Читать книгу Quest Biographies Bundle — Books 31–35 - Rosemary Sadlier - Страница 25

The same thunderous roar of cannon fire that had roused Isaac Brock from his bed at Fort George before dawn on October 13 shook the ground at Queenston and reverberated through the Secord house. Laura bolted upright.

Before she’d opened the door to the children’s room, thirteen-year-old Mary appeared in the hall. “I heard it, Mother. I’ll help you get the little ones up.”

Eleven-year-old Charlotte was already pulling clothes on over her nightshift. Harriet, who was nine, had her face pressed to the windowpane, trying to see what was causing the excitement. “It’s another thunderstorm,” she decided when the next flash of light illuminated the escarpment west of the house.

Laura lifted Appy from her bed. “Quickly; quickly!”

Charles had to be shaken awake. The three-year-old sat up, rubbing his eyes and scowling. “Don’t want to,” he complained, trying to shake off Mary, who was stuffing his chubby arms into his coat.

There was no time to grab more than a knitted coverlet. Laura, with two-year-old Appy on her hip, found Fan standing at the foot of the stairs, wringing her hands. She put an arm about her shoulders and herded the girl and the children out through the back door.

Bob had already gone ahead to set the farm animals loose, as James had instructed he should do in the event of an invasion.

“Pick-a-back.” Mary crouched down to let the reluctant Charles clamber onto her back.

“Hurry; hurry!” They had to get to a safe place, away from the gunfire at Queenston. In the dim light of early morning the family made its way into the countryside.

“Cannon balls were flying around me in every direction,” Laura recalled many years later. If only James were there. She had no way of knowing where his company of militia had taken him, and her worst fear was that he would be in the midst of whatever was happening.

About a mile from the village Laura and the children found shelter in a farmhouse where several other Queenston families had gathered. Although the children were safe for now, Laura was sick with worry over James. Throughout the whole day, while the children found ways to amuse themselves, the adults in the house listened to the sound of muskets and cannon. Every so often there would be a lull, and then the noise of gunfire would resume. If only someone would bring some news!

Finally, late in the afternoon, there was another lull. Would this one last? They waited. Even the children grew still. When only the occasional crack of a musket was heard in the distance, Laura could wait no longer. Leaving her children in the care of Mary and the other women, she hurried back to Queenston.

The air was still thick with gun smoke when she entered her own property through the back, giving a rueful smile to find the cow patiently waiting for someone to open the gate, the pigs happily rooting in the weeds on the other side of their pen.

Before she reached the back door, a man wearing a bloodied bandage on his head came with the news that James had been wounded and was lying on the battlefield at Queenston Heights.

With a murmur of thanks, Laura pushed past the messenger. Her heart hammering in her throat, she lifted her skirts and climbed the steep hill to the scene of the battle, each step a prayer that James would not be badly hurt.

At the sight of the dead from both sides of the battle, and the moans of the injured and dying amongst them, Laura was filled with horror. She picked her way through all the red and blue uniformed figures on the ground until at last she found her husband.

James was weak from loss of blood and in great pain. In her haste to reach him, Laura had not thought to bring anything to staunch the flow of blood from his wounded shoulder. She tore a wide strip off the bottom of her petticoat and folded it to make a compress. Besides the shoulder injury, James had a musket ball lodged in his knee and could barely stand. A kind officer, whom Laura later referred to as “a Gentleman,” came to her aid, and together they got James down off the hill and into his own house.

There, the Secords were in for another shock. The house had been ransacked, searched for valuables, and its contents turned upside down. During one of the lulls in fighting a few unscrupulous American soldiers had seized the opportunity to break into the deserted homes in the village and plunder them.

But this was not the time to grieve over their lost possessions. James was alive. Bob, who had returned by this time, helped Laura to make up a bed on the ground floor for him, and Laura bathed and dressed his wounds. By evening the children returned with the other villagers and were greatly relieved to find their father home.

Over the next few days the whole family prayed for James’s recovery. A doctor from Fort George was finally able to attend him, but was unable to remove the shell from James’s knee. He would never fully recover from this injury, and it would cause him pain for the rest of his life.

When James was a little stronger and could be moved, the family took him to St. Davids, where they planned to spend the winter. The house in Queenston would have to be repaired while they were gone.

