USA > New York > Genesee County > History of the Genesee country (western New York) comprising the counties of Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Chemung, Erie, Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara, Ontario, Orleans, Schuyler, Steuben, Wayne, Wyoming and Yates, Volume I > Part 35
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General Hall's headquarters between Black Rock and Buffalo to report the presence of the enemy. Hall called out his troops, and ordered Colonels Warren and Churchill to move forward with their corps and feel out the strength and position of the enemy. It was dark, the roadway was treacherous, the troops were raw and had no knowledge that the whole British army was not before them. Yet on they went with their commanders. It was not long before the British showed them where they were by opening a disastrous fire. The American soldiers broke ranks and fled in confusion through the night. Refuge was their only thought. They disappeared so completely that during the following day they were not seen. They had evidently found a place to shield themselves from the terrors of war. General Hall now ordered Chapin and Adams to go forward with their forces. They, too, were to "feel out the British," and provoke British fire; they also fled in confusion. Morning came and Buffalo's defender found himself with 800 less troops than he possessed at midnight; they had actually deserted. Hall now moved forward with his own command, at the same time ordering Colonel Blakeslee to advance for an attack on the British left; on marched the American columns, and, in the dim light of early morning, they saw a flotilla of the enemy's boats engaged in discharging troops on the shore near General Peter B. Porter's mansion. These troops proved to be 800 Royal Scots, and their landing was completed successfully in the very face of the fire of our five-gun battery and musketry opposition. Captain Gordon, with 400 Royal Scots, took the center and began the attack, while the British left wing attempted to flank the American right. Hall countered by throwing Granger with his Indians, and Mallory with his Canadian refugees, against the enemy's advancing left; Blakeslee with his Ontario County militia took the center ; McMahon and his Chautauqua troops were posted as a reserve at the Fort Tompkins battery, under command of Lieutenant John Seeley. The batteries on both shores now opened on one another and the Ontario militia, brave as regulars, held back the foe with the determination of overwhelmed veterans, giving ground only inch by inch as the pressure of the enemy com- pelled it. Our right wing soon gave way, for the Canadians and Indians had neither the numbers nor determination to overcome the odds against them. McMahon with his little band of Chau-
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tauquans was then ordered into the breach, but they, too, broke and fled, no orders being effective to rally them again.
Hall's center was in a perilous situation and almost sur- rounded. Outnumbered, his troops deserting him and fleeing, he had no other recourse than to retire. The Americans had been beaten in a half-hour struggle. Here and there were men con- spicuous for their bravery. John Seeley, commanding the bat- tery, fought with great obstinacy, firing his guns effectively, and receiving the enemy's fire until he had but seven men and one horse left. Retreat being ordered, he harnessed his horse to a gun and rode on to Buffalo, pausing to fire whenever a suitable occa- sion offered; when he had reached the marshy slough where Mo- hawk Street joins Niagara, he paused again and loaded; he fired, and his gun became dismounted by the recoil; replacing it, he marched on to the settlement. Seeley was a carpenter by trade, but had joined the militia and was stationed as lieutenant at Black Rock. Chapin fled back upon Buffalo, disputing the enemy's ad- vance with great heroism, until the British successfully entered the settlement. Chapin then surrendered the town on condition that there should be no destruction of private property. General Riall accepted the surrender and promised immunity, but, when he found that Chapin had no legal power to consummate the sur- render, he gave his troops full license to burn and plunder. Chapin and a number of citizens were made prisoners and held within the British lines. Hall fled to his headquarters on Eleven Mile Creek (Williamsville), and here he rallied about 300 faithful men to protect the retreat of the refugees and to hold the enemy from advancing into the interior. All but four houses were burned, those left standing being the stone jail, a barn frame, a blacksmith shop and the home of Mrs. St. John, who, by great diplomacy and a display of kindness, saved her home, though urged some time before to flee. A Mrs. Sally Lovejoy, seeing the Indians coming, fought them with musket fire, her son Henry assisting. Mrs. Lovejoy was killed, scalped and mutilated.
