the British line in the woods. So little precaution had Drummond’s engineers taken that they left the dense forest standing within pistol-shot of the flank and rear of their Battery No. 3 on their extreme right, and the American parties opened a path within one hundred and fifty yards of the flank of the British line without being discovered.

At noon, September 17, General Porter led a column of sixteen hundred men—of whom one thousand were militia volunteers, and a part were the Twenty-third regiment—along the path through the woods, in three divisions, commanded by Colonel Gibson of the Fourth Rifles, Colonel E. D. Wood of the Engineers, and Brigadier-General Davis of the New York militia. At three o’clock, under cover of heavy rain, the whole force fell suddenly on the blockhouse which covered the flank and rear of the British battery No. 3, and succeeded in capturing the blockhouse and mastering the battery held by DeWatteville’s regiment. While detachments spiked the guns and blew up the magazine, the main column advanced on Battery No. 2, while at the same time General Miller, promoted to the command of Scott’s old brigade, moved with “the remains of the Ninth and Eleventh Infantry and a detachment of the Nineteenth” from a ravine in front of Battery No. 3 to pierce the centre of the British line between Battery No. 3 and Battery No. 2.[132]

Within half an hour after the first gun was fired, Porter and Miller had effected their junction within the British lines, had captured Battery No. 2, and moved on Battery No. 1, by the Lake-shore. There the success ended. Battery No. 1 could not be carried. By that time the Royal Scots, the Eighty-ninth, the Sixth, and the Eighty-second British regiments had arrived,—probably about one thousand men.[133] A sharp engagement followed before Brown, after ordering his reserve under Ripley to the assistance of Porter and Miller, could disengage his troops. The three commanders of Porter’s divisions—Gibson, Wood, and Davis—were killed or mortally wounded,—Gibson at the second battery, Davis and Wood in assaulting the shore battery. Ripley was desperately wounded at the same time. General Porter, Lieutenant-Colonel Aspinwall of the Ninth, and Major Trimble of the Nineteenth, as well as a number of other officers, were severely wounded. That the last action was sharp was proved by the losses suffered by the British reinforcements. According to the British official return, the four regiments which came last into the field—the Royal Scots, Sixth, Eighty-second, and Eighty-ninth—lost thirty-six killed, one hundred and nine wounded, and fifty-four missing,—a total of two hundred men, in a short action of half an hour at the utmost, without artillery.

The American forces were recalled by Brown and Miller as soon as their progress was stopped, and they retired without serious pursuit beyond the British lines. Their losses were very severe, numbering five hundred and eleven killed, wounded, and missing, or about one fourth of their number. Among them were several of the best officers in the United States service, including Ripley, Wood, and Gibson. Drummond’s loss was still more severe, numbering six hundred and nine,[134] probably almost one man in three of the number engaged. The British killed numbered one hundred and fifteen. The Americans reported seventy-nine killed,—sixty regulars, and nineteen militia.

The next day Drummond issued a general order claiming a victory over an American force of “not less than five thousand men, including militia;” but his situation, untenable before the sortie, became impossible after it. Three out of six battering cannon were disabled;[135] he had lost six hundred men in battle, and his losses by sickness were becoming enormous. “My effective numbers are reduced to considerably less than two thousand firelocks,” he reported, September 21. Immediately after the sortie, although reinforced by the Ninety-seventh regiment, he made his arrangements to retreat.

“Within the last few days,” he wrote to Prevost, September 21,[136] “the sickness of the troops has increased to such an alarming degree, and their situation has really become one of such extreme wretchedness from the torrents of rain which have continued to fall for the last thirteen days, and from the circumstance of the Division being entirely destitute of camp-equipage, that I feel it my duty no longer to persevere in a vain attempt to maintain the blockade of so vastly superior and increasing a force of the enemy under such circumstances. I have therefore given orders for the troops to fall back toward the Chippawa, and shall commence my movement at eight o’clock this evening.”

CHAPTER IV.

Weak as was the army at Niagara, it was relatively stronger than the defence at any other threatened point. Sackett’s Harbor contained only seven hundred effectives.[137] On Lake Champlain, Major-General Izard tried to cover Plattsburg and Burlington with about five thousand regular troops.[138] Already Armstrong knew that large British reinforcements from Wellington’s army were on their way to Canada;[139] and within a few weeks after the battle of Lundy’s Lane eleven thousand of the best troops England ever put in the field were camped on or near the Sorel River, about to march against Izard’s five thousand raw recruits.

They could march nowhere else. Not only was the line of Lake Champlain the natural and necessary path of an invading army, but the impossibility of supplying any large number of troops in Upper Canada made Lake Champlain the only region in which a large British force could exist. Sir George Prevost had reached the limit of his powers in defending Upper Canada. His commissary-general, W. H. Robinson, wrote to him, August 27, expressing “the greatest alarm” on account of deficient supplies at Burlington Heights and Niagara, where instead of nine thousand rations daily as he expected, he was required to furnish fourteen thousand, half of them to Indians.[140] Much as Prevost wanted to attack Sackett’s Harbor, and weak as he knew that post to be, he could not attempt it, although he had thirteen or fourteen thousand rank-and-file idle at Montreal. In October he went to Kingston expressly to arrange such an attack, and found it impossible.

“An investigation of the state of the stores at this post,” he wrote to Lord Bathurst October 18,[141] “proved that the articles for the armament and equipment for a ship of the class of the ‘St. Lawrence,’ carrying upward of one hundred guns, had absorbed almost the whole of the summer transport-service from Montreal, leaving the materials for an undertaking of the magnitude of the destruction of Sackett’s Harbor still at the extremity of the line of communication; and now, by giving precedence to that supply of provisions and stores without which an army is no longer to be maintained in Upper Canada, its removal is inevitably postponed until the winter roads are established.”

