Part 16

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.

“And though slavery’s cloud o’er thy morning hath hung, The full tide of freedom shall beam round thee yet.”

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.