The Invasion of Canada

by Pierre Berton

  On November 25, Smyth issues orders for the entire army to be ready to march “at a moment’s warning.” Two days later he musters forty-five hundred men at Black Rock for the impending invasion.

  “Tell the brave men under your command not to be impatient,” he writes to Porter, who is in charge of the New York volunteers. “See what harm impatience did at Queenston. Let them be firm, and they will succeed.”

  At three on the morning of the twenty-eighth, Smyth sends an advance force of some four hundred men across the river to destroy the bridge at Frenchman’s Creek (thus cutting British communications between Fort Erie and Chippawa) and to silence the battery upstream. The British are waiting. Boats are lost, destroyed, driven off. In the darkness there is confusion on both sides, with men mistaking enemies for friends and friends for enemies. In spite of this the Americans seize the battery and spike its guns while a second force reaches the bridge, only to discover that they have left their axes in the boats and cannot destroy it before the British counterattack. In the end some of the advance party are captured for lack of boats in which to escape. The remainder cross to the safety of the American camp with little accomplished.

  An incredible spectacle greets the British next morning. Lining their own shore in increasing numbers, they watch the American attempt at embarkation as if it were a sideshow. Smyth himself does not appear but leaves the arrangements to his subordinates. The operation moves so ponderously that the afternoon shadows are lengthening before all the troops are in the boats. Some have been forced to sit in their craft for hours, shivering in the late November weather – a light snow is falling and the river is running with ice.

  The only logical explanation for an action that defies logic is that Smyth is attempting to terrify the British into surrendering through what General Sheaffe calls “an ostentatious display” of his force. If so, it does not work. When Smyth sends a message across to Lieutenant-Colonel Cecil Bisshopp, urging him to surrender to “spare the effusion of blood,” Bisshopp curtly declines.

  Late in the afternoon, with the entire force prepared at last to cross the river, the General finally makes an official appearance and issues an amazing order. “Disembark and dine!” he cries. At this point the troops are on the edge of rebellion. Several, reduced to impotent fury, pointedly break their muskets.

  Smyth returns to his paper war:

  Tomorrow at 8 o’clock, all the corps of Army will be at the Navy yards, ready to embark. Before 9 the embarkation will take place. The General will be on board. Neither rain, snow, or frost will prevent the embarkation.

  It will be made with more order and silence than yesterday; boats will be alloted to the brave volunteers.…

  The cavalry will scour the fields from Black Rock to the bridge & suffer no idle spectators.

  While embarking the music will play martial airs. Yankee Doodle will be the signal to get underway.…

  When we pull for the opposite shore, every exertion will be made. The landing will be effected in despite of cannon, The whole army has seen that cannon is to be little dreaded.

  The information brought by Captain Gibson assures us of victory.…

  Smyth’s council of officers is aghast. Surely, with the British alerted, the General does not propose a daylight frontal assault from the identical embarkation point on a strongly fortified position! But Smyth declines to change his plans.

  Next morning, however, the troops, who arrive at the navy yard promptly at eight, are sent into the nearby woods to build fires and keep warm. Smyth’s staff has managed overnight to knock some sense into their commander. The departure time is changed to three the following morning. The troops will not cross directly but will slip quietly down the river, hoping to avoid the enemy cannon, and will land above Chippawa, attack its garrison and, if successful, march through Queenston to Fort George.

  In the dark hours of the following morning, the wet and exhausted men are once more herded down to the boats. As before, the embarkation proceeds in fits and starts; when dawn arrives the boats are still not fully loaded. Now Smyth discovers that instead of three thousand men he has fewer than fifteen hundred in the boats, many of these so ill they cannot stand a day’s march. The Pennsylvania volunteers have not even arrived on the ground; they are, it develops, perfectly prepared to fight on foreign soil but not under General Smyth. Other troops, lingering on the shore, sullenly refuse to embark.

