USA > New York > Franklin County > Historical sketches of Franklin county and its several towns > Part 63
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On November 7th General Hampton was virtually ordered to repair to St. Regis with his army, there to join General Wilkinson. He replied that his troops were raw, dispirited and sickly, and were themselves short of food; and thereupon, on November 11th, the very day that he was sorely needed at Chrystler's Farm, he set out for Plattsburgh. General Wilkinson complained that had Hampton obeyed orders, a com-
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plete victory would have been gained at Chrystler's Farm, and that the entire success of the campaign against Montreal would have been assured.
As bearing upon General Hampton's representation that his commis- sariat was low, Colonel Bissel, from General Wilkinson's army, arrived at Chateaugay only four days after the former's departure, finding the roads in good condition. General Hampton's quartermaster-general testified that he had sufficient supplies, and Major Wadsworth, issuing commissary, reported that there were on deposit at Chateaugay forty- five days' provision of bread and flour and a considerable quantity of salt meats, while in the vicinity there were seven or eight hundred head of fat cattle. It would thus seem that jealousy and insubordination must have been responsible in very large part for the wretched failure of General Hampton to co-operate with General Wilkinson. The former quitted the army a little later through resignation. A more appropriate retirement, it is thought, would have been by court martial.
General Wilkinson's own army sailed from Sacket Harbor, nearly eight thousand strong, on October 21st, but, delayed by confusion and storms, was until November 2d in reaching Clayton, and it was Novem- ber 6th when it arrived at Ogdensburg. Apprehending that his boats might be destroyed by British batteries at Prescott, General Wilkinson disembarked the troops above Ogdensburg, marching them overland around that place, while the boats, unharmed, were run down the river by night. Further delays occurred from point to point, a part of the army progressing by land on either shore of the river, until on Novem- ber 11th one of the columns on the Canadian side was attacked, about twenty miles above Cornwall, Ontario, by a British detachment which had followed it from the vicinity of Prescott. The American troops were under the immediate command of General Boyd, with General Leonard Covington, of Maryland, and General Swartwout commanding brigades under him. The battle that followed continued for about two hours and a half, and has come to be known as that of Chrystler's Farm. On the part of the Americans it was a rearguard affair, and on both sides it was warmly contested. The American force was reported by General Wilkinson not to have exceeded eighteen hundred men, while the Canadian writers represent that it was two thousand five hundred strong. General Wilkinson, himself sick on a boat at the time, gives the British a strength of fifteen to sixteen hundred, but the Canadians assert that it was considerably less. Apparently both commands wel- comed the approach of night to make an end to the fighting. At the very best for the Americans the battle was a drawn one, while all
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British and Canadian authors claim that it was an important (indeed, almost a decisive) victory for their arms. A dispassionate view rather confirms the latter contention. At least, the Americans left a part of their wounded on the field, and were glad to take to their boats, while the Canadians were too exhausted, and perhaps too doubtful of their strength, to attempt pursuit or to venture to harass the American force. Moreover, the Americans had three or four thousand additional men within call, and, with capable and vigorous leadership, might have turned easily the next day upon the enemy, and absolutely have anni- hilated them. The British loss was 24 killed and 145 wounded; the American, 102 killed and 237 wounded. General Covington was mor- tally wounded while leading his men in a charge. Lossing says that he died the next day at Barnhart's Island, and another writer that he died on a boat on his way down the river. He was buried just outside of the block-house, but in 1820 his remains, with those of two other officers, were removed to Sacket Harbor, and given reinterment with military honors. The block-house at French Mills was named Fort Covington, in honor of the gallant officer, and later it was sought to pay further tribute to his memory by naming the town itself Covington, but another town in the western part of the State having been so called, French Mills prefixed the "Fort," and has since been known as Fort Covington.
