The Invasion of Canada

by Pierre Berton

  After this no-nonsense ultimatum it becomes clear that Hull is prepared for a full surrender. He will give up everything-the fort, its contents, all the ordnance, all supplies, all the troops, even those commanded by the absent Cass and McArthur and by Captain Henry Brush at the River Raisin. Everything. When Hull tries tentatively to make some provision for those Canadian deserters who have come over to his side, Macdonell replies with a curt “Totally inadmissible.” Hull makes no further remonstrance. The surrender details he leaves to Elijah Brush and Miller, actually to Brush alone, since Miller, trembling with ague, is now prostrate on the ground. But sick or not, he is in no mood to sign any surrender document and does so only reluctantly.

  Two more signatures are required-those of Hull and Brock. The British general now rides into the fort accompanied by a fife and drum corps playing “The British Grenadiers” and by his advance guard, which includes John Beverley Robinson, the future chief justice of Upper Canada, Samuel Peters Jarvis, whose family will give its name to one of Toronto’s best-known streets, and two members of the Askin family, Charles and his fifteen-year-old nephew, John Richardson. Askin, for one, has never felt so proud as at this moment.

  The advance guard, however, has advanced a little too quickly. The articles of surrender stipulate that the Americans must leave the fort before the British enter. A confused melee follows. The American soldiers are in a turmoil, some crying openly, a few of the officers breaking their swords and some of the soldiers their muskets rather than surrender them. Others cry “Treason!” and “Treachery!” and heap curses and imprecations on their general’s head. One of the Ohio volunteers tries to stab Macdonell before the advance guard moves back across the drawbridge.

  Within the fort, Abraham Hull wakens in his quarters from a sound sleep, doubtless brought on by his earlier inebriation, to discover enemy soldiers entering the fort. He breaks through a window and, hatless, rushes up to a British officer to demand his business there with his “redcoat rascals.” The officer raises his sword and is about to run him through when an American runs up to explain that the General’s son is temporarily deranged.

  Finally the tangle is straightened out. The Americans stack their arms and move out of the fort. The 4th Regiment of regulars, its members in despair and in tears, gives up its colours, sewn by a group of Boston ladies and carried through the Battle of Tippecanoe. Charles Askin, watching them shamble past, wonders at the legend of their invincibility. To him they look like the poorest set of soldiers he has seen in a long time, their situation and their ragged clothing making them appear as sick men.

  Now the British and Canadians officially enter the fort, the regulars in the lead, followed first by the uniformed militia, then by those not in uniform and, bringing up the rear, Tecumseh’s followers led by the chiefs and the officers of the British Indian Department, themselves dressed and painted as Indians.

  Down comes the Stars and Stripes. A bluejacket from one of the gunboats has tied a Union Jack around his body in preparation for this moment. It is hoisted high to the cheers of the troops. John Richardson, whose musket is taller than himself, is one of those chosen to mount the first guard at the flagstaff. He struts up and down his post, peacock proud, casting his eyes down at the vanquished Americans on the esplanade below the fort. Almost at this moment, in Kentucky, Henry Clay is predicting the fall of Fort Amherstburg and the speedy conquest of Upper Canada.

  As the flag goes up, the Indians pour through the town, cheering, yelling, firing off their guns and seizing American horses. There is looting but no savagery; Tecumseh keeps his promise to Brock that his people will not molest the prisoners. As the two ride together through the fort, the general seems larger than life in his black cocked hat – his crimson uniform and gilt epaulettes contrasting sharply with the fringed buckskin of his lither Shawnee ally. It is a moment for legend: a story will soon spring up that Brock has torn off his military sash and presented it to Tecumseh. If so, Tecumseh is not seen to wear it. Perhaps, as some say, he has turned it over to Roundhead, who as senior member of the senior tribe of Wyandot is held by the Shawnee to be more deserving. Perhaps Tecumseh feels the gaudy silk is too much out of character for the plain deerskin garb that, in a kind of reverse vanity, he has made his trademark. Perhaps. The incident becomes part of the myth of Tecumseh, the myth of Brock.

  Brock has one more symbolic act to perform. He goes directly to the guardroom to release John Dean, the British regular who struggled to hold the bridge during the first engagement at the River aux Canards. He releases him personally, shakes his hand, and in the presence of his men, his voice breaking a little with emotion, tells Dean he is an honour to his military calling.

