Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (68 page)

With that he turns on his heel and walks back to the garrison, where the other members of the surrender committee await him.

These brusque tactics are successful. Dearborn, in a better humour, appears, rereads the surrender terms, and ratifies them. The militia are paroled. The community begins to return to something resembling normality. But the public funds so carefully concealed must be given up; if not, the Americans threaten to burn the town.

The Americans get the paper money from the home of Donald McLean, but not the gold. Major Allan’s wife and Mrs. Prideaux Selby have worked out a plan to save it. They persuade Selby’s chief clerk, Billy Roe, to dress up as an old market woman, complete with sunbonnet and voluminous skirts. The gold goes into a keg, is loaded onto a one-horse wagon and covered with vegetables. Roe in his disguise drives slowly out toward the Don River, crosses it, passes the American guards without incident, and buries the treasure.

In the farmhouse on Yonge Street, Ely Playter is awakened by a friend, Joel Beman, who, believing him killed, has arrived to look after the Playter family. Playter dispatches his wife and children to Newmarket in Beman’s wagon, then with his brother George walks back toward town, picking up fragments of news from passersby and friends. He has no intention of giving his parole to the Americans and the following day packs up his valuables and hides them. He and his brother take refuge in the woods and watch helplessly as looters break down his door and pillage his possessions—his sword, a set of razors, a powder horn, a shot pouch, a box of jewellery, clothing.

The next day—Friday, April 30—on William Allan’s advice he agrees at last to go to the garrison, sign his parole, and get a pass from the enemy.

The town is pillaged—“dismal” is Playter’s word. The garrison buildings are shattered. The Council Office is stripped bare, every window broken. The legislative building, a low, one-storey brick structure with two wings, one for each house, is ablaze. Nobody knows who set the fire. The Americans are blamed but without
any hard evidence. The best guess is that the culprits are individual American sailors, who wear no military uniform; they have discovered a human scalp in the building and have, presumably, used this example of British infamy as an excuse to fire the entire structure.

The scalp (it may be only a wig) is presented to Commodore Chauncey, who sends it on to the Secretary of the Navy with the undocumented charge that it was found hanging over the Speaker’s mace in the main chamber. The following day the Americans burn what remains of the Governor’s house and other buildings at the fort. These are the only fires, but the myth that “the Americans burned the capital” gathers credence in the years that follow.

Little York is scarcely a cohesive community. The upper class is united in its opposition to the American invasion, but scores of ordinary citizens welcome it, or at least accept it. For every man concealing himself to escape parole there seems to be another eager to sign a paper that will take him out of the war. A number openly join the enemy; some are actually aboard
Madison
or at the garrison giving information to Dearborn. When it becomes clear that the Americans intend to evacuate the town, panic seizes the disaffected, some of whom urge the American officers to hold on to York and give them protection, promising to help the invaders and complaining of “the further exposure to the fury and persecution of the royalists.”

Suspicion and sedition go hand in hand, as neighbour breaks with neighbour over idle remarks or disloyal outbursts. In Michael Dye’s tavern in Markham Township, Alfred Barrett offers a toast: “Success to the American fleet!” His cronies, John Lyon and Simeon Morton, raise their glasses in agreement. George Cutter overhears them and notes as well a conversation between two others who agree that it is foolish to support the government of Upper Canada—the country, they say, really belongs to the United States, and they both hope the Americans will win. On Cutter’s evidence, and that of others, all four men will find themselves in the York jail, charged with sedition.

Elijah Bentley, an Anabaptist preacher who has pleaded with Dearborn to arrange a parole for his son, tells a friend that he has
seen more liberty during those few hours with Dearborn than he had seen in the whole of the province: why, the men in the American army were allowed to answer their own officers back! For these remarks and others, Bentley too will be jailed.

The Americans also make themselves popular with many of the farmers by distributing a quantity of farm implements, which had been sent out from Britain intended for the settlers but as a result of bureaucratic inertia had never been distributed.

