Despite the dismal results of the Canadian invasions of 1812 and 1813, the spring of 1814 found the American whip-poor-will still monotonously intoning, “Canada, Canada, Canada.” Lake Erie remained in American hands after Perry’s victory, and from its waters the Americans still hoped to wrestle at least Upper Canada from the British crown. On May 15, 1814, Lieutenant Colonel John B. Campbell led seven hundred American troops north across the lake to attack Port Dover. This was the little harbor where Robert Barclay had dallied while Perry escaped the bar at Presque Isle the summer before. It was also reported to be the haven of many of those who had put Buffalo to the torch the previous winter.
Landing at Port Dover, Campbell ordered a similar reprisal, and the result was “a scene of destruction and plunder” that one Pennsylvania soldier asserted “beggars all description.” Campbell’s superiors were equally aghast. Campbell was reprimanded for such excesses by a court of inquiry, but this did little to appease the British, who now had one more reckless and wanton act to avenge once their troops marched on American soil.
To the east of Lake Erie that same spring, Lake Ontario continued to be a conundrum. The British launched a raid against Fort Oswego in the lake’s southeast corner in an attempt to disrupt supply lines to Sackets Harbor. Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond’s force succeeded in capturing the American post, but quickly destroyed it and withdrew without further offensive operations. Meanwhile, the opposing naval commanders on Lake Ontario, Isaac Chauncey and Sir James Yeo, remained content to parry and repose each other’s halfhearted thrusts, all the while still hoping to win the naval war on the lake in the shipyards by building bigger and bigger vessels. Thus, when another American force led by the hero of Fort Stephenson, Major George Croghan, struck north from Lake Erie and failed to recapture Mackinac Island, all attention along the Great Lakes frontier centered near the falls of the Niagara.1
Once again the Americans prepared to cross the Niagara River. Their new commander, Major General Jacob Brown, was a decided improvement over the likes of “Granny” Dearborn and Alexander Smyth. Born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, thirty-nine-year-old Brown represented the next generation of general officers that Secretary of War John Armstrong was rapidly pushing to the forefront. Brown had studied law in New York City, served as military secretary to Alexander Hamilton, and been made a brigadier general of the New York militia. His zealous defense of Sackets Harbor in May 1813 prompted Armstrong to offer him a commission in the regular army.
Brown emerged from Wilkinson’s ill-fated march down the St. Lawrence in the fall of 1813 with his reputation intact, and Armstrong now turned to him to command the Great Lakes front of the American army. In addition to Brown, Armstrong’s list of new general officers included George Izard, Winfield Scott, and Henry Clay’s war hawk crony, Peter B. Porter. (The only name surprisingly absent from Armstrong’s list was that of William Henry Harrison. The victor of the Thames had resigned his commission in disgust that spring after ongoing turf battles with Armstrong.) Perhaps most important, whatever else his talents, Jacob Brown was content to place Winfield Scott in a position of confidence and entrust to him much of the drilling and discipline of his army.
After the hapless engagements along the St. Lawrence in the fall of 1813, Scott had been spared the disease and drudgery of General Wilkinson’s winter encampment at French Mills and been summoned to Washington. Recognizing him as one of the few rising stars in the army’s still muddled officer corps, President Madison appointed Scott a brigadier general a few months shy of his twenty-eighth birthday and sent him to Buffalo as one of Brown’s brigade commanders. Scott was finally in his element, and he went to extraordinary lengths to drill the four regiments of regulars in his brigade. The only thing irregular about his troops was the fact their uniforms were undyed gray and not the blue of most regular units.
The number of Scott’s troops varied daily from sickness and desertion, but was generally about two thousand. “The men are healthy, sober, cheerful, and docile,” wrote the youthful general. “If, of such materials, I do not make the best army now in service, by the 1st of June, I will agree to be dismissed from the service.”2 General Brown decided that the opening salvo of this new Niagara campaign would be to capture Fort Erie—something that the Americans had done once before in 1813.
