The American Invasion of Canada
The American
Invasion of Canada
The conquest of Canada is
in our power. I trust I shall
not be deemed presumptive when
I state that I verily believe
that the militia of Kentucky
are alone competent to place
Montreal and Upper Canada
at your feet.
Henry Clay, to the
United States Senate,
February 22, 1810.
The American
Invasion of Canada
The War of 1812’s First Year
Pierre Berton
Copyright © 1980, 2011 by Pierre Berton
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61608-335-9
eISBN: 978-1-62087-498-1
Printed in The United States of America
Originally Published in Canada as: The Invasion of Canada: 1812-1813
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Starting Out Lisa Kroniuk)
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My Times: Living with History Adventures in Canadian History
196?, The Last Good Year (22 volumes)
CONTENTS
Cast of Characters
PREVIEW: Porter Hanks’s War
OVERVIEW
The War of 1812
PRELUDE TO INVASION: 1807-1811
1The Road to Tippecanoe
PRELUDE TO INVASION: 1812
2Marching As to War
MICHILIMACKINAC
3The Bloodless Victory
DETROIT
4The Disintegration of William Hull
CHICAGO
5J Horror on Lake Michigan
QUEENSTON HEIGHTS
6The End of Isaac Brock
BLACK ROCK
7Opera Bouffe on the Niagara
FRENCHTOWN
8Massacre at the River Raisin
AFTERVIEW
The New War
CODA: William Atherton’s War
Sources and Acknowledgements
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Maps
The Strategic Significance of Michilimackinac
American Invasion Strategy, Summer, 1812
The Theatre of War
American-Indian Battles, 1790-1794
Harrison’s Purchase
Tecumseh’s Frontier
The Wabash
The Battle of Tippecanoe
Hull’s March to Detroit
The Wisconsin-Fox Portage
Michilimackinac Island
The Detroit Frontier
Baynes’s Journey to Albany
Brock’s Passage to Amherstburg
The Capture of Detroit
Mrs. Simmons’s Trek
The Niagara Frontier
The Battle of Queenston Heights
Harrison’s Three-Column Drive to the Maumee Rapids
American Search and Destroy Missions against the Tribes,
Autumn, 1812.
The Battle of Frenchtown
Maps by Geoffrey Matthews
Cast of Characters
PRELUDE TO INVASION
British and Canadians
Sir James Craig, Governor General of Canada, 1807-11.
Sir George Prevost, Governor General of the Canadas and commander of the forces, 1811-15.
Francis Gore, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, 1806-17. On leave in England, 1811-15.
Major-General Isaac Brock, Administrator of Upper Canada and commander of the forces in Upper Canada, 1810-12.
William Claus, Deputy Superintendent, Indian Department, Upper Canada, 1806-26.
Matthew Elliott, Superintendent of Indian Affairs at Amherst-burg, 1796-97; 1808-14.
Robert Dickson (known as Mascotapah, the Red-Haired Man), fur trader. Led Menominee, Winnebago, and Sioux in attack on Michilimackinac.
Augustus Foster, British Minister Plenipotentiary to America, 1811-12.
Americans
Thomas Jefferson, President, 1801-9.
James Madison, President, 1809-17.
William Eustis, Secretary of War, 1809-12.
William Henry Harrison, Governor, Indiana Territory, 1800-1813. Commander of the Army of the Northwest from September, 1812.
William Hull, Governor, Michigan Territory, 1805-12. Commander of the Army of the Northwest, April-August, 1812.
Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War, 1801-9. Senior major-general, U.S. Army, 1812-13.
Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives, November, 1811. Leader of the War Hawks.
Indian Leaders
The Prophet. Born Laulewausika; later Tenskwatawa.
Tecumseh, the Prophet’s older brother, leader of the Indian Confederacy.
THE DETROIT FRONTIER
Isaac Brock’s Command: Summer, 1812
Thomas Bligh St. George, Lieutenant-Colonel; commanding officer, Fort Amherstburg.
Henry Procter, Lieutenant-Colonel; succeeded St. George as commanding officer, Fort Amherstburg.
J.B. Glegg, Major; Brock’s military aide.
John Macdonell, Lieutenant-Colonel; Brock’s provincial aide, Acting Attorney-General of Upper Canada.
Adam Muir, Major, 41st Regiment.
William Hull’s Command: Summer, 1812
Duncan McArthur, Colonel, 1st Regiment, Ohio Volunteers.
James Findlay, Colonel, 2nd Regiment, Ohio Volunteers.
Lewis Cass, Colonel, 3rd Regiment, Ohio Volunteers.
James Miller
, Lieutenant-Colonel, 4th U.S. Infantry (regular army).