Not only were military operations on a large scale impossible in Upper Canada, but for the opposite reason occupation of Lake Champlain by a British force was necessary. Northern New York and Vermont furnished two thirds of the fresh beef consumed by the British armies. General Izard reported to Armstrong, July 31,[142]—

“From the St. Lawrence to the ocean, an open disregard prevails for the laws prohibiting intercourse with the enemy. The road to St. Regis is covered with droves of cattle, and the river with rafts, destined for the enemy. The revenue officers see these things, but acknowledge their inability to put a stop to such outrageous proceedings. On the eastern side of Lake Champlain the high roads are found insufficient for the supplies of cattle which are pouring into Canada. Like herds of buffaloes they press through the forest, making paths for themselves.... Nothing but a cordon of troops from the French Mills to Lake Memphramagog could effectually check the evil. Were it not for these supplies, the British forces in Canada would soon be suffering from famine, or their government be subjected to enormous expense for their maintenance.”

After Chauncey, August 1, regained possession of Lake Ontario, any British campaign against Sackett’s Harbor or Detroit became doubly impossible, and the occupation of Lake Champlain became doubly necessary. Prevost wrote to Bathurst, August 27,[143]—

“In fact, my Lord, two thirds of the army in Canada are at this moment eating beef provided by American contractors, drawn principally from the States of Vermont and New York. This circumstance, as well as that of the introduction of large sums in specie into this province, being notorious in the United States, it is to be expected that Congress will take steps to deprive us of those resources; and under that apprehension large droves are daily crossing the lines coming into Lower Canada.”

The fear that Izard might at any moment take efficient measures to cut off the British supplies gave double force to the reasons for occupying Lake Champlain, and forcing the military frontier back beyond Plattsburg and Burlington.

The political reasons were not less strong or less notorious than the military. England made no secret of her intention to rectify the Canadian frontier by lopping away such territory as she could conquer. July 5, the day of the battle of Chippawa, Lieutenant-Colonel Pilkington sailed from Halifax, and under the naval protection of Sir Thomas Hardy in the “Ramillies,” landed at Eastport, July 11, with the One-Hundred-and-second regiment, some engineers and artillery,—a detachment of six hundred men,—and took possession of Moose Island.[144] Fort Sullivan, with six officers and eighty men, capitulated, and Great Britain took permanent possession of the place.

Moose Island was disputed territory, and its occupation was not necessarily conquest; but the next step showed wider views. August 26, Lieutenant-General Sir J. C. Sherbrooke, the British governor of Nova Scotia, set sail from Halifax with a powerful fleet, carrying near two thousand troops, and arrived September 1 at the Penobscot.[145] At his approach, the American garrison of the small battery at Castine blew up their fort and dispersed. In all Massachusetts, only about six hundred regular troops were to be found, and beyond the Penobscot, in September, 1814, hardly a full company could have been collected. The able-bodied, voting, male population of the counties of Kennebeck and Hancock, on either side of the Penobscot River, capable of bearing arms, was at that time about twelve thousand, on an estimate of one in five of the total population; but they offered no resistance to the British troops.

One misfortune led to another. A few days before Sherbrooke’s arrival at Castine the United States ship “Adams,” a heavy corvette carrying twenty-eight guns, having escaped from Chesapeake Bay and cruised some months at sea struck on a reef on the Isle of Haut, and was brought into the Penobscot in a sinking condition. Captain Morris, who commanded her, took the ship up the river about twenty-five miles, as far as Hampden near Bangor, and removed her guns in order to repair her. Sherbrooke, on occupying Castine, sent a detachment of some six hundred men in boats up the river to destroy the ship, while he occupied Belfast with another regiment.[146] Captain Morris hastily put his guns in battery, and prepared to defend the ship with his crew, numbering probably more than two hundred men, relying on the militia to cover his flanks. On the morning of September 3, in a thick fog, the enemy’s boats approached and landed their infantry, which attacked and routed the militia, and obliged Captain Morris to set fire to the “Adams,” abandon his guns, and disperse his men.[147] The British force then marched to Bangor, which they occupied without opposition. Their entire loss was one man killed and eight wounded.[148] At Bangor they remained nearly a week, destroying vessels and cargoes; but Sir John Sherbrooke had no orders to occupy the country west of the Penobscot, and his troops returned September 9 to Castine.

At Castine the British remained, while another detachment occupied Machias. All the province of Maine east of the Penobscot was then in Sherbrooke’s hands. The people formally submitted. One hundred miles of Massachusetts sea-coast passed quietly under the dominion of the King of England. The male citizens were required to take, and took, the oath of allegiance to King George,[149] and showed no unwillingness to remain permanently British subjects. After September 1 the United States government had every reason to expect that Great Britain would require, as one condition of peace, a cession of the eastern and northern portions of Maine.

For this purpose the British needed also to occupy Lake Champlain, in order to make their conquests respectable. The British general might move on Plattsburg or on Burlington; but in order to maintain his position he must gain naval possession of the Lake. In such a case the difficulties of the American government would be vastly increased, and the British position would be impregnable. Armstrong knew these circumstances almost as well as they were known to Sir George Prevost.

In May the British flotilla entered Lake Champlain from the Sorel River, and cruised, May 9, as far southward as Otter Creek, terrifying Vermont for the safety of the American flotilla under Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough at Vergennes. Irritated and alarmed by this demonstration, Armstrong ordered Izard to seize and fortify Rouse’s Point, or the mouth of Lacolle River, or Ash Island, and so close the entrance to the Lake.[150] Apparently Armstrong gave the order in ignorance that Lacolle River and Ash Island were strongly fortified British positions,[151] and that a battery established at Rouse’s Point, in the relative situation of forces, must have fallen into British hands. On this point the opinion of Izard was more valuable than that of Armstrong; and Izard, after much study and inquiry, decided to erect his fortifications at Plattsburg. He preferred the task of taking a position which he could certainly hold, although it would not prevent the enemy from passing if they chose to leave it behind them. At Plattsburg, therefore, he collected his troops, amounting to five or six thousand men, and constructed strong forts, while Macdonough’s fleet took position in the bay.

