In his despatch which related his heroism Sir Francis tempered his own acts with words likely to cast odium, where any might arise, on the militia. “The militia advanced in pursuit of the rebels about four miles, till they reached the house of one of the principal ringleaders, Mr. Gibson; which residence it would have been impossible to save, and it was consequently burned to the ground.”

Sir Francis would have done better to stand by his acts or to have had the prudence to recall and destroy all his former writings before transcribing anew, since by his writings is he most condemned.

Meanwhile, more prisoners had been taken, and he was in time to see and exhort them, and also to see that proper care was taken of the wounded, insurgent as well as his own followers. They were placed in carts and taken to the hospital, and the body of Wideman given to his cousin for interment. Some of the Loyalists were galloping about, seated behind the living decorations of their saddle bows, and others bore the flags taken out of Montgomery’s burning house. One of these, a large red one, had on one side, “Victoria 1st and Reform,” and on the other, “Bidwell and the Glorious Minority, 1837 and a Good Beginning.”3 It was supposed that this had been intended to take the place of the flag flying from Government House staff, which was not always the same one, for the latter was thriftily managed to reverse the proverb and temper the flag to the wind; large, when it hung motionless in the burning heat of summer, or was a flag poudré by drifting snows, and reduced to a British Jack no larger than a lady’s pockethandkerchief when there was a high blow. There were several others in the rebel group; one decorated with stars, another with stripes, and yet another of plain white, which was useless, since Sir Francis had supplied that article of signal.

Among the men admonished were some as loyal as the soldiers who arrested them, but the advance guard had assumed that all they met were rebels, and deprived them of liberty accordingly. One was a youth named William Macdougall, who, after the manner of boys, left his uncle’s farm-house, where he happened to be making a visit, so that he might see whatever was going on. The uncle tried to break through Sir Francis’ exordium with explanations, but that flow, like Iser running rapidly, was not easily stopped. Sir Francis was sorry to see such a respectable youth in such company, and directed uncle and nephew to return to their allegiance. This drew forth a spirited reply, and the Governor rode away.

Sir Francis tells of a woman whose screams came from the direction of the militia, where he quickly sought her. His intended kindness only hastened the catastrophe. “For some reason or other, probably, poor thing, because her husband, or brother, or son had just fled with the rebels, she was in a state of violent excitement, and she was addressing herself to me, and I was looking her straight in the face and listening to her with the utmost desire to understand, if possible, what she was very incoherently complaining of, when all of a sudden she gave a piercing scream. I saw her mind break, her reason burst, and no sooner were they thus relieved from the high pressure which had been giving them such excruciating pain than her countenance relaxed; then, beaming with frantic delight, her uplifted arms flew round her head, her feet jumped with joy, and she thus remained dancing before me—a raving maniac.” He had this sight, and the sinister blessing invoked on his head by Mrs. Gibson, to further cheer him.

He fought his battle, came home, and by four o’clock published his proclamation wherein, after giving much information on the definition of traitor and loyalist and bidding them leave punishment to the law, he offered a reward of £1000 to anyone who would apprehend and deliver William Lyon Mackenzie up to justice, and £500 each for Lount, Gibson, Jesse Lloyd and Silas Fletcher, with a free pardon to the one who should so deliver his man, provided he had not been guilty of murder or arson.

If the last should be punished by law, Sir Francis became outlaw by his own proclamation.

But Mackenzie, leaving behind him his carpet-bag of papers—calculated to assist in the hanging of many persons—was by that time seeking safety in flight. The “rolls of revolt,” and certain criminatory documents found with them, gave the address of every insurgent and incriminated many persons hitherto unsuspected.

“So unwilling was Mackenzie,” says one eye-witness, “to leave the field of battle, and so hot the chase after him, that he distanced the enemy’s horsemen only thirty or forty yards by his superior knowledge of the country, and reached Colonel Lount and his friends on the retreat just in time to save his neck.” He not only saved his own neck, but left behind him a directory in that padlocked carpet-bag to expedite the search for those whom he had deserted. Small wonder that many women cursed him as the cause of all their domestic unhappiness.

Standing by the belt of wood occupied by his own men, he heard the word pass that the day was lost. He ran across a ploughed field, encountering by the way a friend who inquired how things were going, and Mackenzie’s blanched face gave a direct denial to his hurried “all right.” At the side-line where young Macdougall happened to be when on his way to the seat of war, his footsteps hastened by the sound of cannonading, a horse stood saddled and bridled, evidently left there as a precaution for someone. Women and children, terrified enough at what they saw, more so at what they feared, were hurrying northward, filling the air with their cries. While Macdougall was trying to explain away their fears he saw a little man rush down a lane, mount and ride swiftly away. There was blood on the man’s hand, doubtless his own from a wound he had given himself on the Friday night, when trying to extract one of Sheriff Jarvis’ pistol bullets from the toe of a comrade. He had been so nervous that his shaking hand made him gash himself, and the cutting out had to be done by Judah Lundy. Probably the wound in the hand had reopened when he was scrambling over the intervening fences and bushes. “Oh, God of my country! they turn now to fly—
Hark, the eagle of Liberty screams in the sky,”
says Mackenzie’s muse in one place, and before this, “Yes, onward they come, like the mountain’s wild flood,
And the lion’s dark talons are dappled in blood.”
Again he says, “I am proud of my descent from a rebel race, who held borrowed chieftains, a scrip nobility, rag money and national debt in abomination.”

