by James Laxer
While Brock understood the indispensable role of the Royal Navy, deep in the heart of North America where he was stationed, the blessings the navy could bestow were rather a cold comfort. Over the long haul, the navy could play a huge role in convincing the Americans that the war was not worth fighting. In the immediate future, though, the fate of Brock’s turf would be decided by the sharpness of his regulars, the morale of the local militia, the inclinations of Tecumseh’s confederacy, and even the postures adopted by Upper Canadian politicians.
During the final months of what turned out to be the last year of peace with the Americans, Brock undertook a strategic military review, bringing to it his characteristic energy and his preference for an offensive approach to war. From December 1811 until early 1812, in a series of letters to General George Prevost and to his adjutant general, Colonel Edward Baynes, Brock summarized his thoughts about the defence of the Canadas.
The conventional British perspective was to hold on to Quebec and as much of Lower Canada as possible. With a citadel and seaport to which British warships could readily sail, the old capital at Quebec equalled Halifax as the most vital strategic point in British North America. As long as the British held Quebec, the theory went, they could later regain any regions of the country they lost over the course of a war. General Prevost adhered to this conventional wisdom, which viewed the defence of Quebec and Lower Canada as much more important than the defence of Upper Canada.
While Brock naturally agreed that holding Quebec was crucial, he had different views about the defence of the upper province. He reckoned that because Upper Canada now had a substantial population the defence of the province had become a top priority. In 1759, when the British had invaded against the French, or 1775, when the Americans invaded against the British, retaining the old capital on the St. Lawrence may well have been the key to defending the territory. But conditions had changed. Brock saw real advantages in emphasizing the defence of the upper province, which everyone recognized was a great challenge becuase of its lengthy frontier with the United States. He believed that British regular soldiers were better than their American counterparts. He calculated that the potential for bringing large numbers of native warriors into the field against the U.S. was an advantage that had to be seized. And he knew that to win the adherence of the native tribes, the fight had to be made in Upper Canada, indeed, in its vital southwest corner along the shore of Lake Erie opposite Detroit.
With his preference for going on the offensive, and well aware that the Americans were deeply split on whether to declare war, Brock believed that swift moves to seize Detroit and Michilimackinac (located on the strait connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan) in alliance with native forces would throw the enemy back on its heels.9 In his letters, he returned more than once to the issue of the southwestern frontier of Upper Canada. “Unless Detroit and Michili-
mackinac be both in our possession at the commencement of hostilities,” he calculated, “not only the district of Amherstburg [near present-day Windsor, Ontario], but most probably the whole country as far as Kingston, must be evacuated.” He reminded Prevost through Baynes that former governor Sir James Craig had contemplated a similar strategy three years earlier.10
Unlike the other senior British commanders, who could see only the vulnerability of Upper Canada, Brock perceived the region as a geographical arrow that pointed straight into the heart of American territory, from which offensive action could be launched. So it was that, with respect to the western reaches of Upper Canada, Brock’s strategic thinking focused most attentively on the crucial importance of the native alliance. In the southwestern corner of Upper Canada around Amherstburg, where Fort Malden was situated, Brock calculated that strong preparations would deter the Americans from attempting to occupy the territory west of Niagara. He wanted additional British regulars moved from York and from Fort George, on the Niagara Frontier, to Fort Malden. Such a deployment would raise the morale of militiamen in that corner of the province, and reassure native allies that a serious fight could be made there to counter a U.S. invasion.
“I have always considered that the reduction of Detroit would be a signal for a cordial co-operation on the part of the Indians,” he wrote, and went on to warn that “if we be not in sufficient force, to effect this object, no reliance ought to be placed on them.”11 Within a year, these views opened the door to his close working relationship with Tecumseh.