Early on the morning of July 3, 1814, under the cover of a heavy rain, Winfield Scott led his brigade across the Niagara River in small boats. Nearing the shore in the lead boat, Scott probed the water with his sword and reported it only knee-deep. Always one to be in the lead, Scott promptly leaped into the water and just as promptly disappeared from sight. Somehow, he had managed to jump into a deep hole. No one laughed as the serious, young general, who always valued his military appearance, was hauled back into his boat dripping wet. Trying again, Scott found firmer ground and led his men ashore. Brigades led by Eleazar W. Ripley and Peter B. Porter soon joined them. By noon Fort Erie was surrounded, and by early evening its meager garrison of 170 men surrendered.
Downstream at Fort George, British Major General Phineas Riall heard of Fort Erie’s envelopment and galloped south to try to stem the American advance down the Niagara. Doubtless he carried with him thoughts of Sir Isaac Brock’s similar ride from Fort George to Queenston Heights almost two years before. How would his ride end?
General Riall managed to rally British and Canadian troops and form a defensive line along the Chippawa River where it emptied into the Niagara about two miles above the falls. The little town of Chippawa at its mouth was important to the British as the southern (upstream) terminus of the Portage Road that enabled men and matériel to move around Niagara Falls. Riall ordered two companies of the 100th Foot to march south along the Niagara’s western bank and form an advance guard. By coincidence, they were under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Pearson, who had been Winfield Scott’s captor after the Battle of Queenston Heights.
On the morning of July 4, with exhortations to make this an Independence Day to remember, Brown ordered Scott to move downstream from Fort Erie toward Fort George. Scott did so, but quickly encountered Pearson’s advance guard. Pearson’s troops fought so effective a delaying action as they retreated toward Riall’s main position on the Chippawa that it took the better part of the day for Scott to bring his brigade up to the river’s southern bank. By now, Riall had about two thousand troops in position, and Scott wisely chose to wait for Ripley and Porter’s brigades before attempting to cross the stream and engage the superior numbers. Scott went into camp on tiny Street Creek about a mile and a half south of Riall’s position on the Chippawa and assumed that nothing of significance would occur in the no-man’s-land in between the two armies. The boy general who had cut his teeth at Queenston Heights and come of age on the St. Lawrence still had a lesson or two to learn.
Early the next morning General Scott—never one to decline a sumptuous meal to fill his six-foot-four frame—accepted the breakfast invitation of Mrs. Samuel Street, whose property sat on Street Creek just north of the American encampment. Obviously charmed by his hostess, Scott appears to have forgotten which side of the Niagara River he was on. As he and his staff sat down to breakfast, a company of Riall’s Indian allies swept out of the woods in an attempt to capture them. Mrs. Street coyly feigned surprise, while Scott and his aides scurried back to their lines, unfed but alive.
By that afternoon General Brown was making plans to flank Riall’s position on the Chippawa with Ripley and Porter’s brigades, and Scott’s brigade moved forward across Street Creek into the supposed no-man’s land. But they were not alone. Riall had boldly abandoned his defensive position on the north bank of the Chippawa and moved south to engage Brown’s entire army. Scott’s brigade, however, was suddenly sticking out in front. If retreat occurred to the man who had rushed up Queenston Heights, it did not show. Scott hastily hurried his remaining regiments across the narrow bridge over Street Creek and formed a battle line anchored by three artillery pieces. The British, too, had brought up artillery, and they began to pound the American position. Noting the gray of the American uniforms, Riall assumed Scott’s men to be only local militia and expected the Americans to disperse quickly as his troops advanced. When that didn’t happen, Riall took a closer look and realized his mistake. “Those are regulars, by God!” legend has him uttering.3
Both lines came on, alternately stopping to fire, reload, and move forward again. When Riall’s right flank began to detach from the woods on the western edge of the field, Scott sent Major Thomas S. Jesup’s Twenty-fifth Infantry regiment to turn it. As the British right wavered, Scott ordered the remainder of his troops to divide in the center and pivot inward. Riall took the bait and thought that Scott’s center was folding. He ordered the Royal Scots and the 100th Foot to charge the American center. Suddenly caught in a crossfire delivered from both sides and pummeled by Scott’s three artillery pieces, the British advance faltered and their surviving troops quickly retreated from the field.
