‘The unguarded border’ secured by the Rush–Bagot Agreement is now so much taken for granted that the war of 1812 seems incomprehensible, let alone any tension since. And yet there were occasional local disputes as the frontier moved west, often as a result of the difficulty of accurate surveying. I have a photograph of Canadian army officers, as late as the 1920s, covertly making a reconnaissance of the border approaches in New York State. Should any reader wish to see for himself the ground over which the bitter and destructive Anglo-American war was fought, I commend Gilbert Collins’s Guidebook to the Historic Sites of the War of 1812 (Dundurn Press, Toronto, 1998).
The 19th Light Dragoons, the only cavalry regiment of the British army to earn the battle honour Niagara, were disbanded in 1821 – only to be re-raised in 1861, almost disbanded again in 1870, amalgamated in 1922 and then again in 1992. The ‘War Office’ does not have many historians.
A Regimental Affair Page 37