While thus occupied, Izard cast anxious glances westward, doubting whether, in case of a reverse at Niagara or Sackett’s Harbor, he ought not to move on the St. Lawrence and threaten the British communications between Montreal and Kingston.[152] The same idea occurred to Armstrong, who in a letter dated July 27 recommended Izard to carry it out.[153] The letter reached Izard August 10, when he had advanced with his army to Chazy, and had learned enough of the concentration of British troops in his front to be assured that they meant to direct their serious attack against Lake Champlain. He wrote Armstrong a letter, August 11, which failed only in saying too little, rather than too much, of the dangers risked in obeying Armstrong’s order:[154]—

“I will make the movement you direct, if possible; but I shall do it with the apprehension of risking the force under my command, and with the certainty that everything in this vicinity but the lately erected works at Plattsburg and Cumberland Head will in less than three days after my departure be in the possession of the enemy. He is in force superior to mine in my front; he daily threatens an attack on my position at Champlain; we are in hourly expectation of a serious conflict. That he has not attacked us before this time is attributable to caution on his part, from exaggerated reports of our numbers, and from his expectation of reinforcements.... It has always been my conviction that the numerical force of the enemy has been under-rated. I believe this to be the strong point of our frontier for either attack or defence, and I know that a British force has been kept in check in Lower Canada for many weeks past, greatly superior to that which I could oppose to it.”

Izard was right. Every week new British forces poured into Quebec and were forwarded to Montreal. The arrival of the first division at Quebec was announced in the American newspapers early in August. Within a few weeks three brigades arrived and were sent to the front. When Izard wrote, he was probably faced by ten thousand veteran British troops within twenty or thirty miles of his position, and more were known to be on their way. At such a moment the danger of attempting a diversion was great; but Armstrong refused to believe it. Irritated by Izard’s remonstrance, the secretary not only persisted in his own opinion, but, abandoning the idea of a movement against the British communications along the St. Lawrence, ordered Izard to march his army to Sackett’s Harbor, and from there to operate either directly in force against Kingston,[155] or to go on to Niagara and assist Brown, then hard pressed at Fort Erie. “It is very distinctly my opinion,” wrote the secretary August 12,[156] “that it has become good policy on our part to carry the war as far to the westward as possible, particularly while we have an ascendency on the Lakes.”

Izard obeyed. His troops, numbering four thousand men, began their march August 29 for Sackett’s Harbor, and for several weeks at the crisis of the campaign ceased to exist for military purposes. Within the fortifications at Plattsburg Izard left a miscellaneous body of three thousand, three hundred men,[157] without an organized battalion except four companies of the Sixth regiment. Brigadier-General Alexander Macomb, who as senior officer was left in command, reported his force as not exceeding fifteen hundred effectives.[158]

Armstrong’s policy of meeting the enemy’s main attack by annihilating the main defence never received explanation or excuse. At times Armstrong seemed to suggest that he meant to rely on the navy,[159]—and indeed nothing else, except Izard’s forts, was left to rely upon; but in truth he rather invited the invasion of a British army into New York to “renew the scene of Saratoga.”[160] As Izard predicted, the enemy crossed the frontier at once after his departure, occupying Chazy September 3, and approaching, September 5, within eight miles of Plattsburg.

Great Britain had never sent to America so formidable an armament. Neither Wolfe nor Amherst, neither Burgoyne nor Cornwallis, had led so large or so fine an army as was under the command of Sir George Prevost. According to his proposed arrangement, the light brigade, under Major-General Robinson, contained four battalions of the Twenty-seventh, Thirty-ninth, Seventy-sixth, and Eighty-eighth foot, with artillery, and numbered two thousand eight hundred and eighty-four rank-and-file. The second brigade, under Major-General Brisbane, contained battalions of the Eighth, Thirteenth, and Forty-ninth, De Meuron’s regiment and Canadian voltigeurs and chasseurs, numbering four thousand and forty-eight rank-and-file. The third brigade, under Major-General Power, contained battalions of the Third, Fifth, Twenty-seventh, and Fifty-eighth, and numbered three thousand eight hundred and one rank-and-file. The reserve, under Major-General Kempt, contained battalions of the Ninth, Thirty-seventh, Fifty-seventh, and Eighty-first, numbering three thousand five hundred and forty-nine rank-and-file. Finally, fourteen hundred and eighty-eight men of the Sixteenth and Seventieth regiments, under the command of Major-General DeWatteville, were stationed between Coteau du Lac and Gananoque on the St. Lawrence.[161]

Thus the left division of the British army in Canada numbered fifteen thousand seven hundred and seventy effectives, or, including officers, probably eighteen thousand men, without reckoning the Canadian militia, either incorporated or sedentary. Two lieutenant-generals and five major-generals were in command. Amply provided with artillery and horses, every brigade well equipped, they came fresh from a long service in which the troops had learned to regard themselves as invincible. As they were at last organized, four brigades crossed the border, numbering not less than “eleven thousand men with a proportionate and most excellent train of artillery, commanded in chief by Sir George Prevost, and under him by officers of the first distinction in the service.”[162] A reserve of about five thousand men remained behind.

The fleet was almost as formidable as the army. As the force of the flotilla was reported to Prevost, it consisted of a thirty-six-gun ship, the “Confiance;” an eighteen-gun brig, the “Linnet;” two ten-gun sloops and twelve gunboats, carrying sixteen guns,[163]—all commanded by Captain Downie, of the Royal Navy, detached by Sir James Yeo for the purpose.