He himself was now the one flying, and the lion’s talons left off dappling in blood to try to get him within their clutches, while he showed the truth of the third quotation by returning to first principles and displaying another Highland indication—petticoats. Earlier in the day a lady on her way through Toronto to Cornwall had been in the stage when he stopped it to intercept the news of Duncombe’s rising, and to seize the general contents of the mail-bags. With a pistol at her head he had possessed himself of her portmanteau, and in the contents was enabled later to disguise himself. He was described in Sir Francis’ reward for his apprehension as a “short man, wears a sandy-coloured wig, has small twinkling eyes that can look no man in the face....” At the Golden Lion, about ten miles above the city, he overtook Colonel Anthony Van Egmond, and they agreed to make at once for the Niagara frontier. But the colonel was taken and only Mackenzie escaped. In those mail bags he had been made a sorry dupe by Mr. Isaac Buchanan, who anticipated that they would be so robbed. The mail contained two decoy letters from him, representing matters in the beleaguered city in a most flourishing condition, letters which were read by Mackenzie and no doubt helped to bring about the desired result.

The encouraging terms of the proclamation made many scour the country at breakneck speed, and it is a marvel that any escape should have taken place; Mackenzie’s own recital of it sounds like the tale of the magic ring. The word was given to save themselves, and in a twinkling the woods were full of the flying and the hiding; the beacon, intended for loyalist eyes in Toronto as one of victory, told all was lost to the rebels. The hunting parties did not return empty handed. Many respectable yeomen, some Reformers but not rebels, others neither of these, were unceremoniously taken from their farms and work. These rebels by coercion, and those who had been fugitives, were bound to a strong central rope and paraded along the highway amid the hootings and jeerings of the loyal, in all to the number of sixty. To keep them company there was a party, equally mixed, who arrived in Toronto the same day from the north, with the five hundred men who reached there too late for battle. The latter were reinforced by one hundred Indians, all in paint and native splendour, but burning with as much zeal as any Briton.

The records of the whole affair show that the disaffected were always of one colour, while the African and the native were unhesitatingly and to a man for the Queen.

The last-mentioned party, in their march, could see the flames from Montgomery’s and thought the city was on fire. They were met by many flying northward from there, who in a twinkling changed their politics and their route and returned to town among the guards over those unhappy ones who had been made look like a string of trout. Powder was taken from stores; cake-baking and bacon-frying were made the business of every house passed; they carried the usual medley of gun, pike and rusty sword; and each man, to distinguish him from his fellow-man who was prisoner, wore a pink ribbon on his arm.

Naturally, there was renewed sensation when the guards and prisoners marched to the gaol; sensation greater still when Dr. Morrison and three others, who were exceptionally important, were added, their march preceded by a loaded cannon pointed towards them. A concourse of citizens, anxious to see the whole event, followed. Happily a farmer, detained in town by the impressment of his horses and waggon in Government service, and who knew the city well, left the crowd and reached the northern gate of the market in time to perceive a gunner, with a lighted portfire in his hand, standing by a cannon which was loaded with grape. Thinking the approaching crowd was a body of rebels the gunner was about to apply his light, when the farmer, with great presence of mind, stopped him. Had the piece been fired more lives would have been thus sacrificed than were lost during the whole winter.

One of the prisoners was now lying in hospital at the point of death from a grape-shot wound, and a small detachment under Captain Gamble was detailed to take a party of other prisoners from the gaol, to be led before him for recognition. Among them was Colonel Van Egmond. The dying man lay on his bed propped up with pillows, his mangled shoulder and arm slightly covered, his ghastly face telling his moments were numbered. It was night-time, and lights were held at the head and foot of the bed as his fellows were slowly marched before him. Some he knew, replied to questions, and mentioned them by name. When Van Egmond’s turn came, he must have intentionally touched the man’s foot for when the usual question was put, he said: “Why do you push my foot, Colonel Van Egmond? I am a dying man; I cannot die with a lie in my mouth. You were with us, and were to have commanded us at Montgomery’s tavern, but you did not arrive in time.”

It was a weird scene. The man died that night, and was followed by the Colonel himself, whose years could not endure the dampness and many other horrors of his cell, where the temperature was arctic. Inflammatory rheumatism and a complication of maladies brought him to a cot in the same hospital, where, with some of his unhappy companions, he closed his life.

The farce of rebellion, so far as Toronto was concerned, had been played; but the tragedy was to follow. Of the two men who had pitted themselves against each other, and who have left page upon page of their mutual opinions—let there be gall enough in the ink, though thou write with a goose pen, no matter—one was completely victorious, one completely vanquished. The progress of the first was attended with enthusiastic cheers; that of the other by hunger, cold, fatigue, and by much sympathy, which meant death to those showing it. Christmas Day of ’37, the year “of one thousand eight hundred and freeze-to-death,” saw the apostles of the “sacred dogma of equality” of either province, fugitive; and even Sir Francis himself recorded of the season, “I cannot deny that the winter of the past year was politically as well as physically severer than I expected.” “Several times,” he says, “while my mind was warmly occupied in writing my despatches, I found my pen full of a lump of stuff that appeared to be honey, but which proved to be frozen ink.” Sir Francis flatters the Canadian climate. Beautiful, vivifying, transforming as it is, it had no power to turn the gall in that compound to honey. He looked upon himself as the eminent man who makes enemies of all the bad men whose schemes he would not countenance; others looked upon him as having done more to alienate those whom he was sent to govern than any other person or set of persons. “If the people felt as I feel, there is never a Grant or Glenelg who crossed the Tay and Tweed to exchange high-bred Highland poverty for substantial Lowland wealth who would dare insult Upper Canada with the official presence, as its ruler, of such an equivocal character as this Mr. What-do-they-call-him Francis Bond Head.”