Black Rock fared no better, and the American boats Ariel, Little Belt, Chippewa and Trippe, heroic instruments in the battle of Lake Erie three months before, were burned to the water's edge. Such was British revenge for the destruction of Newark! General Hall had done his best, but volunteers then were uncer- tain elements; it was almost impossible to control them, and every
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little deed of daring had to be lavishly praised. They came and deserted when they pleased, and only remained when cajoled. It takes instruction, training and a cultivated morale, guided by able leaders, to make soldiers who will fight and obey. The lessons of 1813 were fruitful in the year 1814. The newspapers of the day published mournful accounts of the disasters on the Niagara frontier, and many put the blame upon the militia, but then, as now, it should have been realized that training and organization count for half the victory. One Batavia account reads as follows: "Batavia, Jan. 8, 1813. To the want of discipline, of subordina- tion and proper concert, is to be attributed the fate of Buffalo and Black Rock. Our forces were not only sufficient to have repelled, but to have captured the invaders. Our frontier, from Buffalo to Niagara, now presents one continued scene of ruin. The build- ings that now remain in Buffalo are the jail (built of stone) and a small wooden building belonging to the widow St. John, who had the address to appease the ferocity of the enemy so far as to remain in her house uninjured.
"Since our last publication the enemy have evacuated Black Rock. Their last detachment crossed the river on Tuesday, since which time the alarm so generally spread through this section has in a great measure abated, and a degree of calmness succeeded that of bustle and confusion. Previous to evacuating Black Rock, the British fired every building in that place but three. Two of these -a stone dwelling house, belonging to Peter B. Porter, and a storehouse on the bank of the river-were blown up by a quantity of powder placed in them for that purpose. A log house in which some women and children had taken refuge was suffered to re- main. This is an act of humanity in the enemy not to be expected after the barbarous assassination of about twenty of our wounded, who had been carried into a barn near that place. We have not been able to procure a list of the names of our men who have been made prisoners. Of the killed, thirty-three have been found, but stripped of their clothing, few of them have been recognized. This number, together with the wounded, said to be inhumanely butch- ered in a barn at the Rock, swells the list of the killed up to fifty.
"The schooners Ariel, Little Belt, Chippewa, and sloop Trippe, lying near Buffalo Creek, fell into the enemy's hands and are probably destroyed."
Such was an item in one of the weekly papers, but when the
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"morning mail" was opened a citizen might have read such an extract as this, found in Nathaniel Sill's letter to General Porter, then (January 3d) at Albany. Dated at Lima, the letter in part reads: "The inhabitants are flying from Batavia. We know that the whole country, so far as this place, is in imminent danger. It is full of men who would defend it, but they are destitute of arms and ammunition. One thousand men would burn Canan- daigua, and return with little loss." A sidelight on the condition of our volunteers may be gained from an account in the Manlius Times, of January 4, 1814. After recounting the facts incident to the landing of the British troops and the initial resistance of our forces, the account reads: "But what availed courage or numbers. Our troops were not organized,-had no cannon. Their muskets could not be depended on, and but few had but four rounds of ammunition when they took the field. They were soon put to flight. It is said that General Hall continued upon the field until he was almost deserted, when he was obliged to retire."
Let us now seek to discover the motives of the British. Their ferocity and indifference to humanity seem inexcusable; yet they had a well-prepared justification. In a proclamation of his ex- cellency Lieutenant-General George Prevost, commander of his majesty's forces in North America, made January 12, 1814, he declares :
"The complete success which has attended his majesty's arms on the Niagara frontier having placed in our possession the whole of the enemy's posts on that line, it becomes a matter of imperious duty to retaliate on America the miseries which the unfortunate inhabitants of Newark had been made to suffer upon the evacua- tion of Fort George. The villages of Lewiston, Black Rock and Buffalo have accordingly been burned.
