Tecumseh and Brock (20 page)

The day after the Union Jack was raised, the British celebrated their triumph by firing a salute in front of Fort Detroit. The gun they used to mark their victory was a brass 6-pounder with a brass plaque on it. The plaque read “16 October 1777.” The gun had been captured from British General John Burgoyne's defeated army following the Battle of Saratoga during the American War of Independence. Firing a return salute from the lake were the guns of the British ship
Queen Charlotte
.

Brock and Tecumseh feted their common victory with gestures of praise toward one another. The Shawnee chief told Brock that the Americans had been denying the valour of British generals, but what he had seen at this battle had removed any doubts on that score. Brock made a gift of a pair of pistols to Tecumseh and took the silk sash from his own uniform and placed it across Tecumseh's shoulders. Tecumseh presented a decorative scarf to the general. The exchange was spontaneous. The two men had known each other so briefly and had achieved so much together in that short time.
11
Tecumseh's warriors, following the American surrender, considered the lives of the prisoners to be theirs to protect. No massacres or scalpings ensued.

Hull's officers were in a bitter mood during the traditional surrender ceremony. The 47th U.S. Regiment and the Ohio volunteers turned over 1,900 muskets, and 1,150 weapons were surrendered by members of the Michigan militia and other units. Among the cache of weapons the British acquired were thirty-nine brass and iron cannon of various kinds, four hundred rounds of 24-pound shot, and one hundred thousand cartridges.
12
The 1,606 members of the Ohio militia who laid down their weapons were paroled and allowed to return to their homes. Their names were duly placed on the roll of prisoners, meaning that they could not serve in the military again until they had been formally exchanged for British prisoners. British soldiers escorted them on the first leg of their journey home.
13
General Brock also paroled the members of the Michigan militia.
14

Back in York at the end of August 1812, Brock reflected on his encounter with Tecumseh and on the cause for which the Shawnee chief was fighting. In a letter to the Earl of Liverpool written on August 29, 1812, he noted, “Among the Indians whom I found at Amherstburg . . . I found some extraordinary characters . . . He who attracted most my attention was a Shawnee Chief, Tecumseh, brother to the Prophet, who for the last two years has carried on (contrary to our remonstrances) an active warfare against the United States. A more sagacious or a more gallant warrior does not, I believe, exist. He was the admiration of everyone who conversed with him. From a life of dissipation he is not only become in every respect abstemious but has likewise prevailed on all his Nation, and many other Tribes, to follow his example.”

On the war aims of Tecumseh and his warriors, Brock wrote, “They appear determined to continue the contest until they obtain the Ohio for a boundary. The United States Government is accused, and I believe justly, of having corrupted a few dissolute characters, whom they pretend to consider as Chiefs, and with whom they contracted engagements, and concluded Treaties, which they have been attempting to impose on the whole Indian Race. Their determined opposition to such fictitious and ruinous pretentions which if admitted would soon oblige the Indians to remove beyond the Mississippi is the true ground of their enmity against the Americans.”
15

Brock's reference to Tecumseh's earlier “life of dissipation” is a theme picked up by others who have written about the Shawnee chief. Significantly, it was a view not shared by Stephen Ruddell. In his account of Tecumseh's younger years, Ruddell wrote, “He rarely ever drank ardent spirits to excess — when inebriated he was widely different from other Indians — perfectly good humoured and free from those savage ideas which distinguished his companions.”
16

During the months prior to the assault on Fort Detroit and during the brief time he spent with Tecumseh, Brock came to comprehend the politics and goals of the native confederacy. He understood they had war aims that were quite distinct from those of the British government, and he geared his military strategy to complement the goals of Britain's native allies, calculating that it was the only way to prevail in the southwestern corner of the province.

While the victors at Detroit savoured their hour of glory, the losers suffered a different fate. General Hull and the 582 U.S. regulars who had been taken prisoner began their journey by boat to Fort Erie and then to Kingston, and from there to Montreal on foot. The arrival of the American captives in Montreal generated a carnival-like atmosphere in the city. A Montreal journalist who dubbed the spectacle “an exhibition equally novel and interesting” went on to note that “it unfortunately proved rather late in the evening for the vast concourse of spectators assembled to that gratification they so anxiously looked for. This inconvenience was, however, in great measure remedied by the illuminations of the streets through which the lines of march passed.”

