The Invasion of Canada (21 page)

The Americans now hold the bridge that can lead the army to Amherstburg. It appears to Cass and Miller that the entire force should immediately move up to within striking distance of its objective. But Hull dithers. He is going by the book, planning a careful set-piece siege of the British fort. That he will not undertake until his heavy artillery is ready. The fort might be taken by an infantry assault, but the slaughter would be appalling; and that the former divinity student cannot abide. The bridge is abandoned.

He has other concerns. What is happening on the Niagara frontier? It is essential that an American army be in place along that river. Otherwise there is nothing to stop the British from deploying all their resources against him. Eustis and Dearborn have promised a diversion on the Niagara to support his invasion, but communications are such that the General has no way of knowing whether this has been done.

A closer problem torments him. He is certain that Colonel Cass is trying to pressure him for reasons of personal ambition. He feels his authority slipping away; his officers’ complaints are beginning to destroy his influence. He calls council after council to try to quell their impatience; it only erodes his command. “They seem to have thought,” he will later argue, “that when a council of war was called, it was to be governed by the laws of a town meeting.”

He is determined not to advance until there is “an absolute certainty of success.” How long will it take to prepare the cannon? Two days? Two weeks? After each meeting, the time stretches. Hull fears defeat. Defeat will mean starvation for the troops and, worse, devastation
by the Indians. The militia fear the Indians. At the bridge over the Canard and also at Turkey Creek and Petite Coté, where desultory skirmishing continues almost daily, Dickson’s Menominee and Tecumseh’s followers terrify the raw recruits. One regular officer writes to the New York
Gazette
:

“Had it not been for the dastardly conduct of the drafted Ohio militia who composed one half of the party and who took to their heels when they evidently had the advantage, the whole of the Indians would have been killed or taken. The officers endeavoured to rally them and said they would be fired at by their own party if they did not stand. They replied that they would rather be killed by them than by the damned Indians.”

There is savagery on both sides. The first Indian scalp is taken by Captain William McCullough of the Rangers, who describes in a letter to his wife how he tore it from the corpse’s head with his teeth.

Word of these skirmishes reaches William K. Beall and his fellow prisoners aboard the
Thames
, docked at Amherstburg. It fuels their hope for speedy deliverance. On the night of the encounter at the Canard bridge, Beall learns that Hull’s army is camped within reach. Glorious news! But instead of seeing American soldiers marching into town he is greeted by a more macabre spectacle: Thomas McKee of the Indian Department (the perennial drunkard whom Elliott has replaced) arrives at the head of about fifty Indians, all naked except for their breech cloths. McKee, who is also dressed as a native, halts opposite the gaping prisoners and hoists a fresh scalp, fastened to a long pole, which he shakes exultantly, all the time taunting the prisoners with savage cries.

For this spectacle, “which would have chilled the frigid blood of a Laplander or … crimsoned the tawny cheek of an unrelenting Turk,” Beall abuses everything British, from the King on down. His fury is misplaced, for the scalp is undoubtedly that of the unfortunate British sentry Hancock.

Beall and his fellow prisoners have other concerns. Where is Hull? What can be keeping him? Gone now is the optimism, the good humour, the gallantry of those first days in captivity. Beall no longer sees the British as gentlemen but as monsters. And he is desperately homesick. His nights are troubled by visions of his young wife, far away on their estate of Beallmont in Kentucky. “In my sleep the air drawn figure of my Melinda often rises to my view: beautious as an Angel, gentle as the spring, smiling on me with enchanted tenderness and yealding to my fond embrace. In dreams, with rapturous fondness,
I have pressed her to my bosom, felt her soft touch, heard the sweet accents of her voice, and gazed upon her lovely countenance till every sense was lost in extacy and love.”

These visions are rendered more poignant by Beall’s disillusionment with his general: “The British officers and soldiers begin to laugh at Hull.… He is now the object of their jest and ridicule instead of being as he was formerly their terror and greatest fear.”