A council of war determined the next day after the fight at Chrystler's Farm, influenced perhaps by that reverse, but probably more by the lateness of the season and by advices that General Hampton had abandoned the plan for a junction of his own army with General Wilkin- son's, that the campaign against Montreal should be given over, or at least deferred, and, proceeding down the river to the mouth of the Salmon, ascended that stream to French Mills, where the army went into winter quarters. The block-house was strengthened, huts were built for the men, and Canadian writers say trees were felled to form an abattis completely surrounding the place against a possible attack. Not improbably another consideration for the decision not to proceed against Montreal was the lack of a proper commissariat. At Sacket Harbor the stores appear to have been loaded into the boats with entire dis- regard for systematic arrangement, and also to have been of a quality to endanger the health of the men. In the voyage down the river large quantities of supplies were lost, including not only food, but hospital necessaries and equipment.
No clear statement of the number of men that General Wilkinson brought to French Mills appears in any of his reports, nor in those of the war department. A report by Inspector-General Nicoll indicates the
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full strength of the command on December 1, 1813, as 8,143, though it is not certain that this did not include troops remaining at Sacket Harbor. General Wilkinson indicated in one requisition for supplies that the number at French Mills was about five thousand, and at Chateaugay about fifteen hundred. In any case, deductions for absentees and the sick reduced the number of effectives to 4,482.
The personnel of the rank and file is officially stated not to have been good, the best class of citizens having generally refused to enlist, so that when sickness appeared almost at once after arrival at French Mills it extended rapidly and alarmingly. A sufficient number of houses for hospital purposes could not be obtained at the cantonment, and the general hospital of the army had therefore to be established at Malone. The total number reported sick in November was 1,400, on December 1st 1,767, and on December 31st 2,800. Dr. Ross, hospital surgeon, reported under date of December 8th that the blankets available were of inferior quality, and so small that three or four were required to make each patient comfortable; that the wine for hospital use was adulterated; that the barley, rice, brandy and rum had been lost; that for several days the sick had had no bread; and that oatmeal which had been intended for poultices had had to be used for food. The flour on hand had become mixed with meal and earth, and was damaged and sour, having been made from sprouted wheat. It was suspected also that it had been adulterated with gypsum, and was found to be pro- duetive of sickness which took the form of paralysis, with dry mortifica- tion of the extremities. Rheumatism, pneumonia, dysentery and diarrhea were prevalent also. The beef and pork were unsound. Years afterward the surgeon-general of the army, in emphasizing the maxim that an army moves upon its belly, referred thus to some of the con- sequences of these conditions : "As soon as they [the army at French Mills] found themselves in the wilderness, without houses or food, they not only quitted their posts upon the most trifling pretenses, but many who would have faced the enemy with pleasure fled from privation in a manner that came little short of desertion."
A letter written by General Wilkinson soon after his arrival at French Mills declared that "the army is now safe from the enemy and snug against the weather." Another letter by him says that after having himself languished at French Mills for several days he was carried in a litter to Malone, where his disease "continued obstinate and aeute for several weeks," reducing him almost to a skeleton.