Returning to St. Davids was a little like coming home. James had grown up in the tiny village, and he and Laura had spent the first few years of their marriage there among the members of his family. There were Secords on many of the farms in the area, and Laura would have plenty of help in caring for James. James’s older brother, Stephen Secord, had died four years earlier, but Hannah and their seven children were still there, running the gristmill together.

While she was in St. Davids, Laura was relieved to learn that her half-brother Charles Ingersoll had survived the Battle of Queenston Heights. Charles had volunteered as a cavalryman in Thomas Merritt’s Niagara Light Dragoons when the war first broke out. He was twenty-six. When the unit reorganized in 1813 as the Provincial Dragoons, under Merritt’s son William Hamilton Merritt, Charles would be promoted to the rank of lieutenant. He would remain with the Dragoons until the end of the war. Charles Ingersoll would later marry William Merritt’s sister Anna Maria and become a partner with Merritt in a mercantile business in St. Catharines.

James’s brother, David Secord, who owned shops, mills, and businesses in St. Davids, had also fought at Queenston and survived. Unfortunately, his son, David Jr., had been taken prisoner by the Americans.

A favourite story of the Secord family, attributed to Laura’s grandson James B. Secord, son of Charles Badeau, gives a different version of what happened after Laura found James on the battlefield that day.

Three enemy soldiers were standing over him, two with their muskets held as if they intended to club him to death. Laura flung herself over her husband’s body, screaming that they should kill her and spare James. One of the men pushed her roughly aside, intent on his murderous deed.

Just in the nick of time, American captain John Wool stepped in and commanded the men to stop. Reprimanding them and calling them cowards, he had them taken to Lewiston under guard. Then he ordered a party of his own men to carry James down to his house. Wool didn’t even make James a prisoner-on-parole, and reportedly often visited James after the war was over, the two becoming good friends.

A colourful story, but hardly true. James had been wounded in the afternoon battle when his Car Brigade saw action, and by the time Laura ascended the Heights, the British had taken back control of it. The Americans had surrendered.

As for Captain John Wool, he was back in Lewiston by this time, having his own wounds tended to.

In November 1812, American brigadier general Henry Dearborn, appointed senior major general in the American army after the resignation of Stephen van Rensselaer (brother of Solomon, who had landed at Queenston Heights), made two bungled attempts to invade Canada. Otherwise, most of the action in the war that winter took place farther to the east, on the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario.

Late in 1812, construction began on a fort at Prescott, a port on the St. Lawrence that seemed particularly vulnerable to an attack by the Americans, in a place where the river was narrow. Fort Wellington, which would be completed in 1814, was a one-storey blockhouse enclosed by earthen ramparts. Although it was not attacked, it did serve as a rallying place for British and Canadian troops crossing the river early in 1813 for the Battle of Ogdensburg.

After losing the Battle of Queenston Heights, the Americans returned to their side of the Niagara River, and the frontier remained quiet until the following spring.

The winter of 1812–13 was a hard one for the people of the Niagara area. Every merchant in Queenston had suffered considerable losses during the battle, James Secord among them. His store had been vandalized and the shelves emptied of anything of value.

The people of the area shared what little they had with one another, and the Natives brought game to Queenston and St. Davids, providing the residents with a little meat. Even the British army was as generous with its stores as was possible.

Captain Isaac Chauncey of the U.S. navy had arrived in Sackets Harbor, New York, on the southeastern shore of Lake Ontario in October 1812. He would command the American naval effort on Lakes Ontario and Erie. In November his fleet of seven ships chased the British Royal George into Kingston Harbour. He was prevented from attacking the ship by the guns on shore, but he did manage to keep the British fleet bottled up at Kingston until winter came and the navigation season ended.

All through the winter both sides in the conflict continued constructing warships at a feverish pace, each side trying to out-build the other. British shipbuilders at Kingston and York were trying to match the American ship Madison, with its twenty-four guns. Across the lake at Sackets Harbor, Chauncey was building an even larger vessel.

During the first eight months of the war there had been a series of raids all along the St. Lawrence, and British supply boats on the river were constantly harassed. In September 1812, American troops stationed at Ogdensburg, New York, under Captain Forsyth of the 1st U.S. Rifles, raided Gananoque, Ontario. This resulted in a retaliatory attack by the British in October.