The Americans were the centrepiece of the parade, which was held to cheer the inhabitants. A military band and British soldiers led the procession. Next came General Hull, who rode in a carriage alongside a British captain. Four carriages carrying wounded American officers followed. On foot came American officers and then non-commissioned officers and finally private soldiers. The Montreal journalist told readers, “The general appears to be about sixty years of age, and is a good looking man . . . He is communicative, and seems to bear his misfortunes with a degree of philosophical resignation that but few men in similar circumstances are gifted with.”
17
General Hull was taken to the residence of General Prevost, the officers were housed in a hotel, and the soldiers had to make do with a British barracks.

News of the catastrophe at Detroit did not reach President James Madison for a couple of weeks. By then the president, who hated Washington's intolerable summer weather, had left town with his wife, Dolley, to spend some time at his estate in Montpelier, Virginia, in the cooler clime of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They had arrived at Dumfries Tavern, where a messenger raced to deliver the terrible news. Madison read the missive from Eustis, which told him that Hull had surrendered Fort Detroit and its 2,500 men without firing a shot.

The following morning, he returned to the capital, where he called the second full cabinet meeting of his presidency. The fall of Detroit stiffened the spines of the members of the administration. The president posed two questions to the cabinet: First, should the United States undertake a swift recapture of Detroit? And a second, longer-term, strategic question: did the U.S. need to establish a viable naval force on the Great Lakes? The cabinet answered both questions in the affirmative.

Despite Madison's injunction to the members of his administration that he did not want General Hull to be publicly pilloried until all the facts were known, the nation's rush to judgement was already well underway. The president directed Richard Rush, his comptroller, to write a piece about the debacle at Detroit for the
National Intelligencer
. However, Rush failed to adhere to Madison's instructions to be even-handed, saying of Hull, “The nation had been deceived by a gasconading booby.”

Even Dolley Madison had trouble sticking to the president's line. “Do you not tremble with resentment at the treacherous act?” she wrote of Hull's surrender to a friend. She did, however, add, “We must not judge the man until we are in possession of his reasons.”
18

The surrender of Detroit would haunt the disgraced General Hull for the rest of his life. On January 17, 1814, in Albany, New York, he had his day in court. At the military tribunal, where he faced a court martial, Hull pleaded not guilty to the charge of treason. Hull's officers testified that the general had spoken in a trembling voice during the brief British siege of Fort Detroit. They told the court of Hull's dishevelled demeanour as tobacco-stained spittle dripped from his mouth.

While the twelve-member court did not find Hull's behaviour treasonous, its members did find him guilty of neglect of duty and conduct unbecoming an officer. Two-thirds of the judges concluded that he should be executed by firing squad. Three months later, President Madison reviewed the sentence and wrote that in view of Hull's contribution to the United States during the American Revolution, “the sentence of the court is approved, and the execution of it remitted.” Hull was allowed to return home to Massachusetts.
19

Hull spent his latter years in an effort to recover his lost reputation. He wrote two books,
Detroit: Defence of Brigadier General William Hull
and
Memoirs of the Campaign of the North Western Army of the United States, A.D. 1812
. The publication of the latter in 1824 convinced at least a part of the public to view him more favourably. In the spring of 1825, a dinner was held in his honour in Boston. In June of that year, the Marquis de Lafayette visited him and declared, “We both have suffered contumely and reproach; but our characters are vindicated; let us forgive our enemies and die in Christian love and peace with all mankind.” A kindly word from this hero of the American Revolution could only help the general's standing with his fellow countrymen. On November 29, 1825, Hull died at his home in Newton, Massachusetts.

The triumph of Tecumseh and Brock at Detroit threw the American invasion of Canada off stride. Conquering Canada would not be “a mere matter of marching,” as Thomas Jefferson had forecast. The twin victories at Detroit and at Queenston Heights a few months later were as important to the future independence of Canada as was the victory of the Americans against General Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War.
‡‡
At Detroit and later at Queenston Heights, the Americans discovered that wresting Canada from the grip of the British Empire would be no easy matter. It would take two more years of bitter fighting for that lesson to sink in. And indeed, many later episodes in the relationship of Canadians with their more powerful southern neighbour would show that the lesson was a hard one to learn. The path of American expansion, it turned out, would be to the west and the southwest, and not to the north, at least militarily. In later decades, the Americans would tear off a large portion of the territory of Mexico, not British North America.