John Finch, who has been given some iron and ploughshares, encounters a fellow farmer, Henry Mulholland, and upbraids him for taking part in the attempt to repulse the invaders. Finch grows bolder: the British government, he declares, is austere and tyrannical. He would rather see his sons serve in hell than in a British garrison. He hopes the American fleet will destroy York “and all the damned crew.” Henry Mulholland stores all this in his mind and, when the time comes, informs upon Finch who, with more than two dozen others, finds himself under indictment.

But one does not need to be disaffected to applaud the distribution of farm equipment. Many are convinced that the ruling class was reserving all this largesse for its friends. Before the fleet departs, the American soldiers also distribute to destitute families all the peas, flour, and bread they cannot load on board the ships.

Dr. Strachan is not to be seduced by this generosity. His church has been looted; anarchy of a sort prevails. Once again the resolute clergyman goes after the hard-pressed Dearborn. All the American general wants to do now, as April gives way to May, is to get out of York. There is no advantage in holding the town. The brig in the harbour is destroyed. More significantly, all the public stores destined for the Detroit frontier have been captured. All the armament and equipment for the British squadron on Lake Erie and the new ship under construction at Amherstburg—cables, cordage, canvas, tools, guns, ammunition—have been seized and cannot be replaced. This is a considerable loss and will badly cripple the British Right Division, which holds Detroit and most of Michigan Territory, for it can affect the balance of naval power on Lake Erie where the
Americans are constructing a fleet of their own. If the Americans can win Lake Erie, Detroit will be regained and the entire right wing of the British Army will be in peril.

Dearborn is embarrassed by the continued looting, which makes a mockery of the terms of surrender (but not so embarrassed that he can resist the offer of a private soldier to purchase for one hundred dollars the gold snuff box, set with diamonds, looted from the effects of Major-General Sheaffe). He realizes that he cannot control his own troops and wants nothing more than to leave as soon as the fleet is ready. He is only too happy to turn the civilian control of the town back to the magistrates and rid himself of the importunate Dr. Strachan and his friends.

Control does not return easily. On May 1, as the fleet makes ready to sail, Strachan surprises two looters, rushes impetuously at them demanding that they cease, and almost receives a bullet for his pains. An officer appears and forestalls Strachan’s murder. That night, most of the Americans board their ships, leaving the town to deal with its own disaffected.

Commodore Chauncey, riding out a storm that keeps the American troops trapped and seasick on board the fleet for the best part of the week, is convinced that “we may consider the upper province as conquered.” Although the troops that attacked York are now reduced through injury, illness, and death to one thousand effectives, reinforcements are on the way. Dearborn expects six hundred men to join him at Oswego. More are expected from Buffalo. Another thousand troops are waiting at Sackets Harbor, ready to go on board. “With this force,” Chauncey believes, “Fort George and the whole Niagara frontier must fall without great sacrifice of lives.”

The Commodore has reason to feel elated. His handling of the fleet during the attack cannot be faulted. Dearborn, old, ill, worn out by his exertions at York, is less certain of an accolade. He himself took no part in an action that cost three hundred casualties—more than twice those of the British. Worse, in the view of the Secretary of War, John Armstrong, Sheaffe has outwitted him by preferring the preservation of his troops to that of his post and “thus carrying
off the kernel leaves us only the shell.” Armstrong is already planning to replace his ailing general.

For the people of York, the invasion marks a watershed. Nothing can ever be quite the same again. Those who fought the good fight, with weapons or with words, will occupy a special place in the community. The heroes of the day—Allan, for one, and especially Strachan—will become the leaders of the morrow. The lines are drawn; those who aided the Americans, by word as much as by deed, are held to be traitors.