When Sir Francis first arrived he was informed that his chief duty was to sit very still in a large scarlet chair and keep his hat on. The first was easy, but the second was repugnant to his feelings; and thinking the dignity of the head would lose nothing by being divided from the hat, he meditated holding the latter between his white gloved hands. His English attendants agreed with him in this idea of courtesy. But he quailed beneath the reproof of a wordless stare from a Canadian who thought this a bid to democracy; “What,” said the look, “what! to purchase five minutes’ loathsome popularity will you barter one of the few remaining prerogatives of the British crown?” And so he wore his hat.

Of deceptive stature, the governor’s presence did not tally with his militia register. He owed much to a wonderful personal magnetism; old and young alike loved him—when they did not hate him. Seated in that chair he is described by an eye-witness on his first appearance in it: “Although too small to fill it, his shoulders and the poise of his head did much to counterbalance the lack of nether proportions; his feet, unable to reach the floor, were not allowed to dangle, but were thrust out stiffly in front and kept in that position, apparently without effort, during the opening. One of two Americans, in the space near him reserved for visitors, plucked his friend’s sleeve. ‘That,’ said he, ‘is a man of determination, and will gain his point.’

“‘Why do you say so,’ said the other. ‘Because no other kind of man could or would hold his feet like that.’”

The Governor’s opinion of the unaccredited grievance-monger was more elaborate than the one he gravely records in his “Narrative” as given of himself—“proclaimed the d—dst liar and the d—dst rascal in the province.” Condensed, his opinions amount to a never-ending diatribe against that book bound in boards of five hundred and fifty-three closely-printed pages, in which it was calculated there were three times as many falsehoods as pages, penned by one who had been “an insignificant peddler-lad.” “Afraid to look me in the face, he sat with his feet not reaching the ground and with his face averted from me at an angle of about seventy degrees; while with the eccentricity, the volubility, and indeed the appearance of a madman, the tiny creature raved in all directions ... but nothing that I could say would induce the peddler to face his own report.”

Perhaps, after all, there was something in the management of legs which would not reach the floor.

Yet the aphorism that “Next to victor it is best to be victim” never had better exemplification.

Autocrats All.
“It is in me and shall out.”

At about this period of her history Canada threatened to become that against which Washington had warned his countrymen, a slave to inveterate antipathies. The mass of the people were violently for or against each person, cause or abstract question, in turn; and naturally, the times being critical, weak men went to the wall and those who were by nature autocrats came to the front, and in their way did the best of work. Sir John Colborne, St. Eustache notwithstanding, was the right man in the right place; his severe acts were not committed either thoughtlessly or wantonly. Each was useful in his own way as circumstances and a narrow orbit permitted. After Sir John came Prince, MacNab and Drew. None of them hated in a small, toothy way; there was nothing of the schemer about any one of them. It was a word and a blow. And although at one time it seemed as if the most prominent of them, Prince and MacNab, had given force to the saying that the man who commits a crime gives strength to the enemy, the two events in which they figured—as criminals or heroes according to prejudice—and which nearly caused a great war, were the means of putting down the rebellion. The Caroline, and the prisoners who were “shot accordingly,” showed that the iron heel could stamp, that the iron hand was better without the glove.

Following closely upon Gallows Hill came the occupation of Navy Island and the burning of the Caroline.

“What,” asked Canada, “is meant by Neutrality?” and Jonathan, smoothing the rough edges of his meaning in poesie, replied: “Excite fresh men t’invade that monarch’s shore,
And fill a loyal country with alarms,
And give them men, with warlike stores and arms,
Encourage brigands and all aid supply;
I guess that’s strict, downright Neutral-i-ty!”

At the foot of the terrible three hundred and thirty-four feet of water-leaps taken in the last thirty-six miles of the river-bed of the Niagara, lay Navy Island, only a mile and a half above the cauldron, and within three-quarters of a mile of the worst of the mysterious strugglings and throes of the rapids. This, with several other small islands, forms a strait and two channels, and lies within a half-mile row of the Canadian shore. The Canadian boatman, intrepid as he is, knows the meaning of that sound, which is ocean at its maddest—a rolling sea heralding a coming storm that is born in the countless million tons of clear, deep green water and milk-white bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, which leap into the appalling confusion below.

Here, on December 13th, was run up the patriot flag, with its twin stars supposed to represent “the Canadas—two pretty provinces, like two pretty daughters kept in durance vile by an old and surly father; they will either soon elope, or be carried off nolens volens.”

The Provisional Government, set up on this Juan Fernandez, where Mackenzie hoped soon to be monarch of all he surveyed, had also its seal, which showed, besides the twin stars, a new moon breaking through the surrounding darkness—the Egyptian night of Canadian thraldom—with the legend, “Liberty—Equality.” Luckily, the third word from their French model was missing, for they did fall out and scratch and fight in a way to serve any local Watts with themes. At Gallows Hill nothing would satisfy Mackenzie but the Governor’s head. So now there was an issue of money, and a proclamation, the latter offering five hundred pounds for the apprehension of Sir Francis Bond Head, “so that he may be dealt with as appertains to justice.” “Would you as it were dethrone him and bring him to the block,” had queried Rolph some time before, in his well-known and clever serio-comic supposititious trial of that dignitary. The commissions issued were embellished with an eagle and other insignia of patriotism, the eagle lifting a lion in his claws and evidently about to fly away with him, the legend “Liberty or Death.”

