1812

IN THE SUMMER of 1813, at the same time that Perry and Harrison were planning to secure the Northwest, Madison was preparing to attack Kingston and Montreal, something he had intended to do back in the spring, before Dearborn and Chauncey had talked him out of it. Even if he succeeded, the key British strongholds at Quebec and Halifax would remain, but taking Upper Canada would strengthen the president’s diplomatic hand immeasurably. With Napoleon in trouble, seizing Canada, or a substantial portion of it, was the only way Madison could gain enough leverage to move Liverpool and his colleagues. Nothing had been heard from the British about negotiations, although it was clear they were not rushing to accept the czar’s offer to mediate. The operations against Canada were therefore critical. At the moment, all the president had to bargain with was Amherstburg.

Unfortunately, Madison was sick for five weeks in June and July, suffering a debilitating illness (similar to the one that had struck him the previous summer). Dolley again feared for his life. Direction of the war fell to the president’s department heads, and they were agreed that putting off the attacks on Kingston and Montreal earlier in the year had been a huge mistake. Secretary Armstrong wanted to make up for it now by striking both places during the late summer. He hoped that by then Commodore Chauncey would have naval supremacy on Lake Ontario. Secretary Jones, not a great admirer of Armstrong, nevertheless agreed with the plan and did everything he could to support Chauncey. But time was running out; winter in that part of Canada arrived in late October.

In preparation for the attacks, Armstrong appointed new leaders for the northern army. In May, he promoted fifty-six-year-old Brigadier General James Wilkinson to major general, and after accepting General Dearborn’s resignation in July, Armstrong appointed Wilkinson to lead the assault on Kingston and Montreal. Wilkinson was given command of Military District 9, which included the Niagara region, Sackets Harbor, and Lake Champlain. His headquarters would be at Sackets Harbor. Armstrong had already appointed Major General Wade Hampton of South Carolina to lead the army gathering at Burlington, Vermont, on Lake Champlain. Hampton was expected to combine with Wilkinson in a joint attack on Montreal.

Choosing Wilkinson was, to say the least, baffling. What the inscrutable Armstrong was thinking is hard to imagine. Winfield Scott described Wilkinson as an “unprincipled imbecile,” a characterization that most army officers would have agreed with. Wilkinson had been the most controversial and hated figure in the service for many years; Armstrong certainly knew this. Their relationship went back to the Revolutionary War, when both were ambitious young men working under the even more ambitious—and duplicitous—General Horatio Gates, notorious for his efforts to undermine General Washington.

A tireless self-promoter, Wilkinson was the darling of many uninformed Republicans. In March 1813 he had attained notoriety by leading the successful occupation of the rest of West Florida, which included the Mobile area and ran to the Perdido River. He was military commander of Louisiana at the time. Before then, his career had been marked by abject failure and well-founded charges of corruption. An inveterate intriguer, he had been closely associated with Aaron Burr, until he turned on him and became the prosecution’s chief witness against him at Burr’s trial for treason in 1807. Although Burr was acquitted, President Jefferson, who hated Burr, was grateful to Wilkinson. Earlier, the general had been secretly in the pay of the Spanish government while a senior American officer, and that treasonous relationship persisted. Spain even gave him a pension of $2,000. Prior to his elevation by Armstrong, Wilkinson’s graft and incompetence in Louisiana had led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of his men. Both senators from Louisiana had demanded the secretary of war remove him.

The appointment of sixty-year-old Major General Wade Hampton was just as puzzling. In the later stages of the Revolutionary War, Hampton became a hero in South Carolina, serving under the famed guerrilla leaders Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter. Afterward, he became a rich plantation owner with thousands of slaves and a powerful Republican, serving in Congress for a time. His hatred for Wilkinson was no secret. He made it clear to Armstrong that he would follow Wilkinson’s orders only if the forces at Sackets Harbor and those at Lake Champlain were joined in an attack on Montreal. Hampton’s inability to work with his superior—indeed, his loathing of him—should have disqualified him. His lack of combat experience as a general officer and addiction to hard liquor were further reasons. But Hampton’s shortcomings did not seem to matter to Armstrong.

The appointments of Wilkinson and Hampton were all the more mystifying when one considers the promising general officers that the army now had available who could have led the invasion, such as Brigadier Generals Jacob Brown and Ralph Izard or talented colonels like Winfield Scott, Alexander Macomb, Eleazer W. Ripley, Edmund P. Gaines, and Leonard Covington, whom Armstrong could have promoted. But once again Madison and his advisors, for reasons that remain obscure, selected elderly incompetents for vital positions.