What made Tecumseh and Brock such natural allies, not merely from a personal point of view, was their approach to combat. Both were inclined to fight offensive battles, to strike quickly, and to cede as little ground as possible to the enemy. Realizing that when the Americans mobilized to their full capacity they would outnumber the native warriors, British regulars, and Canadian militia, they counted on a war of movement, in which swift attacks would disrupt the enemy, endanger his lines of supply and communication, and prevent him from assembling his superior numbers on a field of battle where he could achieve a strategic victory. Brock's regular army, outfitted with cannon, was an ideal match for Tecumseh's warriors, who were much more akin to a guerilla force, relying on an unexcelled knowledge of the terrain and a capacity to strike swiftly at points of their choosing.

During the battle for Detroit, Tecumseh and Brock reinforced each other's strengths, marrying the speed and flexibility of the native force to the firepower and solidity of the British regulars. That potent combination proved lethal for the cumbersome Americans and their shaky commanders. The consequence was a victory that should not have been won.

It was on the evening of August 13 that Brock arrived at Fort Malden and met Tecumseh; three days later, the Union Jack flew over Fort Detroit. This was a moment when the fate of the continent hung in the balance. But now the brief triumph shared by Tecumseh and Brock was over. Each continued to fight the Americans, but never again together.

Chapter 11

Death of the General

W
ARRIORS WHO FALL
in battle appear in retrospect to have been journeying all their days to their appointed places of death. The Spartans led by King Leonidas who fell fighting the Persians are inexorably journeying to Thermopylae. No matter what part of Nelson's career we explore, he is always en route to Trafalgar on the deck of the HMS Victory. So it is with Brock and Queenston Heights. It can scarcely be doubted that Brock was likely to die on a battlefield. He could have died at Egmont-op-Zee in 1799, when a spent bullet struck the handkerchief he wore over his cravat. If Hull hadn't been so anxious to surrender at Detroit, it is not hard to imagine Brock leading a charge and being picked off there.

The story of Queenston Heights does not begin heroically with Brock, however. It begins in the weeks before the fall of Detroit, this time at the Niagara Frontier. Over the previous two decades, both the Americans and the British had regarded this frontier, along the gorge through which the Niagara River roared, as a crucial flashpoint in the event of a future war. In 1791, the British decided that this location at the foot of the Heights was a propitious place to locate a post. The village that consequently developed drew its name, Queenston, from the detachment of Queen's Rangers located there. On the Heights, the British embedded an 18-pounder and a mortar in an earthwork that faced in two directions at right angles.

In 1791, the capital of Upper Canada was located at Newark, at the northern end of the river where it emptied into Lake Ontario. (In 1796, the capital was moved to the more militarily defensible position of York.) Farther upstream from Newark was Fort George, the main British military base in the region. Directly across the river from Newark was Fort Niagara, the principal base of the United States.

The Americans were determined to avenge the disaster at Fort Detroit. From Monticello, his retirement home in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, the nation's most esteemed elder statesman, wrote a letter to President Madison warning that the Americans must move quickly to put things right. “I fear that Hull's surrender has been more than the mere loss of a year to us,” he wrote. “Besides bringing on us the whole mass of savage nations, who fear and not affection, had kept in quiet, there is a danger that in giving time to an enemy who can send reinforcements of regulars faster than we can raise them, they may strengthen Canada and Halifax beyond the assailment of our lax and divided powers.”
1

To lead the assault at Niagara, the U.S. Department of War had endorsed the selection of Stephen Van Rensselaer by New York Governor Daniel Tompkins prior to the disaster at Detroit. Although he held the rank of major general of volunteers, Van Rensselaer had no military experience. His was a political appointment, pure and simple. The New York governor reasoned that by appointing a distinguished Federalist and a member of the party that was out of power in the nation's capital, he could help heal the country's political divisions and encourage other Federalists to back the war effort. It was hoped that the major general would receive advice from his cousin, Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer, New York's adjutant general. The colonel had seen action in 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, where Tecumseh had fought in a losing cause.

The major general travelled to Ogdensburg, a post on the St. Lawrence River. Arriving on July 16, he found the position threatened by the presence across the river of two British warships, the
Duke of Gloucester
and the
Earl of Moira
. Van Rensselaer's first thought was to take offensive action, but of the four hundred militiamen assembled for the task, only sixty-three were fit for duty. The major general thought better of attacking the British, and on July 29 he and his men left Ogdensburg for the two-week journey to the Niagara River.