Such an expedition was regarded with unhesitating confidence, as able to go where it pleased within the region of Lake Champlain. About every other undertaking in America the British entertained doubts, but in regard to this affair they entertained none.[164] Every movement of the British generals showed conviction of their irresistible strength. Had Prevost doubted the result of attacking Plattsburg, he could have advanced by St. Albans on Burlington,[165] which would have obliged Macomb and Macdonough to leave their positions. So little did his army apprehend difficulty, that in advancing to Plattsburg in face of Macomb’s skirmishers they did not once form in line, or pay attention to the troops and militia who obstructed the road. “The British troops did not deign to fire on them except by their flankers and advanced patrols,” reported Macomb.[166] “So undaunted was the enemy that he never deployed in his whole march, always pressing on in column.”

The fleet felt the same certainty. According to the best Canadian authority,[167] “the strongest confidence prevailed in the superiority of the British vessels, their weight of metal, and in the capacity and experience of their officers and crews.” Captain Downie informed Sir George Prevost’s staff-officer that he considered himself with the “Confiance” alone a match for the whole American squadron.[168] Taking the British account of the “Confiance” as correct, she was one hundred and forty-six feet long on the gun-deck, and thirty-six feet broad; she carried a crew of three hundred officers and men;[169] her armament was thirty-seven guns,—twenty-seven long twenty-four-pounders, six thirty-two-pound carronades, and four twenty-four-pound carronades,—throwing in all nine hundred and thirty-six pounds.[170] The American account, which was more trustworthy because the “Confiance” became better known in the American than in the British service, gave her thirty-one long twenty-four-pounders and six carronades.[171]

Macdonough’s best ship was the “Saratoga.” Her dimensions were not recorded. Her regular complement of men was two hundred and ten, but she fought with two hundred and forty; she carried eight twenty-four-pounders, twelve thirty-two and six forty-two-pound carronades,—or twenty-six guns, throwing eight hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Her inferiority to the “Confiance” at long range was immense, and within carronade range it was at least sufficient to satisfy Captain Downie. He believed that a few broadsides would dispose of the “Saratoga,” and that the other American vessels must then surrender.

Assuming Sir George Prevost’s report to have been correct, the two fleets compared as follows:[172]—

Force of British Fleet.

Force of American Fleet.

In this calculation the possible error consists only in one disputed eighteen-pound columbiad on the “Finch,” and three disputed guns—one long and two short—on the British gunboats. In one case the British would have thrown about nineteen hundred pounds of metal,—in the other, about eighteen hundred. A glance at the two tables shows that in one respect Downie held a decisive superiority in his guns. He had no less than sixty long-range pieces, while Macdonough had but forty-five. Downie’s long-range guns threw at least eleven hundred pounds of metal; Macdonough’s threw but seven hundred and sixty. If Downie chose his own distance beyond range of the thirty-two-pound carronades, and fought only his long guns, nothing could save Macdonough except extreme good fortune, for he had but fourteen twenty-four-pound guns against Downie’s thirty-four. Firing by broadsides, Downie could throw from his single ship, the “Confiance,” sixteen twenty-four-pound shot, to which Macdonough could reply only with eight, even if he used all his long guns on the same side.

The Americans had a decided advantage only in their commander. Thomas Macdonough, born in Delaware in 1783, was thirty years old when this responsibility fell upon him. He had been educated, like most of the naval heroes, in the hard service of the Tripolitan war, and had been sent to construct and command the naval force on Lake Champlain in the spring of 1813. Macdonough’s superiority over ordinary commanders consisted in the intelligent forethought with which he provided for the chances of battle. His arrangement showed that he foresaw, and as far as possible overcame in advance, every conceivable attack. He compelled the enemy to fight only as pleased himself.

PLAN
OF THE
BATTLE
OF
PLATTSBURG

Position of vessels 20 M. after anchoring

Macdonough anchored his four large vessels across Plattsburg Bay, where it was a mile and a half wide, and placed his gunboats in their rear to fill the gaps. Cumberland Head on his left and front, and Crab Island on his right obliged the enemy to enter in a line so narrow that Downie would find no room to anchor on his broadside out of carronade range, but must sail into the harbor under the raking fire of the American long guns, and take a position within range of the American carronades.[173] As the battle was to be fought at anchor, both squadrons would as a matter of course be anchored with springs on their cables; but Macdonough took the additional precaution of laying a kedge off each bow of the “Saratoga,” bringing their hawsers in on the two quarters, and letting them hang in bights under water.[174] This arrangement enabled him to wind his ship at any time without fear of having his cables cut by the enemy’s shot, and to use his larboard broadside if his starboard guns should be disabled. In effect, it doubled his fighting capacity.

Sir George Prevost and the army were ready to move before Downie’s fleet could be prepared. Marching directly forward with the utmost confidence, Sir George turned the advanced American position at Dead Creek Bridge and drove away the gunboats that covered it. He reached the Saranac River September 6, and saw beyond it a ridge “crowned with three strong redoubts and other field-works, and blockhouses armed with heavy ordnance, with their flotilla at anchor out of gunshot from the shore.”[175] The description was not exaggerated. Izard was himself a trained engineer, and the works built by him, under the direction of Major Totten of the Engineer Corps, were believed capable of resisting for three weeks a combined attack by land and water, even if the British fleet were victorious.[176] Three good companies of artillery manned the guns. Excellent officers of every arm were in command.

Prevost properly halted, and declined to assault without the co-operation of the fleet. He waited five days impatiently for Downie to appear. Not till seven o’clock on the morning of September 11 did the British flotilla sail round Cumberland Head. At the same time Prevost ordered his troops to cross the Saranac and storm the American works.

Downie intended, without regarding his superiority in long-range guns, to sail in and to lay the “Confiance” alongside of the “Saratoga;” but the wind was light and baffling, and his approach was so slow that he could not long bear the raking fire of the American guns. As he came within carronade range the wind baffling, he was obliged to anchor at two cables’ lengths,[177] or three hundred yards,[178] and begin action. With the same discipline that marked the movements of the troops on shore, Downie came to, anchored, made everything secure, and then poured a full broadside into Macdonough’s ship. The “Saratoga” shivered under the shock of sixteen twenty-four-pound shot and canister charges striking her hull; almost one-fifth of her crew were disabled; but she stood stoutly to her work, and the whole line was soon hotly engaged.

