For Honour's Sake (34 page)

FitzGibbon little helped to clarify matters. His reports on Beaver Dams filed shortly after the action failed to mention her at all. Sometime after the war, when a debate as to the credence of her story was raised, FitzGibbon issued a signed certificate that a woman named Laura Secord, “a person of slight and delicate frame,” did make the journey.
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She would be the only hero to emerge on either side out of the seesaw of events that played out on the Niagara Peninsula in 1813.

In Washington, President James Madison had convened a special session of the Thirteenth Congress on May 24 primarily to enact legislation needed to keep the federal treasury afloat by introducing internal taxation and to have his appointed envoys to the Russian mediation offer endorsed. Typically, Henry Clay was elected Speaker by a hefty majority vote of eighty-nine to fifty-three. When news of the defeat at Beaver Dams and other failures on the Niagara Peninsula reached the city, Clay was so incensed that he sent Representative Charles J. Ingersoll to Madison with a formal demand that Dearborn be replaced. The president, who had fallen ill with a severe fever on June 11 that seemed at times life-threatening, was barely able to receive Ingersoll. Rising from his sickbed but briefly, Madison agreed that Dearborn must be replaced, and the bitter note had been duly issued under Armstrong's hand on July 6.

Armstrong's first instinct was to personally take command in the north, but there was little support among the rest of the administration for this notion. James Monroe and Armstrong were engaged in ever more public scraps over war policy. William Jones, the navy secretary, was disenchanted with them both but more so with Armstrong. Many, Jones wrote, “believe that the ‘Old Soldie.' is not a legitimate son of Mars.
He is descending very fast—and so are we all.”
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In Albert Gallatin's absence, Jones had assumed responsibility for the treasury and found the double duties extremely onerous. He begged Madison to appoint a new treasury secretary, but the president ignored him.
²⁰
Madison was barely functional, laid out on what was alternately described, depending on the source of information, as his White House sickbed or deathbed. The latter prospect gave many a Federalist heart while adding to a general sense of demoralization in Republican ranks. A wet, searing summer gripped Washington in its maw. The House and the Senate sweltered. Their members bickered incessantly.

Madison had sought ratification of his appointments of Albert Gallatin, John Quincy Adams, and James Bayard for the Russian peace delegation. He also advanced the name of Jonathan Russell, whom he wanted endorsed at the same time as minister to Sweden.

The president had expected a rough reception to the taxation proposal, and that was exactly what he got. “Is this a dagger that I see before me?” demanded an editorial in the New York
Evening Post.
Macbeth, the editor wrote, “hardly felt less horror at the appearance of the bloody dagger staring him in the face, than must the good people of these United States at beholding a democratic President recommending internal taxes.”
²¹
The taxes had been proposed by Gallatin, and when Jones presented the plan in the House he made this clear. One Federalist after another and many a Republican accused Gallatin of having fled his post by joining the Russian mediation delegation “to avoid the odium of the system of taxation.” When the proposals were forwarded to the Ways and Means Committee for consideration and discussion, the Federalists launched an all-out attack on the administration by challenging the appointments of Gallatin and Russell.
²²

Gallatin, they argued, could not simultaneously serve as a peace mediator while retaining helm of the treasury. Without addressing the proposal that he serve on the Russian mission, the Federalist senators objected to Russell's appointment as minister to Sweden. The character and record of both men were impugned during the hearings that followed. Finally the Senate ended the matter of Russell by deciding there was no need to appoint any minister to Sweden at all. A covey of senators
tried to mollify Russell by suggesting they would reverse their votes if he agreed to go to Sweden as something less than a minister. This proposal was “so pitiful in the parsimony … so incompatible with the national interests and dignity … that I did not hesitate for a moment in my refusal,” Russell wrote.
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Meanwhile, Gallatin's appointment was rejected by an eighteen-to-seventeen vote. Only Adams and Bayard were approved.

On August 2 Madison advised Gallatin of “the painful manner in which the Senate have mutilated the mission to St. Petersburg.”
²⁴
By this time, it was equally clear that the Ways and Means Committee would not recommend Gallatin's tax plan in full. Instead, a series of stopgap measures were accepted that would do little to raise significant amounts of money. The war would continue to be financed on the cheap.

While these debates had been under way, Armstrong confirmed Dearborn's replacement, a matter that received little attention in the House or Senate. Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson, another Revolutionary War veteran currently posted to New Orleans, would assume command in the north. Gearing up for this change for some time, Armstrong had sent word four months earlier for Wilkinson to report to Washington. Fifty-six, Wilkinson was not one of the Revolution's favoured sons. His was the reputation of a professional schemer and incompetent most notorious for participating in a cabal that had attempted to bring about the sacking of George Washington. Most U.S. senior officers despised him. His health in recent months had been poor.
²⁵
Sensing no urgency in Armstrong's summons, Wilkinson turtled northward and had yet to pass all the way through Georgia, stopping here and there to visit acquaintances and take long rests, when he learned that Armstrong had fired Dearborn and he was to make haste to Washington. Picking up the pace to a shuffle, Wilkinson passed another four weeks moving along the banquet circuit, making speeches and currying favour as he went, before reporting to Armstrong in early August.

Meanwhile, the hot, dry summer of 1813 on the Canadian border had passed with the Americans doing little of anything. At best a stalemate had been allowed to develop. While this might suit the British, allowing them to continue building defences and assembling reinforcements, it did nothing to advance the American cause.

T
he failed British attack on Fort Meigs in early May rendered both commanders on the Lake Erie frontier unduly cautious. Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison cancelled an attack on Fort Malden and instead passed the spring recruiting and training new regiments. Harrison waited for Oliver Hazard Perry. The young master commander at Presque Isle was busily constructing a small fleet to contest control of the lake. Once there were ships, an amphibious operation could be mounted.