In February 1813, two hundred American soldiers and a number of volunteers crossed the ice at night to the Canadian side of the river and freed a group of American citizens held in the Brockville jail. Before fleeing back to Ogdensburg, they seized supplies, arms, and forty-five of the town’s most prominent citizens. The Canadian captives were soon set free, but on February 22, eight hundred British troops and Canadian militia crossed the ice from Prescott and attacked Ogdensburg.

As a result of the Battle of Ogdensburg, a large part of the town was damaged, the fort dismantled, and the barracks burned. Captain Forsyth and some of his riflemen escaped overland to Sackets Harbor, where he asked for additional troops to help him take back Ogdensburg. His request was denied.

As far as the people of Ogdensburg were concerned, Forsyth was responsible for the attack on their town. Under a flag of truce, British lieutenant colonel “Red George” Macdonnell, the commander of Fort Wellington at Prescott, had earlier come to see Captain Forsyth to complain about the continuous raids, but Macdonnell had been met with nothing but insults.

After the battle, the townspeople of Ogdensburg did not want any more American troops stationed there. None would return until October 1813. In the meantime, the citizens began selling food and supplies to the British troops across the river, a practice that would continue for the duration of the war.

In 1813, Sir James Lucas Yeo became the British Royal Navy’s commander for Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. In the spring the fleets belonging to both Canada and the United States jockeyed up and down Lake Ontario, keeping an eye on each other but managing to avoid any major confrontations.

That all changed when, in April 1813, Chauncey’s American fleet of fourteen ships led an invasion of York, sailing from Sackets Harbor to the western end of the lake. Under the command of Henry Dearborn, 1,700 American regulars disembarked before dawn at what is today Sunnyside Beach. Although York was the capital of Upper Canada, the garrison there was small, consisting of only about three hundred regulars, four hundred militia and dockworkers, and about fifty to one hundred Natives. The American troops easily drove back the small force that met them, while their warships demolished the batteries on the shore.

British general Roger Hale Sheaffe, who had become commander of forces and administrator of Upper Canada after Brock’s death, advised the militia officers to surrender the town, to burn the naval storehouses, and to blow up the stone magazine in the small fort where the ammunition was stored, to keep it out of the enemy’s hands. The explosion was so huge that it was heard as far away as Niagara. Tons of falling debris from the blast damaged property, and thirty-eight American soldiers were killed, another 222 wounded. Among the dead was American brigadier general Zebulon Pike, Dearborn’s commander on shore.

Dearborn came ashore himself then to assume command, and the surrender was negotiated. Sheaffe and the British regulars abandoned the garrison at York, the militia was allowed to return home, and private property was ordered to be left untouched. But during their six-day occupation the Americans burned Government House — the residence of the lieutenant-governor — the parliament buildings, and other public buildings. When some of their shops and private homes were also robbed, the citizens of York felt they had been abandoned by the British.

In the invasion, the British lost their naval and military stores at York as well as a ship that had been under construction there. When the American fleet sailed away, it took with it one of the British vessels.

Now that York had been captured, the Americans set their sights on the Niagara frontier. The plan was that if attacks along the Niagara River turned out to be successful, the Americans would move on to Kingston.

The warmer weather had arrived, and James and Laura Secord and their five children left St. Davids and returned to their home in Queenston. It was time to prepare the ground for planting. Spring always brought new life, and the Secords were hopeful of a brighter future. But the war was not yet over, and in May it returned to the Niagara Peninsula.

On May 25, 1813, the American fleet under Commander Chauncey began a cannon bombardment of Fort George, setting its log buildings on fire. Because of the heavy shelling, Brigadier General John Vincent and his staff of regulars and militia were unable to stop the American troops under Colonel Winfield Scott, Dearborn’s chief-of-staff, from landing two days later on the Canadian side.

After spiking the guns and destroying any ammunition they couldn’t carry with them, Vincent hastily evacuated the fort, leaving behind the women and children who lived there. The British, outnumbered four to one, suffered heavy casualties: fifty dead and three hundred wounded or missing.

Vincent retreated with his troops along the Niagara River to Queenston, where he cut north, marching his men to a British supply depot in a farmhouse belonging to John De Cew (also De Cou) near Beaver Dams. The large, stone house had been built before the war by De Cew, and he’d offered it to the British army as a depot for supplies and ammunition. It occupied a commanding position, high on the escarpment.