He set up his headquarters in Lewiston, located on the narrow, swift-flowing Niagara downstream from Niagara Falls. His task was to guard the crucial fifty-two-kilometre line from Fort Niagara in the north, on the shore of Lake Ontario, to Black Rock in the south, on the shore of Lake Erie.
2
British regulars, Canadian militia, and their native allies were posted opposite him on the Canadian bank of the Niagara River.

On his arrival, Major General Van Rensselaer found a rather a wretched force of troops — only 691 were fit for duty, out of a force of about 1,600 men — badly equipped and clamouring for pay. Many of them had no shoes. In the camp, there was not one heavy cannon, and no artillery men were available to fire the few small cannon on site. The medical department lacked equipment and supplies. Few tents were on hand. The mood among the militia men was surly and insubordinate; the grumpy soldiers were loath to follow orders.
3

While Van Rensselaer was under pressure from his superiors to mount an attack on the British forces at the earliest opportunity, Brock was en route from his triumph at Detroit. He sailed from Amherstburg on August 17 but, held up by contrary winds, he did not reach Fort Erie for six days. Many of Van Rensselaer's men actually saw Brock across the river, as well as the dispiriting spectacle of the U.S. prisoners from Detroit being marched past Queenston en route to Montreal.
4

A few days before Brock reached the Niagara Frontier, Major General Roger Hale Sheaffe, who was in command during his absence, negotiated an armistice with Van Rensselaer. The armistice initiative went back to Prevost's hope that an end to the war might be possible, since Britain had repealed the Orders in Council. On August 21, Sheaffe and Van Rensselaer agreed to “a cessation of all acts of hostility between the troops and vessels of all descriptions under our command, until we shall receive further orders; and the party who shall first receive orders for the renewal of hostilities, shall give four days' notice, computing twenty-four hours to each day, before any offensive operation shall take place.” They further agreed not to take advantage of the temporary armistice to bring forward men or supplies of ammunition.
5
Sheaffe did have the advantage of knowing about the British victory at Detroit a few days earlier, while his American counterpart was unaware of the disaster. But Van Rensselaer did manage to get the best of Sheaffe by ensuring that the U.S. forces could be supplied by water. During the hiatus in fighting, the Americans shipped heavy guns to Niagara from Oswego, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario.
6

Van Rensselaer received orders from General Dearborn, who commanded U.S. forces in the Northeast, to end the armistice. In light of these instructions, Van Rensselaer sent a letter to Brock on September 4, informing him that “having now received orders to terminate the armistice . . . I have the honour to transmit you this notice, that the armistice will be terminated at twelve o'clock, at noon, on Tuesday, the eighth day of September, inst.”
7
The U.S. commander was scrupulous in living up to the four days' notice embodied in the armistice agreement.

With the armistice over and the Americans committed to taking the offensive, Van Rensselaer received reinforcements. Troops from the 5th, 12th, 13th, and 14th U.S. Infantry Regiments and from the 2nd U.S. Artillery vastly increased the number of troops available to the Americans on the Niagara Frontier. By September 29, when a new senior officer reached the camp to share command with General Van Rensselaer, the United States had six thousand soldiers available. A regular army officer, Brigadier General Alexander Smyth, was under instructions from the War Department to place his own units at the disposal of Van Rensselaer. A forty-seven-year-old former lawyer, Smyth had opted for a military career in 1808, when he took command of a newly formed U.S. rifle regiment. Although lacking real military experience himself, the headstrong Smyth took an instant dislike to Van Rensselaer, whom he regarded as a political general. Smyth refused to attend the senior officers' meetings that Van Rensselaer held on a regular basis.
8
This forced Van Rensselaer to go ahead with his own planning, not knowing whether Smyth would coordinate an attack with his own forces when the time came.

In a book that recorded the bickering between the two senior officers, Solomon Van Rensselaer, the major general's cousin, charged Smyth with a general unwillingness to act in concert with his superior. “It is plain that his second in command [Smyth] had no cordial disposition to act in concert with him [Van Rensselaer]. And in . . . confirmation of the fact, is his letter reporting his arrival from Buffalo, dated 29th Sept.; in this, although an entire stranger to the country, he goes out of the way to obtrude his advice upon his commanding officer, touching movements and localities of which he knew nothing . . . All who were aware of his conduct, and many, among whom I was one, were of opinion that coercive measures should be resorted to, to bring him to a sense of duty.” If Solomon Van Rensselaer had any criticism of his cousin Stephen, it is that he chose not to bring matters to a head with Smyth.
9