Elsewhere on the western frontier developments indirectly strengthened his position at Lake Erie. Illinois governor Ninian Edwards spent a busy spring building forts at Peoria, Fort Madison, and Prairie du Chien and at Rock Island Rapids. The last three, on the Mississippi River, marked the outer limits of American influence in Indian territory. On the negative side of the ledger came word that the tenuous claim America had made to any presence on the Pacific coast had been erased by the surrender that April of Fort Astoria on the Columbia River mouth. North West Company traders had appeared at the fort to inform the American fur traders there of the war and the inevitability of an imminent attack by the Royal Navy. To avoid bloodshed, the Canadian traders offered to buy the fort, and the American Pacific Fur Company manager astutely accepted. American colours were exchanged for the Union Jack.
¹

Back on Lake Erie, Perry was well aware that the fate of American operations rested on his ability to float a fleet and destroy the British
ships. Under construction were two brigs to be called
Lawrence
and
Niagara.
Weighing 500 tons and brig-rigged with two masts that mounted square sails, the two ships were to be fitted with eighteen 32-pounder carronades and two long 12-pounder guns.
Perry
also had eight smaller schooners, some built from scratch and others, like
Caledonia,
that had been captured earlier. Most of these vessels had been trapped at Black Rock until Fort Niagara's fall. But he lacked sufficient sailors to crew them all. Naval reinforcement flowed through Commodore Isaac Chauncey at Sackets Harbor and most were kept there.
²

More immediate was the problem that the British had Presque Isle blockaded. Because Lake Erie's southern shore lacked an ideal harbour, Presque Isle had been selected only out of necessity. A long sandbar that choked the mouth of the bay to a width of only eight-tenths of a mile and a depth of only five to seven feet made it too shallow for the British warships to enter. But this protection came at a distinct disadvantage. When fully loaded with armaments, Perry's new brigs had insufficient draft to cross over the sandbar. So long as the British maintained the blockade, any attempt to float the vessels over the bar and then mount the guns could be easily thwarted.
³

Knowing this, the British naval commander, Capt. Robert Heriot Barclay, kept vessels standing off the bay at all times. An experienced officer, Barclay had lost an arm at Trafalgar and his career had since suffered. Middle-aged, he was still only a commander, his captaincy temporary and contingent on continued command of the Lake Erie fleet—a fleet that was poor at best. Barclay had two main fighting ships afloat, the 12-gun
Lady Prevost
and the 18-gun
Queen Charlotte.
At Amherstburg he was building the larger
Detroit.
But Barclay was hampered by the same personnel shortages that dogged Perry. Worse, the ship's guns had been lost during the American raid on York, along with many stores Barclay's little fleet sorely needed.
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If Perry got loose from Presque Isle, Barclay would be hard pressed to retain control of the lake. So he had to keep the blockade cork firmly in place.

While the two naval commanders glared at each other across the sandbar, Maj. Gen. Henry Procter had come to the demoralizing conclusion that his superiors were ready to cede the Lake Erie frontier, at least
temporarily, to the Americans. When Maj. Gen. Francis de Rottenburg assumed command in Upper Canada, he advised Procter that should the Americans gain control of Lake Ontario he intended to withdraw east of Kingston. Procter and his men, de Rottenburg said, would escape via Lake Huron to Lake Superior. There they could commandeer North West Company canoes and follow a tortuous old river route that would eventually bring them safely to Montreal.

Stunned by these defeatist instructions, Procter had immediately gone over de Rottenburg's head to Governor Sir George Prevost. If the British abandoned Lake Erie, he argued in a July 11 letter, they would lose the support of Tecumseh's confederacy. Procter wanted to seize the initiative on Lake Erie by capturing Perry's fleet at Presque Isle. But that demanded reinforcement from the east.
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Over the next two days, Procter discussed matters with Tecumseh. As the warrior chief preferred, they met in the open. Tecumseh sat comfortably on the ground, legs crossed, smoking his tomahawk-pipe. Both men treated the other coolly. The failure at Fort Meigs had distanced them more than ever. Never sure what to think of his ally and always a poor communicator, Procter found explaining his strategy difficult. Tecumseh little trusted the British general and doubted his competency. The Fort Meigs failure, he believed, had resulted from a lack of both skill and will on the part of the British. Tecumseh wanted to try again and was uninterested in Procter's notion that attacking the smaller Fort Stephenson on the Sandusky River would be easier. What would success there accomplish? Presque Isle and Fort Meigs were where the Americans were concentrated. Even most of Procter's officers saw no utility in an operation on the Sandusky.

Procter argued that it was impossible to transport heavy siege guns to breach the walls at Fort Meigs, but Fort Stephenson was poorly constructed and its garrison small. A victory there would keep Harrison on the defensive.

Tecumseh wanted to destroy Harrison and his army. Scouts kept him informed of the American dispositions. At Fort Meigs there were about 2,000 troops under command of Brig. Gen. Green Clay. Harrison was nine miles up the Sandusky River at Seneca Town with
about the same number. From here the American commander could reinforce either Fort Meigs or Fort Stephenson. Although Harrison had overall numerical superiority, Tecumseh had more warriors than Clay had soldiers.

For the past two months the confederacy had been gathering at Amherstburg and Fort Malden, and now 3,000 warriors waited impatiently for action. The warriors would not stay put for long unless given a chance to fight. Looking at Procter, Tecumseh lowered his pipe and sardonically suggested that if the British could not breach the walls at Fort Meigs they should supply his warriors with shovels to dig a trench into the fort.