Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (20 page)

The army arrives on July 5, after thirty-five days of struggle through Ohio’s swampy wilderness. The soldiers find a primitive settlement of twelve hundred straggling on the outskirts of a log fort. Like their neighbours on both sides of the river, most of the people are French speaking, descendants of families that settled the land a century before and whose strip farms with their narrow river frontage betray their Québécois background. In Hull’s view they are “miserable farmers,” being descended from voyageurs, traders, soldiers, and artisans—people with no agricultural tradition. They raise apples for cider and gigantic pears for pickling but pay little attention to other forms of agriculture, depending principally on hunting, fishing, and trading with the Indians. In short, they cannot provision his troops—and this is Hull’s dilemma: his supply line is two hundred miles long, stretching south along the makeshift trace his men have hacked out of the forests. To secure his position, Hull must have two months’ provisions. In Chillicothe, the capital, Ohio’s energetic governor, Return Meigs, receives the General’s plea, raises a company of ninety-five citizen volunteers, and sends them north through Urbana as escort for a brigade of pack horses, loaded with flour and provisions, and a drove of beef cattle. But to reach Hull, this supply train must eventually follow the road that hugs the southwestern shore of Lake Erie and the Detroit River. That will be dangerous because the British control the water.

Hull’s more immediate concern is the fate of the baggage captured aboard the
Cuyahoga
. Have the British actually rifled his personal possessions, discovered his official correspondence? He pens
a note to Lieutenant-Colonel St. George, the commander at Fort Amherstburg. Dripping with politeness and studiedly casual, it reads more like an interoffice memorandum than a communication between enemies:

Sir,

Since the arrival of my army at this Encampment … I have been informed that a number of discharges of Artillery and of small arms have been made by some of the Militia of the Territory, from this Shore into Sandwich.

I regret to have received such information, the proceeding was [un]authorized by me. I am not disposed to make War on Private Property, or to authorise a wanton attack upon unoffending individuals, I would be happy to learn whether you consider private Property a proper objective of seizure and detention, I allude to the Baggage of Officers particularly.…

St. George, in his reply to Hull, outdoes the General in verbal niceties:

Sir,

I am honoured with your letter of this days date; I perfectly coincide with you in opinion respecting private property, and any wanton attack upon unoffending individuals, and am happy to find, what I was certain would be the case, that the aggression in question was unauthorized by you.

In respect to the property of officers not on board a vessel at the time of capture I must be judged by the customs of war in like cases, in justice to the captors, and shall always be ready to meet your wishes … when I receive orders … from my government.…

Which, translated, simply means: go to hell.

The bearer of Hull’s letter, under a flag of truce, is Colonel Cass, whose instructions are to spy out the situation at the British fort. Cass takes a good look, reports that rumour has exaggerated the
garrison’s strength and also the number of Indians. He believes, and will continue to believe, that Fort Amherstburg can be easily taken.

In spite of the suavity of his correspondence, Thomas Bligh St. George is a badly rattled commander. He is an old campaigner, with forty years of service in the British Army, much of it spent in active warfare on the Mediterranean. But he has been a staff officer for the past decade and clearly has difficulty coping with the present crisis. He commands a lightly garrisoned fort, in need of repair and reinforcement. Across the river an army of two thousand sits poised for invasion. Scrambling about in a fever of preparation he is “so harassed for these five days and nights, I can scarcely write.” Brock, who receives this communication, is dismayed to discover that Lieutenant-Colonel St. George has let three days slip by before bothering to inform him that Hull’s force has reached Detroit.

Fort Amherstburg is in chaos. Indians are coming and going, eating up the supplies; no one can guess their strength from day to day. The same is true of the militia: St. George has no real idea of how many men he commands or whether he has the resources to supply them. The accounts are in disarray, the returns non-existent. He has not enough officers to organize the militia—many of whom are leaving for home or attempting to leave—or enough arms to supply them. Nor does he know how he can pay them.