Appearing in no hurry, Wilkinson reached Sackets Harbor on August 20 and held his first council of war six days later. Among those attending were General Jacob Brown, Wilkinson’s second in command, and Commodore Chauncey. Wilkinson’s orders were to attack Kingston and then Montreal, but he doubted that he could accomplish these objectives so late in the season. He preferred attacking in the Niagara area. Secretary Armstrong thought this was a sideshow, however, and quickly vetoed the idea. “You will make Kingston your primary object,” he wrote to Wilkinson, “and you may choose (as circumstances warrant), between a direct and indirect attack upon that post.” It was left to Wilkinson to construe what “direct” and “indirect” meant. He decided to interpret it as meaning a “strong feint” on Kingston before sending the army against Montreal, a city of 30,000.

General Brown was willing to do whatever Wilkinson wanted, but Chauncey was strongly in favor of attacking Kingston first. A mere feint would leave a substantial enemy force—including Yeo’s fleet—in Wilkinson’s rear when he attacked Montreal, placing Sackets Harbor in danger of assault from Kingston while the American forces were occupied in the St. Lawrence River. Nonetheless, even if his advice were ignored, Chauncey still intended to “afford the Army every facility of transport and protection” on its way to the St. Lawrence. But he refused to remain in the river and cooperate with Wilkinson. Chauncey felt that his primary duty was protecting Sackets Harbor, and he “deemed [it] unsafe to be in that river after the 1st of November, on account of the ice.” After talking at greater length with Wilkinson, however, Chauncey became convinced that Armstrong’s original plan was still intact and that Kingston was the general’s first objective.

Of course, Kingston would be a much easier target if Chauncey first destroyed Yeo’s warships. On August 29 he received word that Yeo’s fleet had exited Kingston and was abroad on Lake Ontario. Chauncey went looking for him. His fleet of eleven vessels had been substantially strengthened by the 16-gun schooner Sylph, which Henry Eckford had built at Sackets Harbor in just twenty-three days.

On September 7 Chauncey discovered Yeo “close in with the Niagara River” and went after him with his heavy schooners in tow, which slowed him down considerably. Chauncey kept Yeo in sight, but he could not close with him. The British squadron remained just beyond his grasp. After days of fruitlessly chasing Yeo “round the lake day and night,” Chauncey managed to engage him from a distance on the eleventh of September off the Genesee River near present-day Rochester, New York. Chauncey had an advantage in long guns; Yeo had mostly carronades. Chauncey also had the weather gauge, but he failed to deliver a decisive blow, claiming that Yeo ran away from him and escaped after a running fight of over three hours. Yeo in his report maintained that “it was impossible to bring them to close action.” It seems that neither commodore wanted to hazard their precious fleets until they had an overwhelming advantage. Yeo escaped to the protection of Amherst Bay near Kingston, where the American fleet could not follow. Chauncey’s pilots did not have detailed knowledge of the bay’s deadly shoals.

On August 30, while Chauncey was chasing Yeo, Wilkinson left his command at Sackets Harbor in the hands of Jacob Brown and sailed to the Niagara area to acquire 3,500 additional troops from the army guarding Fort George and Fort Niagara. During the voyage Wilkinson became seriously ill, and he did not recover for a month. While he was away, Chauncey was again out after Yeo. They met on September 28 near Burlington Bay at the western end of Lake Ontario. After dueling at long range for three hours, Yeo broke off and raced for the protection of the batteries at Burlington Heights. Chauncey followed until gale force winds forced him to claw back to the protection of the Niagara River. Some vessels had been damaged on both sides, but there were few casualties. When the storm abated, Chauncey convoyed Wilkinson’s troops from Niagara to Sackets Harbor. While he was doing so, Yeo returned unnoticed to Kingston. On the fourth of October Chauncey was out again looking for Yeo when he spotted four British troop transports making for Kingston and captured them. Two of the prizes were the schooners he had lost earlier, the Growler and the Julia.

When Wilkinson returned to Sackets Harbor the first week of October, he was still sick. To relieve his pain he took large doses of whiskey laced with laudanum. During the third week of October, while he was trying to recover his health and get an attack organized, snow began falling. The dreaded winter had begun.