This battle of a thousand or so troops on either side was hardly comparable to the gargantuan epics the British were accustomed to fighting against Napoleon. But for the Americans, after two years of stumbles and bumbles, they could at long last claim—however fleetingly—that they had bested British regulars. Scott was probably right when he wrote years later in his memoirs that “history has recorded many victories on a much larger scale than that of Chippawa; but only a few have wrought a greater change in the feelings of a nation.”4 Finally the Americans had something to celebrate. Perhaps even more important, the American public, so craving a hero on land to rank with the likes of Isaac Hull, Decatur, and Perry on water, would find one in young Winfield Scott.
Buoyed by Scott’s success at the Chippawa, Brown soon moved his entire army north across the river. His plan was to link up with Isaac Chauncey’s naval units on Lake Ontario before marching westward around the lake toward York. But if the American army was finally working more effectively, interservice cooperation had not improved. General Brown pleaded with Commodore Chauncey to support his advance. “I do not doubt my ability to meet the enemy in the field and to march in any direction over his country, your fleet carrying for me the necessary supplies,” wrote Brown. “We can threaten Forts George and Niagara, and carry Burlington Heights and York, and proceed direct to Kingston and carry that place. For God’s sake let me see you: Sir James [Yeo] will not fight.”5
Chauncey, of course, had already spent more than a year proving that he would not fight, either. Nonetheless, the commodore caustically replied to Brown that his fleet had been created to “fight the enemy’s fleet, and I shall not be diverted in my efforts to effectuate it by any sinister attempt to render us subordinate to, or an appendage of, the army.”6 Enough said. It quickly dawned on General Brown that whatever happened next, he and his army were on their own.
Brown advanced as far as the old battleground at Queenston Heights, but he was uneasy. All along his front General Riall and the British were receiving reinforcements daily, including Colonel Joseph Morrison’s Eighty-ninth Foot, the regiment that had carried the day at the Battle of Crysler’s Farm. Most significant was the arrival of Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond, now the supreme British commander in Upper Canada.
A Scotsman, Drummond was born in Quebec in 1772 while his father was serving there as deputy paymaster general. Entering the British army at seventeen, Drummond used the purchase system to rise rapidly in rank, commanding a regiment in Flanders alongside the future Duke of Wellington and serving in various posts throughout North America. While he lacked the personal charisma of Isaac Brock, Drummond may have been the most competent British general to follow him. After leading the May 1814 attack on Fort Oswego, Drummond waged an ongoing war of words with Canadian Governor-General Sir George Prevost about the necessity of more troops for Upper Canada before hurrying to Riall’s aid after Chippawa. Drummond arrived in York on July 22, and two days later disembarked across the lake at Fort George. Whatever else Commodore Chauncey was doing, he wasn’t disrupting British naval activity on the western waters of Lake Ontario.
Despite the British buildup, Winfield Scott asked permission from General Brown to take his brigade and advance around the lake toward York. Brown declined to sanction what may well have become a reckless romp and instead ordered Scott and all of his command to withdraw from Queenston Heights and retreat south past the falls to a position once again along the Chippawa. But this, too, left Brown uneasy. There were reports that Drummond was dispatching a sizable force to the American side of the Niagara, perhaps in an attempt to outflank him or to plunder what was left of Buffalo. Not sure of what was going on, Brown had scarcely reached the Chippawa when he ordered Scott to take his brigade and once again reconnoiter north toward Queenston Heights. Perhaps recognizing his subordinate’s greatest strengths as well as his limitations, Brown admonished Scott “to report if the enemy appeared, and to call for assistance if that were necessary.”7
Scott’s brigade—Scott with the advance guard as usual—marched north from the Chippawa along the Portage Road the few miles to Niagara Falls. Reaching Willson’s Tavern, which overlooked the Horseshoe Falls at Table Rock, in the late afternoon of July 25, Scott discovered British officers fleeing in much the same haste that he had fled his uneaten breakfast at Mrs. Street’s farmhouse a few weeks before. Several of the officers tossed him courteous salutes as they galloped away, and Scott entered the tavern to quiz its owner, the widow Willson.
