Likewise, the addition of highly visible regimental colours (flags), served on the one hand as a valuable rallying point for its soldiers and an indication of where a regiment’s commander and senior officers would generally be located, while on the other as a perfect point-of-aim for the enemy’s fire.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Almost as soon as the news of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent (December 24, 1814) reached the continent of North America and the conflict that has become commonly, if inaccurately, known as the War of 1812 ended, publications about the war began to appear. Some were the memoirs of an assortment of the leading military and political leaders of the day — all anxious to have their “heroic” deeds recognized and their importance within the war cast in a positive light. Others were documentary or encyclopedic “impartial” histories, which in reality usually translated as being determined to justify their own nation’s reasons for fighting the conflict and to prove conclusively that their respective country had “won” the war. Finally, there were the works that established the foundation of many of the still-persistent myths about the War of 1812. These included American volumes claiming the war as America’s “Second War of Independence,” and that the British burned Washington, D.C., in revenge for the American invasion at York (Toronto). While in Canadian books there appeared the stories of Brock’s visit to his supposed fiancé during his ride to Queenston, the substance of his famous last words as he lay dying on the battlefield, and of “How Laura Secord (and her cow) saved Upper Canada.”
During the succeeding two centuries, many later historians joined the catalogue of authors writing upon this subject, with varying degrees of success and accuracy in their finished works. As a living history re-enactor of this period and interested in doing research of my own, I ended up reading many of these publications and came to the realization that for the most part, they fell into one of two general categories. Either they went to the one extreme and tried to include everything that happened at every location across North America and beyond. Or they provided a microscopic analysis of a single military event or battle, but in consequence relegated the context within which the action took place, the sequence of events that preceded, and those that followed to relative insignificance. On the other hand, what were conspicuous by their scarcity were publications that fit somewhere in the middle. By which I mean works that examined the story of the duration of the war within the self-imposed geographic limit of a particular campaign front or geographic region, but still documented in reasonable detail the individual skirmishes and battles that were fought.
As a result, in looking at the overall picture of what I prefer to call the North American War of 1812–1815, I came to a simple recognition of fact. That during the course of the war, more fighting took place in Upper Canada, and in particular upon the Niagara frontier, than in any other location or region within the whole of North America combined! And that no one in recent publishing history had tried to tell that story.
As if to reinforce the significance of this geographic concentration of fighting, my readings included an article that documented the story of the medal produced by the Loyal and Patriotic Society of Upper Canada. Originally intended for presentation to Upper Canada veterans after the war had concluded, it was unfortunately never distributed (a story that will be documented later in the series). What is interesting is that the imagery on the front face of this medal shows the geographic outline of the “Niagara” region, with the “national” symbols of the American eagle, the British lion, and, for the Canadas, the beaver, facing each other across the dividing line of the Niagara River. While complementing these images are the words “Upper Canada Preserved.”
I therefore decided to take up the challenge and write the story of the war as defined by the image and words on that medal. Unfortunately, this work eventually became more of a tome of unwieldy, but well-detailed, proportions. As a result, it has been divided into a more manageable and publishable series of six chronological parts. This is not to say that I have ignored events and influences that took place beyond the Niagara frontier or Upper Canada that had an impact upon this region’s campaigns and battles, for these will also be referred to, in varying degrees of detail, as the story is told.
The “Upper Canada Preserved” medal was produced, but never officially issued, by the Loyal and Patriotic Society of Upper Canada in 1814. Originally created as a limited edition of sixty gold and 550 silver medals, most were deliberately destroyed in 1840.
Image from Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812, 1868.
SETTING THE SCENE
For the modern traveller, driving from the province of Ontario’s eastern provincial border with Quebec, at the St. Lawrence River, to the international border with the United States, at the Detroit River, represents a day or so of either “zipping” along the multi-lane 401 highway or taking a more leisurely passage along the older “heritage” roads of southern Ontario. These latter routes were once the main arteries of communication and travel across country, and today consist of broad paved roads, well-signposted directions, scenic by-ways, heritage plaques, and viewing points. Not to mention a host of towns and communities where one can find food and lodgings, if needed.
The “Northern frontier” of the War of 1812–1815.
By contrast, during the early 1800s, visitors to Upper Canada saw this same region as either a virtually impenetrable wilderness, a new frontier of European civilization and settlement, or a prime location for economic exploitation of its seemingly infinite natural resources. The military and naval transport hub of Kingston on Lake Ontario was the only community of any size and importance, while the remainder consisted of little more than small towns, villages, or isolated hamlets.
In terms of development, Upper Canada’s eastern border with Lower Canada was composed of a mixture of forests, relatively well-established agricultural farmland, and riverside communities. These settlements were linked together by both the main waterborne “highway” of the St. Lawrence River and a network of variable-quality roads and trails that either followed or ran inland from the river’s northern bank. This type and level of development continued up the St. Lawrence River valley to Lake Ontario and Kingston. Beyond that there was a relatively less-developed corridor of farming and settlement, running along the north shore of Lake Ontario to the growing lakeside community of “Muddy” York (present-day Toronto) and then on to the smaller settlements of Head-of-the-Lake (Hamilton) and Ancaster, located at the far western end of Lake Ontario. However, beyond this point, anyone wishing to travel overland toward the Detroit River found themselves in another world entirely. Travellers who used the Grand and Thames River valleys to reach the Detroit frontier repeatedly talked about passing by, or worse through, a wilderness of forests, rocks, and bogs — interrupted only by a series of underdeveloped clearings and scattered pockets of crude frontier settlement. Similarly, they described the inland road network as consisting of little more than overgrown and rutted tracks, carved directly from the surrounding “bush,” that were clogged with dust in the summer, mud in the spring and autumn, and snow in the winter.
Instead, prior to 1812, travellers looking to pass from the lower to the upper Great Lakes generally made a southerly detour that followed the line of the Niagara Peninsula, Lake Erie, and the Detroit River. Because of this diversion, the Niagara Peninsula became the primary corridor for all transportation and movement between Lake Ontario and the upper reaches of the province. In a similar manner, when the time came for