  Out in midstream, about a quarter of a mile from shore, Peter B. Porter has been waiting impatiently in a scout boat to lead the flotilla downriver to the invasion point. Hours pass. On the shore, the confusion grows. In his quarters, General Smyth is holding a council with his regular officers to which the militia commanders have not been invited. At last a message is sent out to Porter: the troops are to disembark. The invasion of Canada is to be abandoned for the present. Smyth does not intend to stir until he has three thousand men fit for action. The regulars will go into winter quarters; the volunteers are dismissed to their homes.

  This intelligence provokes a scene of the wildest fury. Officers break their swords in rage; ordinary soldiers batter their muskets to pieces against tree trunks. The mass of the militia runs amok, firing off their weapons in all directions, some shouting aloud in frustration, others cheering in delight. Some of the volunteers offer to fight under Porter, promising to capture Fort Erie if Smyth will give them four cannon. The embattled commander turns the request aside.

  Roused to a passion, the troops try to murder their general. Musket balls whiz through his tent, almost killing an aide who has his belt and cap shot off. Smyth doubles his guard, moves his headquarters repeatedly to protect his life.

  Porter is outraged by Smyth’s posturing. Some of the other officers are calling the General a traitor. Porter merely attacks him as a coward but puts that word into the public record in the Buffalo Gazette (which is forced, briefly, to cease publication, so great are the disturbances). A duel follows on Grand Island; shots are exchanged; both men’s marksmanship is lamentable; unmarked, they shake hands, but the bitterness continues.

  Smyth is the object of intense execration. Governor Tompkins’s censure is blunt: “Believing that there was some courage and virtue left in the world, I did not, indeed could not, anticipate such a scene of gasconading and of subsequent imbecility and folly as Genl. Smith [sic] has exhibited. To compare the events of the recent campaign with those of the days of the Revolution, is almost enough to convince one, that the race of brave men and able commanders will before many years become extinct.”

  Smyth’s career is finished. With his life in danger from both his officers and his men, he slips away to his home in Virginia where, within three months, the army drops him from its rolls.

  Dearborn is aghast. He has sent four thousand troops to Niagara: how is it that not much more than a thousand were in a condition to cross the river? He himself has kept such a low profile that the firestorm of public disgust and fury with the losses of Hull, Van Rensselaer, and Smyth sweeps past him. Yet as the senior commander he is as culpable as any, and so is his fellow physician, the myopic secretary of war Dr. Eustis.

  At Lake Champlain Dearborn has the largest force of all under arms, including seven regular army regiments with supporting artillery and dragoons. But these have been infected by the same virus as the others. Dearborn’s overall strategy is to attack Montreal simultaneously with Smyth’s invasion on the Niagara. On November 8, he informs Eustis that he is about to join the army under General Bloomfield at Plattsburg to march on Lower Canada. An attack of rheumatism delays him. On November 19, when he finally arrives, he finds Bloomfield too ill to lead his troops. Illness, indeed, has all but incapacitated his army, a third of which is unfit for duty. An epidemic of measles has raged through the camps. A neglect of proper sanitary measures has reduced one regiment from nine hundred to two hundred able-bodied men. Typhus, accompanied by pneumonia, has killed two hundred at Burlington. Fifteen per cent of Dearborn’s entire force has died from o
ne of these several afflictions.

  Dearborn takes command of his depleted invasion force. Two separate and independent advance columns, numbering about 650 men, are dispatched north to surprise the British outposts at the border. They advance by different roads, run into one another in the dark, each mistaking the other for the enemy. A brisk skirmish follows until daylight, when, exhausted and dispirited by their error, they retreat with twenty casualties, a number that is shortly augmented by forty deaths from disease contracted during the expedition. Meanwhile Dearborn manages to get three thousand militia men as far as Rouse’s Point at the northern end of Lake Champlain. When two-thirds refuse to cross the border, Dearborn gives up, slinks back to Plattsburg, and returns to Albany as quietly as possible. The news of Smyth’s humiliation provides the final blow. Dearborn offers to surrender his command “to any gentleman whose talents and popularity will command the confidence of the Government and the country.” But it will be another six months before his government, and a new and more aggressive secretary of war, get around to relieving him.