Yes, Deborah Willson offered graciously, the British were formed on Lundy’s Lane just around the bend with more than a thousand men and two cannon. But Scott was skeptical. He still assumed that the main British force was on the eastern bank of the Niagara and that he could easily push aside whatever troops stood between him and Queenston Heights. Poor Winfield Scott. He wasn’t having much luck with the ladies. Mrs. Street had conned him and now when Mrs. Willson told him the truth, he didn’t believe her! So Scott’s brigade marched boldly toward Lundy’s Lane.8
Almost opposite Niagara Falls, the little dirt track of Lundy’s Lane ran west from the Portage Road atop a low rise crowned by a church used by several denominations. Below the church, a large open field extended south to a chestnut forest. The field offered little protection to anyone moving across it. Much to his chagrin, Winfield Scott found this out the hard way. As his brigade marched into the field, they came into “full view, and in easy range of a line of battle drawn up in Lundy’s Lane, more extensive than that defeated at Chippawa.” The brigade was subjected to a withering fire from the British line, and it was immediately obvious to Scott that he had blundered into a major British force. Retreat, however, did not occur to him, and he hastily sent word to Brown to bring up Ripley’s and Porter’s brigades. Had he retreated, the entire American army may have followed suit. But as it was, “by standing fast, the salutary impression was made upon the enemy that the whole American reserve was at hand and would soon assault his flanks.” Indeed, Generals Drummond and Riall thought so. Drummond ordered up Colonel Hercules Scott’s 103rd Foot Regiment and called for his own reserves to tighten his line.9
One thing was certain. Scott could not keep his brigade in this field forever. Drummond’s artillery was positioned in the cemetery below the church, and even through the thick smoke of gunpowder that quickly enveloped the field, the regimental standards of Scott’s units made for inviting targets. Determined to do something, Scott ordered an advance, thought better of it, and then dispatched Major Thomas S. Jesup and his Twenty-fifth Infantry to attack the junction of Lundy’s Lane and the Portage Road and attempt to turn the British left flank. Just as he did at Chippawa, Jesup gamely moved forward.
By now, even in the midsummer twilight, it was getting dark. One of the first officers to fall wounded on the British side was General Riall, who would later lose his right arm. His aides guided him down Lundy’s Lane toward the Portage Road en route to Queenston and shouted out at a cluster of troops at the junction to “Make way for the General!” The group cleared the roadway with acknowledgments of “Yes, sir, yes, sir” but quickly formed again to surround the general. “What is the meaning of this?” Riall demanded. “You are our prisoner, sir,” replied Captain Daniel Ketchum of Jesup’s Twenty-fifth Infantry.10
Meanwhile, the remainder of Scott’s brigade was in sad shape, but before it could be driven from the field, General Brown arrived on the scene with reinforcements. Still anticipating an attack from the phantom British forces on the eastern bank of the Niagara, Brown had left Porter’s Third Brigade in reserve and advanced with only Ripley’s Second Brigade. But it might be enough to turn the tide. Brown ordered the undermanned First Infantry Regiment with only 150 men to feint toward the center of the British line below the church. Then Brown rode to find Lieutenant Colonel James Miller of the Twenty-first Infantry, one of the most battle-hardened units in the American army. Miller had cut his teeth at Tippecanoe, fought near Detroit, and followed Wilkinson’s folly down the St. Lawrence. Within the hour, Miller would lead the Twenty-first into legend.
Recognizing that seizing the British artillery in the churchyard was the key to the battleground, General Brown rode up beside Miller and directed him to storm the guns and take the position. Miller was physically imposing and single-minded of purpose. He squinted for a moment at the British battery and then turned to eye Brown. His reply of “I’ll try, sir!” was to become the motto of the regiment.