The militia, who saw little action in the battle of York, sustaining no more than ten casualties, are the darlings of the community. The regulars, who bore the brunt of the fighting, are castigated as men who care only about saving their own skins. This is wholly unfair, as is the memorandum that Strachan prepares for Sir George Prevost, the Governor General. The document, running to ten pages and signed by seven eminent citizens, berates Sheaffe, whose name “is odious to all ranks of people.” Strachan writes that the citizens of York “are indignant rather than dispirited and while they feel the disgrace of their defeat they console themselves with the conviction that it was owing entirely to their commander.”

Sheaffe is attacked for taking the very action that his enemy, Dearborn, is criticized for allowing: getting his troops out of town and destroying the ship in the harbour, an act that Strachan claims “incensed the enemy to such a degree as to expose the town to indiscriminate pillage and conflagration.”

Strachan’s message to Prevost is blunt: Sheaffe must go. “Without a new commander and more troops this Province must soon be overpowered.” At least some members of York’s minor aristocracy agree. Mrs. Powell, for one, is planning to draw off all her wine and pack the bottles in sawdust in the event of precipitate flight, for “a miracle alone can save us.”

Sir George Prevost cannot agree with Strachan’s armchair assessment of his general’s conduct, especially as neither the chaplain of York nor any of his colleagues can suggest what
they
might have done in the circumstances. But Sir George is a practical politician and diplomat as well as a general of armies. Clearly Sheaffe has outlived his usefulness in Upper Canada. He will not be sent back as administrator; eventually, a phlegmatic Swiss-born major-general, Francis De Rottenburg, will be sent in his stead; but that is two months in the future. In the meantime, without title or stipend, but with all the power he needs, John Strachan reigns supreme.

TWO
Stalemate on the Niagara Peninsula

May 27–August 1, 1813

Following the attack on York, American strategy calls for an immediate amphibious landing at the mouth of the Niagara River to seize Fort George and Fort Erie, destroy the defending army, and roll up the peninsula. For this task the Americans have sixteen warships and seven thousand men. The British have eighteen hundred regulars dispersed along the Niagara frontier; most of the militia have returned to their farms. Ill and indecisive, Major-General Dearborn dallies for a fortnight before launching the invasion. It comes at last on May 27, 1813
.

NEWARK, UPPER CANADA, MAY 27, 1813

Dawn. Brigadier-General John Vincent, commander of the British Centre Division, stands with his staff near the lighthouse overlooking Lake Ontario at the Niagara’s mouth, trying to peer through the blanket of fog that masks the water. He is almost certain there are ships out there, but he cannot be sure. He expects invasion, for
a rocket has already flared up from the American side, but he can only guess where it will come. Nor can he know whether there will be one landing or several.

He is, however, painfully aware that he is badly outclassed. The guns from Fort Niagara across the river have already shattered his imperfect defences, and his own troops, spread out thinly all along the frontier from Newark to the falls, are exhausted from night watches. Vincent himself has had no sleep.

Young William Hamilton Merritt of the Provincial Dragoons, standing beside him, spyglass to eye, points suddenly out into the lake. The curtain of fog lifts, as in a theatre, and there is now revealed to Vincent and his staff a spectacle they will never forget—sixteen ships standing out from the lakeshore, sweeping toward them in a two-mile arc. Behind, on towlines, 134 open boats, scows, and bateaux, crowded with men and artillery, move steadily toward the Canadian side.

Even as Vincent and the others put spurs to their horses and gallop upriver toward Fort George, the cannon begin to thunder—fifty-one guns in action on the lake, another twenty from Fort Niagara, pouring a hail of iron and exploding shells across the fields and roads. The barrage is so powerful that Ely Playter, forty miles away at York, distinctly hears the rumble of the guns. A cannonball tears through the wall of the Carrol house in Newark. Mrs. Carrol, whose husband is a British gunner, hastily wraps her two small boys in bedding and rushes into a neighbouring wheatfield. Another ball ploughs into the ground beside the terrified trio. They leap up and join the throng of refugees heading for Four Mile Creek.