Americans usually had a decided advantage in their better gunnery, but three hundred yards was a long range for thirty-two-pound carronades, which at point-blank carried less than two hundred and fifty yards, and lost accuracy in proportion to elevation.[179] Macdonough was slow to prove superiority. Early in the battle the British suffered a severe, and perhaps in the experience of this war a decisive, loss in their commander, Captain Downie, instantly killed by one of his own guns thrown off its carriage against him by a solid shot. Yet at the end of two hours’ combat the British squadron was on the whole victorious, and the American on the point of capture. Of the three smaller American vessels, the “Preble” on the extreme right was driven out of the engagement, and the British gunboats, turning the American flank, attacked the “Ticonderoga,” which maintained a doubtful battle. The American left was also turned, the “Eagle” having been driven to take refuge between the “Saratoga” and “Ticonderoga,” in the centre. Macdonough’s ship was then exposed to the concentrated fire of the “Confiance” and “Linnet,” and his battery was soon silenced. The “Saratoga” could no longer use a gun on the engaged side, and the battle was nearly lost.

Then Macdonough’s forethought changed the impending defeat into victory. His fire had nearly silenced the “Confiance,” and disregarding the “Linnet,” he ceased attention to the battle in order to direct the operation of winding ship. Little by little hauling the ship about, he opened on the “Confiance” with one gun after another of the fresh broadside, as they bore; and the “Confiance,” after trying in vain to effect the same operation, struck her colors. Then the British fleet was in the situation which Downie had anticipated for the Americans in the event of silencing the “Saratoga.” The three smaller vessels were obliged to surrender, and the gunboats alone escaped. The battle had lasted from quarter past eight till quarter before eleven.

POSITIONS
OF THE
BRITISH AND AMERICAN FORCES
AT
PLATTSBURG

AFTER A SKETCH BY BRIG. GEN. MACOMB

By land, the British attack was much less effective than by water. The troops were slow in reaching their positions, and had time to make no decisive movement. A column under Major-General Robinson was ordered to move round by the right flank to a ford previously reconnoitred, some distance up the Saranac, in order to gain a position whence they could reverse the American works and carry them by assault; but Robinson’s column missed its way, and before reaching the ford heard the cheers of the American troops, and halted to ascertain its cause.[180] The remainder of the army waited for Robinson’s column to assault. The casualties showed that nothing like a serious engagement took place. The entire loss of the British army from September 6 to September 14 was officially reported as only thirty-seven killed and one hundred and fifty wounded, and of this loss a large part occurred previous to the battle of September 11. The entire American loss was thirty-seven killed and sixty-two wounded.

In the naval battle, Macdonough reported fifty-two killed and fifty-eight wounded, among about eight hundred and eighty men. The British reported fifty-seven killed and seventy-two wounded, in crews whose number was never precisely known, but was probably fully eight hundred. In neither case was the loss, though severe, as great relatively to the numbers as the severity of the action seemed to imply. The “Saratoga” lost twenty-eight killed in a crew of two hundred and forty. In Perry’s battle on Lake Erie, the “Lawrence” lost twenty-two men killed in a crew of one hundred and thirty-one. About one man in eight was killed on Macdonough’s ship; about one man in six on Perry’s.

With needless precipitation, Prevost instantly retreated the next day to Champlain, sacrificing stores to a very great amount, and losing many men by desertion. The army was cruelly mortified, and Prevost lost whatever military reputation he still preserved in Canada. In England the impression of disgrace was equally strong. “It is scarcely possible to conceive the degree of mortification and disappointment,” said the “Annual Register,”[181] “which the intelligence of this defeat created in Great Britain.” Yeo brought official charges of misconduct against Prevost, and Prevost defended himself by unusual arguments.

“With whatever sorrow I may think of the unfortunate occurrences to which I allude,” he wrote to Bathurst, three weeks later,[182] “I consider them as light and trivial when compared to the disastrous results which, I am solemnly persuaded, would have ensued had any considerations of personal glory, or any unreflecting disregard of the safety of the province, or of the honor of the army committed to my charge, induced me to pursue those offensive operations by land, independent of the fleet, which it would appear by your Lordship’s despatch were expected of me. Such operations, my Lord, have been attempted before, and on the same ground. The history of our country records their failure; and had they been undertaken again with double the force placed under my command, they would have issued in the discomfiture of his Majesty’s arms, and in a defeat not more disastrous than inevitable.”

The Duke of Wellington was not so severe as other critics, and hesitated to say that Prevost was wrong; “though of this I am certain, he must equally have returned ... after the fleet was beaten; and I am inclined to think he was right. I have told the ministers repeatedly that a naval superiority on the Lakes is a sine qua non of success in war on the frontier of Canada, even if our object should be wholly defensive.”[183] Yet the Duke in conversation seemed to think that his army in Canada was also at fault. “He had sent them some of his best troops from Bordeaux,” he said five-and-twenty years afterward,[184] “but they did not turn out quite right; they wanted this iron fist to command them.”

Meanwhile Major-General Izard, by Armstrong’s order, marched his four thousand men as far as possible from the points of attack. Starting from Champlain, August 29, the army reached Sackett’s Harbor September 17, having marched about two hundred and eighty miles in twenty days. At Sackett’s Harbor Izard found no orders from the government, for the government at that time had ceased to perform its functions; but he received an earnest appeal from General Brown to succor Fort Erie. “I will not conceal from you,” wrote Brown, September 10,[185] “that I consider the fate of this army very doubtful unless speedy relief is afforded.” Izard, who had no means of testing the correctness of this opinion, decided to follow Brown’s wishes, and made, September 17, the necessary preparations. Violent storms prevented Chauncey from embarking the troops until September 21; but September 27 the troops reached Batavia, and Izard met Brown by appointment. The army had then been a month in movement. The distance was more than four hundred miles, and no energy could have shortened the time so much as to have affected the result of the campaign. At one end of the line Sir George Prevost retreated from Plattsburg September 12; at the other end, Lieutenant-General Drummond retreated from Fort Erie September 21; and Izard’s force, constituting the largest body of regular troops in the field, had been placed where it could possibly affect neither result.