Henry Procter’s Command: Winter, 1812-13
Ebenezer Reynolds, Major, Essex Militia.
Roundhead, Wyandot chief.
William Henry Harrison’s Command: Winter, 1812-13
James Winchester, Brigadier-General; commander, left wing, Army of the Northwest.
John Allen, Lieutenant-Colonel, 1st Kentucky Rifles.
William Lewis, Lieutenant-Colonel, 5 th Regiment, Kentucky Volunteers.
Samuel Wells, Lieutenant-Colonel, 17th U.S. Infantry (regular army).
THE NIAGARA FRONTIER
Isaac Brock’s Command: Fall, 1812
Christopher Myers, Lieutenant-Colonel; commanding officer, Fort George.
Roger Hale Sheaffe, Major-General; second-in-command to Brock. Commanded British forces on Brock’s death.
Thomas Evans, Brigade Major, Fort George.
John Dennis, Captain, 49th Regiment; commander of flank company defending Queenston.
John Williams, Captain, 49th Regiment.
James Crooks, Captain, 1st Lincoln Militia.
William Holcroft, Captain, Royal Artillery.
Frederic Rolette, Lieutenant, Provincial Marine.
Robert Irvine, Second-Lieutenant, Provincial Marine.
John Brant, Mohawk chief.
John Norton, Captain, Indian Department; leader of Mohawks.
Henry Dearborn’s Command: Fall, 1812
Stephen Van Rensselaer, Major-General, New York state militia; senior commander on the Niagara frontier.
Solomon Van Rensselaer, Lieutenant-Colonel; cousin and aide-de-camp to Stephen Van Rensselaer.
John Lovett, Major; aide to Stephen and Solomon Van Rensselaer. In charge of artillery at Fort Grey at Battle of Queenston Heights.
William Wadsworth, Brigadier-General, Upper New York State militia.
Alexander Smyth, Brigadier-General, regular army, Niagara frontier. Replaced Stephen Van Rensselaer following Battle of Queenston Heights.
John Chrystie, Lieutenant-Colonel, 13th U.S. Infantry (regular army).
John Fenwick, Lieutenant-Colonel, U.S. Light Artillery.
John E. Wool, Captain, 13th U.S. Infantry.
Winfield Scott, Lieutenant-Colonel, 2nd U.S. Artillery.
Peter B. Porter, Quartermaster General, Upper New York State. Member of the War Hawk faction in Congress.
Jesse D. Elliott, Lieutenant, U.S. Navy.
The Strategic Significance of Michilimackinac
PREVIEW: Porter Hanks’s War
MICHILIMACKINAC ISLAND, MICHIGAN TERRITORY, U.S.A. The small hours of a soft July morning in 1812.
The lake is silent, save for the whisper of waves lapping the shoreline. In the starlight, the island’s cliffs stand out darkly against the surrounding flatland. In the fort above the village at the southern tip the American commander, Lieutenant Porter Hanks, lies asleep, ignorant of a war that will tragically affect his future. Napoleon has entered Russia; Wellington is pushing toward Madrid; and in Washington, the die has been cast for invasion. But history has passed Hanks by. It is nine months since he has heard from Washington; for all he knows of the civilized world he might as well be on the moon.
The civilized world ends at the Detroit River, some 350 miles to the southeast as the canoe travels. Mackinac Island is its outpost; a minor Gibraltar lying in the narrows between Lakes Huron and Michigan. Whoever controls it controls the routes to the fur country — the domain of the Nor’Westers beyond Superior and the no man’s land of the upper Missouri and Mississippi It is a prize worth fighting for.
Hanks slumbers on, oblivious of a quiet bustling in the village directly below-of low knockings, whispers, small children’s plaints quickly hushed, rustlings, soft footsteps, the creak of cartwheels on grass—slumbers fitfully his dreams troubled by a growing uneasiness, until the drum roll of reveille wakes him. He suspects something is going to happen. He has’ been seven years a soldier knows trouble when he sees it, has watched it paddling by him for a week. An extraordinary number of Indians have been passing the fort, apparently on their way to the British garrison at St. Joseph’s Island, forty-five miles to the northeast, just beyond the border. Why? The answers are strangely evasive. The Ottawa and Chippewa chiefs, once so friendly, have turned suspiciously cool On the British side, it is said, the tribes have gathered by the hundreds from distant frontiers: Sioux from the upper Mississippi, Winnebago from the Wisconsin country, Menominee from the shores of Green Bay.
