Chapter VIII: Part 8

As for volunteers, they were as plentiful as United States arms, and comprised all sorts and conditions of man and boy. Two thirty-six pounders, one eighteen-pounder, two thousand stand of arms, one hundred cannon balls, five hundred musket cartridges, is the enumeration of one contribution; and only the state of the roads prevents one contributor setting out with a six-pound brass cannon. An old gun is actually sent with the message, “If you want cannon we are ready to cast them for you.” An ex-member of the New York Legislature, with two certified captains, goes with a letter to Van Rensselaer, to talk over what measures sentries, presumably of an arsenal, might take to furnish material without infringing the law; and D. M’Leod writes, “Arms in abundance can be had for the asking.” Another friend sends blankets and arms; one old man, a follower of Murat, asks a cavalry commission for his son, a lad of nineteen, adding pathetically, “I am now old and poor, but if you will grant my request I will send you my son, the last descendant of a noble line of warlike commanders of France.”

A blacksmith in Buffalo had an order for nine hundred creepers, other artisans were busy at daggers and bowie knives, and a Mr. Wilkinson furnished five hundred pounds of boiler cuttings as a substitute for grape-shot. Canadians were used to this kind of ammunition. Away back in 1758 the Highlanders wounded at Carillon had died of cankered wounds from the broken glass and jagged metal used instead of “honest shot.”

“An empty hand, a stout heart, and a fair knowledge of military tactics,” blankets, boots and shoes, one hundred and seventeen loaves of bread, eight tons of grape-shot, two loads of beef, pork, and bread, together with “some gentlemen well equipped for fight,” one hundred muskets, four loads of volunteers, swell the original twenty-six men who accompanied Mackenzie and Van Rensselaer at first, when the frame of a cannon, upon which Mackenzie had sunk inert and spirit-broken till aroused by some false alarm, is the only defence mentioned. But, undaunted, “Push off!” had been the cry of this handful. A proclamation was issued, drawing attention to the country in front which was languishing under the blighting influence of military despots, strangers from Europe; an end forever was promised to the wearisome prayers, supplications and mockeries attendant upon our connection with the lordlings of the Colonial office, Downing Street, London; the time was favourable, owing to the absence of the “hired” red-coats of Europe; and ten millions of acres of fair and fertile lands were at the disposal of the Provisional Government, to be divided into portions of three hundred acres, which, added to one hundred dollars in silver, would be the reward of those who would bring this glorious struggle to a conclusion.

“And though slavery’s cloud o’er thy morning hath hung,
The full tide of freedom shall beam round thee yet.”

Besides Van Rensselaer, the aid was announced of Colonel Sutherland and Colonel Van Egmond. Alas, the latter, a good and true man, who was worthy of a better fate than the one he earned by meddling in misunderstood politics of a foreign country, was by then suffering agonies in Toronto gaol; and Sutherland--as true-bred coward as ever turned back--was destined for the tender touch of Colonel Prince a little later. When proposal was subsequently made to exchange Sutherland for Mackenzie, it drew the following query from an American paper, “What should they do with him if they had him, and why not give up Mackenzie to the Canadians in payment for the custody of Sutherland?” Clearly the possession of Sutherland was a poor boast; he was a mark for his countrymen’s contempt from the time he paraded the streets of Buffalo, preceded by a fife and drum, enlisting volunteers, until he disappears from the scene. The _Buffalonian_, when giving a detailed account of thefts committed by the patriots, from cannon to cabbages, says: “The patriot army have also robbed an uncommon quantity of hen-roosts. In these exploits Brigadier-General Sutherland is chiefly conspicuous for his gallantry in the attack and skill and expedition in retreating.”

Robert Gourlay, then at Cleveland, Ohio, wrote his opinion of the fatuity of this course direct to Van Rensselaer. Several of his letters are condensed into, “Never was hallucination more blinding than yours. At a moment of profound peace, putting on armour, and led by the little editor of a blackguard newspaper, entering the lists of civil broil, and erecting your standard on Navy Island to defy the armies of Britain! David before Goliath seemed little, but God was with him. What are you in the limbo of vanity, with no stay but the devil? Mr. Hume is a little man, and you less.” He adds, alluding to the famous letter, “That his four years of residence in the United States had let him see things far worse than European domination. You call yourself a patriot, and fly from home to enlist scoundrels for the conquest of your country. This is patriotism with a vengeance.”

Mackenzie, like Gourlay, had a great aptitude in calculating the difficulties they were powerful enough to create. But neither of them, in his own case, counted on possible consequences.

At the finish of his proclamation Mackenzie has a prophecy: “We were also among the deliverers of our country.” But he further says, “Militiamen of 1812, will ye rally round the standard of our tyrants? I can scarce believe it possible.”

Already that standard was floating before his eyes from one of the tallest pines, and around it were gathered MacNab, Drew, and a host of others whose own arms or their fathers’ had been borne in 1812,--two thousand five hundred Canadian farmers, most of them delaying, when called, for nothing but the clothing in which they now stood. Bayonets glittered in the sun, and, on horseback as usual, Sir Francis trotted up and down, reviewing with pardonable pride the troops, white, red, and black, which had rallied round that flag.

“Canadians, rally round your Head,
Nor to these base insurgents yield,”

had been the cry of a Tory paper.