It looked as if the would-be Cromwell, after he had “Come in with a rout, kicked Parliament out,
Would finish by wearing the Crown.”

His coadjutor from the United States was Rensselaer van Rensselaer. Together, they were dubbed Tom Thumb and Jack-the-Giant-Killer. Van Rensselaer, a naturally handsome man, under thirty, looked much older from dissipation, “A lean and bloated dram-drinker, a spectacle his nose,” called by his countrymen Rip van Winkle the Second, who spent his time on Navy Island in the double occupation of drinking brandy, of which he always had a bottle under his head at night, and writing love-letters. By his own account he spent his days plodding “four weary miles through mud and water” round their little republic to dispose of recruits and to erect defences; was prostrate, haggard and careworn, and, when about to partake of a much-needed meal, would be called away to receive a boat-load of visitors and leave it untouched. By the account of others, he bade fair, like Lord Holland in his epitaph, to be drowned sitting in his elbow-chair, or properly speaking camp-stool, for furnishings were meagre on Navy Island. The New York Courier and Enquirer had the honesty, in the recapitulatory articles which all border events called out, to say, “It is idle in this matter to affect concealment of the fact that the present Canadian rebellion receives its chief impulse and encouragement from the United States.” No wonder then that a Canadian sheet should say: “Marshals, governors and generals were on the look-out for patriots; but one such in charge met a number of the last en route to Navy Island hauling a piece of ordnance. ‘Where are you bound for?’ said the gentle general. ‘Oh, we are only going to shoot ducks,’ said they, and they were allowed to proceed.”

The Attorney-General said that the wording of Marcy’s and other messages deprecated the invasion of Canada in an “Oh-now-don’t” kind of appeal, which, read between the lines, meant “Go on like good fellows—do just as you like.”

“The doors were opened,” writes a patriot, “and the patriots told to help themselves.” Ten pieces of State artillery were given up on the strength of the following note, a fine compliment to General Winfield Scott’s literary reputation—than whom no finer military man in any service ever stepped:

“Buffalo Head Qr., Jan. 18, 1838.

“Col. H. B. Ransom, Commander-in-chief, Tonawanda.

“Pleas sen on those pieces of Canon which are at your place; let the same teams come on with them.

“Your in hase,
“W Scott Commander in Chief on the
“Frontier of Niagara.”

There was no forgery, for the patriot guard was W. Scott, afterwards, by the way, a candidate for presidential honours.

New York papers could not see any similarity between the Rebellion and the Revolution; and as to comparing leaders, “why, it was likening barn door fowls to soaring eagles.” But in case of the pother ending in war, a correspondent of the Toronto Palladium says, “There would not be a house left to smoke, nor a cock to crow day, within ten miles of the shore on the banks of navigable rivers—and a finger-post might be set up, ‘Here the United States was.’”

As for volunteers, they were as plentiful as United States arms, and comprised all sorts and conditions of man and boy. Two thirty-six pounders, one eighteen-pounder, two thousand stand of arms, one hundred cannon balls, five hundred musket cartridges, is the enumeration of one contribution; and only the state of the roads prevents one contributor setting out with a six-pound brass cannon. An old gun is actually sent with the message, “If you want cannon we are ready to cast them for you.” An ex-member of the New York Legislature, with two certified captains, goes with a letter to Van Rensselaer, to talk over what measures sentries, presumably of an arsenal, might take to furnish material without infringing the law; and D. M’Leod writes, “Arms in abundance can be had for the asking.” Another friend sends blankets and arms; one old man, a follower of Murat, asks a cavalry commission for his son, a lad of nineteen, adding pathetically, “I am now old and poor, but if you will grant my request I will send you my son, the last descendant of a noble line of warlike commanders of France.”

A blacksmith in Buffalo had an order for nine hundred creepers, other artisans were busy at daggers and bowie knives, and a Mr. Wilkinson furnished five hundred pounds of boiler cuttings as a substitute for grape-shot. Canadians were used to this kind of ammunition. Away back in 1758 the Highlanders wounded at Carillon had died of cankered wounds from the broken glass and jagged metal used instead of “honest shot.”

“An empty hand, a stout heart, and a fair knowledge of military tactics,” blankets, boots and shoes, one hundred and seventeen loaves of bread, eight tons of grape-shot, two loads of beef, pork, and bread, together with “some gentlemen well equipped for fight,” one hundred muskets, four loads of volunteers, swell the original twenty-six men who accompanied Mackenzie and Van Rensselaer at first, when the frame of a cannon, upon which Mackenzie had sunk inert and spirit-broken till aroused by some false alarm, is the only defence mentioned. But, undaunted, “Push off!” had been the cry of this handful. A proclamation was issued, drawing attention to the country in front which was languishing under the blighting influence of military despots, strangers from Europe; an end forever was promised to the wearisome prayers, supplications and mockeries attendant upon our connection with the lordlings of the Colonial office, Downing Street, London; the time was favourable, owing to the absence of the “hired” red-coats of Europe; and ten millions of acres of fair and fertile lands were at the disposal of the Provisional Government, to be divided into portions of three hundred acres, which, added to one hundred dollars in silver, would be the reward of those who would bring this glorious struggle to a conclusion.