  These and other formalities observed, he turns the command of the captured territory over to Lieutenant-Colonel Procter and prepares to leave for York, where he will be hailed as the saviour of the province. In just nineteen days he has met the legislature, arranged the public affairs of Upper Canada, travelled three hundred miles to invade the invader, captured an entire army and a territory as large as the one he governs. Now he must hurry back to the capital and return the bulk of his troops as swiftly as possible to the sensitive Niagara frontier, under threat of imminent attack.

  On this triumphant journey across the lake he makes a remark to a captain of the York Volunteers, Peter Robinson, that is both self-revealing and prophetic.

  “If this war lasts, I am afraid I shall do some foolish thing,” says General Brock, “for I know myself, there is no want of courage in my nature-I hope I shall not get into a scrape.”

  ONCE THE SURRENDER is accomplished, Hull emerges from his catatonic state like a man coming out of an anaesthetic. Scarcely able to speak or act that morning, he is now both lucid and serene. “I have done what my conscience directed,” he declares. “I have saved Detroit and the Territory from the horrors of an Indian massacre.” He knows that his country will censure him (though he cannot yet comprehend the magnitude of that censure), knows that he has “sacrificed a reputation dearer to me than life,” but he is by no means downcast. A prisoner of the British, he no longer carries on his shoulders the crushing burden of command. As his former friend Lieutenant-Colonel Baby remarks to him in his captivity-echoing Hull’s own brittle comment of the previous month – “Well, General, circumstances are changed now indeed.”

  Of his surrender, Hull says, “My heart approves the act.” His colleagues are of a different mind. McArthur and Cass, trotting to the relief of Detroit, their exhausted and famished troops riding two to a horse after a forced march of twenty-four miles, have heard the cannonade cease at 10 A.M. and are convinced that Hull has repulsed the British. The astonishing sight of the Union Jack flying over the fort changes their minds, and they move back several miles. Their men have had nothing to eat for forty-eight hours except green pumpkins and unripe corn garnered in the fields. Now they spy an ox by the roadside, slaughter and roast it. In the midst of this feast they are accosted by two British officers bearing a flag of truce who inform them that by the terms of their commander’s surrender they are all prisoners.

  “Traitor!” cries Cass. “He has disgraced his country,” and seizing his sword from its sheath proceeds to break it in two.

  It does not, apparently, occur to either of these commanders, so eager now to have at the enemy, that they might make their way back to Urbana without much fear of pursuit. Tired and dispirited, they meekly lay down their weapons and are marched into captivity.

  Captain Henry Brush, at the River Raisin, is an officer of different mettle. When Matthew Elliott’s son William, a militia captain, arrives to inform him of the surrender, Brush denounces the document of capitulation as a forgery, calls Elliott an imposter and spy, places him under arrest, and with all of his men except the sick decamps to the Rapids of the Maumee and thence through the Black Swamp to Urbana, where his followers disperse in small groups to their homes in Chillicothe. Tecumseh gives chase with three hundred mounted Indians, but Brush�
�s men are too far in the lead to be captured. It makes little difference: the war still has rules of a sort, and under the terms of the surrender document, the United States officially recognizes Brush’s men as prisoners. They cannot fight again until they are exchanged for an equal number of captured British.

  Hull, who is worth thirty privates in a prisoner exchange, is shipped off to Quebec with his officers and the regular troops of Miller’s 4th Infantry. Some of these men, hungry and emaciated, do not survive the journey. One regular, the enterprising Robert Lucas, has no intention of making it. The instant the British flag replaces the Stars and Stripes over the fort, he slips out of his uniform, hides his sword in his brother’s trunk, and disguised as a civilian volunteer boards the vessel that is taking the Ohio militia on parole to Cleveland. Twenty years from now the Democratic party of Ohio will nominate him for governor over his only rival-Colonel James Findlay, his fellow prisoner.

  Tecumseh knows many of the American prisoners by sight and greets them in Detroit without apparent rancour. This is his supreme moment. One of the militia engineers, Lieutenant George Ryerson (older brother of the great educator, Egerton) sees the buckskin-clad Shawnee chief shortly after the surrender, sitting with his brother, the Prophet, smoking his pipe “with his face perfectly calm, but with the greatest satisfaction beaming in his eye.”

