Tecumseh and Brock (28 page)

On March 27, 1814, Jackson launched his attack, which opened with an ineffectual artillery bombardment during which the Americans and their native allies managed to make it over the barricade and drive back their foes. While a few Red Sticks got away, the rest fought to the finish, unwilling to surrender when Jackson sent forth a flag of truce. In its latter phases, what happened at Horseshoe Bend was a slaughter. In one incident, a young soldier saw his officer rubbing his eyes. The officer told him that a Red Stick bullet had hit a tree and deflected bark into his eyes. “I want you to kill an Indian for me,” the officer said. The soldier saw an old Muscogee sitting on the ground, pounding corn, refusing to acknowledge what was happening around him. He took deliberate aim and shot the old man dead. Another soldier beat a small Muscogee boy to death with the butt of his weapon. When an officer reprimanded him, the soldier explained that the little boy would one day have grown up to become a Red Stick.
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In a letter he later wrote to his wife, Jackson conceded that “the carnage was dreadful.” When the Americans made their count of the fallen Red Sticks, they concluded that close to 900 had died — 557 lay dead on the ground and an estimated 300 had perished in the river.

Following the bloody victory, Jackson declared to his men that “the fiends of the Tallapoosa will no longer murder our women and children, or disturb the quiet of our borders.”
29
He then led his force south to the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, the heart of the Muscogee territory, and constructed Fort Jackson. Having fought his way through the Muscogee country, Jackson sent word to Muscogee settlements that they faced a stark choice: surrender or destruction. Many agreed to surrender. To complete his triumph, the general demanded that the Muscogees turn William Weatherford, Red Eagle, over to him. Red Eagle did not wait for others to come for him. He walked into Jackson's camp and declared, “My warriors can no longer hear my voice. Their bones are at Talledega, Tallushatchee, Emuckfaw and Tohopeka . . . I now ask for [peace] for my nation, and for myself.” With this, Red Eagle went about the task of talking the remaining Red Sticks into giving up.

Jackson's war against the Creeks was over. The general returned to Nashville to a hero's welcome. That summer, he came back to Fort Jackson to dictate the terms of the Treaty of Fort Jackson to the shattered Muscogee nation. The United States took more than half the territory of the Muscogees, twenty million acres of land.
30
The Muscogee chiefs were astonished by the harshness of the terms. Those who had remained allies of the Americans anticipated generosity in return. They had expected land to be taken from the areas in which the Red Sticks had been strongest, but they did not imagine that the Americans would
seize the heart of the territory of the whole Muscogee people.

The general's rejoinder was that the whole Muscogee nation had to pay the price for the Red Stick rebellion. He told the chiefs that the Muscogees should have taken Tecumseh prisoner when he came to draw them into his confederation. Now the Muscogees would suffer for the choice they had made.
31

Andrew Jackson built his career, which culminated in two terms as president of the United States, on his reputation as a warrior on behalf of the new West. He stood up for the settlers west of the Appalachians and defied the established ways and institutions of the East. He fought against the power of eastern banks and championed a financial system in which local banks would meet farmers' and industry's need for capital.

In the conventional version of American history, Jackson is recorded as a leader who broadened the concept of democracy. He is the author of so-called Jacksonian democracy. Every year, the Democratic Party of the United States holds its annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner, named in honour of two of its greatest champions, the first a slave owner, the second a man who won his spurs in the systematic destruction of an entire people. The Creek War was one more chapter in the Endless War, the war to which Tecumseh had dedicated his life.

Chapter 15

Out of the Furnace of War,
an Upper Canadian Identity

W
HEN THE WAR
OF 1812 ERUPTED
, political identities were fluid on both sides of the border. The Americans did have
their revolution behind them, as well as the founding documents of
the civil religion of American patriotism: the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution of 1787. Although the United States was on the way to a national identity, it was not there yet. The political divisions between Democratic-Republicans and Federalists were more than schisms between parties; they expressed dangerous regional chasms, most importantly that between New England and the rest of the country.

Unlike French Canada, with its firm and long-established identity, the settler communities in Upper Canada at the turn of the nineteenth century were fragmented. Some were Loyalist, some were American, some were British. A rainbow of loyalties was on offer. The war would change that.

For French Canadians, the threat from the south called up vivid memories of the invasions of the past, most recently the one undertaken by American Patriots in 1775, one year before the Declaration of Independence. They did not view the Americans as liberators but rather as descendants of those who had waged bloody struggles against them for nearly two centuries. Preserving their language, religion, and way of life meant halting the invader, even if it meant fighting under the folds of the Union Jack, a flag that provoked mixed feelings, at best, among the Canadiens.

On the eve of the war, the Lower Canada legislature unanimously passed the Army Bills Act, which approved funding for the local military effort.
1
The legislature also passed an act that authorized the establishment of an “incorporated militia” to number two thousand men. The governor-general-in-council — made up of the governor general and his appointed advisors, in effect his cabinet — increased the number to four thousand, which remained the official size of this militia until the end of the conflict.