Besides Van Rensselaer, the aid was announced of Colonel Sutherland and Colonel Van Egmond. Alas, the latter, a good and true man, who was worthy of a better fate than the one he earned by meddling in misunderstood politics of a foreign country, was by then suffering agonies in Toronto gaol; and Sutherland—as true-bred coward as ever turned back—was destined for the tender touch of Colonel Prince a little later. When proposal was subsequently made to exchange Sutherland for Mackenzie, it drew the following query from an American paper, “What should they do with him if they had him, and why not give up Mackenzie to the Canadians in payment for the custody of Sutherland?” Clearly the possession of Sutherland was a poor boast; he was a mark for his countrymen’s contempt from the time he paraded the streets of Buffalo, preceded by a fife and drum, enlisting volunteers, until he disappears from the scene. The Buffalonian, when giving a detailed account of thefts committed by the patriots, from cannon to cabbages, says: “The patriot army have also robbed an uncommon quantity of hen-roosts. In these exploits Brigadier-General Sutherland is chiefly conspicuous for his gallantry in the attack and skill and expedition in retreating.”

Robert Gourlay, then at Cleveland, Ohio, wrote his opinion of the fatuity of this course direct to Van Rensselaer. Several of his letters are condensed into, “Never was hallucination more blinding than yours. At a moment of profound peace, putting on armour, and led by the little editor of a blackguard newspaper, entering the lists of civil broil, and erecting your standard on Navy Island to defy the armies of Britain! David before Goliath seemed little, but God was with him. What are you in the limbo of vanity, with no stay but the devil? Mr. Hume is a little man, and you less.” He adds, alluding to the famous letter, “That his four years of residence in the United States had let him see things far worse than European domination. You call yourself a patriot, and fly from home to enlist scoundrels for the conquest of your country. This is patriotism with a vengeance.”

Mackenzie, like Gourlay, had a great aptitude in calculating the difficulties they were powerful enough to create. But neither of them, in his own case, counted on possible consequences.

At the finish of his proclamation Mackenzie has a prophecy: “We were also among the deliverers of our country.” But he further says, “Militiamen of 1812, will ye rally round the standard of our tyrants? I can scarce believe it possible.”

Already that standard was floating before his eyes from one of the tallest pines, and around it were gathered MacNab, Drew, and a host of others whose own arms or their fathers’ had been borne in 1812,—two thousand five hundred Canadian farmers, most of them delaying, when called, for nothing but the clothing in which they now stood. Bayonets glittered in the sun, and, on horseback as usual, Sir Francis trotted up and down, reviewing with pardonable pride the troops, white, red, and black, which had rallied round that flag. “Canadians, rally round your Head,
Nor to these base insurgents yield,”
had been the cry of a Tory paper. “I wonder how that rebel crew
Could clap their wings and craw, man,”
says another. But Sir Francis had one discomforting answer to his appeal for aid against Navy Island. Mr. Absalom Shade, of Galt, replied that not a few there declined to enter into any such frontier service; while many in the Paisley Block, though not allying themselves with Mackenzie, would have seen “Governor and Governor’s party drowned in the depths of the sea and not a solitary cry of regret for them.”

But Sir Francis had his friends. (Toast): Sir Francis Bond Head—the noble champion of our rights—distinguished alike for every virtue which constitutes the gentleman and the scholar, whose name adorns a bright page in the History of Upper Canada. (Tune: “Britons Strike Home”).

Gallows Hill over, the Canadian muse took her lyre in hand and sang, with a Scotch accent forbye: “Oh, did ye hear the news of late,
Which through the Province rang, man,
And warned our men to try the game
They played at Waterloo, man.
All destitute of dread or fears,
Militia men and volunteers
Like lightning flew, for to subdue
The rebel loons and crack their croons,
And pook their lugs and a’, man.
Lang life to Queen Victoria,
Our Governor and a’, man!
We’ll rally round Britannia’s flag,
And fecht like Britons a’, man.”

Sir Francis, in the account he has given us, seems to have been so taken up with the moral lesson of the panorama before him, making a book out of the running brook of Niagara and a moral out of everything, showing his chemical analysis of the comparative advantages of monarchical and republican institutions, speculating on the mutating effect of hard shot on the latter and the thickness of the hide of the American conscience and the thinness of skin which covered American vanity, that he forgot to fight. “Waiting calmly on the defensive,” he called it, emulating a commander at Fontenoy, nicknamed The Confectioner, who, when asked why he did not move to the front, replied, “I am preserving my men.” The usually alert and active Canadian volunteer was occasionally balanced by one more likely to damage himself or his comrades than the enemy. A young clergyman, newly ordained, arrived in Canada about the time of the Rebellion. As he had as yet no charge he thought it only proper to take part in the fray, of course on the loyalist side. A musket was placed in his hands, but he had to apply to someone wiser than himself to know what should go in first. He was stationed on the Niagara frontier in mid-winter, where the beauties of nature made him forgetful of all else. Instead of keeping “eyes front” he used them in star-gazing, fell into the hands of the rebels, and narrowly escaped being shot as a spy. He escaped by the intervention of a person who happened to know him.

A central blockhouse, several batteries, and most imposing earthworks could be seen through the telescope; but as the island was for the most part covered with wood it was hard to approximate its strength. The main camp of huts was on the other side and on Grand Island—a large island some ten miles long, belonging to the United States, and on which a certain Major Noah, of New York, years before had laid the foundations of the city of Ararat, intending to raise there an altar. Across the channel was a portion of the army of sympathisers and the general hospital, the latter transformed into an ark of refuge. From this island, United States property, the loyalist reconnoitering parties sent out in small boats were fired upon, as minutely recorded by Lieutenant Elmsley, who also states, “On our coming abreast of Fort Schlosser I distinctly saw two discharges of heavy ordnance from a point on the main shore on the American side, not far from that fort. As soon as our boats had passed the firing ceased.” The two vantage points of the lesser island and Canadian mainland were near enough for threat or challenge to be thrown across, and from the Battle Ground Inn, just opposite Navy Island, such encouraging sentences as “We’ll be over at you one of these days,” were wafted over. An idle threat so far. Chases after the balls of the enemy as they bounded along, laughter and cheers, made the place more like a playground than a battle-field, a state of inaction which continued for a fortnight.