  Now, in the aftermath of the bloodless victory, a number of tales are added to the legend of Tecumseh.

  There is, for instance, the story of Father Gabriel Richard, the priest of Ste Anne’s parish, who refuses to take the oath of allegiance to the British Crown because, he says, he has already sworn an oath to support the American Constitution. Procter, whom Brock has left in charge, imprisons the priest at Sandwich. When Tecumseh insists upon his release, Procter snubs him. Tecumseh swiftly assembles his followers, warns Procter that he will return to the Wabash if the priest is not freed. The Colonel gives in. It is the first but not the last time that he will clash with the Shawnee.

  There are other tales: Tecumseh is speaking to his followers at the River Raisin when he feels a tug at his jacket, looks down, sees a small white girl. When he continues to speak, she tugs again: “Come to our house, there are bad Indians there.”

  He stops at once, follows her, seizes his tomahawk, drops the leader with one blow and, as the others move to attack, shouts out: “Dogs! I am Tecumseh!” The Indians retreat. Tecumseh, entering the house, finds British officers present. “You are worse than dogs to break faith with your prisoners!” he cries, and the British apologize for not having restrained the Indians. They offer to place a guard on the house, but that is not necessary, the child’s mother tells them. So long as Tecumseh is near she feels safe.

  Another incident occurs about the same time. Tecumseh’s followers are ravenous. The game has fled; the settlers are short of supplies. Near the River Raisin, Tecumseh approaches a boy working with two oxen.

  “My friend,” says Tecumseh, “I must have these oxen. My young men are very hungry. They have nothing to eat.”

  The youth remonstrates. His father is ill. The oxen are their only farm animals. Without them they will die.

  “We are the conquerors,” Tecumseh says, “and everything we want is ours. I must have the oxen, but I will not be so mean as to rob you of them. I will pay you one hundred dollars for them, and that is more than they are worth.”

  He has his interpreter write out an order on Matthew Elliott for that sum, then takes the beasts, which his men roast and eat. But Elliott will not pay: Hull, after all, has stolen quantities of Canadian cattle, not to mention a herd of fine Merino sheep. When Tecumseh hears this he drops everything, takes the boy to Elliott, insists on payment. The Shawnee’s anger rises when Elliott remains stubborn:

  “You can do what you please, but before Tecumseh and his warriors came to fight the battles of the great King they had enough to eat, for which they only had to thank the Master of Life and their good rifles. Their hunting grounds supply them with enough food, and to them they can return.”

  “Well,” Elliott responds, “if I must pay, I will.”

  “Give me hard money,” says Tecumseh, “not rag money.”

  Elliott counts out one hundred dollars in coin. Tecumseh gives it to the toy, then turns to Elliott.

  “Give me one dollar more,” he says.

  Elliott grudgingly hands him an extra coin.

  “Here,” says Tecumseh to the boy, “take that. It will pay you for the time you have lost getting your money.”

  There are many such tales growing out of the victory at Detroit. The Americans believe Tecumseh to be a brigadier-general in the British Army. He is not, but he dines with the officers at the victory dinner in Amherstburg, ignoring the wine in which the toasts are drunk yet displaying excellent table manners while his less temperate followers whoop it up in the streets of Detroit.

  When news of Prevost’s armistice reaches him, he is enraged. The action confirms his suspicions that the British are not interested in prosecuting the war to its fullest. If they will not fight, then the Indians will. Already the tribes are investing the American wilderness blockhouses-Fort Harrison, Fort Wayne, Fort Madison. Tecumseh leaves them to it and heads south on a new journey, attempting once again to rally new tribes to his banner.

  For the British, if not for the Indians, the results of Detroit’s surrender are staggering. Upper Canada, badly supplied and even worse armed, now has an additional cache of 2,500 captured muskets, thirty-nine pieces of heavy ordnance, forty barrels of gunpowder, a sixteen-gun brig, Adams (immediately renamed Detroit), a great many smaller craft, and Henry Brush’s baggage train of one hundred pack animals and three hundred cattle, provisions and stores. The prize money to be distributed among the troops is reckoned at $200,000, an enormous sum considering that a private’s net pay amounts to about four shillings, or one dollar, a week.

