Friends –
My silence over the last few days was owing to indisposition, not lack of respect for the topic at hand.
ckleisch, your request for a bibliography and maps is a good one, which I will answer as expeditiously as possible.
I now realize that, by posting such a challenging topic, more contributions will be necessary. Please allow me time to make this in installments. Also, provocative language need not be immoderate – my earlier criticism of American historians was rather unwarranted; some of my own sources, in fact, including my beloved two-volume work by Benjamin Lossing,
The pictorial field-book of the War of 1812, are American.
Finally, in this installment, I would like
not to address the actual winning or losing of the War of 1812 in the field
per se. Rather, I would like to point out that the War of 1812 was, in a larger, geopolitical sense, an irredeemable setback to expansion of the United States -- ironically, the War of 1812 saved Canada from extinction.
The War of 1812: an Irredeemable American Setback to Expansion
Had I not raised the original subject at hand, then many of you might have continued to think that the War of 1812 was a “mere” British-American war, which, of course, in the formal sense it was. But please take note that the crucial theatre of war was not the Atlantic privateering/ commerce-raiding region, nor was it the late-1814 British campaign regions in the Lake Champlain area or the South (these latter campaigns were basically designed and executed to gain advantage at the peace-negotiating table at Ghent).
The War of 1812 theatre of primary strategic importance always was the Canadian theatre, for it was there not only that the United States was foiled in the war aim of conquering British North American possessions by force of arms, but it was there that it lost the chance for all time to gain this territory by political absorption by any other means. But for the War of 1812, it is probable in the extreme that all of present-day Canada would now exist under the banner of the Stars and Stripes, and that the United States would be a nation stretching from Atlantic to Pacific, and from Rio Grande to the Arctic Ocean.
Again and again, Canadian historians have made a very vital point, and again and again American historians have, by and large, blithely ignored it. By the second decade of the 19th Century, Ontario (and, subsequently and inevitably, the rest of British North America) was a plum, ripe and ready to fall into the welcoming hands of the great Union to the South. In 1812, the population of Ontario was tiny (60,000 – 80,000 souls), badly-divided politically, and generally considered itself unable to ward off prolonged attack by a much more powerful neighbour.
As Canadian and popular historian Pierre Berton wrote:
In the summer of 1812, with three American armies threatening the border strongpoints – Amherstburg, Queenston, Montreal, and Kingston – the early fall of Upper Canada and the subsequent collapse of Quebec seemed certain. In British North America there were some three hundred thousand souls, in the Union to the south, almost eight million. In Upper Canada, three out of five settlers were newly arrived Americans, people of uncertain loyalties, lured from New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut by the promise of cheap land. They scarcely thought of themselves as British, though they were forced into a token oath of allegiance, and they certainly did not call themselves Canadian (that word was reserved for their French-speaking neighbours, many of whom lived on American soil in the vicinity of Detroit). Surely these people would not oppose an invasion by their compatriots!
Nor, on the face of it, would they. There is little evidence of any surge of national pride rippling across the grain fields, swamps, and forests of Upper Canada in the early days of the war; quite the opposite. The main emotion was not patriotism but fear: fear of the invaders who could and did loot the farms to feed themselves; fear of the British regulars, whose task it was to stiffen the backbones of the reluctant citizen soldiers; fear of the Indians; fear of losing a harvest, a homestead, and above all a life. Many of the militia had to be goaded into fighting, while large numbers of settlers expressed pro-American sympathies, sometimes openly, more often privately. It is possible, even probable, that without the war the province would eventually have become another state in the Union. The Americans could have had it by osmosis. But the war intervened. (Pierre Berton, The invasion of Canada, 1812-1813 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart), 1980, pp. 25-26)
As Canadian J.M.S. Careless wrote while he was Chairman of the Department of History, University of Toronto:
Before the war, Upper Canada had been little more than a loose string of settlements along the American border, largely populated from the United States and uncertain in their loyalties. Granted, there were United Empire Loyalists among them, whose own feelings had been sharply defined by their opposition to the American Revolution. Yet the Loyalists’ allegiance had been to the British connection, or perhaps to the old colonies that were no more: they had not yet necessarily identified themselves with their new homeland. Furthermore, the largest single element in the province were those American pioneers who had come in the wake of the Loyalists seeking fertile, empty land. If they had no strong cause to dislike a provincial regime that offered free lands and little taxes, these sons of the republic had no reason either to feel firmly committed to the British colony. In fact, there was a widespread assumption among them that the spread of American settlement into Upper Canada would lead naturally and irresistibly to its incorporation into the United States. The province yet had no real definition or commitment. It was virtually an overflow of the American frontier, which seemed destined to absorb it. (J.M.S. Careless, “Introduction,” In Morris Zaslow, ed. The defended border: Upper Canada and the War of 1812 (Toronto: MacMillan Co.), 1964, pp. 2-3)
Militarily, Ontario in 1812 was ready to collapse. The province’s administrator and commander of all armed forces, Major-General Isaac Brock (later Sir Isaac; he died at Queenston Heights before receiving news of his knighthood), a 42-year-old, 6’ 3” Englishman who was probably the most competent general officer on either side during the War, had 850 British troops under his command to defend all Ontario. Privately he wrote to the new Governor General of Canada at Quebec City, Sir George Prevost, that it was impossible to animate the militia to a proper sense of duty. When he had attempted to muster 500 men at Long Point on Lake Erie to march to the relief of Fort Amherstburg, there had been open revolt.[1] Anti-British dissidents (who later turned traitor) made inflammatory speeches in the colonial legislature. There was a general mood among the citizenry of despair and defeatism.