  8

  FRENCHTOWN

  Massacre at the River Raisin

  The Battle’s o’er, the din is past!

  Night’s mantle on the field is cast,

  The moon with Sad and pensive beam

  Hangs sorrowing o’er the bloody Stream …

  Oh! Pitying Moon! Withdraw thy light

  And leave the world in murkiest night!

  For I have seen too much of Death

  Too much of this dark fatal heath …

  – From “A Night View of the Battle of the Raisin,

  January 22nd, 1813” (written on the field by

  Ensign William O. Butler).

  GEORGETOWN, KENTUCKY, August 16, 1812. Henry Clay is addressing two thousand eager Kentucky militiamen who have volunteered to march into Canada under the banner of William Henry Harrison to reinforce Hull’s Army of the Northwest. The dark eyes flash, the sonorous voice rolls over the raw troops as he exhorts them to victory. More than most Americans, Clay is telling them, they have a twofold responsibility – to uphold the honour of their state as well as that of their country:

  “Kentuckians are famed for their bravery – you have the double character of Americans and Kentuckians to support!”

  This is more than posturing. Kentucky is a world unto itself, as different from Maine and New York as Scotland from Spain. No frustrated general will need to prod the Kentuckians across the Canadian border; they will, if necessary, swim the Detroit River to get at the British. When, the previous May, the Governor called for volunteers to fill Kentucky’s quota of fifty-five hundred men, he found he had too many on his hands. Clay at the time wrote to the Secretary of State that he was almost alarmed at the enthusiasm displayed by his people.

  Now, on the very day of Hull’s defeat, Clay fires up the troops, who confidently believe that the American forces are already half-way across Canada. And why not? Kentucky has been told only what it wants to hear. The newspaper stories from the frontier have been highly optimistic. Editors and orators have bolstered the state’s heroic image of itself. In these exhortations can be heard echoes of the Revolution. “Rise in the majesty of freedom,” the Governor, Charles Scott, has pleaded; “regard as enemies the enemies of your country. Remember the Spirit of ’76.”

  The troops who are to march off through the wilderness of Michigan and into Canada expect the briefest of wars – a few weeks of adventure, a few moments of glory (swords glistening, bugles calling, drums beating, opponents fleeing), then home to the family farm with the plaudits of the nation and the cheers of their neighbours ringing in their ears.

  Most have signed on for six months only, convinced that the war cannot last even that long. On this warm August day, standing in ragged, undisciplined lines, basking in Clay’s oratory, they do not contemplate November. They wear light shoes and open shirts of linen and cotton: no coats, no blankets. Not one in twenty is prepared for winter. The war department has lists of goods needed for the campaign, but no one has paid much attention to that The army is without a commissariat; private contractors, whose desire for profit often outweighs their patriotism, have been hired to handle all supplies. As for the Congress, it has not been able to screw up enough courage to adopt new taxes to finance the war; the unpopular resolution has been postponed, and Clay and his Hawks, eager to get on with the fighting, have gone along with the delay without a whimper.

  Every able-bodied man in Kentucky, it seems, wants to fight. Six congressmen don uniforms. One, Samuel Hopkins, becomes a major-general; two are happy to serve as privates. Clay remains behind to fight the war in Congress, but his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Hart, goes as a captain, and so does John Allen, the second most eminent lawyer in the state. Thomas Smith, editor of the Kentucky Gazette, inflamed by the optimistic reports in his own newspaper, quits his desk and signs up to fight the British and the Indians. Dr. John M. Scott, a militia colonel and an old campaigner, insists on his right to command a regiment even though he is desperately ill; his friends expect (rightly) that he will not return alive. By the end of the year there will be more than eleven thousand Kentuckians in the army.