  As a result of the victory at Detroit, every private soldier receives prize money of more than four pounds-at least twenty weeks’ net pay. The amount increases according to rank and unit. Sergeants of the 41st Foot receive about eight pounds, captains, such as Adam Muir, forty pounds. General Brock is due two hundred and sixteen pounds. One luckless private bearing the Biblical name of Shadrach Byfield is left off the list by mistake and does not receive his share until May of 1843.

  More significant is the fact that Brock has rolled back the American frontier to the Ohio River, the line that the Indians themselves hold to be the border between white territories and their own lands. Most of Michigan Territory is, for practical purposes, in British hands. A council of tribal leaders called by the U.S. government at Piqua, Ohio, for ithe express purpose of maintaining native neutrality collapses with the news of Hull’s surrender. Many Indians, such as the Mohawk of the Grand Valley, who have been reluctant to fight on either side, are now firmly and enthusiastically committed to the British. The same can be said for all the population of Upper Canada, once so lukewarm and defeatist, now fired to enthusiasm by Brock’s stunning victory. In Montreal and Quebec, the spectacle of Hull’s tattered and ravaged followers provokes a wave of patriotic ardour.

  The General, who has to this point treated the militia with great delicacy, reveals an iron fist. Now he has the power and the prestige to enforce the oath of allegiance among the citizen soldiers and to prosecute anybody, militiaman or civilian, for sedition, treason, or desertion.

  In Canada Brock is the man of the hour, but in America the very word “Hull” is used as a derogatory epithet. In their shame and despair, Americans of all political stripes-civilians, soldiers, politicians-lash out blindly at the General, who is almost universally considered to be a traitor and a coward. On his drooping shoulders will be laid all the guilt for his country’s singular lack of foresight and for its military naíveté. Forgotten now are Hull’s own words of advice about the need for controlling the Lakes before attempting to invade Canada. Ignored is Major-General Dearborn’s dereliction in refusing to supply Hull wi
th the reinforcements for which he pleaded or launching the diversionary attacks at Niagara and Kingston, which were key elements in American strategy.

  Hull is to be made the scapegoat for Dearborn’s paralysis and Washington’s bumbling. When he is at last exchanged (and Prevost is anxious to release him because he believes Hull’s return will cause dissension in America), he faces a court martial that is a travesty of a trial. Here he comes up against his old adversaries, McArthur, Cass, Findlay, Miller. But his lawyer is not permitted to cross-examine these officers or to examine other witnesses; the old general, unschooled in law, must perform that task himself.

  Though his papers were burned on their way from Detroit to Buffalo after the surrender, he is not allowed to examine copies at Wasliington. The court is packed against him: Henry Dearborn is the presiding judge. He is unlikely to be sympathetic, for if the court acquits Hull of the twin charges of cowardice and treason, Dearborn himself and his superiors in Washington must be held culpable for the scandal at Detroit.

  The charge of treason is withdrawn on the grounds that it is beyond the court’s jurisdiction. Three months later, when the weary process is at last completed and Hull is found guilty of cowardice, the court adds a rider saying that it does not believe him to be guilty of treason. There is more to this than simple justice, for the charge is based entirely on the loss of the Cuyahoga and all Hull’s baggage before he knew war was declared. That misfortune cannot be laid at the ill-starred general’s door but at that of Dr. Eustis, the Secretary of War, who was scandalously remiss in informing his outposts of the outbreak of hostilities.

  Hull, officially branded as a coward, is sentenced to be shot. The President, taking into account the General’s Revolutionary gallantry and perhaps also pricked by a guilty conscience, pardons him. Hull spends the rest of his life attempting to vindicate his actions. It is an irony of war that had he refused to surrender, had he gone down to defeat, his fort and town shattered by cannon fire, his friends and neighbours ravaged by the misfortunes of battle, his soldiers dead to the last man, the civilians burned out, bombed out, and inevitably scalped, the tired old general would have swept into the history books as a gallant martyr, his name enshrined on bridges, schools, main streets, and public buildings. (There is also the possibility that he might have beaten Brock, though somehow one doubts it.) But for the rest of their lives the very soldiers who, because of him, can go back whole to the comfort of their homesteads, and the civilians who are now able to pick up the strings of their existence, only briefly tangled, will loathe and curse the name of William Hull who, on his deathbed at the age of seventy-two, will continue to insist that he took the only proper, decent, and courageous course on that bright August Sunday in 1812.