“I wonder how that rebel crew
Could clap their wings and craw, man,”

says another. But Sir Francis had one discomforting answer to his appeal for aid against Navy Island. Mr. Absalom Shade, of Galt, replied that not a few there declined to enter into any such frontier service; while many in the Paisley Block, though not allying themselves with Mackenzie, would have seen “Governor and Governor’s party drowned in the depths of the sea and not a solitary cry of regret for them.”

But Sir Francis had his friends. (_Toast_): Sir Francis Bond Head--the noble champion of our rights--distinguished alike for every virtue which constitutes the gentleman and the scholar, whose name adorns a bright page in the History of Upper Canada. (_Tune_: “Britons Strike Home”).

* * * * *

Gallows Hill over, the Canadian muse took her lyre in hand and sang, with a Scotch accent forbye:

“Oh, did ye hear the news of late,
Which through the Province rang, man,
And warned our men to try the game
They played at Waterloo, man.
All destitute of dread or fears,
Militia men and volunteers
Like lightning flew, for to subdue
The rebel loons and crack their croons,
And pook their lugs and a’, man.
Lang life to Queen Victoria,
Our Governor and a’, man!
We’ll rally round Britannia’s flag,
And fecht like Britons a’, man.”

Sir Francis, in the account he has given us, seems to have been so taken up with the moral lesson of the panorama before him, making a book out of the running brook of Niagara and a moral out of everything, showing his chemical analysis of the comparative advantages of monarchical and republican institutions, speculating on the mutating effect of hard shot on the latter and the thickness of the hide of the American conscience and the thinness of skin which covered American vanity, that he forgot to fight. “Waiting calmly on the defensive,” he called it, emulating a commander at Fontenoy, nicknamed The Confectioner, who, when asked why he did not move to the front, replied, “I am preserving my men.” The usually alert and active Canadian volunteer was occasionally balanced by one more likely to damage himself or his comrades than the enemy. A young clergyman, newly ordained, arrived in Canada about the time of the Rebellion. As he had as yet no charge he thought it only proper to take part in the fray, of course on the loyalist side. A musket was placed in his hands, but he had to apply to someone wiser than himself to know what should go in first. He was stationed on the Niagara frontier in mid-winter, where the beauties of nature made him forgetful of all else. Instead of keeping “eyes front” he used them in star-gazing, fell into the hands of the rebels, and narrowly escaped being shot as a spy. He escaped by the intervention of a person who happened to know him.

A central blockhouse, several batteries, and most imposing earthworks could be seen through the telescope; but as the island was for the most part covered with wood it was hard to approximate its strength. The main camp of huts was on the other side and on Grand Island--a large island some ten miles long, belonging to the United States, and on which a certain Major Noah, of New York, years before had laid the foundations of the city of Ararat, intending to raise there an altar. Across the channel was a portion of the army of sympathisers and the general hospital, the latter transformed into an ark of refuge. From this island, United States property, the loyalist reconnoitering parties sent out in small boats were fired upon, as minutely recorded by Lieutenant Elmsley, who also states, “On our coming abreast of Fort Schlosser I distinctly saw two discharges of heavy ordnance from a point on the main shore on the American side, not far from that fort. As soon as our boats had passed the firing ceased.” The two vantage points of the lesser island and Canadian mainland were near enough for threat or challenge to be thrown across, and from the Battle Ground Inn, just opposite Navy Island, such encouraging sentences as “We’ll be over at you one of these days,” were wafted over. An idle threat so far. Chases after the balls of the enemy as they bounded along, laughter and cheers, made the place more like a playground than a battle-field, a state of inaction which continued for a fortnight.

Part of Sir Francis’ “moral” inward conflict was through the very evident desire on the part of his black militia, many of them scarred and mutilated from their slave-life, to be up and doing on the land from which they had made their escape. They were a formidable looking set of men, powerful, athletic; and as they stood about him, yellow eyes, red gums and clenched ivory teeth making a fine combination of colour, terrible possibilities seem to have crossed his mind. So also with the Indian contingent. They did not like the Long Knives across the water--a name not originally Kentuckian, but straight from the time of good King Arthur. But there was what Sir Francis calls an unwholesome opinion in Downing Street that it would be barbarous to use them as allies against American citizens. It had been said that Canadians were only a trifle less handy at scalping than the allies were, and there were still tales extant of scalping scenes at the time of the Conquest, and later. He managed to satisfy the Indians, however. The honest red countenances glowed, the feathers on their heads gently waved, as they communed among themselves, and presently a disconcerting warwhoop arose, at first like the single yelp of a wolf, but gathering in volume until every scalp upon the island must have quivered.

The following extracts from letters sent from Chippewa by Captain Battersby to his home show how slowly matters progressed:

“Pavilion Hotel, 26th December, 1837.--MacNab arrived yesterday with a large accession of force. Boats have been brought up from Niagara and preparations are making for an attack, which if made at all will, I think, take place in a day or two....