Then – a miracle happened! War came to Canada. The polarizing effect may be seen in events in the extreme southwest of Ontario, near the American Fort Detroit. When Brig. Gen. William Hull, Commander of the U.S. Army of the Northwest and Governor of Michigan Territory, commanding 2,000 men, arrived at Detroit, with the intention of seizing the British Ft. Amerherstburg in Ontario to the south, his men were practically greeted by the Ontario population nearby with open arms. At the settlement of Sandwich, Ontario, opposite Detroit, many of the inhabitants waved white handkerchiefs and flags, and their welcome was cordial. The colonial militia of Kent and Essex counties, which covered the area, was a disaffected, pro-American rabble. The British commander at Ft. Amherstburg, Lt. Col. St. George, saw his militia force dwindling daily, and was filled with desperation; he considered the men capable of joining the invaders themselves.[2]
Hull, however, issued a witless and bombastic proclamation to the “Inhabitants of Canada”, in which he stated the aim of delivering them from tyranny and threatened that “No white man found fighting by the side of an Indian will be taken prisoner. Instant destruction will be his lot….”[3] Soon thereafter, Hull sent Gen. Duncan McArthur, commander of the Ohio militia, on a raid into Ontario up the Thames River, foraging for supplies. For 60 miles McArthur left a trail of devastation – burnt farms, destroyed grist mills, and slaughtered and stolen livestock.
Yet Hull has overstated his case. These are farmers he is addressing, not revolutionaries. The colonial authoritarianism touches very few. They do not feel like slaves; they already have enough peace, liberty and security to satisfy them. This tax-free province is not America at the time of the Boston Tea Party. Why is Hull asking them to free themselves from tyranny? In the words of one, if they had been under real tyranny, “they could at any time have crossed the line to the United States.”
Hull has made another error. He threatens that anyone found fighting beside the Indians can expect no quarter. That rankles. Everybody will be fighting with the Indians; it will not be a matter of choice. Some of the militiamen who have secretly hoped to go over to Hull in the confusion of battle have a change of heart. What is the point of deserting if the Americans intend to kill them on capture? (Pierre Berton, The invasion of Canada, 1812-1813 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart), 1980, pp. 130-131)
Within a short time, the militia of Essex and Kent were no longer quite so disaffected towards the British cause. The fact that the Americans had promised no quarter was an insult which failed to intimidate. Then the American forces had begun to beggar them by destroying their crops and orchards! Slowly they drifted back to the muster calls. By August 9, parties of them were to lie in wait, determinedly, to ambush Hull’s supply trains, ready to charge in the centre with the bayonet, in concert with Shawnee warriors on the flanks.[4]
It was, in conclusion, a tragically missed opportunity for the United States. Americans of that period would later be considered the enemy across Ontario, having burnt every home along the Niagara River, despoiled Toronto, laid waste the Thames Valley, and ravaged the St. Lawrence. No longer would it be popular to espouse American ideals – for a few short years, anyway.
From a companion volume,
Flames across the border, to the one previously quoted of his, I will let Canadian Pierre Berton have the (almost) last word:
Having won the last battle, the Americans were convinced that they won the War of 1812. Having stemmed the tide of invasion and kept the Americans out of their country, Canadians believed that they won the war. Having ceded nothing that they considered important, the British were serene in the conviction that they won it. But war is not a cricket match. The three nations that celebrated peace were beggared by the conflict, their people bereaved, their treasuries emptied, their graveyards crowded. In North America, the charred houses, the untended farms, the ravaged fields along the border left a legacy of bitterness and distrust….
…The War of 1812 was remembered only in terms of catch-phrases: Don’t give up the ship… We have met the enemy and they are ours… Push on, brave York Volunteers [alleged last words of Maj. Gen. Sir Isaac Brock at Queenston Heights]. History gave the conflict short shrift; and yet, for all its bunglings and idiocies, it helped determine the shape and nature of Canada. Like the Battle of Waterloo, it was, to use Wellington’s phrase, “a near run thing.” The balance might have been tipped another way had the leadership on either side been more incisive, the weather less captious, or the Gods of War less perverse. A change of wind on Lake Champlain could have led to the capture of Upper New York State. The sniper’s bullet that killed Isaac Brock undoubtedly helped prolong the struggle.
Events, not individuals, it is said, control the course of history. The War of 1812 suggests the opposite. Canada’s destiny, for better or for worse, was in the hands of human beings, subject to human caprices, strengths, and emotions. If the ambitious Winfield Scott had waited for the army at Lundy’s Lane, if the haughty Commodore Chauncey had deigned to support Jacob Brown at Fort George, could Upper Canada have held out? Tecumseh [the brilliant and charismatic Shawnee leader of the Indian confederation against the United States] was unique. If he had not been born, would another have risen in his place?
Human failings frustrated American strategy. If Kingston or Montreal had fallen, Ontario would be an American state today. But Dearborn and Wilkinson were flawed commanders. An American Brock might have pierced the heartland of the nation and cut the jugular between the two provinces. But the invaders were reduced to hacking vainly at the country’s extremities. (Pierre Berton, Flames across the border (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart), 1981, pp. 424, 426-427)
In future I will try to address other aspects of the war on the Canadian frontier. Obviously your comments will be of great interest.
Footnotes
[1] E.A. Cruickshank, ed.
Documents relating to the invasion of Canada and the surrender of Detroit, Canadian Archives Publications, No. 7 (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau), 1912, pp. 195-196.
[2] Pierre Berton,
The invasion of Canada, 1812-1813 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart), 1980, p. 127.
[3] E.A. Cruickshank, ed.,
op. cit., pp. 58-60.
[4] Milo M. Quaife, ed.
War on the Detroit: the chronicles of Thomas Vercheres de Boucherville, and the capitulation by an Ohio volunteer (Chicago: Lakeside Press), 1940, p. 94.
Best wishes,
Tim