Apparently Malone was not made a post or cantonment, General Wilkinson being attended at that point only by a bodyguard. Many of
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the sick, however, having been brought to Malone, the academy, the arsenal, the hotel of Appleton Foote (located near where the armory now stands), and the large building on Catherine street, next south of the American House, and then, I think, the residence of Amos Greeno, were all converted into hospitals. Conditions attending the sick appear to have been horrible. James Mann, of Massachusetts, was the hospital- surgeon of General Wilkinson's army, and in 1816 published a volume entitled " Medical Sketches of the Campaigns of 1812, 13, 14," a copy of which is before me. Dr. Mann states that immediately following the arrival of the army at French Mills the weather became, even for this latitude, intensely cold, and so continued. Neither the men fit for duty nor the sick, with few exceptions, had covering other than tents until the first of January, by which time huts and log houses had been erected. Dr. Lovell, a regimental surgeon, wrote: "It was impossible for the sick to be restored, with nothing to subsist upon except damaged bread." In order to assure the sick better housing, as well as to remove them farther from possible incursions by the enemy, General Wilkinson had promptly established the policy of making Malone his hospital point, and to that place were transferred from time to time such of the sick as could not be adequately cared for at French Mills. Dr. Mann states that the number in hospital at Malone on February 1, 1813, was 250, and he reported to General Brown: "All the sick now here are not as yet made comfortable. It is my duty further to state that out of the number sent yesterday, four literally died with cold; having not a sufficient quantity of clothing and blankets to render them, in their debilitated condition, comfortably warm. Many of them are destitute of apparel. Humanity shudders at the appearance of these unfortunate men." Again, on February 4th, Dr. Mann wrote: "The regimental surgeons have neglected to send with their sick their bed- sacks. All we can procure here have been already issued to the sick in the hospitals. Destitute of bed-sacks, the men must suffer extremely during the severe weather. Blankets are also wanted. One hundred and fifty received from Chateaugay Four Corners have long since been issued. Less than three blankets will not render a man sick in hospital comfortable. Eighty sick have this day been received." On Februa y 5th Dr. Mann wrote to General Wilkinson: "During the month of January accommodations were provided for about two hundred and fifty sick. This number was received and comfortably lodged. The second of this month the A. D. Q. M. General at this post was directed to make additional provisions for the sick ordered here from the Mills. A house capable of receiving one hundred men was procured. Upon the
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evening of the 4th two hundred men, in addition to those already in the general hospital, were sent on. It is impossible to render their situation comfortable with the means in our possession. Every house in this village which can be procured at this time is appropriated to the use of the sick. They may possibly receive four hundred. It is not possible to do justice to these unfortunate men, destitute of bed- sacks, and wanting additional blankets. These men were sent on with- out attendants or nurses, without kettles, pans and cups; destitute of even an axe to cut their own wood. It is now understood the sick of the army are all on their way to this place. And if information be correct, and it is presumed some opinion may be formed from returns already received, the number ordered here exceed one thousand. * * Can not some measures be adopted to remedy evils resulting from loss of their apparel, whether their wants are the consequence of unavoidable casualties, carelessness, knavery or folly? Of the means of cleansing such articles of clothing as we have on hand, we are destitute; not having a sufficient number of men in health to perform the labor of washing." Dr. Mann says further that in removing the sick from Malone to Plattsburgh, after the order had come from Washington for the abandonment of French Mills and Chateaugay, the line of sleighs obtained for the purpose was three days in forming, and that the first division arrived at Plattsburgh when the last was starting. It snowed or rained throughout the journey, and six men died on the way. Twenty were left at Malone, too sick to be moved, and these were captured a few days later by the British, but not disturbed beyond being required to give their paroles. Notwithstanding the severe conditions that pre- vailed, only twenty deaths occurred in the hospitals at Malone between January 1st and February 9th. While there has been a more or less general impression in Malone that some of the sick suffered from small- pox, neither the department records at Washington nor the reports of Dr. Mann show a single case of it. It is of interest to note that Dr. Mann disapproved very strongly of the use of stimulants in the treat- ment of the sick, but that he was an enthusiastic believer in bleeding. His book gives numerous instances where eight ounces of blood were drawn from a patient on each of three consecutive days.
The lot on Pearl street now occupied by Cyril Dupree for a planing mill was made a burial place for the soldier dead, and within recent years parts of skeletons and metal military buttons have been unearthed there.
Toward the end of December General Wilkinson began to gain in
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health, and under date of January 8, 1814, he wrote to General Jacob Brown, of Jefferson county, whom he had left in immediate command at French Mills, that he should move the next day to Plattsburgh to examine the post there; and cautioned him that during his absence he should be vigilant and incessantly watchful on all sides to protect his post against any attempt by the enemy, and particularly that he take care of various communications by way of Trout River, over which an approach might be made. General Wilkinson also advised General Brown in this letter that on January 17th a British force, with cannon, would leave Lachine for Kingston, and suggested attacking when it should reach a point about nine miles north of French Mills, which point he said could be gained by crossing the St. Lawrence on the ice. No interception of this force was attempted.