“Chippewa, 28th December.--No attack has yet been made, but the preparations are going on. We are procuring boats from Dunnville, St. Catharines and Niagara, forty or fifty seamen have arrived, and there are two captains in the navy and four lieutenants, ... so that you see our means are augmenting fast. We are most deficient in artillery, but I believe some heavy guns are on their way. There was some firing yesterday from the island, but no effect except wounding a horse. It is said that the Governor has sent up orders not to attack the island by boats, but to dislodge the enemy by artillery and bombardment. At any rate I am glad to see that our leaders are going on cautiously and do not intend making an attack until they have sufficient force. A part of the 24th Regiment is said to be on its way here, and I shall be very glad to see them--they will be invaluable as a support and rallying point to our raw militia.... I will write again when I can, but such is the hurry and confusion that it is difficult to find time and place.

“30th December, 9 p.m.--You will hear before this reaches you of the burning of the steamboat on the American side of the river. It took place about midnight, and was a very gallant enterprise, as those who achieved it were mostly young, inexperienced lads, gentlemen volunteers from the militia; very few of them could even row decently, and many of the small boats employed had not even rudders.... I was in one of the boats, but owing to not having men who could row, and the boat being heavy, I lost sight of the others in the dark ... and obliged to return. I have no doubt that this affair will make a great noise in the United States; in fact I know it already has at Buffalo.... I don’t think that an immediate attack is contemplated, though we are going on with our preparations and shall have boats enough fitted and ready in two or three days. One company of the 24th Regiment came in on the morning of the day I last wrote you.... To give you an idea of the way we go on, yesterday night when the boats were manning for the attack a whole squad of people I knew nothing about came down armed to the teeth, and I really thought at first they would have attempted to take possession of my boat by force that they might go themselves.

“January 4, 1838.--The Lieut.-Governor is here and preparations are still going on for the attack. I have now, however, no fear for the result, as several heavy guns have been brought up, two mortars and a large quantity of Congreve rockets. Our boat force is also increasing rapidly and will soon be equal to whatever is required.... I believe two or three companies of the 32nd will take part in the attack whenever it is made. We are going to move to-night with the boats two or three miles above the island, for the purpose of dropping down with the current when the attack is made.

“January 8th.--The time of attack is as doubtful as ever. We are going on still with our preparations, but owing to the paucity of materials and the terrible state of confusion in which we are, our progress is very slow. There has been a constant thaw here and some rain for the last fourteen days, and the roads are in a state absolutely indescribable. I can safely say that I am floundering in six inches of mud and water from morning till night. I cannot ask for leave of absence for a day, for numbers of the seamen are already discontented and would willingly seize such a pretext for leaving us. We are living in the utmost filth and discomfort.

“January 11th.--Here we are still in the same degree of uncertainty as when I last wrote.... More artillery and troops are expected.... I think myself that no attack will take place for two or three weeks, but it is very likely that we shall endeavour to check their communications with the United States, by means of armed boats, in which case my services would be as necessary as if the island were attacked.... It is now more than a fortnight since I have had my clothes off, night or day. More or less firing takes place between our batteries and those of the enemy every day, and though there are always crowds of gazers on our side, yet to my astonishment only two men have as yet been hurt, although the shot fall a good quarter of a mile past our batteries. I think the commanding officer very much to blame for allowing such crowds to put themselves in danger merely to gratify an idle curiosity. The Buffalo papers state the loss on the island to have been eleven men since the batteries first opened. Great numbers of the militia have left and are leaving this place, at which I am not sorry, as they are entirely undisciplined and many of them disorderly.”

But Sir John Colborne to the rescue. His artillery, officers, guns, mortars, Congreve rockets and stores arrived, and a great stir went through the dissatisfied lines.

The guard standing at Black Creek bridge had a very bad toothache the night of December 29th, so bad that he thankfully retired to the barracks at Chippewa, an old, evacuated tavern, whose big cavernous fire-place, well filled with blazing logs, gave much comfort to his aching jaw. The men were lying about on straw, two and two under a blanket, when in came Nick Thorne to ask if any one of them would help him load up wood from the barrack yard. Some great doings were on hand; he had the countersign; the wood loads were to be used for a beacon light. Reed, whose father, a U. E. Loyalist of 1796, had followed Brock at Queenston, forgot his toothache.

The _Caroline_ was a copper-bottomed craft, originally constructed by the man known afterwards as Commodore Vanderbilt, was intended to sail in the waters off South Carolina, and her timbers were of live oak from that State. She was converted into a steamer and brought up the canals to Lake Ontario, had been used as a ferry at Ogdensburg, and was then taken through the Welland Canal for similar ferry purposes at Buffalo. She was hired by the patriots on Navy Island to convey stores to them from Fort Schlosser, an old military position of French times, where neither fort nor village remained; there was nothing but a tavern, which was the rendezvous of the “pirate force” in coming and going. “Where are you going?” queried someone similar to the gentle general.

“To Dunkirk,” answered the _Caroline’s_ master, Appleby.

“You mean eastward to Navy Island?” But this skipper answered never a word, and a scornful laugh laughed he.