"At the same time that his excellency, the commander of the forces, sincerely deprecates this whole mode of warfare, he trusts that it will be sufficient to call the attention of every candid and impartial person, both among ourselves and the enemy, to the cir- cumstances from which it has arisen, to satisfy them that this departure from the established usages of war has originated with America herself, and that to her alone are justly chargeable all the awful and unhappy consequences which have hitherto followed and are likely to result from it. It will be hardly credited by those who shall hereafter read it in the pages of history, that
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in the enlightened era of the nineteenth century, and in the in- clemency of a Canadian winter, the troops of a nation, calling itself Christian, had wantonly and without a shadow of pretext, forced four hundred helpless women and children to quit their dwellings and be the mournful spectators of the conflagration and total destruction of all that belonged to them; yet such was the fate of Newark, on the 10th of December, a day which the in- habitants of Upper Canada can never forget, and the recollection of which can not but nerve their arms when opposed to their vin- dictive foe.
"Lamenting, as his excellency does, the necessity imposed upon him of retaliating upon the inhabitants of America the miseries inflicted upon Newark, it is not his intention to further pursue a system of warfare so revolting to his own feelings and so little congenial to the British character, unless the future measures of the enemy should compel him again to resort to it."
There has been much discussion as to why the Buffalo-Niagara region should have been left in such a defenseless state as to make it possible for the enemy to devastate the frontier. There were rumors at the time that McClure and Chapin quarreled violently over the proposition to burn Newark, Chapin believing the act unnecessary. After McClure had abandoned Fort Niagara, knowing that the enemy was preparing to descend upon Buffalo, he retreated far inland to Batavia, and there resigned his com- mand to Hall, as we have seen. From Batavia he fled afterwards to his Steuben County home. Major Chapin, in describing the events leading up to the burning of Newark, said in a public docu- ment, dated June 13, 1814: "The ill-fated town of Newark was burnt under his (McClure's) orders on the night of December 10, 1813. Here was exhibited a scene of distress which language would be inadequate to describe. Women and children were turned out of doors on a cold stormy night; the cries of infants, the decrepitude of age, the debility of sickness, had no impression upon this monster in human shape." * * This statement from a soldier appears severe, but there are other statements that make one believe that McClure must have been suffering from some grievance, real or fancied.2
2 For a complete documentary discussion of McClure's conduct, and other papers relating to the burning of Buffalo, see Ketchum's "Buffalo and the Senecas," Vol. 2, pp. 379 et seq.
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The year 1814 was ushered in with misgivings on the part of the people of America. The disasters in the autumn of 1813 were such that the country was seriously concerned about the situation, a situation rendered more disturbing by the fact that the British naval and military forces had been released from the campaigns against Napoleon. This meant that the United States might now face the hardened veterans of the European wars; indeed, the news soon leaked out that 14,000 of Wellington's veteran troops were on their way over.
The British, with a dawning conception of what the American conflict actually was, drew up a two-fold plan for handling the war : the first provided for the protection of Canada from invasion and attack; the second called for a maritime blockade from Maine to Georgia. A paragraph from a British journal, quoted in Baines' history, gives us a clue to British sentiment. The article reads: "After the fall of Napoleon, it was held in this country with a lamentable ignorance of the real state of feelings and energies of the United States, that Britain, so long the undisputed mistress of the ocean, would soon be able to sweep from the seas the ships of America; and that those troops which had acquired so much glory when contending with the veteran armies of Europe, would no sooner show themselves on the western side of the Atlantic, than the panicstricken soldiers of the United States would be driven far within their own frontiers. These pleasing illusions were heightened by the hope that England would soon be able to dictate peace in the capital of the republic; or at least that the splendor of British triumphs, and the pressure of American embarrassments, would induce and encourage the inhabitants of the northern states to form a separate government under the pro- tection of the crown of Great Britain, if not actually under the sway of her sceptre." Thus, to break up the United States and gain control of the weakened states, was the avowed hope of the mother country, whose statesmen could scarcely see that they had in fact become a separate and distinct national entity never to return to British allegiance.
Let us now observe what effect the war had upon the Genesee Country. On January 8th, the following letter was drawn up by the Committee of Safety and Relief, of Canandaigua, addressed to DeWitt Clinton, Colonel Robert Troup, General Clarkson and others:
BLACK SQUIRREL, Veteran of the War of 1812.