  Most of these will be in the volunteer forces, for the people of Kentucky are confident that the war will be fought to a speedy conclusion by citizen soldiers enrolled for a single, decisive campaign. Regulars are sneered at as hired mercenaries who cannot compete for valour or initiative with a volunteer who has a direct interest in the outcome of the struggle.

  The idea of individual initiative is deeply ingrained in the Kentucky character. They are a hardy, adventurous people, confident to the point of ebullience, optimistic to the point of naïveté–romantic, touchy, proud, often cruel. Not for them the effete pastimes of settled New England. Their main entertainments are shooting, fighting, drinking, duelling, horse racing. Every Kentucky boy is raised with a rifle. An old state law provides that every white male over sixteen must kill a certain number of crows and squirrels each year. Instead of raffles, Kentuckians hold shooting contests to pick winners. The very word “Kentuck” can cause a shiver of fear in the Mississippi River towns, where their reputation is more terrifying than that of the Indians. As scrappers they are as fearless as they are ferocious, gouging, biting, kicking, scratching. Kentuckians like to boast that they are “half horse and half alligator tipped with snapping turtle.” A future congressman, Michael Taul, is elected captain of his militia company not because he has any military training – he has none – but because he has beaten his opponent, William Jones, in a particularly vicious encounter – a “hard fight,” in Taul’s words, “fist and skull, biting and gouging, etc.”

  Kentucky lies on the old Indian frontier, and though its Indian wars are history, bloody memories remain. Youths are raised on tales of British and Indian raiders killing, scalping, and ravaging during the Revolution. Tippecanoe has revived a legacy of fear and hatred. The reports of British weapons found at Prophet’s Town confirm the people of the state in their belief that John Bull is again behind the Indian troubles.

  Tippecanoe is seen as the real beginning of the war. “War we now have,” the Kentucky Gazette exulted when news of the battle reached Lexington. The shedding of Kentucky blood on the banks of the Wabash fuelled the latent desire for revenge, so that when war was declared Kentucky indulged in a delirium of celebration. Towns were illuminated, cannon and muskets discharged in the villages. And in the larger towns, Senator John Pope, the one Kentucky member of the Twelfth Congress to vote against the war, was hanged in effigy.

  On the Fourth of July, the state wallowed in patriotic oratory. At a public celebration in Lexington no fewer than eighteen toasts were drunk, the celebrants raising their glasses to “Our volunteers – Ready to avenge the wrongs and vindicate the right of their country – the spirit of Montgomery will lead them to victory on the Plains of Abraham.” Little wonder that a Boston merchant travelling through Kentucky a little later described its people as �
��the most patriotic … I have ever seen or heard of.”

  This yeasty nationalism springs out of Kentucky’s burgeoning economy. It has become the most populous state west of the Alleghenies. In two decades its population has leaped from 73,000 to more than 406,000. Log cabins have given way to handsome brick houses. Frontier outposts have become cities. But all this prosperity depends on a sea-going trade – a trade now threatened by Great Britain’s maritime strictures. The opposite side of the coin of nationalism is a consuming hatred of Great Britain. Henry Clay is its voice.

  What Clay wants, Clay is determined to get; and Henry Clay wants William Henry Harrison to command the army going north to subdue the Indians and to reinforce General Hull at Detroit. The Hero of Tippecanoe is by all odds the most popular military leader in the state. Every Kentuckian, it seems, wants to serve under him; but the Secretary of War has long since chosen James Winchester of Tennessee to take command. Now an active campaign, spearheaded by Clay and orchestrated with all the cunning of a political coup d’état, is mounted to force the government’s hand and replace Winchester with Harrison. In this enterprise, Clay has Harrison’s willing cooperation. The Hero of Tippecanoe himself tours the state, rousing martial feeling, fuelling the clamour for his appointment.