The three lake schooners, each fitted with a gun and intended to carry troops to the island when the long deferred attack should be made, were still inactive. A loyalist reconnoitering party was sent out to report upon what proved to be the _Caroline’s_ last trip. She had landed a cannon and several armed men, and had dropped her anchor east of the island. Expecting to find her still there it was decided to “cut her out” that night. The process technically known as cutting out is a naval one, conducted with great secrecy and muffled oars, men and cutlasses, pistols and boarding pikes, black night and plenty of blood, after the manner of Marryat; always a dangerous business, but in these circumstances, where their chart reported irresistible currents and not half a mile above the Falls, a most perilous enterprise. Luckily there was the right kind of material at hand and to spare for it. They had but a few small boats of about twelve feet in length, each pulling four oars; it would be necessary to keep uncomfortably close to the rapids in order to avoid observation from Navy Island; the difficulties, did the men once quail, were so great that the shortest way was to put them out of mind. At four o’clock that afternoon Colonel MacNab and Capt. Drew, R.N., stood on the lookout discussing the situation. They saw the _Caroline_ performing her duty of conveyance, the telescope revealing the field-pieces and men.

“This won’t do,” said MacNab. “I say, Drew, do you think you can cut that vessel out!”

“Oh, yes,” was the ready answer; “nothing easier. But it must be done at night.”

“Well, then,” was the laconic order, “go and do it.” That order “nearly fired the continent as well as the _Caroline_.”

To quote the patriot chronicle, it was now that “an insult, the most reckless, cowardly, and unwarranted that was ever offered to a sovereign people, was given.”

Captain Drew was a commander on half pay, “elderly, shortish, and stout,” who had settled in Woodstock in 1834 upon a beautiful farm, where he fondly hoped to end his days in peaceful occupations of wheat-growing and tree-planting. The Duke of Northumberland, who visited him there, thought it the prettiest place he had seen in Canada; and indeed Captain Drew and Major James Barwick may be termed the pioneers of those--the Vansittarts, Lights, De Blaquières, Deedes and others--who formed the far-known aristocratic settlement of Oxford. The midlands of England held nothing lovelier than these homes scattered along the Thames, farms separated by beautiful ravines, studded and fringed with elms and noble maples, well built picturesque houses, wherein the owners entertained after the manner of their class and kind and spent much money. The stress of war in very few years was to wipe out this community of blood, manners and culture; but Captain Drew’s tenure, owing to the cutting out of the _Caroline_, was to be shorter still.

The first thing to be done was to call for volunteers. “Here we are, sir,” cried a hundred voices, “what are we to do?” some of them from the contingent in the Methodist chapel at Chippewa. “Follow me,” was the only answer, for it was of first importance that no word could possibly be conveyed to the island, and Drew says the men did not know their errand until seated in the boats and off from shore, taking their way _via_ the little canal just above the rapids. Rumours of any kind were quickly transmitted to either side; one of the most ludicrous which had recently come to the ears of the troops was that Mackenzie’s people said the Tories of Toronto had managed to smuggle a black cook into the patriot stronghold opposite, and that presently all patriots would therefore die of poison.

Each man of the boats’ crews had to be able to pull a good oar, a condition not strictly carried out, as we see from Captain Battersby’s letters, but there were some experts, such as young Mewburn, who writes that he was doubly manning a bow oar. Each man was furnished with a cutlass and pistol. Most of them were young fellows, some from that corps organized in King Street in Hamilton by MacNab and called by him his “Elegant Extracts.” One, young Woods, a curly-headed laddie, U.E.L. to the heart’s core, good-naturedly gave up his seat to a friend, Dr. Askin, and then found himself likely to be left on shore. He appealed to his chief. “Why, you d--d young scamp, if you want to be shot give my compliments to Captain Beer and tell him to take you in.” More easily said than done; but through influence, and by being able to hide under a seat, he got into a boat and lay on a pile of wet sand, with knees up to his chin, palpitating with excitement, until the final moment of departure. For time dragged tediously; they had to give the _Caroline_ an hour or two to settle herself for the night, and they heartily wished that the moon would do the same. “Hadn’t you better give me another,” said our curly-headed laddie, referring to his pistol. “When you have used that, you will find that you won’t want another,” said his officer.

MacNab wished the _Caroline_ to be brought to Chippewa; Drew wanted her burnt and done for. By half after eleven they had started, sent off with three hearty cheers from those left behind, Thorne, Reed and the others ready to light the fire which was to answer to the blaze they intended to make, and, unnecessary precaution, which would also serve as beacon to guide them back. Once out, the men were told the service they were bent on and offered the chance to return, the danger not being burked. But no one took advantage of the offer. Some, however, nearly had their course altered in spite of themselves: “Robert Sullivan, one of the crew, called out, ‘Stop rowing, boys, for God’s sake--do you see where we are--we are going straight over the Falls!’ ‘Silence!’ responded Lieutenant Graham, ‘or I will blow your brains out. It is for me, not you, to give orders.’ ‘Oh, very well,’ replied Sullivan, drawing his oar into the boat, ‘if I am to go over the Falls, I may as well go without brains as with them.’ Here we all joined in, and after hurriedly representing to Graham the danger of our position we began to pull up stream. A little longer and it would have been too late.” The roar of the mighty cataract, which awed and somewhat terrified them, had been previously described by a patriot writer as the peal of the funeral dirge of royalty in Canada.