Part of Sir Francis’ “moral” inward conflict was through the very evident desire on the part of his black militia, many of them scarred and mutilated from their slave-life, to be up and doing on the land from which they had made their escape. They were a formidable looking set of men, powerful, athletic; and as they stood about him, yellow eyes, red gums and clenched ivory teeth making a fine combination of colour, terrible possibilities seem to have crossed his mind. So also with the Indian contingent. They did not like the Long Knives across the water—a name not originally Kentuckian, but straight from the time of good King Arthur. But there was what Sir Francis calls an unwholesome opinion in Downing Street that it would be barbarous to use them as allies against American citizens. It had been said that Canadians were only a trifle less handy at scalping than the allies were, and there were still tales extant of scalping scenes at the time of the Conquest, and later. He managed to satisfy the Indians, however. The honest red countenances glowed, the feathers on their heads gently waved, as they communed among themselves, and presently a disconcerting warwhoop arose, at first like the single yelp of a wolf, but gathering in volume until every scalp upon the island must have quivered.

The following extracts from letters sent from Chippewa by Captain Battersby to his home show how slowly matters progressed:

“Pavilion Hotel, 26th December, 1837.—MacNab arrived yesterday with a large accession of force. Boats have been brought up from Niagara and preparations are making for an attack, which if made at all will, I think, take place in a day or two....

“Chippewa, 28th December.—No attack has yet been made, but the preparations are going on. We are procuring boats from Dunnville, St. Catharines and Niagara, forty or fifty seamen have arrived, and there are two captains in the navy and four lieutenants, ... so that you see our means are augmenting fast. We are most deficient in artillery, but I believe some heavy guns are on their way. There was some firing yesterday from the island, but no effect except wounding a horse. It is said that the Governor has sent up orders not to attack the island by boats, but to dislodge the enemy by artillery and bombardment. At any rate I am glad to see that our leaders are going on cautiously and do not intend making an attack until they have sufficient force. A part of the 24th Regiment is said to be on its way here, and I shall be very glad to see them—they will be invaluable as a support and rallying point to our raw militia.... I will write again when I can, but such is the hurry and confusion that it is difficult to find time and place.

“30th December, 9 p.m.—You will hear before this reaches you of the burning of the steamboat on the American side of the river. It took place about midnight, and was a very gallant enterprise, as those who achieved it were mostly young, inexperienced lads, gentlemen volunteers from the militia; very few of them could even row decently, and many of the small boats employed had not even rudders.... I was in one of the boats, but owing to not having men who could row, and the boat being heavy, I lost sight of the others in the dark ... and obliged to return. I have no doubt that this affair will make a great noise in the United States; in fact I know it already has at Buffalo.... I don’t think that an immediate attack is contemplated, though we are going on with our preparations and shall have boats enough fitted and ready in two or three days. One company of the 24th Regiment came in on the morning of the day I last wrote you.... To give you an idea of the way we go on, yesterday night when the boats were manning for the attack a whole squad of people I knew nothing about came down armed to the teeth, and I really thought at first they would have attempted to take possession of my boat by force that they might go themselves.

“January 4, 1838.—The Lieut.-Governor is here and preparations are still going on for the attack. I have now, however, no fear for the result, as several heavy guns have been brought up, two mortars and a large quantity of Congreve rockets. Our boat force is also increasing rapidly and will soon be equal to whatever is required.... I believe two or three companies of the 32nd will take part in the attack whenever it is made. We are going to move to-night with the boats two or three miles above the island, for the purpose of dropping down with the current when the attack is made.

“January 8th.—The time of attack is as doubtful as ever. We are going on still with our preparations, but owing to the paucity of materials and the terrible state of confusion in which we are, our progress is very slow. There has been a constant thaw here and some rain for the last fourteen days, and the roads are in a state absolutely indescribable. I can safely say that I am floundering in six inches of mud and water from morning till night. I cannot ask for leave of absence for a day, for numbers of the seamen are already discontented and would willingly seize such a pretext for leaving us. We are living in the utmost filth and discomfort.

“January 11th.—Here we are still in the same degree of uncertainty as when I last wrote.... More artillery and troops are expected.... I think myself that no attack will take place for two or three weeks, but it is very likely that we shall endeavour to check their communications with the United States, by means of armed boats, in which case my services would be as necessary as if the island were attacked.... It is now more than a fortnight since I have had my clothes off, night or day. More or less firing takes place between our batteries and those of the enemy every day, and though there are always crowds of gazers on our side, yet to my astonishment only two men have as yet been hurt, although the shot fall a good quarter of a mile past our batteries. I think the commanding officer very much to blame for allowing such crowds to put themselves in danger merely to gratify an idle curiosity. The Buffalo papers state the loss on the island to have been eleven men since the batteries first opened. Great numbers of the militia have left and are leaving this place, at which I am not sorry, as they are entirely undisciplined and many of them disorderly.”

But Sir John Colborne to the rescue. His artillery, officers, guns, mortars, Congreve rockets and stores arrived, and a great stir went through the dissatisfied lines.