Izard was a friend of Monroe, and was therefore an object of Armstrong’s merciless criticism.[186] Brown was a favorite of Armstrong, and shared his prejudices. The position of Izard at Buffalo was calculated to excite jealousy. He had implicitly obeyed the wishes of Armstrong and Brown; in doing so, he had sacrificed himself,—yielding to Macomb the credit of repulsing Prevost, and to Brown, who did not wait for his arrival, the credit of repulsing Drummond. As far as could be seen, Izard had acted with loyalty toward both Armstrong and Brown; yet both distrusted him. Brown commonly inclined toward severity, and was the more sensitive because Izard, as the senior officer, necessarily took command.

Until that moment Izard had enjoyed no chance of showing his abilities in the field, but at Niagara he saw before him a great opportunity. Drummond lay at Chippawa, with an army reduced by battle and sickness to about twenty-five hundred men. Izard commanded fifty-five hundred regular troops and eight hundred militia.[187] He had time to capture or destroy Drummond’s entire force before the winter should set in, and to gather the results of Brown’s desperate fighting. Brown was eager for the attack, and Izard assented. October 13 the army moved on Chippawa, and stopped. October 16, Izard wrote to the War Department,[188]—

“I have just learned by express from Sackett’s Harbor that Commodore Chauncey with the whole of his fleet has retired into port, and is throwing up batteries for its protection. This defeats all the objects of the operations by land in this quarter. I may turn Chippawa, and should General Drummond not retire, may succeed in giving him a good deal of trouble; but if he falls back on Fort George or Burlington Heights, every step I take in pursuit exposes me to be cut off by the large reinforcements it is in the power of the enemy to throw in twenty-four hours upon my flank or rear.”

In this state of mind, notwithstanding a successful skirmish, October 19, between Bissell’s brigade and a strong detachment of the enemy, Izard made a decision which ruined his military reputation and destroyed his usefulness to the service. He reported to the Department, October 23,[189]—

“On the 21st, finding that he [Drummond] still continued within his works, which he had been assiduously engaged in strengthening from the moment of our first appearance, the weather beginning to be severe, and a great quantity of our officers and men suffering from their continued fatigues and exposure, at twelve at noon I broke up my encampment, and marched to this ground [opposite Black Rock] in order to prepare winter quarters for the troops.”

Nothing remained but to break up the army. Brown was sent at his own request to Sackett’s Harbor, where the next fighting was expected. A division of the army went with him. The remainder were placed in winter quarters near Buffalo. Fort Erie was abandoned and blown up, November 5, and the frontier at Niagara relapsed into repose.

Izard felt the mortification of his failure. His feelings were those of a generous character, and his tone toward Brown contrasted to his advantage both in candor and in temper with Brown’s language toward him; but great energy generally implied great faults, and Brown’s faults were better suited than Izard’s virtues for the work of an American general at Niagara. Greatly to Izard’s credit, he not only saw his own inferiority, but advised the government of it. He wrote to the Secretary of War, November 20,[190]—

“The success of the next campaign on this frontier will in a great measure depend on concert and good understanding among the superior officers.... General Brown is certainly a brave, intelligent, and active officer. Where a portion of the forces is composed of irregular troops, I have no hesitation in acknowledging my conviction of his being better qualified than I to make them useful in the public service.”

So sensitive was Izard to the public feeling and his loss of standing that he sent his resignation to the secretary, December 18,[191] in terms which betrayed and even asserted his consciousness of shrinking under the weight of responsibility:—

“I am fully aware that attempts have been made to lessen the confidence of government as well as of the public in my ability to execute the important duties intrusted to me,—duties which were imposed unexpectedly and much against my inclination. It is therefore not improbable that my voluntary retirement will relieve the Department of War from some embarrassment, and that my individual satisfaction will accord with the public advantage,—especially as my view of the connection between military command and responsibility differs materially from that entertained by persons in high authority.”

A man who showed so little confidence in himself could not claim the confidence of others, and in contact with stronger characters like Armstrong, Brown, Scott, or Andrew Jackson could play no part but that of a victim. His resignation was not accepted, but his career was at an end. When he relieved the pressure kept by Brown constantly applied to the extremity of the British line, the movement of war necessarily turned back to its true object, which was Sackett’s Harbor. Drummond no sooner saw Fort Erie evacuated and his lines re-established, November 5, than he hurried on board ship with a part of his troops, and reached Kingston, November 10,[192] where Sir George Prevost had already prepared for an attack on Sackett’s Harbor as soon as supplies could be brought from Quebec to Kingston over the winter roads. Soon afterward Sir George Prevost was recalled to England, and a new commander-in-chief, Sir George Murray, supposed to be a man of higher capacity, was sent to take direction of the next campaign. Reinforcements continued to arrive.[193] About twenty-seven thousand regular troops, including officers, were in Canada;[194] a seventy-four-gun ship and a new frigate were launched at Kingston; and no one doubted that, with the spring, Sackett’s Harbor would be formally besieged. Izard remained at Buffalo, doing nothing, and his only influence on the coming as on the past campaign was to leave the initiative to the enemy.

CHAPTER V.