Shots from Navy Island made the heart beat; and do their best they were forced to cross the river diagonally. “We are going astern, sir; we shall be over the Falls;” but reassured by the light from the doomed steamer, by which they could determine the drop down stream, they at length all got together. The moon was yet too bright, and they rested on their oars, dipping them enough to stem the current. At last it was dark enough, and they were alongside. “Boat, ahoy! boat, ahoy!--give us the countersign!” “Silence!” said Drew, in a confidential tone, “silence! don’t make a noise, and we’ll give you the countersign when we get on board.” Once on deck, he drew his sword, saying to the three men who were lounging on the starboard gangway, “I want this vessel, and you must go ashore at once.” Thinking he was alone they took up their arms and fired at him, not a yard off. A swing and a cut of the sword, and one patriot dropped at the captain’s feet. Another trigger was pulled, the only result a flash in the pan; there was a sabre-cut dealt on the inside of the man’s arm, and the pistol fell. The captain confesses to expediting this man and another over the boat’s side with an inch of the point of his weapon.

Meantime, three of the boats had boarded forward, and a good deal of firing followed, the latter checked at once by the captain, as he feared that in the dark friend might be mistaken for foe, a fear soon realized. Returning, he thought it wise to reconnoitre about the gangway between the bulwark and the raised cabin. Here he was met by a man who aimed at him a slashing cut, which he parried and successfully pinned the cutlass against the cabin bulk-head. “Holloa, Zealand,” said he, recognizing one of his own men, a fine specimen of an old British tar, “what are you about?” “Oh, I beg pardon, sir, I didn’t know it was you!” said the zealous sailor, who, released, went to seek legitimate prey. There was a good deal of cursing, clashing of swords and shouting, and (it is said) a cry of “Show the rebels no quarter.” On the contrary, as the men fussed over the lamp, the window sashes and the forgotten “carcass,” trying to coax a fire, one American heard them say of himself, “What shall we do with this fellow?” “Kill him!” suggested one; “No, take him prisoner!” said a third; but their officer’s decision was that they did not want prisoners, and the man was to be put ashore. And the only person killed in the whole affair, Durfee, lay on the dock, shot by a bullet which came from the land side. Wells, the owner of the vessel, finding himself on solid ground, made some good running, in spite of his assertion that he was almost cut to pieces.

One tale of the day has it that another life was lost; a volunteer was fired at by a patriot, and in retaliation beat his assailant’s brains out; his own condition and that of the butt of his pistol corroborated his story on his return to the Canadian side. The matter for the extraordinarily sensational accounts given by the American press was chiefly furnished by Mackenzie.

Lieutenant Elmsley officered a guard on shore while the vessel was cut from her moorings--not an easy thing to accomplish, as she was made fast by chains frozen in the ice; but a young fellow named Sullivan seized an axe, cleared the chains, and set her free. This, Commander Drew’s own story, is denied by a survivor, one of his lieutenants. A lamp was placed in a basket used for carrying Indian corn, cross-bars from the windows were torn off and added to it, and the vessel was set alight in four different places. The material especially brought for this purpose, and known as a carcass, was at first quite forgotten. Care had been taken to rouse all sleepers, had any been able to sleep through such a scene; the invaders were ordered to their boats; the flames shot out fore and aft; and by this time Captain Drew found his stand on the paddle-box too uncomfortable, as those driven ashore had recovered from their surprise and the discharge of their muskets was disagreeably close. It was equally uncomfortably hot, and his gallant wish to be the last on board nearly left him there as she drifted down the current. He found a companion in a man emerging from below who declared it too hot to live in there, and together they got into the boat sent back for them, Drew’s shouts fortunately having risen above the din. So far there was no need for the beacon from the opposite shore; the _Caroline_ herself, like a great torch, glided beside them, or rather they kept in the wake of her gold-dust covered ripples, a fine target for the island guns; but the days of bull’s-eyes were not yet. In spite of wounds the men rose superior to fear of shot, content with the result of their mission, and anxious to rejoin the cheering multitude that waited for them on the Canadian shore. The illumination made by burning vessel and beacon light threw every pebble on the shore-line into bright relief. Drew’s account states that no human ingenuity could have accomplished what the _Caroline_ so easily did for herself. When free from the wharf at Fort Schlosser her natural course would have been to follow the stream, which would have taken her along the American shore and over the American Fall; but she behaved as if aware she had changed owners and navigated herself across the river, clearing the rapids above Goat Island; she went fairly over the British Fall of Niagara.[4]

An extract from one of the songs sung by the Canadian volunteers will give an idea of the sentiments of the singers:

“A party left the British shore,
Led on by gallant Drew, sir,
Who set the Yankee boat on fire
And beat their pirate crew, sir.

The Yankees said they did invent
The steamboat first of all, sir,
But Britain taught the Yankee boat
To navigate the Fall, sir.”

The Lewiston _Telegraph_ on Saturday set this in type at 6 a.m.:

“HORRIBLE! MOST HORRIBLE!!

“We stop the press to announce the following horrible intelligence which has just been communicated by two gentlemen direct from the bloody scene:

“The steamer _Caroline_, which was lying at the landing at Porter’s storehouse, was boarded this morning between the hours of twelve and one by about eighty men, who came in boats from the Canada side. The _Caroline_ had on board from fifteen to twenty of our sleeping and defenceless citizens, who had lodgings on board. They are believed to have been mostly citizens of Buffalo, who came as lookers-on, with the expectation of witnessing the attack upon the island. Every individual was butchered except four, and three of these severely wounded. The engineer, who was thrust through and put on shore, says that after the bloody work was executed a small boy was found in a closet, who begged for mercy but found none. The _Caroline_ was then towed out into the stream and sent over Niagara Falls. Three cheers were given, and at the same time beacon lights were raised at Chippewa. Our informant saw the lifeless body of one person who was shot upon the shore.”