The guard standing at Black Creek bridge had a very bad toothache the night of December 29th, so bad that he thankfully retired to the barracks at Chippewa, an old, evacuated tavern, whose big cavernous fire-place, well filled with blazing logs, gave much comfort to his aching jaw. The men were lying about on straw, two and two under a blanket, when in came Nick Thorne to ask if any one of them would help him load up wood from the barrack yard. Some great doings were on hand; he had the countersign; the wood loads were to be used for a beacon light. Reed, whose father, a U. E. Loyalist of 1796, had followed Brock at Queenston, forgot his toothache.

The Caroline was a copper-bottomed craft, originally constructed by the man known afterwards as Commodore Vanderbilt, was intended to sail in the waters off South Carolina, and her timbers were of live oak from that State. She was converted into a steamer and brought up the canals to Lake Ontario, had been used as a ferry at Ogdensburg, and was then taken through the Welland Canal for similar ferry purposes at Buffalo. She was hired by the patriots on Navy Island to convey stores to them from Fort Schlosser, an old military position of French times, where neither fort nor village remained; there was nothing but a tavern, which was the rendezvous of the “pirate force” in coming and going. “Where are you going?” queried someone similar to the gentle general.

“To Dunkirk,” answered the Caroline’s master, Appleby.

“You mean eastward to Navy Island?” But this skipper answered never a word, and a scornful laugh laughed he.

The three lake schooners, each fitted with a gun and intended to carry troops to the island when the long deferred attack should be made, were still inactive. A loyalist reconnoitering party was sent out to report upon what proved to be the Caroline’s last trip. She had landed a cannon and several armed men, and had dropped her anchor east of the island. Expecting to find her still there it was decided to “cut her out” that night. The process technically known as cutting out is a naval one, conducted with great secrecy and muffled oars, men and cutlasses, pistols and boarding pikes, black night and plenty of blood, after the manner of Marryat; always a dangerous business, but in these circumstances, where their chart reported irresistible currents and not half a mile above the Falls, a most perilous enterprise. Luckily there was the right kind of material at hand and to spare for it. They had but a few small boats of about twelve feet in length, each pulling four oars; it would be necessary to keep uncomfortably close to the rapids in order to avoid observation from Navy Island; the difficulties, did the men once quail, were so great that the shortest way was to put them out of mind. At four o’clock that afternoon Colonel MacNab and Capt. Drew, R.N., stood on the lookout discussing the situation. They saw the Caroline performing her duty of conveyance, the telescope revealing the field-pieces and men.

“This won’t do,” said MacNab. “I say, Drew, do you think you can cut that vessel out!”

“Oh, yes,” was the ready answer; “nothing easier. But it must be done at night.”

“Well, then,” was the laconic order, “go and do it.” That order “nearly fired the continent as well as the Caroline.”

To quote the patriot chronicle, it was now that “an insult, the most reckless, cowardly, and unwarranted that was ever offered to a sovereign people, was given.”

Captain Drew was a commander on half pay, “elderly, shortish, and stout,” who had settled in Woodstock in 1834 upon a beautiful farm, where he fondly hoped to end his days in peaceful occupations of wheat-growing and tree-planting. The Duke of Northumberland, who visited him there, thought it the prettiest place he had seen in Canada; and indeed Captain Drew and Major James Barwick may be termed the pioneers of those—the Vansittarts, Lights, De Blaquières, Deedes and others—who formed the far-known aristocratic settlement of Oxford. The midlands of England held nothing lovelier than these homes scattered along the Thames, farms separated by beautiful ravines, studded and fringed with elms and noble maples, well built picturesque houses, wherein the owners entertained after the manner of their class and kind and spent much money. The stress of war in very few years was to wipe out this community of blood, manners and culture; but Captain Drew’s tenure, owing to the cutting out of the Caroline, was to be shorter still.

The first thing to be done was to call for volunteers. “Here we are, sir,” cried a hundred voices, “what are we to do?” some of them from the contingent in the Methodist chapel at Chippewa. “Follow me,” was the only answer, for it was of first importance that no word could possibly be conveyed to the island, and Drew says the men did not know their errand until seated in the boats and off from shore, taking their way via the little canal just above the rapids. Rumours of any kind were quickly transmitted to either side; one of the most ludicrous which had recently come to the ears of the troops was that Mackenzie’s people said the Tories of Toronto had managed to smuggle a black cook into the patriot stronghold opposite, and that presently all patriots would therefore die of poison.

Each man of the boats’ crews had to be able to pull a good oar, a condition not strictly carried out, as we see from Captain Battersby’s letters, but there were some experts, such as young Mewburn, who writes that he was doubly manning a bow oar. Each man was furnished with a cutlass and pistol. Most of them were young fellows, some from that corps organized in King Street in Hamilton by MacNab and called by him his “Elegant Extracts.” One, young Woods, a curly-headed laddie, U.E.L. to the heart’s core, good-naturedly gave up his seat to a friend, Dr. Askin, and then found himself likely to be left on shore. He appealed to his chief. “Why, you d—d young scamp, if you want to be shot give my compliments to Captain Beer and tell him to take you in.” More easily said than done; but through influence, and by being able to hide under a seat, he got into a boat and lay on a pile of wet sand, with knees up to his chin, palpitating with excitement, until the final moment of departure. For time dragged tediously; they had to give the Caroline an hour or two to settle herself for the night, and they heartily wished that the moon would do the same. “Hadn’t you better give me another,” said our curly-headed laddie, referring to his pistol. “When you have used that, you will find that you won’t want another,” said his officer.