Even as Beall is committing these thoughts to paper, on July 26, Hull, at Sandwich, is shaken by an alarming piece of intelligence. A ship., the
Salina
, flying British colours, is brought about by a shot from the shore. Aboard is a group of American citizens and soldiers, led by Lieutenant Porter Hanks, the former commander at Michilimackinac, paroled by his adversary, Roberts. Now, for the first time, Hull learns of Mackinac’s fall. It is a major disaster. “I can scarcely conceive of the impression made by the fall of Mackanac,” Colonel Cass writes to a relative. For the western anchor on the American frontier has come unstuck, releasing, in Hull’s phrase, “the northern hive of Indians,” who will shortly come “swarming down in every direction.”

Hull feels himself surrounded by Indians. He reasons that there must be two or three thousand Ottawa, Chippewa, and Sioux at his rear, advancing from Mackinac. On his left are the Iroquois of the Grand Valley. They are still neutral, as far as he knows, but he also has news that Brock has sent a detachment to try to bring them into the fight – a task rendered less difficult by the news of Mackinac’s fall. In front of him, at Amherstburg, lies another potent force: hundreds more Indians led by the great Tecumseh. Hull fears these more than he does the handful of British regulars.

Within the fort, by the end of the month William Beall and the other American officers have lost all hope of rescue. “I can scarcely think that Genl. H. will be defeated,” Beall writes, “but appearances justify such a belief. I am confident that he will not take Maiden, though 300 men could do it.… Why does he not, by taking Maiden, silence and drive the Indians away who infest the Country and secure a safe communication with the States, and safety to our Frontiers. Heaven only knows. I for a Harrison, a Daviess or a Wells.”

YORK, UPPER CANADA, July 28,1812. Isaac Brock, administrator of Upper Canada, resplendent in military crimson and gold, is
opening the legislature and managing to mask the emotions of contempt, frustration, and even despair that boil up within him.

…when invaded by an Enemy whose avowed object is the entire Conquest of this Province, the voice of Loyalty as well as of interest calls aloud to every Person in the Sphere in which he is placed, to defend his Country.

Our Militia have heard that voice and have obeyed it, they have evinced by the promptitude and Loyalty of their Conduct, that they are worthy of the King whom they serve, and of the Constitution which they enjoy …

This is hokum, and Brock knows it. He has already written a private note to Prevost declaring his belief that it seems impossible “to animate the militia to a proper sense of duty” and that he almost despairs of doing anything with them. Worse, at Long Point on Lake Erie, where he has attempted to muster five hundred men to march to the relief of Fort Amherstburg, there has been open mutiny. The men have refused to march under Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Talbot, the eccentric and domineering Irish aristocrat who controls some sixty thousand acres of land in the area. One reason for the mutiny has been the wives’ fear of being left alone to the mercy of the neutral Iroquois at the Grand River. Another has been the inflammatory speeches made to them by pro-American civilian dissidents. A third, one suspects, has been Talbot himself, a curious specimen, tyrannical in his control over the settlers – a man who once lived in luxury but who now dresses in homespun, bakes his own bread, labours like a peasant, drinks like a toper, and affects a harsh mode of life which, in the words of a former lieutenant-governor, “might suit a Republic but is not fitted to a Monarchical Government.”

In spite of this disaffection, Brock continues the charade:

…it affords me particular satisfaction, that while I address You as Legislators, I speak to men who in the day of danger, will be ready to assist, not only with their Counsel, but with their Arms …

He does not believe it, and his private correspondence reflects his dismay and cynicism. The people and their leaders appear convinced that the war is lost: “… a full belief possesses them that this Province must inevitably succumb.… Legislators, magistrates, militia officers, all have imbibed the idea, and are so sluggish and indifferent in their respective offices that the artful and active scoundrel is allowed to
parade the country without interruption and commit all imaginable mischief.”