Armstrong’s management of the Northern campaign caused severe criticism; but his neglect of the city of Washington exhausted the public patience. For two years Washington stood unprotected; not a battery or a breastwork was to be found on the river bank except the old and untenable Fort Washington, or Warburton.[195] A thousand determined men might reach the town in thirty-six hours, and destroy it before any general alarm could be given.[196] Yet no city was more easily protected than Washington, at that day, from attack on its eastern side; any good engineer could have thrown up works in a week that would have made approach by a small force impossible. Armstrong neglected to fortify. After experience had proved his error, he still argued in writing to a committee of Congress[197] that fortifications would have exhausted the Treasury; “that bayonets are known to form the most efficient barriers; and that there was no reason in this case to doubt beforehand the willingness of the country to defend itself,”—as though he believed that militia were most efficient when most exposed! He did not even provide the bayonets.

POSITIONS
OF THE
BRITISH AND AMERICAN
FORCES NEAR
WASHINGTON AND BALTIMORE,
FROM AUGUST 20 TO SEPTEMBER 12 1814

In truth, Armstrong looking at the matter as a military critic decided that the British having no strategic object in capturing Washington, would not make the attempt. Being an indolent man, negligent of detail, he never took unnecessary trouble; and having no proper staff at Washington, he was without military advisers whose opinion he respected. The President and Monroe fretted at his indifference, the people of the District were impatient under it, and every one except Armstrong was in constant terror of attack; but according to their account the secretary only replied: “No, no! Baltimore is the place, sir; that is of so much more consequence.”[198] Probably he was right, and the British would have gone first to Baltimore had his negligence not invited them to Washington.

In May the President began to press Armstrong for precautionary measures.[199] In June letters arrived from Gallatin and Bayard in London which caused the President to call a Cabinet meeting. June 23 and 24 the Cabinet met and considered the diplomatic situation.[200] The President proposed then for the first time to abandon impressment as a sine qua non of negotiation, and to approve a treaty that should be silent on the subject. Armstrong and Jones alone supported the idea at that time, but three days afterward, June 27, Monroe and Campbell acceded to it. The Cabinet then took the defences of Washington in hand, and July 1 decided to organize a corps of defence from the militia of the District and the neighboring States. July 2, the first step toward efficient defence was taken by creating a new military district on the Potomac, with a military head of its own. Armstrong wished to transfer Brigadier-General Moses Porter from Norfolk, to command the new Potomac District;[201] but the President selected Brigadier-General Winder, because his relationship to the Federalist governor of Maryland was likely to make co-operation more effective.

Political appointments were not necessarily bad; but in appointing Winder to please the governor of Maryland Madison assumed the responsibility, in Armstrong’s eyes, for the defence of Washington. The Secretary of War seemed to think that Madison and Monroe were acting together to take the defence of Washington out of his hands, and to put it in hands in which they felt confidence. Armstrong placed Winder instantly in command, and promptly issued the orders arranged in Cabinet; but he left further measures to Winder, Monroe, and Madison. His conduct irritated the President; but no one charged that the secretary refused to carry out the orders, or to satisfy the requisitions of the President or of General Winder. He was merely passive.[202]

Winder received his appointment July 5, and went to Washington for instructions. He passed the next month riding between Washington, Baltimore, and points on the lower Potomac and Patuxent,[203] obtaining with great fatigue a personal knowledge of the country. August 1 he established his permanent headquarters at Washington, and the entire result of his labors till that time was the presence of one company of Maryland militia at Bladensburg. No line of defence was selected, no obstructions to the roads were prepared, and not so much as a ditch or a breastwork was marked out or suggested between Annapolis and Washington. Another fortnight passed, and still Winder was not further advanced. He had no more men, arms, fortifications, and no more ideas, on the 18th of August than on the 5th of July. “The call for three thousand militia under the requisition of July 4 had produced only two hundred and fifty men at the moment the enemy landed at Benedict.”[204] Winder had then been six weeks in command of the Washington defences.

Meanwhile a British expedition under command of Major-General Robert Ross, a distinguished officer of the Peninsula army, sailed from the Gironde, June 27, to Bermuda. Ross was instructed “to effect a diversion on the coasts of the United States of America in favor of the army employed in the defence of Upper and Lower Canada.” The point of attack was to be decided by Vice-Admiral Cochrane, subject to the general’s approval; but the force was not intended for “any extended operation at a distance from the coast,” nor was Ross to hold permanent possession of any captured district.[205]

“When the object of the descent which you may make on the coast is to take possession of any naval or military stores, you will not delay the destruction of them in preference to the taking them away, if there is reasonable ground of apprehension that the enemy is advancing with superior force to effect their recovery. If in any descent you shall be enabled to take such a position as to threaten the inhabitants with the destruction of their property, you are hereby authorized to levy upon them contributions in return for your forbearance; but you will not by this understand that the magazines belonging to the government, or their harbors, or their shipping, are to be included in such an arrangement. These, together with their contents, are in all cases to be taken away or destroyed.”

Negroes were not to be encouraged to rise upon their masters, and no slaves were to be taken away as slaves; but any negro who should expose himself to vengeance by joining the expedition or lending it assistance, might be enlisted in the black corps, or carried away by the fleet.

Nothing in these orders warranted the destruction of private or public property, except such as might be capable of military uses. Ross was not authorized, and did not intend, to enter on a mere marauding expedition; but Cochrane was independent of Ross, and at about the time when Ross reached Bermuda Cochrane received a letter from Sir George Prevost which gave an unexpected character to the Chesapeake expedition. A small body of American troops had crossed Lake Erie to Long Point, May 15, and destroyed the flour-mills, distilleries, and some private houses there. The raid was not authorized by the United States government, and the officer commanding it was afterward court-martialed and censured; but Sir George Prevost, without waiting for explanations, wrote to Vice-Admiral Cochrane, June 2, suggesting that he should “assist in inflicting that measure of retaliation which shall deter the enemy from a repetition of similar outrages.”[206]

When Cochrane received this letter, he issued at Bermuda, July 18, orders to the ships under his command, from the St. Croix River to the St. Mary’s, directing general retaliation.[207] The orders were interesting as an illustration of the temper the war had taken.