32-Vol. I
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"Gentlemen: Niagara County and that part of Genesee County which lies west of Batavia are completely depopulated. All the settlements in a section of a country forty miles square, and which contained more than 12,000 souls are effectually broken up. These facts you are undoubtedly acquainted with; but the distress they have produced none but an eye-witness can thoroughly appreciate. Our roads are filled with people, many of whom have been reduced from a state of competence and good pros- pects, to the last degree of want and sorrow. So sudden was the blow by which they have been crushed that no provision could be made either to elude or meet it. The fugitives from Niagara County, especially, were dispersed under circumstances of so much terror, that in some cases mothers find themselves wandering with strange children, and children are seen accompanied by such as have no other sympathies with them than those of common suffering. Of the families thus separated all the members can never meet again in this life, for the same violence that has made them beggars has deprived some of their heads and others of their branches. * * * The inhabi-
tants of Canandaigua have made a large contribution for their relief, in money, provisions and clothing. And we have been appointed, among other things, to solicit further relief for them from our wealthy and liberal minded fellow citizens. In pursuance of this appointment may we ask you, gentlemen, to interest yourselves particularly in their behalf? We believe that no occasion has ever occurred in our country which presented stronger claims upon individual benevolence, and we humbly trust that whoever is willing to answer these claims will always entitle himself to the precious reward of active charity."
This appeal met a generous response the city of New York appropriating $3,000, and the State Legislature $50,000, "for the relief of the indigent sufferers in the counties of Genesee and Niagara, in consequence of the invasion of the western frontier of the state, including the Tuscarora nation of Indians, and the Canadian refugees, the money to be distributed by Graham Newell, William Wadsworth and Joseph Ellicott." From this picture one can comprehend the danger that hung over the Gene- see Country like an impending doom, and the suffering that re- sulted from the frontier invasion of 1813. War was brought home in all its grim realization, but even worse was to come.
General Wilkinson was in camp at French Mills until early in February, when, under orders of the secretary of war, he despatched General Brown with 2,000 troops to the Niagara front. He then destroyed his barracks and retired to Plattsburg. The enemy, gaining knowledge of his movement, raided Malone and destroyed the arsenal and public stores at that place. Wilkin- son's movement was interpreted by the enemy as a feint against Canada, which caused the mustering of 2,000 men under Major Hancock and the fortification of LaColle Mill on the river Sorel. This reaction brought about an attack by Wilkinson, who was defeated with a loss of 100 men, killed and wounded. The expedi- tion was characterized by so many failures that the General was tried before a court-martial at Troy, but was acquitted. The
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British now began to close in for an attack on Champlain, where, at the mouth of the Otter River, at Vergennes, in Vermont, lay the American flotilla. Macdonald, however, was on guard, and repulsed the attack with vigor. Nevertheless, British boats had begun action in the lake; the end was not yet. Lake Ontario ports were also hives of industry and preparation. At Kingston the enemy was building an extra large ship, which furnished an incentive for Chauncey, who also started one to preserve the naval balance; each sought to destroy the other's work.
The alert British, noting the activities at Oswego, determined to attack it. At that place were quantities of naval stores, rig- ging, ropes, food supplies and guns; these would be of vast help to the British. The station was defended by a fort and five guns, and garrisoned by 300 men, under Colonel Mitchell, and promised an easy victory. On May 5th the enemy commenced a bombard- ment, and 1,500 men under General Drummond tried to effect a landing, but were held off by the little American force; the next day the attack was renewed, with greater success. Colonel Mitchell was forced from the fort by heavy fire, and, abandoning it, he joined his corps to the marines and seamen and engaged the enemy's front, but again fell back, defeated in his attempt to re- pulse the foe. Mitchell and his men now retreated to Oswego Falls, thirteen miles upstream, destroying all bridges as he re- treated. The British held Oswego and the key to an important inland region. The enemy looked about for their prizes-the stores for which they had come-but the Americans had not left their valuables behind; they had been sent ahead to a secure hid- ing place, and the enemy found little with which to console them- selves save some cannon and a few barrels of whisky. For this they had lost 235 men, killed and wounded; the American losses were sixty-nine killed and wounded. On May 7th the British evacuated Oswego. The stores came back with the American troops, and, on May 28th, Major Appling and Captain Woolsey were detailed to transfer them to Sackett's Harbor. The watchful British saw the move and covered the American boats, which sailed up a creek and moored; their men disembarked, formed an ambush and waited. The enemy walked straight into the trap, were surprised and surrendered after an action of twenty minutes. The Amer- icans had no losses, and soon after took their barges safely into Sackett's Harbor. Chauncey by this time had completed his
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Superior, which, when fully equipped, sailed out to meet the enemy before Kingston. Sir James Yeo made no response but kept his moorings, awaiting the completion of his own ship, which was capable of mounting almost twice as many guns as the Superior. In the west there were several attempts to reclaim Mackinaw, and in a battle on the Thames the American forces defeated the British, compelling their retreat.