General Wilkinson was not altogether candid with General Brown in this communication, because it appears from a report made by him to the secretary of war a day or two later that his real destination was Cohoes, where he went, on his bed in a sleigh, for an interview with Governor Tompkins, the purpose of which was to urge the Governor to send militia early in February to French Mills, to occupy and hold the place, as General Wilkinson expected to undertake at that time an offensive movement against Canada with his own troops. This con- templated movement, he declared to the secretary of war on January 7th, would be to march on February 3d or 4th " a column of two thou- sand men from Chateaugay " down the Chateaugay river, and thence westward to join a like force to be dispatched from Plattsburgh, and simultaneously to cross the St. Lawrence on the ice from French Mills with four thousand men for a dash upon Cornwall and the capture of that place. As showing the vacillation of the man, he reported only ten days later that "want of provisions and other circumstances depend- ing on the season leave no expectation of being able to take position in the enemy's territory, and even menace us with the necessity of a retrograde movement."
Nevertheless, upon his return from Cohoes to Plattsburgh on January 26th, he had concluded to burn his boats at French Mills, send off his siek and wounded and convalescent to Plattsburgh, and with the residue of his army steal a march into Canada, take Prescott by sur- prise or storm, and barrack there and at Kingston for the winter. That is, he was unable to move twenty miles against unfortified Corn- wall, but proposed to proceed in a Canadian winter three times that distance and capture a place or two places, both of which were fortified.
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General Wilkinson even went so far in this apparently insane project as to dispatch orders from Plattsburgh to Colonel Bissel at Chateaugay and to General Brown at French Mills, the former to hold five hundred picked men in readiness to march at a moment's notice for distant service, and the latter to be prepared with a few pieces of artillery on sleds and one thousand of his best men for the same operation. He intended himself to take six hundred men from Plattsburgh in sleighs on January 29th or 30th, and without halt, except to change horses (as the troops could sleep in the sleighs), to pick up Colonel Bissel's force and reach French Mills at noon the next day. From there, and while his horses were feeding, he would send out a strong force to menace Cornwall, and, stepping into the sleighs, would proceed rapidly to Prescott, taking it by surprise in the twilight of the next morning, or within forty-eight hours of the departure from Plattsburgh. He was confident that he could muster five thousand five hundred men fit for duty and for the arduousness of this enterprise.
But peremptory orders came from Washington to abandon French Mills by sending General Brown with two thousand men and field and battering cannon, via American territory, to Sacket Harbor, and General Wilkinson himself to fall back with the residue of his force, stores, etc., to Plattsburgh. Of. course these orders had to be obeyed, and on February 13th General Brown marched from French Mills with a corps of about two thousand men for Sacket Harbor, and at about the same time the other troops were withdrawn from there and from Chateaugay, and put en route for Plattsburgh. Large stores of pro- visions were arriving at this date at Malone and at Hopkinton from Plattsburgh and Sacket Harbor, and fourteen hundred barrels of pork and beef and one hundred casks were forwarded from French Mills to Malone. Sixty tons of damaged hard biscuit were sunk through the ice in the river at French Mills, and ten tons were distributed to the inhabitants. Nearly all of what was left, a part of which attempt was made to secrete, afterward fell into the hands of the British.
The tenor and substance of other reports and communications of local interest by General Wilkinson were:
An order to reimburse Dr. Albon Man, of Constable, " the sum he has paid for leather to make overshoes " for the men at French Mills, with entreaty to have the number of such overshoes increased by the combined industry of the workmen of the line;
A declaration upon receipt of the order for abandoning French Mills to the effect that the position was so safe that General Brown desired to be attacked by ten thousand men ;
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A complaint, December 24, 1812, to the secretary of war that the troops had only a scanty supply of unwholesome bread, which required resort to be had to musty biscuit; that there was a great deficiency and a very poor quality of medicines and hospital stores; that the pay of the men was in arrears in some cases for four months and in others for six months; that winter clothing, including blankets, flannel shirts. great coats, socks, woolen caps and mittens were needed - without which " we can make no enterprise upon the enemy, nor can the men mount guard without exposing their ears, toes and fingers to be frost bitten ; " and plainly suggesting that operations in the field would not be practicable before April.