“You are hereby required and directed,” wrote the Vice-Admiral to the British blockading squadrons, “to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts upon the coast as you may find assailable. You will hold strictly in view the conduct of the American army toward his Majesty’s unoffending Canadian subjects, and you will spare merely the lives of the unarmed inhabitants of the United States. For only by carrying this retributory justice into the country of our enemy can we hope to make him sensible of the impropriety as well as of the inhumanity of the system he has adopted. You will take every opportunity of explaining to the people how much I lament the necessity of following the rigorous example of the commander of the American forces. And as these commanders must obviously have acted under instructions from the Executive government of the United States, whose intimate and unnatural connection with the late government of France has led them to adopt the same system of plunder and devastation, it is therefore to their own government the unfortunate sufferers must look for indemnification for their loss of property.”

This ill-advised order was to remain in force until Sir George Prevost should send information “that the United States government have come under an obligation to make full remuneration to the injured and unoffending inhabitants of the Canadas for all the outrages their troops have committed.” Cochrane further wrote to Prevost that “as soon as these orders have been acted upon,” a copy would be sent to Washington for the information of the Executive government.

Cochrane’s retaliatory order was dated July 18, and Ross’s transports arrived at Bermuda July 24. As soon as the troops were collected and stores put on board, Cochrane and Ross sailed, August 3, for Chesapeake Bay. They arrived a few days in advance of the transports, and passing up the bay to the mouth of the Potomac, landed, August 15, with Rear Admiral Cockburn, to decide on a plan for using to best effect the forces under their command.

Three objects were within reach. The first and immediate aim was a flotilla of gunboats, commanded by Captain Joshua Barney, which had taken refuge in the Patuxent River, and was there blockaded. The next natural object of desire was Baltimore, on account of its shipping and prize-money. The third was Washington and Alexandria, on account of the navy-yard and the vessels in the Potomac. Baltimore was the natural point of attack after destroying Barney’s flotilla; but Cockburn, with a sailor’s recklessness, urged a dash at Washington.[208] Ross hesitated, and postponed a decision till Barney’s flotilla should be disposed of.

Two days afterward, August 17, the troops arrived, and the squadron, commanded by Vice-Admiral Cochrane, moved twenty miles up the bay to the mouth of the Patuxent,—a point about fifty miles distant from Annapolis on the north, and from Washington on the northwest. Having arrived there August 18, Cochrane wrote, or afterward ante-dated, an official letter to Secretary Monroe:[209]—

“Having been called on by the Governor-General of the Canadas to aid him in carrying into effect measures of retaliation against the inhabitants of the United States for the wanton destruction committed by their army in Upper Canada, it has become imperiously my duty, conformably with the nature of the Governor-General’s application, to issue to the naval force under my command an order to destroy and lay waste such towns and districts upon the coast as may be found assailable.”

The notice was the more remarkable because Cochrane’s order was issued only to the naval force. The army paid no attention to it. Ross’s troops were landed at Benedict the next day, August 19; but neither there nor elsewhere did they destroy or lay waste towns or districts. They rather showed unusual respect for private property.

At Benedict, August 19, the British forces were organized in three brigades, numbering, according to different British accounts, four thousand five hundred, or four thousand rank-and-file.[210] Cockburn with the boats of the fleet the next day, August 20, started up the river in search of Barney’s flotilla; while the land force began its march at four o’clock in the afternoon abreast of the boats, and camped four miles above Benedict without seeing an enemy, or suffering from a worse annoyance than one of the evening thunder-storms common in hot weather.

The next day at dawn the British army started again, and marched that day, Sunday, August 21, twelve miles to the village of Nottingham, where it camped.[211] The weather was hot, and the march resembled a midsummer picnic. Through a thickly wooded region, where a hundred militia-men with axes and spades could have delayed their progress for days, the British army moved in a solitude apparently untenanted by human beings, till they reached Nottingham on the Patuxent,—a deserted town, rich in growing crops and full barns.

At Nottingham the army passed a quiet night, and the next morning, Monday, August 22, lingered till eight o’clock, when it again advanced. Among the officers in the Eighty-fifth regiment was a lieutenant named Gleig, who wrote afterward a charming narrative of the campaign under the title, “A Subaltern in America.” He described the road as remarkably good, running for the most part through the heart of thick forests, which sheltered it from the rays of the sun. During the march the army was startled by the distant sound of several heavy explosions. Barney had blown up his gunboats to prevent their capture. The British naval force had thus performed its part in the enterprise, and the army was next to take the lead. Ross halted at Marlboro after a march of only seven miles, and there too he camped, undisturbed by sight or sound of an armed enemy, although the city of Washington was but sixteen miles on his left, and Baltimore thirty miles in his front. Ross had then marched twenty or twenty-one miles into Maryland without seeing an enemy, although an American army had been close on his left flank, watching him all day.

At Marlboro Ross was obliged to decide what he should next do. He was slow in forming a conclusion. Instead of marching at day-break of August 23, and moving rapidly on Baltimore or Washington, the army passed nearly the whole day at Marlboro in idleness, as though it were willing to let the Americans do their utmost for defence. “Having advanced within sixteen miles of Washington,” Ross officially reported,[212] “and ascertained the force of the enemy to be such as might authorize an attempt to carry his capital, I determined to make it, and accordingly put the troops in movement on the evening of the 23d.” More exactly, the troops moved at two o’clock in the afternoon, and marched about six miles on the road to Washington, when they struck American outposts at about five o’clock, and saw a force posted on high ground about a mile in their front. As the British formed to attack, the American force disappeared, and the British army camped about nine miles from Washington by way of the navy-yard bridge over the Eastern Branch.

Thus for five days, from August 18 to August 23, a British army, which though small was larger than any single body of American regulars then in the field, marched in a leisurely manner through a long-settled country, and met no show of resistance before coming within sight of the Capitol. Such an adventure resembled the stories of Cortez and De Soto; and the conduct of the United States government offered no contradiction to the resemblance.