USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 43
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425
BATTLE OF LUNDY'S LANE.
men, and near the verge of the great cataract he saw some British officers come out of a house, leap into their saddles, and ride swiftly away. IIe dashed into the woods, expecting to find a small detachment of the British army, but soon discovered that Riall was there with a force larger than he led at Chippewa. Scott measured the peril of his situation instantly. To stand still would be fatal, and to retreat might demoralize the army he had just left ; so he resolved to fight with great odds against him.
A desperate battle began at sunset, and did not cease until almost mid- night. The British line encountered by Scott, eighteen hundred strong, was on a hill over which passed a highway known as Lundy's Lane. Near its crest the British had a fine battery of brass cannon, which inflicted fearful havoc in the ranks of the Americans. While Scott was hotly engaged with Riall, Major Jesup secretly led a small force in the gloom to the rear of the British and kept back re-enforcements sent by Drummond. Meanwhile General Brown, apprised of the situation by the booming of cannons and from messengers, pushed forward with his whole army. Perceiving the battery on the hill to be the key to the enemy's position, he turned to Colonel James Miller and asked :
" Can you storm that work and take it ?"
" I'll try !"' said Miller.
The battery was soon taken, and the exploit led to victory. Miller was promoted to brigadier general.
Scott, fighting gallantly, was severely wounded in his shoulder by a musket-ball. Brown, too, was badly wounded, and the command devolved upon the inefficient Ripley. The British had already been driven from the field, notwithstanding Drummond had brought them a re-enforcement of fifteen hundred men. The Americans retired to Chippewa, a short distance off, but could not take the captured battery with them. Brown ordered Ripley to return after a brief rest and take possession of the battle- field and the battery before daylight. That always tardy and disobedient officer hesitated to obey. The British returned, retook the battery, and held the field, while Ripley led the little American army back to Fort Erie, and deprived them of all the advantages they had gained at this battle of Lundy's Lane. He was immediately super- seded by General E. P. Gaines. Both parties claimed the victory .*
Drummond was wounded in the battle. As soon as he was able he
* The British had about four thousand five hundred troops in this battle, and the Americans two thousand six hundred. The latter lost about one third of their number, and the British lost a few more. The conflict is sometimes called the battle of Bridge- water, from a hamlet near by, and also the battle of Niagara, it having been fought in sight of the great cataract.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
pushed forward and besieged Fort Erie with about five thousand men. From the 7th to the 14th of August (1814) almost continuous cannonad- ing between the besiegers and the besieged was kept up. At evening twilight on the 14th a shell hurled from a British mortar came screaming into the fort, lodged in an almost empty magazine, and blew it up. Drummond, supposing he had fired one of the principal magazines of the fort, proceeded to assail the works in strong force. Before dawn on the 15th fifteen hundred of his men furiously attacked the fort. They gained a bastion, but were repulsed at all other points. They held the bastion with tenacity. The Americans mined it and blew it up. The explosion was terrific. Mingled earth, timbers, stones, and human bodies rose one hundred feet in the air and spread a shower of ruins to a great distance. The British, amaz- ed, soon afterward broke and fled, and victory remained with the Americans.
Both parties prepared to renew the struggle. General Brown had recovered, and was again in com- mand of his army. Drummond's force again invested Fort Erie, but, occupying low ground, many died of typhoid fever.
On September 17th a sortie was made from the fort, and after a GENERAL IZARD. severe contest the Americans cap- tured the advanced works of the enemy. The British were driven back to Chippewa, with a loss of almost a thousand men, killed, wounded, and prisoners. " Thus," wrote Gen- eral Brown to the Secretary of War, "one thousand regulars and an equal proportion of militia destroyed the fruits of fifty days' labor, and diminished his [Drummond's] effective force one thousand men."
This victory, won by the Americans so soon after those achieved at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, and occurring a few days after a triumph of their arms at Plattsburgh, on Lake Champlain, and the expulsion of the British from Baltimore, diffused great joy throughout the country, and dispelled the gloom which the recent capture of the national capital by the enemy had spread over the land.
General Izard,* the successor of General Wilkinson, led about five
* George Izard was a native of South Carolina, where he was born in 1777. and died at Little Rock, Ark., in November, 1898. He was educated in England, and soon after
42"
STIRRING EVENTS ON LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
thousand troops to the Niagara frontier in October, and, ranking Brown, took the chief command. The combined forces, numbering about eight thousand men, were preparing to attack Drummond, when he withdrew to Fort George and Burlington Heights. Perceiving that further offen- sive operations on the Canadian peninsula would be perhaps perilous, Izard cansed Fort Erie to be abandoned and blown up early in November, and, leaving Canada, he crossed the Niagara and put the troops into winter quarters at Buffalo, Black Rock, and Batavia.
There were stirring scenes on Lake Champlain early in Septem- ber, 1814. When, in August, Izard marched westward he left about fifteen hundred regulars near Platts- burgh under the command of Gen- eral Alexander Macomb. General Benjamin Mooers * was at the head of the militia force in that region.
During the summer the Ameri- cans and the British had been busy in the preparation of vessels of war U on Lake Champlain. The Ameri- can squadron was placed in charge BENJAMIN MOOERS. of Captain Thomas Macdonough, and was ready for service at the middle of August. At the beginning of September Macomb was in command of about three thousand four hundred armed men all told. With great exertions he had completed redoubts and block-houses there and other preparations for defence. He also took measures to prevent expected invaders from Canada crossing the Saranac River. He had learned that fifteen thousand of Wellington's
his return he entered the army (1794) as a lieutenant of artillery. In 1799 he was ap- pointed aide to General Hamilton, and resigned his office in 1803. He was appointed colonel of artillery in the spring of 1812, and brigadier-general a year later. On Lake Champlain and on the Niagara frontier, he commanded with skill and prudence, with the rank of major-general. In 1825 he was appointed governor of the Arkansas Territory, and so remained until his death.
* Benjamin Mooers, born in Massachusetts in 1761, was a young soldier in the old war for independence. He was chosen commander of one of the two great divisions of the militia of the State of New York in 1812, but did not appear active on the field until the invasion of the Champlain region by the British in 1814, when he was in command of the militia who defended Plattsburgh. In that position he did his duty nobly. He died at his residence on Cumberland Head, in February, 1838.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
veterans were at Montreal, under the command of Sir George Prevost, the Governor-General of Canada, who was preparing to invade the State of New York.
At the beginning of September Prevost,* with fourteen thousand men, chiefly Wellington's soldiers, penetrated the country from the St. Law- rence to a point a few miles from Plattsburgh. He avowed his intention to seize and hold Northern New York as far south as Ticonderoga, and by proclamation called on the inhabitants to east off their allegiance to their government and to furnish him with supplies. At the same time the British squadron, built on the Sorel, moved into Lake Champlain, under the general command of Commodore Downie.
On the morning of Sep- tember 6th Prevost ad- vanced upon Plattsburgh in two columns. One of these encountered and had a severe skirmish with a small force of regulars and mili- tia under Captain Wool, STONE MILL AT PLATTSBURGH. the hero of Queenstown. The Americans were press- ed back by overwhelming numbers, and retired to the south side of the Saranac, tearing up the bridges behind them and using the timbers for breastworks. In trying to force their way aeross the Saranac the British were repulsed by a company of musketeers in a strong stone mill. Prevost soon learned that his invasion was not to be a pleasant holiday excursion, and he paused for the coming up of batteries and supplies, and for the construction of works to eommand those of the Americans on the south side of the river.
Meanwhile the British naval foree had appeared off Cumberland Head, at the entrance to Plattsburgh Bay, in which lay the squadron of Mac-
* Sir George Prevost was born in New York in 1767, and died in England in 1816. He entered the British Army in his youth, and served with distinction in the West Indies late in the last century. In 1805 he was commissioned a major-general, and the same year was created a baronet. He was second in command at the capture of Mar- tinique in 1808, and became Governor of Nova Scotia the same year. He was made lieutenant-general in 1811, and the same year was appointed Governor-General of Canada. He retained that office until his return to England, in 1814.
429
NAVAL BATTLES NEAR PLATTSBURGH.
donough .* His flag-ship was the Saratoga, which was assisted by one brig, two schooners, and ten gun-boats, or galleys. Downie's flag-ship was the Confiance, which was assisted by one brig, two sloops, and twelve gun-boats. The British land and naval forces began an attack at about the same time on the morn- ing of the 11th. The battle was opened by the navy. Macdonough was only thirty-one years of age, 4 pious, and trustful in Providence. When his ship was cleared for action he knelt on her deck, with his chicf officers around him, and implored the aid of the Almighty. Very soon the thunders of great guns boomed over the lake, and a sharp naval battle, which lasted nearly C two hours and a half, began.+ The THOMAS MACDONOUGH. sublime spectacle was seen by hundreds of spectators on the headlands of the Vermont shore of the nar- row lake. The battle ended in a complete victory for the Americans. Both squadrons were dreadfully shattered. "There was not a mast in either squadron," Macdonough wrote, " that could stand to make a sail
* Thomas Macdonough was born in Delaware in December, 1783, and died at sea, November 14th, 1825. He was of Scotch-Irish descent. He became a midshipman in the United States Navy in 1800, lieutenant in 1807, and commander in 1813. He had served with Decatur and Bainbridge in the Mediterranean, and won a signal victory in a naval battle off Plattsburgh on September 11th, 1814, for which service he received the thanks of Congress and a gold medal, and other rewards. Civil honors were bestowed upon him in several places. His health declined from the close of the war, and he lived but ten years afterward.
+ At the beginning of the battle a shot from a British vessel demolished a hen-coop on the Saratoga, where a young game-cock which the sailors had brought from the shore, released from confinement and startled by the sound of cannons, flew up on a gun-slide, and flapping his wings, crowed lustily and defiantly. The sailors regarded the incident as an omen of victory, and felt their courage strengthened. In a rhyming Epistle of Brother Jonathan to Johnny Bull, written at the close of the war, is the following allu- sion to this event :
"O, Johnny Bull, my Joe, John, Behold on Lake Champlain, With more than equal force, John, You tried your fist again ; But the cock saw how 'twas going. John, And cried ' cock-a-doodle-doo,' And Macdonongh was victorious, John, O, Johnny Bull, my Joe."
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
on." "Our masts, yards, and sails," wrote an officer of the Confiance, "were so shattered that one looked like so many bundles of matches, and the other like so many bundles of rags." The Americans lost one hundred and ten men, the British over two hundred. Among the latter was Commodore Downic, who was slain, and was buried at Plattsburgh.
There was a sharp and decisive conflict on the land at Plattsburgh while the battle was raging on the water. At the discharge of the first gun on the lake the British troops moved forward in three columns to force their way across the Saranac at the sites of the two destroyed bridges and at a ford three miles from the mouth of the river, to carry the American works by storm. After a des- perate battle for about two hours, with varying fortunes for both sides, the British were repulsed by the brave inen under Macomb* ALEXANDER MACOMB. and Mooers. The Americans were driving back some of the enemy who had forced their way across the river, when Hiram Walworth (afterward Chancellor of the State of New York) dashed up, his horse flecked with foam, and announced that the British squadron on the lake had surrendered ! The Americans gave hearty cheers. The enemy wavered. The timid Prevost, seeing the militia, who had come streaming over from Vermont and from the surrounding country, gathering on his flanks and rear, sounded a retreat. At mid- night he fled Canadaward with such precipitation that he left his sick
* Alexander Macomb was son of a fur merchant, and was born in Detroit in April. 1782. Died in Washington, D. C., in June, 1841. He entered the army as cornet of cavalry in 1799. At the beginning of the second war for independence (1812-15), he was a lieutenant of engineers and adjutant-general of the army. In the artillery service, he distinguished himself on the Niagara frontier. He was promoted to brigadier-general early in 1814, and was left in chief command in the Lake Champlain region in the sum- mer of that year. His victory over the British at Plattsburgh in September won for him great honors -- the thanks of Congress and a gold medal, and awards from others. On the death of General Brown, in 1835, he was made general-in-chief of the armies of the United States, which position he held at the time of his death. His remains repose be- neath a handsome monument in the Congressional burying ground at Washington.
431
THE BRITISH REPULSED AT PLATTSBURGH.
and wounded and a vast amount of stores behind. A pursuit was begun, but heavy rains compelled the pursuers to give up the chase. The British had lost in killed, wounded, and deserted, from the 6th to the 11th of September, about twenty-five hundred men. Macomb and Macdonough became the recipients of high honors and of solid rewards.
The flight of Prevost to Canada ended military operations of impor- tance on the northern frontier of New York .* The active and efficient Chauncey had been compelled to remain inactive during a large portion of the season. He was blockaded at Sackett's Harbor by a British squadron, and when he was ready to go out and fight the blockaders he was prostrated by severe sickness. While convalescing he went out on a cruise and blockaded the British squadron in Kingston Harbor.
* The victory at Plattsburgh and the flight of Prevost formed the burden of one of the most popular of the many songs composed during the war. It was written by Micajah Hawkins, and was first sung at a theatre in Albany by him, in the character of a negro sailor. It was entitled
THE SIEGE OF PLATTSBURGH. Tune, " Boyne Water."
Backside Albany stan' Lake Champlain, Little pond half full o' water ; Plat-te-burgh dar too, close 'pon de main : Town small, he grow bigger, do, herearter. On Lake Champlain Uncle Sam set he boat, An' Massa Macdonough sail 'em ; While Gineral Macomb make Plat-te-burgh he home Wid de army whose courage nebber fail 'em.
On 'lebenth day Sep-tem-ber, In eighteen hun'red and fourteen, Gubbernor Probose an' he British so-jer Come to Plat-te-burgh a tea-party courtin'. An' he boat come, too, arter Uncle Sam's boat. Massa 'Donough look sharp out de winder ; Den Gineral Macomb (ah ! he always at home) Cotch fire too, Sirs, like tinder.
Bang ! bang ! bang ! den de cannons 'gin to roar In Plat-te-burgh an' all 'bout dat quarter ; Gubbernor Probose try he han' 'pon de shore, While he boat take he luck 'pon de water. But Massa Macdonough knock he boat in he head, Break he heart, break he shin, 'tove he caff'n in ; An' Ginerat Macomb start ole Probose home, "Tot me soul den I muss die a laffiu.
Probose scare so be lef' all behine, Powder, ball, cannon, tea-pot an' kittle ; Some say he cotch a cole-trouble in he mine, Canse he eat so much raw an' cole vittle. Uncle Sam berry sorry, to be sure, for he pain ; Wish he nuss bisself up well an' hearty, For Gineral Macomb and Massa 'Donough home When he notion for anudder tea-party.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
vessel named St. Lawrence, pierced for one hundred and twelve guns, was completed at Kingston on September 1st, when Chauncey prudently raised the blockade and returned to the harbor. That ship, carrying over one thousand men, with other vessels of war, made Sir James Yeo lord of the lake during the remainder of the season. The Americans determined to match the St. Lawrence, and laid the keels of two first- class frigates at Sackett's Harbor. The New Orleans, nearing com- pletion when peace came early in 1815, is still on the stocks at the Harbor.
A land and naval force was prepared in the spring of 1814 for the purpose of recapturing Fort Mackinaw in the far North-west. It left Detroit early in July. It destroyed the post of the North-west Fur Company at the Falls of St. Mary. The agents of this company had been persistent in inducing the Indians to make war on the frontier settlements of the United States beyond the Ohio. The garrison of the fort to be taken was too strong for the small American force, and the enterprise was abandoned.
433
THE BRITISH ON THE NEW ENGLAND COASTS.
CHAPTER XXXI.
WHILE the military events we have considered in the preceding chapter were occurring on the borders of the State of New York during 1814, others of equal importance were taking place at various points in the republic.
Late in August (1814) General Duncan McArthur, with seven hundred mounted men of Kentucky and Ohio, left Detroit, crossed into Canada, and made a terrifying raid through the western portion of the province from Lake St. Clair eastward to the Grand River, and back to Sandwich. He spread alarm everywhere. Fear magnified the number of his men to thousands. The object of the raid was to create a diversion in favor of the Americans on the Niagara frontier. It was effectual. For four weeks McArthur skurried hundreds of miles through the enemy's country, disarming and paroling the militia, and destroying public prop- erty ; but he was generous to inoffensive citizens.
New England had experienced very little actual war before the year 1814. From the end of 1813 until the close of the contest, British block- ading squadrons and single cruisers hovered along its coasts, barred its sea-ports against commerce, and kept its maritime cities and villages in a state of continual alarm and dread.
Pursuant to an order of the British Admiral Cochran given to the commanders of war-vessels to " destroy the sea-port towns and desolate the country," much property was wasted on the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts ; and Stonington, in Connecticut, a little east of New London, suffered a severe bombardment. Formidable squadrons block- aded the Delaware River, New York Harbor, New London, and Boston. The largest of these squadrons on the New England coast was com- manded by Commodore Sir T. M. Hardy.
After seizing a portion of Eastern Maine, Hardy menaced Portsmouth and Boston. The last-named city was almost defenceless. Stimulated by alarm and the instinct of self-preservation, citizens of Boston of every class turned out daily with implements of labor, and worked energetically in the construction of defences for the town. Informed of these prep- arations, and having a wholesome fear of Fulton's torpedoes, with which common report said some of the American sea-port harbors were strewn, Hardy did not venture within the roads, and Boston was saved.
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THE EMPIRE STATE.
New York was equally excited by patriotism and alarm. In daily expectation of an attack by a British land and naval force which had been operating in Chesapeake Bay, men of all classes and occupations worked daily in building fortifications at Brooklyn and Harlem. De Witt Clinton was then mayor of the city of New York. He issued a stirring appeal (August 2d, 1814) to the patriotism and the interests of the citizens, calling upon them to offer their personal services and pecuniary means to aid in the completion of the unfinished fortifications around the town. The response to this appeal was prompt and gen- erous. * Members of various churches and of social and benevolent organizations went out in groups, as such, to the patriotic task. So also did different craftsmen under their respective banners :
" Plumbers, founders, dyers, tinners, tanners, shavers, Sweeps, clerks, and criers, jew ellers, engravers, Clothiers, drapers, players, cartmen, hatters, nailers, Gaugers, scalers, weighers, carpenters, and sailors."
Within four days after Clinton's address three thousand persons were at work on the fortifications under the direction of a Defence Committee and engineers guided by lines drawn by General Joseph G. Swift. The enthusiasm of the people was intense. School-teachers and their pupils went together to the patriotic task, and little boys, too small to handle a spade or pickaxe, carried earth on shingles, and so added their mites in rearing the breastworks. New York City was soon well defended by fortifications and numerous militia, and no blockader ventured within the harbor. Samnel Woodworth concluded a stirring poem published at that time with the following lines, addressed to the British :+
" Better not invade ; recollect the spirit Which our dads displayed and their sons inherit.
* Money to ereet fortifications must be had at once. The Legislature was not in ses- sion. The credit of the National Government was so low at that, the most critical period of the war, that the banks would not loan money on its stock or its Treasury notes with- out other security. It was understood, however, that if Treasury notes were deposited, endorsed by Governor Tompkins, the banks would advance four or five hundred thousand dollars. Rufus King went to the governor and said, " The time is arrived when it is the duty of every man to put his all at the requisition of the Government," and that he him- self (though a leader of the opponents of Mr. Madison) was ready to do so. The governor said he should be obliged to take the responsibility, and should be ruined. " Ruin your- self if it becomes necessary to save your country," said the patriotic Mr. King, " and I pledge you my honor that I will support you in whatever you do." The governor en- dorsed the notes and the banks loaned the money.
t The whole poem, in eight stanzas, may be found in Lossing's Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812, page 970.
435
THE NATIONAL CAPITAL THREATENED.
If you still advance, friendly caution slighting, You may get, by chance, a bellyful of fighting.
Pick-axe, shovel, spade, crowbar, hoe and barrow ; Better not invade ; Yankees have the marrow."
Philadelphia exhibited a similar spirit on a like occasion at that time, and the amphibious marauders met with such resistance at every point that the terrible order of Cochran could not be executed. Hardy was kept out of the Thames and from New London by Commodore Lewis with some gun-boats on Long Island Sound, and he was discomfited at Stonington and driven away by a few determined men.
Early in January, 1814, the National Government was informed that four thousand British troops destined for the United States had landed at Bermuda. At the close of April intelligence was received of the temporary downfall of Napoleon, as we have observed, which would release many British troops from service on the Continent and allow them to come to America ; and on July 1st official intelligence reached the President that a fleet of transports with a large land force bound to some port in the United States, "probably in the Potomac," was about to sail from Bermuda.
The Government gave little heed to these warnings, and when, at the middle of August, a British squadron of about sixty sail appeared in Chesapeake Bay, with six thousand land troops under General Ross, one of Wellington's best officers, destined for the capture of the national capital, there was no force to oppose the invaders excepting a small flotilla of armed barges and a schooner under Commodore Joshua Barney, and a few scattered militia. The British fleet drove Barney's flotilla into the Patuxent River, and blockaded it there. The flotilla went far up the river to a point not to be reached by the British ships.
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