The artful and active scoundrels include a big, ginger-haired blacksmith named Andrew Westbrook and a land surveyor from Montreal named Simon Z. Watson. Westbrook, a recent arrival from the United States, has enthusiastically espoused Hull’s cause, helped distribute his proclamation, and volunteered to fight with the Detroit militia. Watson, “a desperate character” in Brock’s view, is a bitter enemy of Thomas Talbot, and thus of the government, because of a longstanding rivalry over land fees and speculation. Created a temporary colonel by Hull, he has “vowed the most bitter vengeance against the first characters of the Province.” There are other dissidents, such as John Beamer, a justice of the peace, who has chaired a meeting in Norfolk County urging the militia not to fight.

But Brock plays all this down:

A few Traitors have already joined the Enemy.… Yet the General Spirit of Loyalty which appears to pervade the Inhabitants of this Province, is such as to authorize a just expectation that their efforts to mislead and deceive, will be unavailing …

In private he reports:

“A petition has already been carried to Genl. Hull signed by many inhabitants about Westminster inviting him to advance with a promise to join him – What in the name of heaven can be done with such a vile population?”

Yet who can blame the mass of the people? The nature of the colonial aristocracy denies them a say in their own destiny, even though they are required to swear allegiance to the King, George III, who being certifiably insane is king in name only, the real monarch being his son, the Prince Regent, known to the irreverent masses as Prinny. The province is administered by the Prince Regent’s appointee, Francis Gore, and in his absence by Isaac Brock, who also commands the army and the militia and is thus a near dictator. He sits at the head of a seven-man council, which, being appointed for life, can be said to be almost as conservative as the mad king himself, and a fourteen-man assembly, elected by freeholders, whose members serve for four years – or less, at the governor’s pleasure. Anyone who dares speak disrespectfully of the King, the government, or its officers is treacling perilously close to sedition.

The Church of England clergy, the military, and the leading
officeholders form a ruling elite, the legacy of the first lieutenant-governor, John Graves Simcoe, who was convinced that a landed aristocracy, conservative in its attitudes and British in its antecedents, was the only way to combat the twin viruses of democracy and republicanism creeping across the border. The tight little group that forms the apex of the social triangle in Upper Canada, entrenched by nepotism and by an educational system that ignores the masses, will shortly become known as the Family Compact. It does not tolerate opposition.

The “vile population” wants to be left alone. Militia service deprives the farms of their greatest asset, able-bodied men. Loyalists and the sons of the Loyalists – men like John Beverley Robinson, or the Ryersons of Norfolk County – will flock to the colours because their whole heritage represents a rejection of American values. And there are others who see in war a chance for adventure or escape. But these are in a minority. Brock is determined to rally the rest by Draconian methods, if need be. He wants to suspend habeas corpus and establish martial law but finds that in spite of his impressive authority he has little hope of either. The legislature will not vote for the first, and if he attempts the second “I am told the instant the law is promulgated the Militia will disperse.…”

He is convinced that the legislators, expecting an American victory, are fearful of taking any overt action that might displease the conquerors. “I really believe it is with some cause that they dread the vengeance of the democratic party, they are such a set of unrelenting villains.”

Pinned down at York by his civilian duties, he has taken what action he can to stiffen the defence at Fort Amherstburg, dispatching a younger and more energetic officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Procter, to take over from the confused and harassed St. George.

Amherstburg is vital. If Hull seizes it – as he seems likely to do – he can sweep up the Thames or turn eastward to attack the British rear at Fort George on the Niagara and link up with the second American army already forming along that gorge. Brock
must
maintain a strong defence on the Niagara, yet his force at Amherstburg is distressingly thin. His only immediate solution is to move some men from Fort George to Fort Erie, a mid-point between the two bastions. From there they can be dispatched swiftly in either direction, depending upon the threat. Fortunately, he commands the Lakes.