MacNab wished the Caroline to be brought to Chippewa; Drew wanted her burnt and done for. By half after eleven they had started, sent off with three hearty cheers from those left behind, Thorne, Reed and the others ready to light the fire which was to answer to the blaze they intended to make, and, unnecessary precaution, which would also serve as beacon to guide them back. Once out, the men were told the service they were bent on and offered the chance to return, the danger not being burked. But no one took advantage of the offer. Some, however, nearly had their course altered in spite of themselves: “Robert Sullivan, one of the crew, called out, ‘Stop rowing, boys, for God’s sake—do you see where we are—we are going straight over the Falls!’ ‘Silence!’ responded Lieutenant Graham, ‘or I will blow your brains out. It is for me, not you, to give orders.’ ‘Oh, very well,’ replied Sullivan, drawing his oar into the boat, ‘if I am to go over the Falls, I may as well go without brains as with them.’ Here we all joined in, and after hurriedly representing to Graham the danger of our position we began to pull up stream. A little longer and it would have been too late.” The roar of the mighty cataract, which awed and somewhat terrified them, had been previously described by a patriot writer as the peal of the funeral dirge of royalty in Canada.

Shots from Navy Island made the heart beat; and do their best they were forced to cross the river diagonally. “We are going astern, sir; we shall be over the Falls;” but reassured by the light from the doomed steamer, by which they could determine the drop down stream, they at length all got together. The moon was yet too bright, and they rested on their oars, dipping them enough to stem the current. At last it was dark enough, and they were alongside. “Boat, ahoy! boat, ahoy!—give us the countersign!” “Silence!” said Drew, in a confidential tone, “silence! don’t make a noise, and we’ll give you the countersign when we get on board.” Once on deck, he drew his sword, saying to the three men who were lounging on the starboard gangway, “I want this vessel, and you must go ashore at once.” Thinking he was alone they took up their arms and fired at him, not a yard off. A swing and a cut of the sword, and one patriot dropped at the captain’s feet. Another trigger was pulled, the only result a flash in the pan; there was a sabre-cut dealt on the inside of the man’s arm, and the pistol fell. The captain confesses to expediting this man and another over the boat’s side with an inch of the point of his weapon.

Meantime, three of the boats had boarded forward, and a good deal of firing followed, the latter checked at once by the captain, as he feared that in the dark friend might be mistaken for foe, a fear soon realized. Returning, he thought it wise to reconnoitre about the gangway between the bulwark and the raised cabin. Here he was met by a man who aimed at him a slashing cut, which he parried and successfully pinned the cutlass against the cabin bulk-head. “Holloa, Zealand,” said he, recognizing one of his own men, a fine specimen of an old British tar, “what are you about?” “Oh, I beg pardon, sir, I didn’t know it was you!” said the zealous sailor, who, released, went to seek legitimate prey. There was a good deal of cursing, clashing of swords and shouting, and (it is said) a cry of “Show the rebels no quarter.” On the contrary, as the men fussed over the lamp, the window sashes and the forgotten “carcass,” trying to coax a fire, one American heard them say of himself, “What shall we do with this fellow?” “Kill him!” suggested one; “No, take him prisoner!” said a third; but their officer’s decision was that they did not want prisoners, and the man was to be put ashore. And the only person killed in the whole affair, Durfee, lay on the dock, shot by a bullet which came from the land side. Wells, the owner of the vessel, finding himself on solid ground, made some good running, in spite of his assertion that he was almost cut to pieces.

One tale of the day has it that another life was lost; a volunteer was fired at by a patriot, and in retaliation beat his assailant’s brains out; his own condition and that of the butt of his pistol corroborated his story on his return to the Canadian side. The matter for the extraordinarily sensational accounts given by the American press was chiefly furnished by Mackenzie.

Lieutenant Elmsley officered a guard on shore while the vessel was cut from her moorings—not an easy thing to accomplish, as she was made fast by chains frozen in the ice; but a young fellow named Sullivan seized an axe, cleared the chains, and set her free. This, Commander Drew’s own story, is denied by a survivor, one of his lieutenants. A lamp was placed in a basket used for carrying Indian corn, cross-bars from the windows were torn off and added to it, and the vessel was set alight in four different places. The material especially brought for this purpose, and known as a carcass, was at first quite forgotten. Care had been taken to rouse all sleepers, had any been able to sleep through such a scene; the invaders were ordered to their boats; the flames shot out fore and aft; and by this time Captain Drew found his stand on the paddle-box too uncomfortable, as those driven ashore had recovered from their surprise and the discharge of their muskets was disagreeably close. It was equally uncomfortably hot, and his gallant wish to be the last on board nearly left him there as she drifted down the current. He found a companion in a man emerging from below who declared it too hot to live in there, and together they got into the boat sent back for them, Drew’s shouts fortunately having risen above the din. So far there was no need for the beacon from the opposite shore; the Caroline herself, like a great torch, glided beside them, or rather they kept in the wake of her gold-dust covered ripples, a fine target for the island guns; but the days of bull’s-eyes were not yet. In spite of wounds the men rose superior to fear of shot, content with the result of their mission, and anxious to rejoin the cheering multitude that waited for them on the Canadian shore. The illumination made by burning vessel and beacon light threw every pebble on the shore-line into bright relief. Drew’s account states that no human ingenuity could have accomplished what the Caroline so easily did for herself. When free from the wharf at Fort Schlosser her natural course would have been to follow the stream, which would have taken her along the American shore and over the American Fall; but she behaved as if aware she had changed owners and navigated herself across the river, clearing the rapids above Goat Island; she went fairly over the British Fall of Niagara.4

An extract from one of the songs sung by the Canadian volunteers will give an idea of the sentiments of the singers: