USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 40
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393
BATTLE OF QUEENSTOWN.
ment, had concluded an armistice in the summer with the chief British commander in Canada, and this caused delay in the gathering of troops on the Niagara. But at length Van Rensselaer found himself in com- mand of about six thousand troops scattered along the river from Lewiston to Buffalo, and he resolved to invade the neighboring province. from Lewiston, on the night of October 12th, and take the British by surprise.
Intense darkness brooded over the waters and the land, for a heavy storm was just ending. It was three hours past midnight when Colonel Solomon van Rensselaer, in command of six hundred men, was ready to cross the swift-running stream in boats to storm the British works on Queenstown Heights. There were only boats enough to convey less than one half his force. With the brave three hundred he pushed across in the gloom. The British were on the alert, for they had discovered the movement of the New Yorkers ; and when Van Rensselaer landed, his little force was fiercely assailed with musketry and a small field-piece. A battery on Lewiston Heights responded to this firing, when the British fled toward Queenstown, followed by some regulars under Captains Wool and Oglevie, who, pushing gallantly up the hill, pressed the British back to the plateau on which the village stands, fought them there, and finally gained possession of Queenstown Heights.
Colonel Van Rensselaer, who had followed with the militia, was so severely wounded that he was compelled to relinquish the command and recross the river. Wool, who was now in chief command, was also badly wounded, a bullet having passed through the fleshy part of both his thighs ; but, unmindful of his wounds, he would neither leave the field nor give up the command until the arrival of his senior officer, Lieu- tenant-Colonel Christie, who had been in a boat which lost its way in the darkness in crossing the river.
General Sir Isaac Brock, the Governor of Upper Canada, to whom General Hull had surrendered in August, was at Fort George, several miles below Queenstown, when the firing began. He hastened to the scene of action, and with his staff pressed up the heights to a redan battery, where they dismounted. They were suddenly startled by the
there. He served faithfully during the whole war, and in 1781 was one of Washington's military family, with the rank of colonel, at the siege of Yorktown. He filled several civil offices after the war, and was a member of Congress from 1793 to 1797. Jefferson appointed him Secretary of War in 1801. From 1809 until called to the head of the Army of the Northern Department by Madison, in 1812, he was collector of the port of Boston. In 1822 he was sent to Portugal as American Minister, where he remained two years, when he returned to Roxbury.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
crack of musketry. Wool and his followers were close upon them. Brock and his aides had not time to remount, but fled down the hill, lead- ing their horses at full gallop. They were followed by the dozen men who manned the battery, and in a few moments afterward the American flag was unfurled over that little work.
AN INCIDENT AT THE BATTLE OF QUEENSTOWN.
Brock placed himself at the head of some troops to retake the battery and drive Wool from the heights. The Americans were pressed back to the verge of the precipice two hundred feet above the rushing Niagara. Seeing the peril of the little band, who were in danger of being hurled
395
BATTLE ON QUEENSTOWN HEIGHTS.
into the flood below, Captain Oglevie raised a white handkerchief on the point of a bayonet in token of surrender. Wool sprang forward, snatched the token of submission, addressed a few stirring words to his men, begging them to fight as long as they held a weapon, and then, waving his sword, so inspirited his comrades to a renewal of the fight, that they soon made the British veterans break and fly down the hill in confusion. Brock rallied them, and they were about to reascend the heights when their commander was mortally wounded at the foot of the declivity. At the end of a brief struggle the British fled a mile below Queenstown. After three distinct battles young Wool (then only twenty-four years of age) was left master of the heights, with two hundred and forty men. Soon afterward Brigadier-Gen- eral Wadsworth, of the New York militia, took the chief com- mand.
General Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command, and rallied the troops. Lieutenant-Colonel Winfield Scott, who had arrived at Lewiston, crossed the river and joined the troops as a volun- STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER. teer, when he was requested to take active command. Early in the afternoon quite a large number of Ind- ians, painted and plumed and led by John Brant, a son of the famous chief, fell with great fury upon the American pickets, uttering the horrid war- whoop. The militia were about to flee, when Scott, by his voice and commanding presence, inspired the troops to fall upon the barbarians. The Indians fled to the woods in terror.
General Van Rensselaer," who stood by the side of Scott, seeing the troops under General Sheaffe pressing forward, hastened across the river
" Stephen van Rensselaer, the last of the patroons, was born in New York City, November 1st, 1764 ; died at the Manor House at Albany, January 26th, 1839. He was the fifth in lineal descent from Killian van Rensselaer, the first patroon. His mother was a daughter of Philip Livingston. He married a daughter of General P. Schuyler. Mr. Van Rensselaer served in both branches of the Legislature, and from 1795 to 1801 he was Lieutenant-Governor of the State. He presided over the Constitutional Convention of the State in 1801, and was made one of the first Canal Commissioners in 1810. He was
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
to send over re-enforcements of militia. They refused to go, pleading that they were not compelled to leave the soil of their country and invade that of another. Very soon overwhelming numbers compelled the Americans to surrender, and they were made prisoners. They lost on that memorable day (October 13th, 1812), in killed, wounded, and prisoners, about eleven hundred men. Van Rensselaer left the service, and was succeeded by General Alexander Smythe, of Virginia, who accomplished nothing of importance during the remainder of the season.
president of the Canal Board fifteen years. He was made commander of the State cavalry in 1801, with the rank of major-general ; and when war began in 1812 he was the chief of the militia of the State. He became a Regent and Chancellor of the State University ; was a member of the State Constitutional Convention in 1821, and of Con- gress from 1823 to 1829. At his own expense and under his direction a geological survey of the State was made in 1821-23, and in 1824 he established at Troy, N. Y., a scientific school for the instruction of teachers.
397
NAVAL OPERATIONS ON THE SEA.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
WHILE the American armies were suffering defeat and humiliation, and the disasters became a staple topic for rebuke of the Democratic administration in the mouths of its opponents, the little American navy was winning honors and renown for its skill and prowess on the ocean. At that time the British navy comprised one thousand and sixty vessels, while that of the United States, exclusive of small gun-boats, numbered only twenty. Two of these were unseaworthy, and one was on Lake Ontario. Nine of the American vessels were of a class less than frigates, and none of them could well compare in appointments with those of the enemy. Yet the Americans went boldly out upon the ocean in their ships to meet the war-vessels of the proudest maritime nation on the earth, and won victory after victory.
Commodore Rodgers * was at Sandy Hook, N. Y., with the frigates President, Congress, and United States, and the sloop-of-war Hornet, in June, 1812 ; and on the day after the declaration of war was pro- claimed he put to sea in pursuit of a British squadron which had sailed as a convoy of the West India merchant fleet. He abandoned the chase at midnight, and returned to his anchorage. He had a slight skirmish with the enemy.
On August 19th the American frigate Constitution, Commodore Isaac Hull, fought the British frigate Guerriere, Captain Dacres, some distance off the American coast, in the present track of ships plying between New York and Great Britain. The contest lasted about forty minutes. Hull was victorious. The Guerriere had become such a complete wreck that he burned her. This victory had a powerful effect on the public mind in both countries.
On October 18th the American sloop-of-war Wasp, Captain Jones, captured the British brig Frolic off the coast of North Carolina, after a
* John Rodgers was born in Maryland in 1771, and died in Philadelphia in August, 1838. He entered the navy as lieutenant in 1798, and was executive officer of the frigate Constitution under Truxton. From 1802 to 1806 he did good service in the Mediter- ranean. In the spring of 1811, in command of the President, he had an encounter with the Little Belt. His services were conspicuous during the War of 1812-15. He was acting Secretary of the Navy in 1823. For a long time he was a member of the Board of Naval Commissioners, which he left the year before his death.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
severe conflict of forty-five minutes. Out of the Frolic's company of eighty-four men and boys only three officers and one seaman remained unhurt at the close of the battle. They had been either slain or badly wounded. The Wasp lost only ten men. In the afternoon of the same day the British ship Poictiers, seventy-four, recaptured the prize and seized the victor. A week later (October 25th) the American frigate United States, Captain Decatur, fought the British frigate Macedonia, westward of the Canary Islands, for almost two hours, and captured her. She had been greatly damaged in the conflict, and lost more than one hundred men, killed and wounded, while Deeatur lost only five men killed and seven wounded. A few weeks later (December 29th) the Constitution, Commodore Bainbridge, captured the British frigate Java, after a fieree battle for almost three hours, off San Salvador, on the coast of Brazil. The Java had four hundred men on board, of whom more than one half were killed or wounded. The Java was so much injured that she could not be kept afloat, and was burned.
These victories greatly elated and inspirited the Americans. They had also sent out numerous privateers that struck British commerce heavy blows in every direction. During the latter half of the year 1812 upward of fifty British armed vessels of various sizes, and two hundred and fifty merchantmen, with an aggregate of over three thousand pris- oners and a vast amount of booty, were captured by the Americans. British pride was fearfully wounded in a tender part, and the favorite national song,
" Britannia, Britannia rules the waves,"
was sung in a minor key by the boasted " Mistress of the Seas."
These events strengthened the national administration, and Mr. Madison was re-elected President of the United States in the autumn of 1812 by an increased majority, with Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, Vice-President. Gerry's venerable predecessor, George Clinton, had died in the spring of the same year .*
* George Clinton was born in Ulster County, N. Y., in July, 1739, and died in Wash- ington, D. C., in April, 1812. In early youth he made a successful cruise in a privateer during the French and Indian War, and was in the expedition against Fort Frontenac in 1758. He studied law under William Smith, became a member of the Provincial Assembly of New York in 1768, and was a leading Whig. In 1775 he became a member of the Continental Congress, and voted for the resolution for independence in June, 1776, but was in the military service when the Declaration of Independence was adopted. As brigadier he performed important services. He was elected the first Governor of the State of New York in 1777, and retained the office, by re-election, eighteen years. In 1788 he presided over the convention at Poughkeepsie which ratified the National Consti-
399
A BANK CHARTER IN POLITICS.
The political situation in New York was still in a state of effervescence owing to the continued bitterness of the quarrel between the " Clin- tonians" and the " Martling men," or the "Regular .Democracy." The latter had " read " De Witt Clinton "out of the party ;" but he was a power too strong to be repressed by such " paper blockades." At the same time another important and disturbing question arose for dis- cussion-namely, a proposition for an increase of the paper currency of the States, by chartering a bank to be located in the city of New York, with a capital of $6,000,000, to be called the "Bank of America." The petitioners for the charter of the bank offered the extrava- gant bonus of $600,000, to be paid in the following manner and for the following purposes : $400,000 to the common-school fund ; $100,000 to the literature fund ; and $100,000 to be paid into the Treasury at the end of twenty years, provided no other bank should in that time be chartered by the State. The sum of $1,000,000 was also to be loaned to the State at five per cent interest, to be laid out in con. structing canals, and $1,000,000 to be loaned to farmers. Solo- mon Southwick, then a brilliant GEORGE CLINTON. young man and editor of the Albany Register, the accredited organ of the Democratic Party in the State, and a devoted and confidential friend of De Witt Clinton, was one of the most persistent and efficient agents in efforts to procure the proposed bank charter.
It was suspected that the bank would be used as a political machine, like the Manhattan Bank, and there was much opposition to it. Mr. Clinton avowed that he was opposed to it on other grounds, and protested against making support of or opposition to it a test of political merit. Mr. Southwick echoed Mr. Clinton's sentiments in the Register by say- ing : " He who supports or opposes a bank upon the grounds of Federal-
tution, to which he was opposed. He was again elected governor in 1801, and in 1804 was chosen Vice-President of the United States, which office he filled until his death. His remains rest in the Congressional burying-ground at Washington.
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ism or Republicanism is either a deceiver or deceived, and will not be listened to by any man of experience."
The friends of the bank in the Legislature determined that nothing of importance should be done in that body until their favorite measure should be adopted. They resorted to another measure to force Mr. Clinton and his friends to favor the bill for the charter of the bank. They all professed to favor his nomination for the presidency of the United States, to which he aspired, by a legislative Democratie caucus ; but by one pretence and another they refused to go into caucus on that subjeet until after the question of chartering the bank should be disposed of. This course exceedingly annoyed Mr. Clinton, for he desired that the nomination, if made by the Legislature of New York, should be announced before a Congressional nomination of Mr. Madison should be declared.
A crisis was suddenly reached. Late in March the enacting clause of the bank charter bill was passed by a vote of 52 to 46, when some start- ling disclosures were made of attempts to bribe members of both houses by friends of the measure. Notwithstanding these damaging disclosures, the bill was passed by a vote of 58 to 39. It was sent to the Senate, where it was evident it would be almost immediately adopted. Governor Tompkins, who had watched the measure with keen vigilance, satisfied that it would be forced through by corrupt means, prorogued the Legis- lature on March 27th until May 21st. His message announcing his act fell like a thunderbolt on both houses, and a scene of wildest confusion and uproar ensued ; but the legislators were compelled to submit to the inevitable.
When the Legislature reassembled the bill for the charter of the Bank of America, which had produced so much social and political commo- tion, was promptly passed, all the Federalists in both houses voting for it. Immediately afterward a meeting of the Democratie members of the Legislature was held (May 28th, 1812), by which Mr. Clinton was nominated as the candidate of the State of New York for the presidency of the United States. They recommended his support to the Democratic Party throughout the republic.
Mr. Clinton and his friends having been rather lukewarm on the sub- jeet of war, the Federalists felt kindly toward him. The Clintonian members of Congress from New York voted against the declaration of war. At the election most of the Federalists voted for Mr. Clinton. In the Electoral College he received eighty-nine votes, and Mr. Madison received one hundred and twenty-eight votes. Clinton's course, regarded as coquetry with the Federalists, lost him the friendship of many of his
401
MILITARY MOVEMENTS ON THE NORTHERN FRONTIER.
party at home. An immense majority of the Democrats of New York City, where the " Tammanyites" were influential, became opposed to him politically, and these influenced the party in the State.
There were some hostile movements on the Canada frontier of New York near the St. Lawrence in the autumn of 1812 and in the winter of 1813. Late in September Major Benjamin Forsythe, with a company of riflemen, appeared on the southern bank of the St. Lawrence, and after some exploits among the Thousand Islands, he took post at Ogdensburg. General Brown arrived there on October 1st, and on the same day a large flotilla of British bateaux, escorted by a gun-boat, appeared at Prescott, on the opposite side of the river. On October 4th this flotilla bore armed men across the stream to attack Ogdensburg, when about fifteen hundred American regulars and militia at that place repulsed the invaders.
Nearly three weeks later a detachment of about two hundred militia, chiefly from Troy, N. Y., led from French Mills by Major G. D. Dudley, captured a larger portion of a British detachment stationed at the Indian village of St. Regis, which lies on the boundary-line between the United States and Canada. The late Governor Marcy, of New York, then a lieutenant, captured a British flag with his own hands. It was the first trophy of the war taken on the land.
Early in November Commodore Chauncey* appeared on Lake Ontario with a little squadron of armed schooners. With these he made a cruise toward Kingston, and after a slight skirmish he blockaded a British squadron in Kingston Harbor. In this cruise of a few days he disabled the Royal George, destroyed one armed schooner, captured three mer- chant vessels, and took several prisoners. Leaving vessels to blockade the harbor until ice should seal it, he cruised toward the western end of the lake, and soon returned to Sackett's Harbor. The aggregate amount of metal carried by his squadron was less than fifty guns, and the aggre -. gate number of his men was only four hundred and thirty, including marines.
Meanwhile some stirring events had occurred at the head of the
* Isaac Chauncey was born in Connecticut in February, 1772, and died at Washing- ton, D. C., in January, 1840. At the age of nineteen he commanded a merchant ship, and he made voyages to the East Indies in ships belonging to J. J. Astor. He entered the navy as lieutenant in 1802, and had become captain in 1806. During the War of 1812-15 he was commander-in-chief of the United States naval force on Lake Ontario. After the war he commanded the Mediterranean squadron, and assisted in negotiating a treaty with Algiers. He was Naval Commissioner at Washington in 1820, and held the same position from 1833 until his death. His remains lie in the Congressional burying- ground.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
Niagara River. Black Rock, near Buffalo, had been chosen as a place for the construction of war-vessels for service on Lake Erie. Lieutenant J. D. Elliott had been sent thither by Chauncey as superintendent. A few days before the affair at Queenstown two British merchant vessels- Caledonia and Detroit-had come down the lake and anchored under the protection of the guns of Fort Erie, opposite Buffalo. Elliott deter- mined to seize them. At midnight (October 8th) he crossed the river in boats with one hundred and twenty men, and surprised and captured both vessels with all their people. The shouts of men at Buffalo and Black Rock who witnessed the exploit aroused the garrison at Fort Erie, who brought great guns to bear upon the assailants. A fierce struggle for the possession of the captured vessels ensued. The Caledonia was
un
FORT NIAGARA FROM FORT GEORGE.
secured by the Americans, and was afterward converted into a war-vessel. The Detroit was burned.
Near the mouth of the Niagara River stood old Fort Niagara, lightly garrisoned by the Americans. On November 21st (1812) a heavy artillery attack upon this post was carried on from the morning until the evening twilight by five detached batteries on the Canada shore. Two thousand red-hot balls and a tempest of bomb-shells were projected upon the American works during the day. The cannonading and bombard- inent was returned with spirit. The village of Newark, on the Canada side, was set on fire several times by bombs, and little Fort George was severely pounded by round-shot. Night ended this artillery duel.
This cannonade and bombardment aroused General Smythe, Van Rensselaer's successor in command at Buffalo, to spasmodic action. He made preparations for invading Canada at once. In a flaming proclama-
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GENERAL HARRISON'S CAMPAIGN.
tion he said to his soldiers : " Hearts of war ! to-morrow will be memo. rable in the annals of the United States. Neither rain, snow, nor frost will prevent the embarkation. . The landing will be effected in despite of cannon."
" To-morrow" was "memorable" for the failure of the boaster to cross the Niagara. IIe was afraid of Lieutenant-Colonel Bisshopp, who commanded a small British force on the Canada side. Smythe was dis- missed from the service. He petitioned Congress to be reinstated, ask- ing to be allowed to " die for his country." A wag wrote with a pencil on the panel of a door of the House of Representatives :
" All hail, great chief, who quailed before A Bisshopp on Niagara's shore, But looks on Death with dauntless eye, And begs for leave to bleed and die. Oh my !"
It is not our province to give more than the briefest notices of events not specially connected with the history of the State of New York ; therefore we present only an outline of stirring scenes elsewhere.
We have observed that the surrender of Hull and the atrocities of the barbarians on the northi-western frontier aronsed the hottest indignation and intense patriotism of the people west of the Alleghany Mountains. In the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi the spirit of the old crusaders seemed to have been awakened. Volunteers gathered in every settlement, and for weeks they found employment in driving the hostile Indians from post to post in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, desolating their villages and plantations, and exciting the terrible wrath of the barbarians. The people were so eager to smite the British and their dusky allies that the campaign of 1813 opened at midwinter, and volunteers were more plentiful than were needed.
General Hull had been succeeded in the command of the Army of the North-west by General William H. Harrison (afterward President of the United States), and General Sir George Prevost became the successor of Brock in Canada. Harrison marched a crude and undisciplined army through a savage wilderness toward Detroit. They built roads and block-houses by the way, created magazines of provisions and defended them, and protected in a measure a frontier of several hundred miles in extent against the tomahawk and the scalping-knife of murderous savages. Harrison made the vicinity of the Maumee Rapids, toward the western end of Lake Erie, the place of general rendezvous.
General James Winchester, with eight hundred young Kentuckians,
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
arrived at the Maumee Rapids in January, 1813. Informed that British and Indians were occupying the little settlement of Frenchtown (now Munroe, Mich.), on the river Raisin, he hastened thither to dislodge the intruders. His advanced detachment had driven them out of the hamlet on his arrival on the 20th. General Proctor, with a force of British and Indians (the latter commanded by Tecumtha), then occupied Malden, on the Detroit River. With fifteen hundred men of this motley army he surprised Winchester at dawn on the 22d, made him a prisoner, and slew many of his men. Winchester surrendered his troops to Proc- tor on the condition that they and the settlement should be protected against the fury of the barbarians. This promise was quickly violated. The sick and wounded Americans were left behind when the prisoners were marched away. The Indians soon turned back, murdered and scalped those who were unable to travel, and took the remainder to Detroit, twenty-five miles to the north, in order to procure exorbitant sums for their ransom. This perfidy and massacre created intense ex- citement in Kentucky, for the victims were of the flower of society in that State. After that the war-cry of the Kentuckians was, " Remem- ber the river Raisin !"
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