The little village of Sandwich lies directly across the river from Detroit, upriver from Amherstburg. This, St. George knows, will be Hull’s invasion point. He stations some militia units at Sandwich but has little hope that they will be effective. To “encourage” them, in St. George’s euphemism, he sends along a detachment of regulars. To supply the wants of his confused and amateur army, St. George is obliged to make use of everything that falls in his way. This includes a brigade of eleven bateaux loaded with supplies that the North West Company has dispatched from Montreal to its post at Fort William at the lakehead. St. George seizes the supplies, impresses the seventy voyageurs.

On the docks and in the streets the Indians are engaged in war dances, leaping and capering before the doors of the inhabitants,
who give them presents of whiskey. “I have seen the great Tecumseh,” William Beall, still captive aboard the
Thames
, writes in his diary. “He is a very plane man, rather above middle-size, stout built, a noble set of features and an admirable eye. He is always accompanied by Six great chiefs, who never go before him. The women and men all fear that in the event of Genl. Hull’s crossing and proving successfull, that the Indians being naturally treacherous will turn against them to murder and destroy them.”

Tecumseh’s followers have shadowed Hull’s army all the way through Michigan Territory, warned by their leader to take no overt action until war is declared and he can bring his federation into alliance with Great Britain. Hull has done his best to neutralize him, sending messengers to a council at Fort Wayne, promising protection and friendship if the Indians stay out of the white man’s war.

“Neutral indeed!” cries Tecumseh to the assembled tribes. “Who will protect you while the Long Knives are fighting the British and are away from you? Who will protect you from the attack of your ancient enemies, the western tribes, who may become allies of the British?”

Will a policy of neutrality lead to a restoration of the Indian lands, Tecumseh asks, and as he speaks, takes the emissary’s peace pipe and breaks it between his fingers. And later:

“Here is a chance presented to us—yes, a chance such as will never occur again—for us Indians of North America to form ourselves into one great combination and cast our lot with the British in this war.…”

Tecumseh leaves Fort Wayne with a large party of Shawnee, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Delaware to meet Matthew Elliott at Amherstburg. Hull sends another emissary, urges another council at Brownstown, the Wyandot village directly opposite the British fort. Tecumseh refuses:

“I have taken sides with the King, my father, and I will suffer my bones to bleach upon this shore before I will recross that stream to join in any council of neutrality.”

Like the Americans, the Wyandot are split into camps of hawks and doves. They are important to Tecumseh’s cause because they are
the senior tribe, looked up to by all the others. They are Huron, the remnants of the mighty nation destroyed during the French regime. At a great council held on the parade ground at Fort Amherstburg on July 7, one chief, Roundhead, supports Tecumseh. Another, Walk-in-the-Water, advocates neutrality and crosses back into U.S. territory. But Tecumseh has no intention of letting the Wyandot straddle the fence.

Upriver at Detroit, Hull prepares to invade Canada by landing his army at Sandwich. He attempts to move on July 10 but, to his dismay, discovers that hundreds of militiamen, urged on in some cases by their officers, decline to cross the river. They have not committed themselves to fight on foreign soil.

The next day Hull tries again. Two militia companies refuse to enter the boats. One finally gives in to persuasion; the other stands firm. When Hull demands a list of those who refuse to go, the company commander, a Captain Rupes, hands over the names of his entire command. Hull’s adjutant harangues the men. Words like “coward” and “traitor” are thrown at them to no avail. Again the crossing is aborted.

The war has yet to develop beyond the comic opera stage. Across the river at Sandwich an equally reluctant body of citizen soldiers—the militia of Kent and Essex counties, only recently called to service—sits and waits. These young farmers have had little if any training, militia service being mainly an excuse for social carousing. They are not eager to fight, especially in midsummer with the winter wheat ripening in the fields. Patriotism has no meaning for most of them; that is the exclusive property of the Loyalists. The majority are passively pro-American, having moved up from New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Isolated on the scattered farms and absorbed in the wearisome if profitable task of clearing the land and working the soil, they have as yet no sense of a larger community. Few have ever seen a newspaper; they learn of the war tardily, through handbills. Whether or not Upper Canada becomes another American state they do not really care.