On October 29 Chauncey visited Wilkinson at his headquarters on Grenadier Island, midway between Sackets Harbor and Kingston, where 7,000 troops were gathering for the attempt on Montreal. Chauncey had protected all the movements of the troops from Sackets Harbor to Grenadier Island, often in severe weather. Chauncey was “mortified,” as he told Secretary Jones, to hear for the first time that Wilkinson was not going to attack Kingston after all but would only make a feint and then proceed to Montreal.

Two days later, General Brown led an advance party to French Creek on the St. Lawrence, guarded by Chauncey’s vessels. On November 2 sloops and gunboats of the Royal Navy, under Captain William Howe Mulcaster, slipped out of Kingston, past Chauncey’s screen at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and attacked Brown, but he was well prepared and beat them off, forcing Mulcaster to return to Kingston.

On the fifth Brown led a flotilla of three hundred boats down the St. Lawrence toward Montreal. As he did, Yeo appeared with his fleet in the North Channel near the mouth of the river, while Chauncey and his fleet were in the South Channel. Wolfe Island separated them. Chauncey was anxious to engage the British fleet in a decisive action and made every effort to get at Yeo, who inexplicably retreated to Kingston.

Wilkinson now proceeded down the river, but Chauncey did not follow to protect his rear. Instead, he moved in stages back to Sackets Harbor. The commodore’s first priority was still protecting his fleet and base, not taking Montreal. By November 11 he had all his vessels safely tucked in for the winter at Sackets Harbor. “It is now blowing a heavy gale from the westward with snow,” he wrote to Secretary Jones, “and every appearance of the winter [has] set in.”

Wilkinson landed his men just above Ogdensburg on November 6, and during the night he ran the empty boats that had transported his troops safely past the guns of Fort Wellington in Prescott. From the American camp seven miles above Ogdensburg he wrote to General Hampton, ordering him to move his army to St. Regis (opposite Cornwall) by the ninth or tenth, when they would join together for the attack on Montreal. Wilkinson added that Hampton was to bring two or three months’ worth of supplies for the entire army. Wilkinson claimed his provisions would last only a few more weeks.

As far as Wilkinson knew, Hampton had a force of 4,000, whose principal object was to join him in attacking Montreal. He was aware that Hampton despised him and would not follow his orders if he could help it, which is why Wilkinson preferred to work through Armstrong, but the secretary, who was in upstate New York at the time, forced Wilkinson to communicate directly with Hampton. Armstrong’s unwillingness to coordinate the movements of the two armies at this stage probably meant that he had lost faith in the enterprise and did not want to be blamed for its failure. People in Washington wondered where the elusive secretary was exactly, what he was doing, and why he was not at the War Department. He did not return to Washington until December 24.

Wilkinson’s order surprised Hampton, who thought the attack on Montreal had been canceled because of the lateness of the season. Weeks earlier, a messenger from Sackets Harbor had arrived at Hampton’s headquarters with instructions from Armstrong to build winter quarters for 10,000 men. Hampton assumed that Armstrong had given up the plan to attack Montreal. Thus, even before Wilkinson had embarked on the St. Lawrence, Hampton had put aside coordinating an attack on Montreal. Prevost knew of Hampton’s withdrawal well before either Wilkinson or Armstrong did.

Wilkinson was unaware that back on October 26 Hampton had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of 1,300 French and English militiamen and a few Indians, commanded by Charles de Salaberry, a French-Canadian aristocrat of considerable experience, skill, and flair. At the time, Hampton had been trying to position himself for a junction with Wilkinson by traveling across the border toward Montreal via the Chateaguay River, which empties into the St. Lawrence just below the city. Secretary Armstrong knew of Hampton’s movements and approved them, but Wilkinson did not.

On that day in October, Hampton ran into de Salaberry at Allan’s Corners, near present-day Ormstown, Quebec, on the Chateaguay, fifty miles northeast of Cornwall and thirty-six miles southeast of Montreal. The subsequent fight became known as the Battle of Chateaguay, but it was hardly a battle. Hampton vastly overestimated the size of the enemy and withdrew before the fight was really joined. Embarrassed, discouraged, and confused, he retreated back across the border to Four Corners, New York, where he received Wilkinson’s command to join him. By then, Hampton was totally demoralized and had no intention of carrying out the order.