In addition, Brock wanted increased naval forces to be developed on both Lake Erie and Lake Huron. Lake Erie was key to the viability of Fort Malden, and a force on Lake Huron could serve as a springboard for an attack on Michilimackinac. He wanted older commanders to be replaced with younger officers, and recommended building sailing vessels and gunboats.12
Along the Niagara Frontier, soon to become the epicentre of the war, Brock reckoned that a strong contingent of regulars could serve as the backbone for a force that would also include close to three thousand militiamen and five hundred native warriors. There was, along this vital frontier, a volunteer corps of farmers who used their horses to move cannon. To shore up the volunteers, he requested the dispatch of more gunners, drivers, and horses. He also wanted a stock of weapons that could be used to outfit a volunteer cavalry contingent.13
Not surprisingly, Brock placed his greatest faith in the security of the old fortress town of Kingston, with its vital location at the junction of the eastern end of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. He reckoned that the militiamen in the Kingston district were Upper Canada’s most dependable. Kingston was a vital supply point for men and weapons for operations farther west in the province, and attacks could be launched from there against Sackets Harbor, the principal American base on the lake.14
Brock was also keenly aware that high morale among the settlers in the province was essential if an active militia was to be raised and maintained in the field. In December 1811, from York, Brock wrote Prevost that during his recent visit to Niagara “I received the most satisfactory professions of a determination on the part of the principal inhabitants to exert every means in their power in the defence of their property and support of the government . . . unless the inhabitants give an active and efficient aid, it will be utterly impossible for the very limited number of the military who are likely to be employed, to preserve the Province.”15 In Upper Canada, responses to the threat of war ranged from loyalism to neutrality to outright support for the Americans. Even though the colonies did not yet have responsible government — a parliamentary system in which cabinet ministers had to enjoy the support of the majority of the members in the elected assembly — they did elect legislatures that played a role in financing their own militias. Brock displayed considerable acumen in weighing the opinions of the settler population in Upper Canada on the question of war. Many of them were migrants from south of the border. A large percentage were genuine Loyalists with a strong attachment to the British Crown, and some of them had suffered personally at the hands of the Patriots. Many of the “Late Loyalists,” on the other hand, had lukewarm political loyalties; they could be swayed either way in a conflict between the British and the Americans.
Toward the end of 1811, Brock detected a shift in the mood of settlers along the Niagara Frontier. While the residents there had formerly thought that the military situation was so bad that no real resistance to a U.S. invasion was intended, the steps taken to shore up defences had changed many minds.16 Despite his conviction that civilian morale had improved on the Niagara Frontier, Brock harboured concerns about governing a province in which loyalty was a slippery commodity. In a letter to Prevost, he said frankly that he was “perfectly aware of the number of improper characters” with whom he had to deal, men whose “principles diffuse a spirit of insubordination very adverse to all military institutions.” He reckoned, though, that despite the presence of “improper characters,” “the best policy to be pursued . . . will be to act with the utmost liberality,
and as if no mistrust existed.”17
On February 4, 1812, General Isaac Brock opened the final session of the fifth Parliament of Upper Canada with an address to the members of the appointed Legislative Council and the elected Legislative Assembly. Under the shadow of impending war with the United States and the more distant shadow of the war against Napoleon, Brock declared, “I should derive the utmost satisfaction, the first time of my addressing you, were it permitted to me to direct your attention solely to such objects as tended to promote the peace and prosperity of this Province.” This was not such a time, however. He warned the members of the assembly about the disposition of the American government. “Insulting threats are offered,” he stated, “and hostile preparations actually commenced.” While he expressed the hope that “cool reflection and the dictates of justice may yet avert the calamities of war,” he said it was time to prepare for the worst.
Brock wanted the assembly to pass an amendment to the Militia Act of 1808, which stipulated that fit males in Upper Canada attend an annual muster to receive more serious training. “Principally composed of the sons of loyal and brave bands of veterans, the militia, I am confident, stand in need of nothing but the necessary legislative provisions to direct their ardour in the acquirement of military instruction, to form a most efficient force.”
Warning against the clear risk of a U.S. invasion of Canada, Brock asserted that “the growing prosperity of these provinces, it is manifest, begins to awaken a spirit of envy . . . Heaven will look favourably on the manly exertions which the loyal and virtuous inhabitants of this happy land are prepared to make.”18
John Graves Simcoe, who served as the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada from 1791 to 1796, had set up the province’s militia system, whereby all males in the province from sixteen to sixty years of age were required to become active militia members when called up by the government. What concerned Brock was the poor attendance of Upper Canadian males at the militia and the abysmal level of training.
Brock was correct in his suspicions that the members of the legislative assembly of Upper Canada were not particularly interested in military affairs and that they were inclined to question and often oppose the initiatives of the appointed council and its head. It was entirely natural for an elected assembly that enjoyed relatively little power to chafe at the limitations imposed on it, much the way the assemblies in the pre-revolutionary Thirteen Colonies had pushed for greater powers.
The members of the assembly did not belong to clearly defined political factions. To use a term common later in nineteenth-century Canada, they were often “loose fish.” Among those who typically opposed the council, the strongest figure was Joseph Willcocks, a sometime newspaper publisher and sheriff. Born in Palmerstown, Ireland, in 1773, Willcocks had emigrated to York when he was twenty-seven years old. He led the fight in the assembly to reject the proposed amendments to the Militia Act.
In the ensuing debates, Willcocks and the members who followed his lead managed to block the passage of Brock’s proposed legislative measures. By small majorities, the assembly rejected the government’s bill that would have required the subjects of the province to swear an oath of loyalty declaring that they owed no allegiance to foreign powers, and another bill that would have suspended habeas corpus in a time of threatened invasion. The assembly was willing to approve Brock’s proposed changes to the Militia Act, but only until the end of the ensuing session of Parliament.