Lieutenant-Colonel St. George, who is convinced that these
unwilling soldiers—most are not even uniformed—will flee to their homes at the first shot, decides to get them out of the way before the attack is launched. Otherwise, their certain rout would throw his entire force into a state of confusion. The only way he can prevent them from melting away to their farms is to march the lot back to the fort and make the most of them; perhaps their backs can be stiffened by the example of the regulars. Even that is doubtful: from his vantage point in the town of Amherstburg William Beall discovers that many of these former Americans express a desire to join Hull as soon as he crosses into Canada.

At last, on July 12, a bright and lovely Sunday, Hull resolves to make the crossing, even though two hundred of his men continue to stand on their constitutional rights. He fears further mutinies if he keeps his troops inactive, and it is also his fancy that the Canadian settlers will feel themselves liberated from the British yoke once he lands and that they and the Indians will stay out of the war.

Hull’s landing is unopposed. Colonel Cass is the first to leap from the lead boat, and thus the first American to set foot on Canadian soil. He immediately unfurls the Stars and Stripes while Hull’s staff searches about for a headquarters.

Sandwich is a placid little garden village, almost every house set in a small orchard where peaches, grapes, and apples flourish. The conquering general seizes the most imposing residence—a new brick home, built in the Georgian style the year before, its interior still unfinished, belonging to Lieutenant-Colonel François Bâby, a member of a distinguished pioneer fur-trading family. The Bâbys and the Hulls have been on intimate terms, but when James Bâby, a brother and also a militia colonel, protests (his own home not far away is quickly pillaged), all Hull can say is that
circumstances are changed now
, a phrase which Lieutenant-Colonel Bâby will throw back at him a month later.

Hull has scarcely landed when he insists on issuing a proclamation intended to disperse the militia and cow the inhabitants, many of whom are either terrified of his troops or secretly disposed to his cause. Most have fled, but those who remain welcome the
invaders as friends, waving white handkerchiefs and flags from the windows and crying out such phrases as “We like the Americans.” At Amherstburg, Beall encounters similar sentiments and confides to his journal that many solicit secret interviews with him, and when these are refused “occasionally and slily say ‘Success to the Americans and General Hull’, ‘Let us alone and we will take Malden [Amherstburg] ourselves’, et cetera, and many expressions showing their warmth for us and the Americans and their detestation of the British.”

Yet Hull cannot resist issuing a bombastic proclamation that seems designed to set the Canadians on edge. He has it printed, rather imperfectly, in Detroit, borrowing the press of a Roman Catholic priest. It is soon the talk of the countryside:

A PROCLAMATION

INHABITANTS OF CANADA
! After thirty years of Peace and prosperity, the United States have been driven to Arms. The injuries and aggressions, the insults and indignities of Great Britain have once more left them no alternative but manly resistance or unconditional submission. The army under my Command has invaded your Country and the standard of the United States waves on the territory of Canada. To the peaceful, unoffending inhabitant, It brings neither danger nor difficulty I come to
find
enemies not to
make
them, I come to
protect
you not to
injure
you.

Separated by an immense ocean and an extensive Wilderness from Great Britain you have no participation in her counsels no interest in her conduct. You have felt her Tyranny, you have seen her injustice, but I do not ask
you
to avenge the one or to redress the other. The United States are sufficiently powerful to afford you every security consistent with their rights & your expectations. I tender you the invaluable blessings of Civil, Political, & Religious Liberty, and their necessary result, individual, and general, prosperity: That liberty which gave decision to our counsels and energy to our conduct in our struggle for INDEPENDENCE
and which conducted us safely and triumphantly thro’ the stormy period of the Revolution.…