Despite the lack of cohesion in the American camp, Van Rensselaer pushed ahead with his plans for an attack. His soldiers at Lewiston outnumbered Brock's, who were spread out along the opposite shore. Counting on that advantage, Van Rensselaer planned to seize a foothold in Upper Canada before the onset of winter. Hot on his back were his superiors, pressing for action. In a letter to Van Rensselaer on September 26, General Dearborn wrote, “The enemy may be induced to delay an attack until you will be able to meet him, and carry the war into Canada. At all events, we must calculate on possessing Upper Canada before winter sets in.”
10

Brock did not know when and where an American blow might fall. He deployed his main forces at Fort Erie, located at the southern junction of the Niagara River and Lake Erie, and at Chippawa, just upstream from the Falls. At Queenston, where a crossing would be more difficult, he positioned only the flank companies of the 49th Regiment and an equivalent number of militia.
11

At Lewiston, the Americans had about 2,300 regular soldiers and 4,000 militia. Brock's force numbered 1,200 British army regulars and 800 Canadian militia. In addition, he had on hand a force of five or six hundred warriors from the Six Nations settlement at Grand River (near present-day Brantford, Ontario), along with Mississaugas, Delawares, and Ojibwas. Brock deployed the native warriors as a fast-moving light force, which he dispatched across the Niagara River to Grand Island to scout the enemy and skirmish with them.
12

Prior to the war, Brock had regarded the Grand River warriors as a potentially important source of military strength to shore up border defences in the vulnerable Niagara sector. But his initial efforts to raise a force there had been met with a very cool response. When the war did break out, most of the Iroquois chose to remain neutral or to quietly back the Americans. Brock also had to cope with the fact that Iroquois from New York State were actively pressing the Six Nations on the Grand River to decline invitations to rally to the British side. In early June 1812, before the United States declaration of war, a council on the Grand River considered the options. Those who favoured neutrality left the meeting, allowing the pro-British Mohawks to prevail.
13
It was from the pro-British elements that Brock drew his present complement of warriors.

Van Rensselaer decided to move. On October 10, he ordered Smyth to march his force at once to Lewiston. He issued unequivocal instructions: “Immediately on the receipt of this you will please give orders to all the United States troops under your command to strike their tents, and march, with every possible despatch, to this place.”
14
The next day Van Rensselaer again wrote to Smyth, informing him that the failure of the latter's troops to arrive swiftly meant that an opportunity to attack the British batteries at Queenston had lapsed. “In the interim,” he wrote, “the United States troops under your command will remain at their encampment near Buffalo.”
15

To this Smyth replied a day later that “the badness of the weather and roads” had “harassed” the progress of his troops. They would now have to spend the next day washing themselves and their clothing, and 1,200 men should be prepared to march the day after that, on October 14.

Van Rensselaer decided to proceed with his plans despite his problems coordinating the American forces. Not only was he not working effectively with Smyth, he had failed to act in concert with U.S. commanders farther afield — Captain Isaac Chauncey on Lake Erie and William Henry Harrison, who had been named by Madison to replace the disgraced Hull as commander in the Northwest. It was the usual set of problems the Americans encountered early in the war. The commanders got on badly and seldom hesitated to express their feelings. Instead of a coordinated series of attacks on Upper Canada, bringing their superior numbers to bear, the Americans made do with a feint here and a feint there against a more agile opponent. Justifying his actions after the battle, Van Rensselaer wrote: “On the morning of the 12th, such was the pressure upon me from all quarters, that I became satisfied that my refusal to act might involve me in suspicion and the service in disgrace.”
16

For Van Rensselaer, the days leading up to his attack could not have been worse. Instead of a well-coordinated operation, the attack was to be made without all the available units being prepared to participate.

At 3:00 a.m. on October 13, three hundred U.S. regular soldiers boarded embarkation vessels and set out for the Canadian shore. Major General Van Rensselaer had put his cousin Solomon in command of these lead troops. To cover the U.S. crossing, two 18-pounders in Fort Grey, in the hills above Lewiston, and a mortar in the adjacent woods opened fire on the British positions across the river. Only thirteen vessels made the initial assault, which meant that too few troops were deployed to make the attack fully effective. Again, American disorganization was a factor. Thirty-nine vessels were available not far away at Fort Schlosser, but they were not commandeered to give the first assault more punch.