But even before Miller’s regiment could start up the hill, Brown was startled to see the First Infantry advancing on the same guns. Somehow, the First had misunderstood its orders to conduct only a feint. Before its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Nicholas, rethought the matter and ordered his men to retreat, the First’s efforts had ended up doing exactly as Brown had hoped and distracted the British while Miller’s regiment moved smartly up the slopes with its bayonets at the ready. One British observer later reported that Miller’s men “charged to the very muzzles of our cannon and actually bayoneted the artillery-men who were at their guns.”11
Not only did the Twenty-first capture Drummond’s artillery, but it surprised Morrison’s Eighty-ninth Foot, which had been in a line just north of the crest of the hill. Sensing a general rout, Drummond ordered Morrison to pivot his line so as to catch the lost artillery position and the advancing Americans in a cross fire. This was done rather smartly, but instead of faltering, the Twenty-first returned volley after volley of musket fire. No wonder that Miller himself later described the scene as “one of the most desperately fought actions ever experienced in America.”12
The Eighty-ninth Foot finally retreated from the hilltop, but were they finished? General Brown rode up to congratulate Colonel Miller and survey the situation. Brown was certain that his men had won a resounding victory, but Ripley was equally certain that the British were preparing a counterattack. Determined to see for themselves, Brown, Ripley, and their aides rode west along Lundy’s Lane in front of the American line. Now it was Brown’s turn almost to be taken prisoner because of a case of mistaken identity in the darkness. A regimental line appeared through the murky night, but was it friend or foe? Brown’s aide, nineteen-year-old Captain Ambrose Spencer, spurred his horse forward to investigate. “What regiment is that?” Spencer cried out. “The Royal Scots, sir,” came the prompt answer. “Stand you fast, Scotch Royals,” replied Spencer, as he wheeled his horse and scurried Brown’s party back to the American lines.13
So the British were indeed counterattacking. Drummond really had no choice. His army’s artillery had been captured, and without it he might as well retreat to Fort George. Throughout the darkness as the hours wound toward midnight both sides continued to attack and counterattack. Winfield Scott, though wounded, was back in the fray leading the remnants of his brigade west along Lundy’s Lane. In the process, his troops were fired upon by both sides. Almost at the same time, General Brown was wounded in the thigh and his daring aide, Ambrose Spencer, killed. There followed a final counterattack by the British that resulted in hand-to-hand fighting over and around the gun carriages. Scott was hit by a ball that shattered his shoulder, and unsure that he was even alive, his men carried him to the rear. Among those to fall at the point of this farthest advance was Captain Abraham Hull of the Ninth Infantry, the son of General William Hull, who had surrendered Detroit so many months before.
As Scott was making his final attack, General Brown received a second wound. Barely able to stay in his saddle, the general tried to find Scott to turn command over to him. Told that Scott had been carried to the rear, Brown sent his surviving aide, Captain Loring Austin, to find General Ripley and order him to assume command. At this point near midnight, the Americans had driven the British off Lundy’s Lane and retained control of their artillery in the churchyard.
What happened next has long been a matter of great debate on both sides of the field. As Brown rode slowly toward the rear, a number of his officers counseled a general withdrawal back to Chippawa to regroup. Others advocated keeping possession of the hard-won position. One who chanced to speak with Brown as he rode away from the carnage was Major Jacob Hindman, his chief of artillery. Hindman was hurrying forward with additional ammunition for both his own artillery pieces and the captured British ones. Whatever Brown said—and whether it was said conversationally or as a direct order—Hindman interpreted the sentiments as an order to withdraw and passed on such to Ripley.