For five years the question hung upon a thread whether England and the United States should go to war or not. It is always fair to give two sides of a question, but in the one given by Clio and Melpomene it will be seen their poetic license degenerates into something more than the flowery taradiddle of the average verse-maker:

“Oh, what were the dreams, as they sunk to rest,
Of that devoted band,
Who lay, as a babe on its mother’s breast,
On the shores of their native land?
Breathed they of fire, or of streaming blood,
Or the thundering cataract’s whelming flood?

Strong manhood’s godlike form was there,
With his bold and open brow,
And age, with his wearied look of care,
And his floating locks of snow;
And the agile form of the stripling boy,
With his throbbing pulse of hope and joy.

They dreamed of the happy hours of home,
Of a blessed mother’s prayer,
Of the cherished wife in that sacred dome,
Of the lisping prattlers there;
And the stripling dreamed of his young love’s smile
When he left her bound for the fatal isle.

Oh, what was that dim, ominous sound,
That struck on the sleeper’s ear,
Yet roused him not from his rest profound
Till the unsheathed blade was near?
And it seemed as the air and the rocks were riven
By the slogan of death and the wild shriek given.

Oh, vain was the strife of the struggling few
With a well-armed murderous band;
For the gallant barque, with her blood-drenched crew,
Is floating from the strand,
And the young boy’s _quarter cry_ it bore
To the purple wave, with his own heart’s gore.

On, wildly onward, sped the craft,
As she swiftly neared the verge;
And the demon guards of the black gulf laughed,
And chanted a hellish dirge;
And the booming waters roared anew
A wail for the dead and dying crew.

As over the shelving rocks she broke
And plunged in her turbulent grave,
The slumbering Genius of Freedom woke,
Baptized in Niagara’s wave,
And sounded her warning tocsin far
From Atlantic’s shore to polar star.”

A careful computation from pages of prose, almost as flowery as the foregoing lines and oftentimes breaking into rhyme from a very luxuriousness of idea and rhythm, puts the lives aboard the _Caroline_ at about ninety-nine in number. Thirty-three were killed and missing; thirty-three were towed into the middle of the stream when the boat was fired, and with her went over the ledge; there were also thrilling cries from “the living souls” on board, plus “wails of the dying,” presumably thirty-three cries and thirty-three wails, all gliding down the resistless rapids to perish by “the double horror of a fate inevitable.”

On the day following the cutting out five hundred men were told off to complete the work by driving the filibusters off the island, the three schooners, with boats and barges, being sufficient transport. “But what shall we do if a shot strikes our boat--we must either drown or go over the Falls,” was a query which sent Captain Drew off on another hazard. He pulled up stream in a four-oared gig, within pistol shot of the island, to see if the enemy’s field-piece was equal to hitting a boat which moved fast through the water. So far the casualties from the red-hot shot sent skipping along the Canadian shore were the death of young Smith of Hamilton, who, lying in a barn on some hay, had part of his thigh carried away and some ribs broken, and an old sailor named Millar who served Captain Luard’s guns, and had his leg taken off. Millar asked to see his leg, gave three cheers for the Queen, and died.

A twenty-four pounder, mounted on a scow, battered the point where the guns of Van Rensselaer were most active. Drew’s expedition brought upon themselves both musketry and field-pieces, at first innocent of all aim, but suddenly so improved that one shot made ducks and drakes on the water, just clearing the gunwale, and passing between Drew and his strokesman. This was from no amateur, but owed its precision to the hand of a young West Pointer--possibly of the “empty hand, stout heart, of fair military tactics” letter. Van Rensselaer has left it on record that the only moments of excitement to him in this episode were when the first gun was fired from the island, and when this boat’s crew, at early dawn, made its way in safety round them; so that Drew’s temerity was not without reward. These patriots had “kissed their rusty muskets” and vowed they would never lay them down until “the redemption of Canada was accomplished.” A “sympathetic” account tells us that the men so determined to do or die, in order to protect themselves from temptation had taken the pins out of the screws of the scows and burned their oars, resolved,

“If sons of Liberty can keep
resting-place but this,
Then here we’ll stand--or madly leap
Into the dark abyss.”

The outcome was a hurried departure by night after they heard of the arrival of the 24th Regiment. The brisk cannonade of about four hundred rounds from heavy guns and mortars, and the armed schooners which effectually kept them within their breastworks, were almost enough without the rumour of the 24th.

When the Canadian force landed not a soul was to be seen, and what had appeared formidable defence dwindled. Apparently a second Gibraltar, it was found in military parlance to be a bug-bear than which a greater never existed, a conglomeration of batteries and hovels masked with wood, a sickening spectacle of “looped and windowed” wretchedness. The vaunted blockhouse citadel, the barracks and the batteries, were but huts of trees and sods and ill-constructed embankments; the only reward for industry was an abattis of brushwood to prevent boat invasion.