Married volunteers were not encouraged to join this force, whose members had to serve for two years. Half the members of the militia could be discharged each year, with new recruits topping up the strength of the corps. Men who had served and been discharged formed a trained reserve that could be recalled to active duty in the event of an emergency. By law, all able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were required to enroll with the local militia captain during the month of April. They were also obliged to attend four muster parades, where they learned the basic elements of drill. Once a year, they were mustered for an inspection carried out by a superior officer assigned by the commander-in-chief.

Of Lower Canada's total population of 330,000, 52,000 were enrolled in the militia.
2
In Upper Canada, only 11,000 men were enrolled, out of a population of under 100,000. From this total enrollment, called the “sedentary militia,” members were activated when they volunteered or were selected by ballot.

The local British North American regulars played an important role in the defence of the territory. Among them were the Canadian Fencibles, the Voltigeurs of Lower Canada, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the New Brunswick Regiment, the Royal Veterans, and the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles. Drawn from Roman Catholics from the Scottish Highlands who had migrated to Glengarry County, in Upper Canada on the St. Lawrence River, the Glengarrys numbered eight hundred men. The manpower of the six corps totalled about four thousand soldiers.
3

On the eve of the war, Brock worried that the Upper Canadians' response to an invasion might be tepid, with most settlers waiting to see which way the wind would blow. When U.S. General William Hull set foot on Canadian soil in the summer of 1812, he was gratified that several hundred Canadian residents answered his call to support the United States, and that several dozen Canadian militiamen deserted from Fort Malden to join the American forces. But much of the initial Canadian enthusiasm for the American invaders was soon put to rest at Detroit and Queenston. And in the aftermath of the burning of public buildings in York and later atrocities on Canadian soil, public opinion turned sharply against the Americans. The fires of war were forging an identity in Upper Canada, whose elements would be evident for many decades to come. Indeed, the contemporary political culture of Ontario has its roots in the war.

While the Upper Canadian identity would one day embrace democrats as well as political and social reformers, its bedrock was Tory. Loyalty to the British Crown was its central point of reference. That hard truth was driven home by the American invasions. John Strachan, the Anglican cleric who did so much to annoy American military leaders during their brief occupation of York, personified Upper Canadian Toryism. Unlike Brock and Tecumseh, who fought on Canadian soil by happenstance rather than design, Strachan was
in Canada for the duration. Not surprisingly, he was a staunch admirer of Brock and the military alliance with the native confederacy.

Even before the U.S. attack on York, John Strachan had become a constant critic of the government, cheering on those he thought were putting up a valiant fight against the American invaders and writing scathing attacks on those who he thought were weak-kneed in their defence of the Canadas, particularly Upper Canada. On September 30, 1812, he wrote to the Honourable John Richardson, an influential Montreal merchant, to rail against “the languid manner in which the war is carried on.” He outlined a long series of steps that the military should take to pursue the war more vigorously, and he set out the political benefits that would flow from taking the offensive. “We are told that some wise acres,” he concluded, “find fault with General Brock for employing the Indians, but if he had not done so, he and all his men must have perished.”
4

A few weeks later, in a lengthy missive to the Honourable William Wilberforce, the British politician renowned for his campaign against the slave trade, Strachan set out the case for an alliance with the native peoples in the prosecution of the war against the United States. Rehearsing the historic mistreatment of native peoples in the U.S., Strachan said, “The Americans drive them [natives] from their hunting ground . . . and the American government makes fraudulent purchases of their lands from Indians who have no power to sell — one or two insignificant members of a village for example.” He referred to the reasons for the war of the native peoples against the Americans as given “by the Famous Chief Tecumseh to General Brock when he was lately at Detroit on his expedition against General Hull. This Indian Chief unites the most astonishing wisdom to the most determined valour — he has been employed for several years in uniting all the Indians against the Americans.”
5

In another letter to Richardson, Strachan made the case that despite the other stated causes of the war, the true object of the United States was Upper and Lower Canada. “The importance of this country to them is incalculable,” he wrote. “The possession of it would give them the complete command of the Indians who must either submit or starve within two years and thus leave all the Western frontier clear and unmolested. The Americans are systematically employed in exterminating the Savages, but they can never succeed while we keep possession of this country. This my Dear Sir is the true cause of the war.”
6

Strachan's distaste for the invaders was captured in a letter to the Marquess Wellesley in November 1812, in which he advocated the establishment of a University of Upper Canada. He hoped to create a university “upon an extensive and liberal plan so as to prevent in future our young men from going to the United States to finish their education, where they learn nothing but anarchy in Politics and infidelity in religion.”
7

Strachan was an authentic voice of the Upper Canada to come, an Upper Canada in which loyalty to the Crown and distance from the republic to the south were deeply embedded values.