As the ranking American officer, Ripley now had his own cluster of officers who advocated withdrawal or consolidation of a position upon the hilltop. In the end, Ripley decided that it was safer to follow Brown’s purported order to withdraw—no matter how disputed—rather than take the responsibility for exposing his badly mangled brigades to another British attack. The end result was that the Americans withdrew from the field in the wee hours of July 26, inexplicably leaving the British artillery in place. Imagine General Drummond’s surprise a few hours later when the morning’s light not only revealed no sign of the Americans but also showed his precious artillery left unattended. Once more in possession of the field of battle, Drummond quickly reclaimed his artillery and declared victory.14
As always in such nineteenth-century encounters, exact casualty totals were difficult to determine. British losses were reported as 84 killed, 559 wounded, 193 missing, and 42 taken prisoner, a casualty rate of roughly 25 percent of the force engaged. Morrison’s Eighty-ninth Foot had been particularly hard hit and lost more than 60 percent of its effective strength. On the American side, losses were given as 173 killed, 571 wounded, 38 missing, and 79 captured, more than 30 percent of those engaged. Scott’s First Brigade and Miller’s Twenty-first Infantry bore the brunt of these numbers. While such totals may seem slight in the face of the slaughter that was to occur on American fields two generations hence, the high percentage of casualties for those engaged made what came to be called the Battle of Lundy’s Lane one of the bloodiest of the war. “We boast of a ‘Great Victory,’” wrote British Colonel Hercules Scott of the 103rd Foot, “but in my opinion it was nearly equal on both sides.” One thing was clear, the ragtag American army was learning how to stand and fight.15
But now the Americans were retreating. However confusing his orders or intent in the early morning of July 26, General Brown now determined that he must withdraw to the safety of Fort Erie. On the British side, General Drummond was content for the moment to let him do so. Drummond, too, had been wounded, and that fact only served to remind him how badly his army had been mauled, even if it had managed to retain its artillery. A few days later, as Drummond cautiously advanced south across the Chippawa battlefield toward Fort Erie, Ripley pleaded with a convalescing Brown in Buffalo that the Americans should abandon the fort and the entire Canadian side of the Niagara. No, said Brown, Ripley was to stand firm and hold the fort at all costs. This time Ripley made certain that he got his orders from Brown in writing.16
The Americans had in fact strengthened Fort Erie during the summer of 1814, and despite Ripley’s concerns in holding it, Drummond did not fancy a frontal assault against it. Instead he hoped to persuade the Americans to withdraw completely from the Canadian side of the river by making a raid against the American side. On August 3 Drummond sent Lieutenant Colonel John Tucker with a force of six hundred men across the river to disrupt supply depots at Black Rock and Buffalo. They met with stout resistance from three hundred Americans at Conjocta Creek and were forced to withdraw without accomplishing their objective. So Drummond was back to square one and forced to order that which he abhorred.
In the early morning of August 15, 1814, under the cover of a heavy downpour, three columns of British troops, including Colonel Hercules Scott’s 103rd Foot, moved forward against Fort Erie with bayonets fixed. The two northern columns succeeded in breaching the bastion on the north wall despite heavy hand-to-hand fighting. Colonel Scott was among those to fall—dead almost instantly from a bullet to the head. The British managed to swing one American cannon around to fire into the fort. In the process, however, sparks from its muzzle blast fell through the wooden flooring and ignited a stockpile of gunpowder. The result was a tremendous explosion that shook the ground for miles and sent bodies flying through the night. The bastion and a goodly portion of Drummond’s attacking troops were blown sky high. When the smoke cleared the following morning, the British had suffered more than nine hundred casualties out of an attacking force of about twenty-five hundred—more than at Lundy’s Lane—and the Americans remained in possession of Fort Erie.17
Throughout a dismal, rainy September, Drummond pondered what to do next. His supply lines were finally being threatened by Isaac Chauncey’s belated appearance with his fleet in the western waters of Lake Ontario. Reinforcements of New York militia were seen rowing across the Niagara from Buffalo almost daily. If the Americans were that determined to hold Fort Erie, so be it. Drummond decided to withdraw and give up the siege, only to have the Americans storm out of the fort and attack his positions just as he was removing his artillery. It was another bloody affair that accomplished little despite one American officer’s account that it was “the most spendid achievement” of the campaign. For his part, General Brown was heartened by the courage and discipline displayed by the much-maligned New York militia. “The Militia of New York,” the general boasted, “have redeemed their character.”18
But that was about all. The Americans marched back to Fort Erie. The British finished packing up their cannon and hauled them back to Fort George. The bloody travail of the war’s third Niagara campaign was over, having failed to accomplish any more on either side than the previous two. Regardless of the recurring arguments over which side won the Battle of Lundy’s Lane, Drummond’s stand that day had blunted Brown’s drive down the Niagara and once and for all ended any hope that the Americans would conquer Upper Canada. On November 5, 1814, Major General George Izard, who had taken over from General Brown, ordered the Canadian side of the Niagara evacuated and Fort Erie blown up. Since then, the only thunder along the Niagara has been peaceful.