The next day, Vincent sent the militia home and took the regulars to Burlington Heights (Hamilton) at the head of Lake Ontario, where there was an earthen fort. He ordered all the troops from the Niagara frontier to join him there — the troops escaping from Fort Erie, as well as those from Amherstburg on the western frontier. Burlington Heights gave the British a harbour-front location high above the lake and close by land routes to both York and Amherstburg.

Although the Americans were now in control of the whole of the Niagara Peninsula, they had not accomplished everything they had set out to do. They had planned to completely destroy Vincent’s army, which would have left Upper Canada west of Kingston entirely in their hands.

While Chauncey’s fleet had been busy softening up the defences at Fort George for the American attack, British commander Yeo had tried unsuccessfully to capture Sackets Harbor. When that failed, he sailed toward Burlington with troops and supplies for Vincent’s army that had arrived there following the evacuation of Fort George.

In July 1813, Chauncey, in his new ship, the General Pike, with its twenty-six guns, would again head for York, where for the second time the American troops would occupy the town, seizing supplies and burning storehouses, although this time the damage would be less severe.

During the final weeks of navigation in 1813, Chauncey’s fleet would control Lake Ontario. Regardless, small boats carrying British troops and Canadian militia between York and Kingston would still manage to get through unscathed. And in Kingston Harbour, the shipbuilders would continue to reinforce Yeo’s fleet.

After Vincent had evacuated Fort George and retreated to Burlington Heights, the settlers in the Niagara region feared that the British were about to abandon them, believing that they were preparing to retreat to Kingston, leaving the western part of the province to the Americans. The Americans had taken Fort Erie, and when General Dearborn ordered a corps of American soldiers to pursue the British to Burlington Heights, they began to advance up the peninsula.

On June 5, a force of 3,400 American infantry made camp for the night in a field at Stoney Creek, where they would wait for the American cavalry to catch up before the attack on Burlington. They felt quite safe. They had the Niagara Escarpment on one side and a swamp on another. Their sentries were posted at the only place the encampment might be vulnerable.

They hadn’t counted on a local boy named Billy Green, who’d been keeping an eye on the American troop movements, and who had told the British at Burlington Heights the location of the enemy camp.

Sometime after midnight on June 6, while the Americans slept, a force of 704 British soldiers led by commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel John Harvey advanced on the sentries who were guarding the encampment. Harvey had ordered his men not to use their muskets for fear of arousing the enemy; the element of surprise was crucial.

After silently bayoneting the American sentries, however, the British troops rushed the camp, cheering and waking up the Americans, who started shooting. What resulted was total confusion. In the dark, men fired on their own troops, and General Vincent, who’d been persuaded by Harvey to try the nighttime attack, got himself lost in the woods, not to be found until the next day by his men.

Before dawn, the fighting ended, but each side thought the other had won, and everyone left the scene. The Americans retreated as far as Forty Mile Creek (Grimsby), and the British went back to Burlington Heights, taking with them one hundred prisoners.

At Forty Mile Creek the Americans thought they would be safe, but on June 7 the British fleet suddenly appeared on the horizon. Farther inland, the dismissed Canadian militia and the Natives were beginning to assemble. The American general, Henry Dearborn, ordered all the American troops to retreat to Fort George. His forces subsequently pulled out of Chippawa, and before leaving Fort Erie, set fire to it.

The Americans retreated from Forty Mile Creek so quickly that they left behind hundreds of tents, wagonloads of camping supplies, baggage, and barrels of flour. The British army picked up these supplies as they advanced. The people of Niagara would later delight in telling how it had taken the Americans four days to reach Stoney Creek, and less than one to run back.

Vincent moved all his troops from Burlington Heights, and within a few days he had detachments at Twenty Mile Creek (Jordan), Twelve Mile Creek (St. Catharines), De Cew’s farmhouse near Beaver Dams, and an advanced post near Ten Mile Creek. Reinforcements of British regulars arrived, and Vincent was able to send some on to Proctor at Amherstburg.

From their location at the western end of Lake Ontario, the British overlooked what was the no man’s land of the Niagara Peninsula. For their part, the Americans remained in control of the area from Fort George, strategically located at the entrance to the Niagara River, and all the way to Queenston. But the Battle of Stoney Creek would be the last time the Americans would advance so deeply into the Niagara Peninsula. They retreated behind the damaged walls of Fort George and would only emerge for a few brief forays before winter set in.