After Brock closed the session of the legislature, much disappointed by the results, he reported to Sir George Prevost, “I had every reason to expect the almost unanimous support of the two houses of the legislature to every measure the government thought it necessary to recommend; but after a short trial, I found myself egregiously mistaken in my calculations . . . The great influence which the numerous setters from the United States possess over the decisions of the lower house is truly alarming, and ought immediately, by every practical means, to be diminished.”19 Writing from Quebec, General Prevost agreed with Brock that the limits placed on “the operation of the Militia Act for Upper Canada” were deplorable.20
In the months immediately prior to the American declaration of war against Great Britain and during the first months of the conflict itself, the differences in temperament and inclination between Brock and Prevost were clearly displayed in their correspondence. Brock understood the need to avoid provoking the Americans and thus making a peaceful settlement between the two countries more difficult, but he could see the advantage in a test of arms as a way to settle outstanding issues. Prevost’s inclinations were exactly the opposite. He behaved like the head of government and a “political general,” whose job was to encourage a peaceful resolution of the issues at stake between Washington and London, even after the guns began firing. While praising Brock for the steps he was taking to prepare Upper Canada to meet an American attack, he persistently sought to restrain the major general and hold in check his inclination to strike at the enemy.
On April 30, 1812, Prevost wrote Brock a letter marked “confidential,” informing him that the U.S. secretary of war had sent orders to Governor Daniel D. Tompkins of New York to send units of five hundred men each to border points adjacent to Canada, on the Niagara Frontier, at Kingston, and south of Montreal at Lake Champlain. He conveyed the concern of the British government that dispatching troops to the border could be designed to “produce a quarrel with the British Troops, which may lead to retaliation on both sides, and occasion hostilities to commence.” He warned, “This way alone, it seems . . . an unjust War can be forced on the American people.” Cautioning Brock, he said that the British must strive “to prevent any collision from taking place between our forces and the Americans.”21
On May 27, General Prevost wrote again to Brock, this time to express his support for the precautions that Brock had taken “to prevent any act occurring within your control that should afford the Government of the United States a legitimate pretext to add to the clamour artfully raised by it against England.”22
Brock had done invaluable service preparing the available forces to defend the Canadas. With only a few months left for him to live, the greatest days of Brock’s career still lay in the future.
Chapter 8
The United States Declares
War on Great Britain
ON JUNE 1, 1812, PRESIDENT James Madison crossed his personal and political Rubicon and sent his war message to both houses of Congress. In sharp contrast to more recent U.S. declarations of war, memorably Franklin Roosevelt’s against Japan in December 1941, a clerk read the document, with no emotion.
In his three-page message, the president made the case that for a number of years the British government had been guilty of “a series of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation . . . British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it; not in the exercise of a belligerent right founded on the law of nations against an enemy, but of a municipal prerogative over British subjects,” Madison charged. “We behold our vessels, freighted with the products of our soil and industry, or returning with the honest proceeds of them, wrested from their lawful destinations, confiscated by prize-courts, no longer the organs of public law, but the instrument of arbitrary edicts,” the president continued, widening his case from impressment to the effects of the British blockade on American shippers.
Although most of Madison’s message dealt with Britain’s alleged wrongdoings on the sea, one paragraph charged that the British were instigating native hostility toward the United States on America’s inland frontier: “Our attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages on one of our extensive frontiers: a warfare which is known to spare neither sex nor age, and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity. It is difficult to account for the activity
and combinations which have for some time been developing themselves among tribes in the constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons, without connecting their hostility with that influence . . . We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States; on the side of the United States, a state of peace towards Great Britain,” concluded Madison.
Having made his case for war, the president passed the matter to Congress to decide whether the U.S. would “continue passive under these progressive usurpations, and these accumulating wrongs; or, opposing force to force in defence of their natural rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands of the Almighty Disposer of events . . .”1
Significantly, Madison closed his message to Congress with a warning to France. “I proceed to remark,” noted the president, “that the communications last made to Congress on the subject of our relations with France, will have shown, that since the revocation of her decrees as they violated the neutral rights of the United States, her government has authorized illegal captures, by its privateers and public ships, and that other outrages have been practiced on our vessels and our citizens. . . . I abstain at this time from recommending to the consideration of Congress definitive measures with respect to that nation, in the expectation, that the result of unclosed discussions between our minister plenipotentiary at Paris and the French government, will speedily enable Congress to decide, with greater advantage, on the course due to the rights, the interests and the honour of our country.”2 Madison delivered his war message to an “executive session” of Congress that was closed to the public and, therefore, to the feedback of public opinion.