For the balance of the war, the people of the Canadas and their defenders carried on the gruelling fight against a succession of American invasions, and many Upper Canadians had to put up with the misery
of occupation by U.S. troops. Occupation brought with it the horrors of
day-to-day intimacy between occupiers and occupied: destruction of
property, the commandeering of farm animals and crops, guerilla warfare, treason, the naming and punishment of traitors.

But the Americans did not limit their forays north of the border to Upper Canada. In late September 1813, a few weeks before Tecumseh died at Moraviantown, Sir George Prevost transferred his headquarters from Kingston to Montreal on receipt of the news that U.S. Major General Wade Hampton — a veteran of the Revolutionary War, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a fierce defender of states' rights
8
— had led a force north up the shore of Lake Champlain, crossing the border into Lower Canada near Odelltown. That placed the Americans just off the northwest corner of Lake Champlain and about seventy-five kilometres due south of Montreal. U.S. attacks on Upper Canada, particularly west of Kingston, posed a threat, but nothing like the threat that a descent on Montreal would represent. If the Americans could take Montreal and choke off British access to the St. Lawrence River, all points west under British control would eventually fall into their hands.

On October 8, Prevost wrote to Lord Bathurst, the secretary of state for war and the colonies, that after receiving news of the American buildup on the frontier, he had moved his headquarters to Montreal, where he had learned that General Hampton's force numbered about five thousand regulars. He informed Bathurst that after crossing the border near Odelltown, Hampton had led his troops westward and was now encamped near the Chateauguay River. The U.S. force assembled for the invasion of the province, said Prevost, was greater than any other so far mounted during the war.
9

Hampton's drive on Montreal was undertaken in conjunction with a related push up the St. Lawrence from Sackets Harbor. In the opinion of military historian Donald E. Graves, the “offensive was possibly the largest military operation mounted by the United States before 1861.”
10

The second American pincer, the one driving north from Sackets Harbor, was led by Major General James Wilkinson, one of the most notorious characters to command a U.S. force during the war. Wilkinson was associated with multiple scandals during his long career. After serving in the Continental Army during the American Revolution, he was appointed governor of the Louisiana Territory in 1805. By then he had exchanged communications with Aaron Burr, who had been vice president of the United States during Thomas Jefferson's first term; some observers believed Wilkinson was associated with Burr's conspiracy to establish a state in the west, independent of the U.S. A megalomaniac given to hatching geopolitical schemes, Burr was eventually charged with treason. After he was acquitted, he lived for a time in Europe before returning to spend the latter years of his life in the U.S. Decades after Wilkinson's death, documents were unearthed that exposed him as having been a paid agent of the Spanish Crown.

If Wilkinson's reputation was not shady enough, there was the additional problem that Wilkinson and Hampton hated each other. Their enmity predated the war; Hampton was one of many officers who had long distrusted Wilkinson. When Hampton became a general in 1808 during an expansion of the U.S. Army, the officer corps was
divided between those supporting Wilkinson — the larger group —
and those backing Hampton.

In 1811, Hampton believed his problems with Wilkinson would be resolved by a court martial President Madison convened, to consider charges against Wilkinson for conspiring with Aaron Burr against the United States and for being on the payroll of the Spanish government. Although the court discovered questionable transactions on the general's part, he was found not guilty on all charges and was restored to his command.
11

In addition to his personal antagonism toward Hampton, Wilkinson did not favour giving first priority to the attack on Montreal. He preferred an attack on Kingston, which would be launched if Commodore Chauncey could establish clear U.S. naval superiority on Lake Ontario. His second choice was to redouble efforts near the Niagara Frontier, an offensive he believed would have the secondary advantage of striking a blow at the native peoples allied against the United States. In the end, the Americans implemented the double-pronged assault on Montreal from Lake Champlain and Sackets Harbor, with Secretary of War Armstrong hoping that Wilkinson and Hampton could coordinate their efforts at critical points.

With the Americans marching north, Prevost rallied his forces to defend Lower Canada. Under Prevost's orders, Lieutenant Colonel “Red George” Macdonell led his 1st Light Infantry Battalion from Kingston to Montreal. Roger Sheaffe, having been redeployed in Lower Canada, had already mobilized three thousand members of the Lower Canada sedentary militia. Prevost called up five thousand more militiamen.

During his journey by road from Montreal to Upper Canada to join the 89th Regiment of Foot, Dr. William Dunlop saw several units of Lower Canada's French-speaking militia and wrote of them: “They had all a serviceable effective appearance — had been pretty well drilled, and their arms being direct from the tower [of London], were in perfectly good order, nor had they the mobbish appearance that such a levy in any other country would have had. Their capots and trowsers [
sic
] of home-spun stuff, and their blue tuques (night caps) were all of the same cut and color, which gave them an air of uniformity that added much to their military look.