A man concealed in the woods now came out, white flag in hand, and from him and two women found in a hut did the Canadians get an account of life on “the fatal isle” during the biting storms and pitiless rain of December, ’37, and January, ’38. “Peas and beans dank as a dog,” varied by feasts, the bones of which lay about with remains of bread and barrels of beans yet untouched, had been their food; the bushes about were eloquent, with bits of rag sticking to them, of the quality of clothing; these patriots, herded together like swine and sheep, left behind them evidences of some stores, boots and shoes, plenty of reading matter of the most virulent kind, all mixed up with burst shells, splintered wood and dirty straw. Some boots had the legs cut open, apparently to strip wounded limbs, some were stained with blood; and “a huge pile of unpicked bones, ... on a rough board used as a table,” and the remains of beds made of pine branches, gave further evidence.

Sir Francis paid the site a visit on the 17th, a wild and boisterous day. He had the body of one man exhumed--shot by a rifle, but his arms were pinioned. He had been suspected as a spy. The susceptible Sir Francis, light as his heart generally was, saddened at the sight of him.

Songs abounded for every part of the event, dates sometimes making way for rhyme:

“They say he murdered one Durfee,
In December, ’39, sir;
And stole some candles and old boots,
And burnt the _Caroline_, sir.”

On the night of evacuation the _soi-disant_ patriot army surrendered their arms to the United States authorities and disbanded their forces. The cannon belonging to the State were returned in a scow to Fort Schlosser, and in transit with the men on board came near following the fate of the _Caroline_. The scow had fallen far down the current and the men had given up their case as hopeless, when a gale from the north-west sprang up, and, aided by their blankets extemporized into sails, they were wafted ashore.

A month before, when they had received these ill-gotten guns, they slaughtered the oxen which drew them, and paid for the beef and work by a due-bill on the future Canadian Republic.

“No sooner was the _Caroline_ in flames than a sudden excitement prevailed; but it was the excitement of _fear_. The women fled from the villages on the coast, people who had fancied themselves bedridden decamped, and the citizens of Buffalo evinced the greatest possible consternation for the safety of their town.”

Captain Drew almost distanced Sir Francis in unpopularity in certain quarters; but like him, among his own was at once a hero. At St. George’s Day dinner in Toronto, Captain Marryat, an old comrade of Drew’s, gave the toast: “Captain Drew and his brave comrades who cut out the _Caroline_.” The day after the cutting-out, Drew, with MacNab, was burnt in effigy on the ice at Detroit, and he saw himself advertised for in a Buffalo newspaper at a reward of $500. He was hanged in effigy--a compliment kept up on the anniversary for several years; active attempts were made to assassinate him, of so determined a nature that in the end the pleasant Woodstock home was forsaken, and heroism was forgotten when, forced to leave the country to preserve life to wife and family, he found himself in England, where the preservation of Canada was of interest on a large scale but the reward of her preservers a matter of no moment. Captain Marryat’s toast brought upon him, too, attentions similar to those bestowed upon the subject of it. He was burned in effigy in every town in the United States through which his journey took him; his writings were made into a bonfire in Lewiston, and in St. Louis his effigy was decorated with a halter round the neck. Cincinnati was the first place which dared to assert a difference. The captain, whose mother was an American, had so far looked on at his own cremation and at that of his child-literary with calmness, smoking a cigar the while; but in Cincinnati, at the dinner tendered him, he spoke out like a man, a gentleman, and a person of force and humour, giving his reasons for his opinions and actions and ashamed of neither. He said that his motive in refusing private hospitality was that he might leave himself freedom of speech; and he finishes his deliverance, “If we are to burn all those who differ with us in opinion, consider, gentlemen, what a glorious bonfire would be made of the whole United States.”

What touched him most deeply was part of his mail matter,--five hundred anonymous letters which cost him on an average fifty cents each to redeem from the post, and of which he makes bitter though humorous complaint in a long, published letter, supposed to answer his five hundred correspondents in one _coup-de-main_ and also his well-wishers, whose missives followed him so persistently from place to place, that he began to think it a combined attack upon his purse from Van Buren and the Postmaster-General.

* * * * *

The destruction of the _Caroline_ surprised everyone, Americans, Canadians, even the chief actors; it let loose the tongues of ministers and diplomats, and it gave a great impulse to the outside movement of sympathisers or patriots. The success of Drew’s action made the last wary; but the howl of indignation, which for a time was allowed to have some show of reason, served as a cloak under which to add retaliation to what before had been dubbed patriotism alone. Sugar Island, Bois Blanc, and the schooner _Anne_ followed in quick succession; but the most direct outrage as result of it was that against the _Sir Robert Peel_ under the management of an autocrat on the other side of the warfare, handsome and distinguished looking as MacNab himself, determined as Drew, uncompromising as Prince, with an air and halo of romance over all his actions arising partly from his personality, partly from the romantic beauty of his surroundings--the redoubtable Bill Johnston, king of the Thousand Islands.