General Brown, who had engaged in no offensive action dur- ing the spring of 1813, had with him two able men-Scott and Ripley. Aided by General Scott, who had adopted French mili- tary methods, the whole army at Niagara was drilled in the tac- tics of the new manual. A mass of undisciplined troops gradually became an organized army, ready for the call to action. There were many tasks to be accomplished, the first of which was the recapture of Fort Erie. With his troops, numbering some 2,000, General Brown in June marched his army to Buffalo, whose ashes were still a grim reminder of an enemy's vengeance; here his com- mand was swelled by Towson's artillery and a corps of volunteers under Peter B. Porter, making a combined force of 3,500 men. Scott's discipline had developed a splendid morale and his men were inspired with new ardor and courage. His own brigade em- braced the battalions of the Ninth, the Eleventh and the Twenty- fifth Regiments of infantry, a detachment of the Twenty-second and Towson's artillery. General Ripley commanded the First, the Twenty-first and Twenty-third Infantry, and Peter B. Porter the militia bodies known as the Canadian Volunteers, the Pennsyl- vania Volunteers, the New York Volunteers and the Six Nations' Indian companies. Early in the morning of July 3d, Scott's bri- gade, with the artillery corps of Major Hindman, crossed the river below Fort Erie, while Ripley's brigade landed above. The resourceful Scott, in command, had arrived in an open boat with Colonel Camp, and thus our forces were on the enemy's shore before a single hostile gun had been fired. One hundred and seventy men surrendered without firing a shot, and were later carried away as prisoners to the concentration camps at Canan- daigua and other interior points.
The troops were greatly heartened by their success, and preparations were immediately made to advance and attack the enemy at Chippewa, occupied by General Riall. The morning of July 4th, 1814, was one of excitement and expectation for Scott's.
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men. Early, as usual, Scott, with his brigade several hours in advance, moved toward the goal, the village of Chippewa, on the river of the same name, near its junction with the Niagara. For sixteen miles of the way there was a running fight with the British One Hundredth Regiment, commanded by the Marquis of Twee- dale. Scott pursued him with such vigor that the enemy were driven at sundown across the Chippewa River, where they united with the main army under General Riall. As night fell Scott took up his position above Street's Creek, two miles from the enemy's camp. The next day was ordained for the battle of Chippewa, in the level between the two streams. The morning of the 5th dawned hot and dusty. The British were securely fortified on the Chippewa, and the Americans temporarily encamped south of the smaller stream; on the west were heavy woodlands, on the east was the Niagara. The British, anticipating an attack, moved forward to meet it, detachments occupying the woods with their Indian allies. The foe had 3,000 troops, and Scott but 1,300, all told; each side was ready and wary. Noon came before the enemy pickets began to annoy the American flanks, shooting from the woods to the left. Scott met Indian with Indian, and, under General Porter, with his volunteers and friendly Six Na- tions warriors, our forces skirmished through the woods and soon drove the enemy in retreat to their works across the Chippewa. The advance of General Riall checked the retreat and engaged Porter; bravely he urged his men on, but when they saw the sea- soned British troops approaching, his militia broke and fled.
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