In his reply to Wilkinson, Hampton wrote that his army was in terrible condition, that supplies were nonexistent, and that he could not possibly form a junction with him at St. Regis. Instead, he told Wilkinson he intended to retreat all the way back to Plattsburgh for the winter.

ON NOVEMBER 8, as of yet unaware of Hampton’s situation, Wilkinson dispatched General Brown with 2,500 men to the Canadian side of the river with orders to clear enemy militia obstructing the road to Cornwall, seventy miles from Montreal. Brown met with weak resistance from Canadian militiamen and quickly dispatched them.

Meanwhile, a small force of about six hundred British regulars under Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Morrison left Kingston on November 6 to trail Wilkinson and hang on his rear. Commander William Howe Mulcaster of the Royal Navy transported them. Ice on the St. Lawrence did not encumber his squadron of two schooners, seven gunboats, and numerous bateaux. Since Commodore Chauncey’s entire fleet was at Sackets Harbor, Mulcaster could traverse the St. Lawrence unimpeded. By the ninth Morrison was at Prescott, where two hundred fifty men from Fort Wellington reinforced him.

Bad weather on November 10 forced Wilkinson and the pursuing British to pause. Morrison established himself at John Crysler’s farm and made preparations should Wilkinson detach a part of his force to get rid of the pesky enemy in his rear. This is exactly what Wilkinson did: He dispatched Brigadier General John Boyd with 2,000 men to attack Morrison.

The resulting Battle of Crysler’s Farm began early in the afternoon of November 11, becoming heavy around two o’clock. Boyd’s larger but poorly organized force attacked and was met by seasoned British regulars who stopped the ill-trained Americans and turned them back. Mulcaster’s gunboats aided in the fight, pouring fire into the American lines. After two hours of close combat, Boyd’s men went running back to their boats in a disorderly retreat. Most escaped to the American side of the river, but 100 were taken prisoner. In the fighting, 103 of Boyd’s men were killed and 237 wounded, many of whom were left on the battlefield. The British had 22 killed, 148 wounded, and 9 missing and presumed dead.

The following day, Wilkinson, who had been sick during the battle and was still in poor condition, gathered what remained of his force and ran the Long Sault rapids, meeting up with General Brown and his men at Barnhart’s Island above Cornwall. Wilkinson was still planning to attack Montreal, but his stores had nearly run out. He was counting on Hampton to bring supplies, as well as 4,000 reinforcements. But when Wilkinson arrived on Barnhart’s Island, Colonel Henry Atkinson was waiting for him with a letter from Hampton, informing him that he was not coming to St. Regis for a rendezvous and that even if he did, he had no way of supplying the provisions Wilkinson requested. Hampton claimed that he had enough problems feeding his own men. Wilkinson was furious. He sent a blistering letter, telling Hampton that he could not find “language to express my sorrow” at Hampton’s actions. Deprived of help, Wilkinson postponed the attack on Montreal and removed his army to winter quarters at nearby French Mills (Fort Covington), New York, just over the border.

Hampton’s claim that he could not find sufficient supplies and Wilkinson’s insistence that he was dependent on Hampton for provisions were curious, considering that New York farmers were then supplying all the food the British needed and would have done the same for the American armies if Wilkinson and Hampton could have somehow found the money. A month earlier Hampton had written that “we have and can have, an unlimited supply of good beef cattle.” Wilkinson could have had plenty of food as well, but without Hampton’s troops he had a perfect excuse for not attacking Montreal.

Wilkinson’s decision was a relief to Governor-General Prevost, who had been working hard for weeks to improve Montreal’s defense. When he first became aware that the Americans were going to attack Montreal and not Kingston, he rushed to Montreal to bolster its defenses, arriving on September 25. He brought marines from Quebec and called up a substantial number of militiamen, who looked formidable on paper but were untested. As Wilkinson approached, Prevost had mustered well over 10,000 militiamen, and he had 5,000 regulars under Major General Sheaffe. Prevost’s sizable army would have, in all probability, administered a crushing defeat to Wilkinson.

WHILE ARMSTRONG AND Wilkinson were focused on attacking Montreal, Fort George and Fort Niagara were left with 850 regulars under Colonel Winfield Scott and 1,600 New York militiamen under Brigadier General George McClure. Believing the British had withdrawn from the Niagara region to defend Montreal, Wilkinson ordered Scott on October 13 to march most of his troops east to join the attack on Montreal, leaving McClure with only 324 regulars and the New York militiamen, whose six-month enlistments were about to expire. McClure was more of a politician than a soldier; he had no military credentials, and he could not inspire any loyalty in his troops. He watched nervously as almost all his militiamen—even with their pay in arrears—left forts George and Niagara and went home. By December 10 he was left with 150 militiamen and 300 plus regulars, who were guarding Fort Niagara.