General Van Rensselaer, in sash and epaulets, with his encampment on Navy Island, backed by two or three hundred vagabonds, making war upon Great Britain, was a ridiculous person. But Bill Johnston, the buccaneer, armed to the teeth, actuated by revenge for real injuries, carrying out his threat to be a thorn in Great Britain’s side, flying from island to island, a price set upon his head, determined to sell his life at desperate cost, devoted to his daughter and adored by his children, has a touch of poetry about him which almost justified what he devoutly believed himself--that it was a glorious thing to be a pirate king. It is a come-down to have to admit that one of his occupations was robbing the Canadian mails, when he would take the clothes off the occupants of the coach and beat whoever refused him, tie the coachman to a tree--as he did between Gananoque and Kingston--and leave the man there. He once captured a dragoon carrying despatches, took the man and his horse to the lake shore, shot the horse, put the despatch-bag in his boat, and let the man find his way on foot to report himself to his captain.

This was the personage concerning whom Silas Fletcher, one of the refugees from Gallows Hill, wrote from Watertown to Navy Island, that he was a man in whom it was perfectly safe to confide, “a gentleman of intelligence, equal to fifty ordinary men,” recommended for a commission because he could “greatly annoy the Kingstonians,” his influence so great that he could raise two hundred as bold volunteers as ever drew trigger. Some of the sympathizers had a faculty for arousing admiration; for about this time a lady in Rochester, who kept a private school where some Toronto girls were sent, allowed her pupils to work a silken flag to be presented to the pirate force.

Johnston and his followers had many disguises. In their attacks on isolated farm-houses it was their pleasure to adopt the dress of ordinary sailors, and in their expedition to the island of Tanti--a Canadian possession of Lord Mountcashel, from which they took much plunder, and where they left one farmer with three fingers and part of a hand shot off--the whole _mise-en-scène_ is absurdly like “H. M. S. _Pinafore_.” From island to island, from rock to the hidden fastness, keeping in the narrower channels where inclined planes were cleverly constructed by which to draw up their fast boats, the only clue to their haunts was a surprise shot from some ambush or the expiring embers of a lately deserted bivouac fire, or perhaps a couple of barrels moored in the narrowest part of Fiddler’s Elbow, innocent-looking infernal machines left ready for the unwary.

French Creek--_A-ten-ha-ra-kweh-ta-re_, the place where the wall fell down--Abel’s Island and some other points, were his favourites; but Fort Wallace, a small islet at the head of Wells’ Island, was his fastness, where, with a dozen men, he boasted he could withstand two hundred. The number of boats scattered up and down the islands was popularly supposed to be one hundred, and the population of this world of islets some thousand souls, all under the sway of Johnston. Rinaldo, Robert Kidd and Robert le Diable seemed centred in him. He could land at Queenston unarmed and get the guard tipsy, and with a few companions take off seventy stand of arms. But his experience as smuggler and trader, and his exploits when in the employment of the American Government during the war of 1812, when he roamed all the lakes and rivers, intercepting despatches, and when, his boat driven in by a gale on the Canadian shore and his crew captured, he could cross Ontario--at that point thirty-six miles wide--in a bark canoe after a fortnight’s dodging of British vessels, made such affairs as came to his hand in ’37 seem bagatelles. In the early days he had at his command a six-oared barge; now he and his four sons, the latter all partaking of his own nature, powers and daring, did their work in four row-boats of extraordinary speed, each boat with a crew of eight or ten men and all armed to the teeth. The boat used by Johnston himself was twelve-oared, the swiftest of the fleet, twenty-eight feet by four and a half, clinker-built and gay with paint. Black bottom, white above, with a yellow streak six inches wide below the gunwale, inside red, so light in weight that two men could carry her with ease, but capable of accommodating twenty armed men, this gay-looking craft flew his own colours.

But for special use in deceiving British vessels a Stars and Stripes lay ready to hand. Not that he was under the protection of the latter; he was harried equally by United States authorities and Canadian, his capture being finally made by the former. The most interesting member of his domestic group was his daughter, whom his ambition was to make Queen of the Thousand Isles, a handsome girl of nineteen, possessed of courage enough to manage her boat alone, armed like her brothers, and skilful enough to keep her father supplied with provisions on those exciting occasions when he had to hide.

Bill Johnston and his followers were of more consequence than all the men, Provisional Government, generals and staff, on Navy Island; in the words of an American newspaper, “This chap seems now to be conducting war on his own hook.” Wells’ Island was the scene of his reprisal for the burning of the _Caroline_; for all his own grievance, such as the confiscation of his property on the British side in 1812, he felt himself more than avenged. The island, part of Jefferson county, had not more than an acre of cleared land upon it, with a wharf used for wooding the vessels which called there for fuel; the sole building was one log shanty. When the _Sir Robert Peel_ drew in on the evening so important to her, May 29th, 1838, the woodman warned the captain that suspicious-looking characters were inland. But the warning was made light of, and the usual fueling programme followed. All on board went to bed, and about ten o’clock thirteen of the erstwhile sailors of the island of Tanti appeared in their new scene as Indians, looking the part to perfection in black, red and yellow paint. Their number had been twenty-eight, but they had dropped down the river from their camp on Abel’s Island, on the opposite side to the wood station, and in crossing fifteen of the band had been temporarily lost in a swamp. The debate whether this left too small a number for the attack led to delay, but Johnston decided that a baker’s dozen was a lucky number, and that if this opportunity were lost another as favourable might not offer itself. So the warwhoop, as good an imitation as their painted semi-nudeness, was raised. One discrepancy was the absence of tomahawks, replaced by guns, and bayonets. The woods re-echoed to their howls, and it was not long until captain, crew and passengers were on deck.