Page:Queenston Heights (1890).djvu/11

 guine of his antagonists. ‘‘Three days ago,” wrote Peter H. Porter, their quarter-master-general, to the Governor of New York, “the heroes of Tippecanoe and the garrisons of Detroit and Mackinac, amounting to about 500, were marched like cattle from Fort Erie to Fort George, guarded by General Brock’s regular troops with all the parade and pomp of British insolence, and we were incapacitated by the armistice and our own weakness from giving them the relief they anxiously seemed to expect. With 4000 men on this river, the whole ot Upper Canada and the Indian country would have been in our possession. Now, Detroit and a brave army taken, the Indians let loose upon our frontiers, the inhabitants flying in every direction. Brock with his army and Indians and thousands of inspirited Canadians, and a powerful train of field and garrison artillery taken at Detroit arrived on this frontier and ready to act. Indeed it is now reduced to a certainty that the inhabitants of this frontier are doomed to feel the scourge and desolation of the war. The hour that closes the armistice will bring ruin to most of them who live on this frontier. We have been daily amused for two months by news of heavy ordnance and flying artillery. They come as far as Utica and then disappear. This letter is written in a state of mind little short of distraction. Yesterday a number of men were shot at Fort George in view of our troops. They are supposed to be the unfortunate fellows who joined General Hull in Canada and were surrendered at Detroit, and for whose protection provision should have been made in the capitulation at the expense of the life of every man in the garrison. The public mind is wrought up almost to a pitch of madness. Jealousy and distrust begin to to prevail towards the general officers.” John Lovell, private secretary of General Van Rensselaer, wrote about the same time to a friend: ‘‘Hull’s surrender has cemented Canada beyond anything you can conceive. It has also a serious effect on the Indians along the whole frontier. The sensation produced by the sight of prisoners marched past is inexpressible.”

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that when General Dearborn, having learned that his government had peremptorily declared to enter into fresh negotiations, and believing the rumor of the capture of Malden, instructed Van Rensselaer to terminate the armistice at once, that the latter exercised the discretionary power allowed him of prolonging it until the last of his artillery had arrived. But when the last division of boats hove in sight, and all the benefit that could be reasonably expected from its continuance had been secured, notice was given that it would end on the 8th of September.

Four hundred batteaux loaded with artillery and stores had come in from Oswego; great quantities of provisions had been collected; a large number of scows and boats suitable for the passage of the river had been built; several thousand additional troops had arrived and more were on the march, yet the American general hesitated to assume the offensive. The panic created by the surrender of Detroit had by that time reached Albany, and Dearborn wrote to warn him that an attack upon his position was imminent. British troops had been seen ascending the St. Lawrence, and he must be prepared to fall back if hard pushed and not be caught in a trap like Hull. The disembarkation of detachments of soldiers both at Fort Erie and Niagara, close upon the heels of this information, alarmed and perplexed them. Colonel Fenwick, commanding at Fort Niagara, reporting that an attack was expected by him, the stores were removed, the siege-guns buried, and every preparation made for the hasty evacuation of the post.

Stephen Van Rensselaer, who held chief command by virtue of his rank as Major-General of the New York state troops, was an utter novice in all military affairs and could scarcely even be termed an amateur soldier. The last patroon of Rensselaer-Wyck and the leading Federalist in the state, his appointment was a sharp stroke of party tactics on the part of the governor who discovered in him a prospective and dangerous opponent. The recent Congressional elections had seemed to indicate that the Federalists had regained the confidence of the people of New York, and most of their leaders were uncompromising in their hostility to the war. If Van Ransselaer accepted, his immediate following would be committed to its prosecution; if he refused, his conduct could be denounced as unpatriotic.

Five generations of the Van Rensselaers had reigned in the ancient manor-house near Albany, and their estates stretched along the Hudson from Barren Island to Cohoes, extending inland for twenty-five miles on either side of the river, and comprising a thousand square miles of territory. Under the Dutch governors they had assumed almost regal state, exacting oaths of allegiance from their tenants, and they still maintained many of their feudal customs giving perpetual leases, receiving the rents in dozens of fowls and bushels of wheat and personal