Again quoting from Dr. Mann: "On Saturday, the 19th (of Feb- ruary), the enemy, hearing that our troops had marched, ventured to cross the St. Lawrence with a motley tribe of regulars, provincials and a detachment of the devil's own - sedentary militia and their brethren, a band of savages. This martial body amused themselves at French Mills until one o'clock P. M., and then marched, with eight pieces of artillery and two cart loads of congreve rockets. At the fork of the roads, eleven miles from the Mills, a detachment was sent off to Malone, and the main body passed on to Chateaugay, where it arrived about four o'clock in the morning of the 20th. There, it is reported, a scene of plunder began which greatly distressed several of the inhabitants, and every particle of beef, pork or flour, with every drop of whiskey which could be found, was seized on as public property, and carried away. By this gleaning, without discrimination between the individual and the public, it is believed the enemy carried off between a hundred and fifty and two hundred barrels of provisions of all sorts, good and bad, public and private." The British at Chateaugay advanced as far easterly as the Marble river, and upon their retreat to French Mills burned the bridges behind them so as to hamper possible pursuit. It is told that teamsters from Lewis and Jefferson counties who had been hauling supplies from Sacket Harbor to Malone had been impressed by General Wilkinson to transport supplies from Malone and Chateaugay to Plattsburgh, and that upon their return to Chateaugay were found, to the number of thirty-two, by the British and compelled to haul the captured stores to French Mills.
Hough says that the British detachment that came to Malone num- bered twelve hundred regulars and four hundred Canadian militia and Indians, and that it arrived toward evening of February 19th. It remained in Malone for only two or three days.
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According to General Mooers, the people of Franklin county had pledged themselves at a mass meeting in 1812 to stand shoulder to shoulder in defending their homes, but the incursion of the enemy in 1814 appears to have sapped their courage and persuaded them of their weakness, for no resistance was anywhere offered, and on March 25th another general meeting of the inhabitants of the county was held at Malone, with Hiram Horton as chairman and John H. Russell as secre- tary, which, while still professing to be " ready to shed our blood " in the country's defense, yet memorialized the Legislature for protection. The original memorial was destroyed in the capitol fire in 1911, but a copy of it is given by Hough in his history of St. Lawrence and Frank- lin counties. It represented that "many of our good citizens have experienced the spoliation of their goods, clothing and provisions, the locks of our desks and trunks have been broken, and books sacred and profane. valuable papers and money have been taken from them. We have escaped massacre and conflagration, but we have witnessed that whoever run was stopped by the force of powder and lead, and whoever submitted was under the humiliating and mortifying situation of being an eye witness to the spoliation of his goods. But this whole country is exposed to daily depredations. The barbarous savage may be prowling about our dwellings, and in our weak state of defense we must tamely submit to every insult and injury. The father experiences, with tenfold increase, the anxious solicitude of a parent and husband. The mother hugs her infant closer to her breast, contemplating with fear and horror the dangers that await her. Why have these calamities hap- pened ? Has it been the production of General Hampton's letters to the secretary of war, degrading the frontier settlements as almost improper subjects of protection, that the army should be ordered from their strong positions in this county to the villages of Plattsburgh and Sacket Harbor? These are strange movements, at a great sacrifice of public property, which we are unable to account for. But our situation is too dangerous and degrading for us as American citizens to have patience to sit peaceably under ; and yet to flee our residences would but complete the ruin which is already begun. We do further represent that our enemies are continually drawing supplies of provisions from our fron- tiers, and the majesty of the civil law is trampled under foot, and the arm of the magistrate is put forth with little or no effect. Our jail has been opened by our enemies, and prisoners set at liberty, and our military force is wholly insufficient to render us secure."
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