Secretary Armstrong, hoping that Prevost had moved all the forces he could east, did not send reinforcements. McClure was already nervous and grew more so when he discovered that British brigadier general Vincent had moved men from Burlington closer to Fort George. McClure did not know how many.

On December 10 McClure learned that all his fears were confirmed—the British were advancing against Fort George. He evacuated the fort in a panic and ordered the nearby town of Newark, a thriving community with over one hundred buildings, including a library and a government center, burned. As many as four hundred innocent Canadians of all ages were driven from their homes with little notice during terrible weather. Snow and severe frost made finding shelter imperative, but none was available. Afterward, McClure led his men across the river to Fort Niagara. He claimed that he destroyed Newark in order to deprive the British of comfortable winter quarters and that Armstrong had given the order. But that simply was not the case. The administration denounced McClure for what he had done. Armstrong ordered Wilkinson, McClure’s superior, to publicly repudiate the act. But that was not enough for Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond, who had just replaced Major General Francis de Rottenburg as the leader of Upper Canada. Drummond announced that “retributive justice demanded of me a speedy retaliation on the opposite shore of America.” After his announcement, the British reoccupied Fort George.

On December 19, Drummond ordered a surprise attack on Fort Niagara. Lieutenant Colonel John Murray led the assault with six hundred men. Entering the fort at five o’clock in the morning, he caught the American regulars completely unawares. McClure wasn’t even in the fort; he had gone to Buffalo. By 5:30, without firing a shot, using only bayonets, Murray captured all the men in the fort and their huge stock of cannon, muskets, ammunition, and supplies.

While Murray was taking Fort Niagara, Major General Phineas Riall, intent on avenging Newark, had crossed the Niagara River on December 18 with 1,000 British regulars and 400 Indians and marched down the New York side, ravaging Lewiston and the neighboring villages of Youngstown and Manchester, burning and pillaging without restraint. The Albany Argus reported that “bodies were lying dead in the fields and roads, some horribly cut and mangled with tomahawks, others eaten by hogs, which were probably left for the purpose.”

Riall continued south, and on December 29, he overwhelmed weakly defended Black Rock, destroying four schooners that were part of the Lake Erie fleet wintering there, and threatening Buffalo. McClure was no longer in charge of the defense. Despised for burning Newark, even by his own people, and blamed for the Fort Niagara debacle and the massacre at Lewiston, he stole off to Batavia, lucky his own men had not killed him. Governor Tompkins appointed Major General Amos Hall to replace him.

Hall had 2,000 green militiamen to protect Buffalo, but at the first glimpse of British bayonets, panic seized them, and when they heard Indian cries, they broke and ran. “They gave way and fled on every side,” Hall said. “Every attempt to rally them was ineffectual.” Buffalo was left to face the enemy alone. Again, showing no mercy, Riall plundered and burned the town. Master Commandant Jesse Elliott feared he would attack the naval base at Presque Isle next, but the severity of the winter brought the British rampage to a halt.

Prevost justified Riall’s butchery by pointing to Newark. But McClure never authorized the slaughter that Riall encouraged. Also, Prevost overlooked the ravaging of Hampton, Virginia, back in June, an atrocity that had all of Riall’s savagery but no Indians to blame it on. When justifying their viciousness, the British liked to point to American violence, but it never remotely equaled the sadistic retaliation they practiced.

The armies now went into winter hibernation along the frozen border, each anticipating more ferocious fighting in the spring. The fort on Michilimackinac Island remained in British hands. After Harrison’s victory over Procter and Tecumseh, severe weather prevented an attack on the fort, which was sure to be an objective come spring.

The defeats along the Canadian border delivered another devastating blow to the president’s war plans and made getting Liverpool to the negotiating table all the more difficult. The British had been so successful not only against American arms but in garnering support from their Canadian subjects that their war aims, which initially had been purely defensive, now became far more expansive. Once the Napoleonic menace was destroyed, Liverpool and his colleagues could deal a crippling blow to the pretensions of the United States.