Hanks peers over the palisades of the fort and gazes down on the village below, a crescent of whitewashed houses, following the curve of a pebbled beach. He sees at once that something is wrong. For the village is not sleeping; it is dead. No curl of smoke rises above the cedar-bark roofs; no human cry echoes across the waters of the lake; no movement ruffles the weeds that edge the roadway.
What is going on? Hanks dispatches his second-in-command, Lieutenant Archibald Darragh, to find out. But he does not need to wait for Darragh’s report. Clambering up the slope comes his only other commissioned officer, the surgeon’s mate, Sylvester Day, who prefers to live in the village. Dr. Day’s breathless report is blunt: British redcoats and Indians have landed at the opposite end of the island. All the villagers have been collected quietly and, for their own safety, herded into an old distillery under the bluff at the west end of town. Three of the most prominent citizens are under guard as hostages.
Hanks reacts instantly to this news: musters his men, stocks his blockhouses with ammunition, charges his field pieces, follows the book. He must know that he is merely playing soldier, for he has fewer than sixty effective troops under his command – men rendered stale by their frontier exile. Presently he becomes aware of a British six-pounder on the forested bluff above, pointing directly into his bastion. Through the spring foliage he can see the flash of British scarlet and – the ultimate horror – the dark forms of their native allies. A single word forms in his mind, a truly terrible word for anyone with frontier experience: massacre – visions of mutilated bodies, decapitated children, disembowelled housewives, scalps bloodying the pickets.
Hanks can fight to the last man and become a posthumous hero. If it were merely the aging troops of Fort St. Joseph that faced him, he might be prepared to do just that. But to the last woman? To the last child? Against an enemy whose savagery is said to be without limits?
A white flag flutters before him. Under its protection a British truce party marches into the fort, accompanied by the three civilian hostages. The parley is brief and to the point. Hanks must surrender. The accompanying phrase “or else” hangs unspoken in the air. The hostages urge him to accept, but it is doubtful whether he needs their counsel. He agrees to everything; the fort and the island will become British. The Americans must take the oath of allegiance to the King or leave. His troops are to be paroled to their homes. Until exchanged they can take no further part in the war.
The war? What war? The date is July 17. A full month has passed since the United States declared war on Great Britain, but this is the first Hanks has heard of it. An invasion force has already crossed the Detroit River into Canada and skirmished with the British, but nobody in Washington, it seems, has grasped the urgency of a speedy warning to the western flank of the American frontier. It is entirely characteristic of this senseless and tragic conflict that it should have its beginnings in this topsy-turvy fashion, with the invaders invaded in a trackless wilderness hundreds of miles from the nerve centres of command.
For its dereliction the American government will pay dear. This bloodless battle is also one of the most significant. The news of the capture of Michilimackinac Island will touch off a chain of events that will frustrate the Americans in their attempt to seize British North America, an enterprise that most of them believe to be, in Thomas Jefferson’s much-quoted phrase, “a mere matter of marching.”
THE INVASION OF CANADA, which began in the early summer of 1812 and petered out in the late fall of
1814, was part of a larger conflict that has come to be known in North America as the War of 1812. That war was the by-product of a larger struggle, which saw Napoleonic France pitted for almost a decade against most of Europe. It is this complexity, a war within a war within a war, like a nest of Chinese boxes, that has caused so much confusion. The watershed date “1812” has different connotations for different people. And, as in Alice’s famous caucus race, everybody seems to have won something, though there were no prizes. The Russians, for instance, began to win their own War of 1812 against Napoleon in the very week in which the British and Canadians were repulsing the invading Americans at Queenston Heights. The Americans won the last battle of their War of 1812 in the first week of 1815-a victory diminished by the fact that peace had been negotiated fifteen days before. The British, who beat Napoleon, could also boast that they “won” the North American war because the Treaty of Ghent, which settled the matter, had nothing to say about the points at issue and merely maintained the status quo.
This work deals with the war that Canada won, or to put it more precisely did not lose, by successfully repulsing the armies that tried to invade and conquer British North America. The war was fought almost entirely in Upper Canada, whose settlers, most of them Americans, did not invite the war, did not care about the issues, and did not want to fight. They were the victims of a clash between two major powers who, by the accident of geography, found it convenient to settle their differences by doing violence to the body of another. The invasion of Canada was not the first time that two armies have bloodied neutral ground over issues that did not concern the inhabitants; nor has it been the last.
Of all the wars fought by the English-speaking peoples, this was one of the strangest-a war entered into blindly and fought (also blindly) by men out of touch not only with reality but also with their own forces. Washington was separated from the fighting frontier by hundreds of miles of forest, rock, and swamp. The ultimate British authority was an ocean away and the nominal authority a fortnight distant from the real command. Orders could take days, weeks, even months to reach the troops.