CHAPTER XIV

THE CONQUEST OF LAKE ERIE

The year 1813 began with another disaster for the United States. After the surrender of Detroit, Governor William Henry Harrison, of the Indiana Territory, placed himself at the head of a popular movement to retrieve the defeat at any cost and to recover Detroit. It was winter before he succeeded in getting an army within reach of the lake coast. For months the three divisions of his force of ten thousand men struggled through the swampy lands of Ohio, where the movement of troops and of necessary provisions was rendered well-nigh impossible by the heavy rains. On the 15th of January two Frenchmen had entered the camp of the advance division of the army, which under command of General Winchester was establishing itself at a point on the Maumee River twenty miles inland from Lake Erie. They urged the troops to occupy Frenchtown, a village on the American shore of Lake Erie but within British lines. This town on the River Raisin was held by Canadians and Indians, and its loss, if taken by the Americans, would be a serious blow to the British. Six hundred and fifty men, the flower of the Kentucky regiments, started under the command of Colonel Lewis for the attack. After considerable losses the Americans seized the town. General Winchester hastened to their support with three hundred more men, making a total American force at the River Raisin of eight or nine hundred men.

General Proctor, Brock’s successor at Fort Malden, had under his command over two thousand soldiers. On the morning of January 22, 1813, he crossed the lake on the ice with a force of six hundred men and from six to eight hundred Indians and attacked the Americans in the ill-fortified village. When the hard-fought engagement was ended four hundred Americans were missing, either killed during the battle by the British or scalped by the Indians in the horrible massacre that followed the defeat. Only after the ammunition had given out and retreat had been proved impossible because of the deep snow and the position of the enemy, did the last of the gallant Kentuckians surrender. “Remember the River Raisin” became the watchword of a desperate people, and operations on the Great Lakes were suspended until Commodore Perry was ready with his navy to retrieve these defeats and turn the tide of American fortune.

Oliver Hazard Perry had been brought up in the naval service. His father was a gallant seaman who had fought in the Revolution and been on the sea ever since. When Oliver was ready he was appointed midshipman on his father’s ship, and had seen since that day service in the West Indies, in the Tripolitan war, and off the Atlantic coast. At the beginning of the War of 1812 he was put in charge of a flotilla of gun-boats stationed at Newport, but he had petitioned to be removed from this retirement and placed in active service, preferably on the lakes. He was summoned in the winter of 1813 to take charge of the construction of vessels on Lake Erie. He found the lake fleet divided. At the Black Rock Navy Yard on the Niagara River lay several vessels, unable to get out past the British fleet and the overlooking British forts. At Erie, Pennsylvania, two brigs, a schooner, and a gun-boat were being built. It was for Perry to unite the two sections of the fleet, to provide them with a crew of able seamen, and to force the British fleet into decisive action.

An American victory on the Niagara River on the 27th of May set free the vessels at Black Rock. Perry was on hand to superintend their laborious removal from the navy-yard. Oxen and men worked day after day dragging the vessels against the heavy current of the river into Lake Erie. Once on the waters of the lake the American ships under Perry’s command evaded the British cruisers which were sailing back and forth between Niagara and Erie, with the sole purpose of intercepting them, and reached the latter port in safety. For two months the fleet lay in that harbor while Perry strained every nerve to get the vessels into shape and secure sailors to man them. We get a little idea of his difficulties by the fact that between the last of May and the first of August he cut down his requirements in the number of seamen to one-half his original estimate. On the sixth day of August all preparations were completed and the fleet sailed out on Lake Erie.

Commodore Perry was twenty-eight years old; his antagonist, Barclay, was thirty-two. Barclay had met as many difficulties as Perry in getting his fleet ready, and especially in securing provisions for his men. The American squadron had, moreover, cut off communication between Fort Malden and its source of supplies. So in September, even though his best vessel, the _Detroit_, had to be launched unfinished from the stocks, Barclay saw no choice but to fight at once. Early on the morning of September 9, the British fleet sailed to meet the American squadron, which was anchored at the mouth of the Sandusky River. Barclay had six vessels with sixty-three guns, and probably about four hundred and fifty men. Perry had nine vessels with fifty-four guns, and about the same number of available men. His guns, however, were much heavier, and his vessels larger.

At daybreak of September 10, Perry’s lookout discovered the approaching British fleet; the American ships at once weighed anchor, in twelve minutes they were under sail and standing toward the enemy. The wind was light and the lake calm, so that both sides found difficulty in getting into position, but by noon they were drawn up for battle. The British vessels were in a single column, the American in a somewhat more irregular formation, and each vessel opposed one of its own tonnage and build in the enemy’s fleet. Barclay commanded the _Detroit_, a ship of four hundred and ninety tons carrying nineteen guns, and opposite him was Perry’s flagship, the _Lawrence_, with twenty guns. At a quarter before twelve the British opened fire, and the Americans replied.

Finding the British fire at long range very destructive, especially to his own vessel, Perry set more sail and passed the word by hail of trumpet for the whole line to close up and advance nearer the enemy. For two hours the fleets manœuvred in this position, the _Lawrence_ within two hundred and fifty yards of the _Detroit_ and both vessels pouring a heavy fire into each other. A second vessel, the _Queen Charlotte_, came to the support of Barclay, and Perry’s flagship, after sustaining the action for over two hours, was seriously disabled. Every gun was rendered useless, the greater part of the crew killed or wounded, and the rigging shot away. At 2.30 the English commander saw the _Lawrence_ drop from her position and a small boat pass from her to the _Niagara_, a vessel under command of Lieutenant Elliot, which had been at some distance from the main engagement and was at this time comparatively fresh. As Barclay wrote in his official report, “The American commodore, seeing that as yet the day was against him, made a noble and, alas! too successful an effort to regain it; for he bore up [in the _Niagara_] and supported by his small vessels, passed within pistol-shot and took a raking position on our bow.” Up to this time the result of the action had been in doubt. For some reason the portion of the fleet under Elliot had pursued an independent course, and Perry with the vessels nearest him had been too hard pressed. A bitter dispute as to the cause of this condition was waged by Elliot’s friends in the ensuing years after the close of the war. Whatever the reason, it was evident to all that the American force was not in its most effective position because so many of the vessels were fighting at long range instead of at close. When Elliot came up near enough to the disabled flagship to allow Perry to go on board, the advantage was for the first time on the American side. Perry was able to bear down on the _Detroit_ and pour into her volleys of shot so that, with American vessels on every side aiding in the attack, she soon became completely disabled. The topmasts and rigging were cut away, the hull was shattered, and the vessel became unmanageable. Within half an hour the British commander was forced to strike his flag and surrender.

It had been a desperate alternative for Commodore Perry to venture into a small boat and transfer his flag from one ship to another. By his personal action in thus rushing his own vessel in at the crisis and exposing himself to a fusillade from the enemy for several minutes before he could make any reply to it, Perry had won the battle for the Americans. He determined to receive the surrender on his original flagship, the _Lawrence_, at whose peak had been flying throughout the battle the words spoken a few months before by the hero for whom the vessel was named, the dying commander of the _Chesapeake_, “Don’t give up the ship.” Perry returned to the ship and the English officers came to him there. Each presented his sword, and in reply Perry bowed and requested that their side-arms be retained by the officers. The deck of the _Lawrence_ was covered with dead and wounded. On both sides the battle had been very hard-fought, and the loss of life, both of officers and men, was very heavy. Out of one hundred and three men on the _Lawrence_ twenty-two had been killed and sixty-one wounded. On both the flagships every officer save Perry was killed or wounded, even Barclay being seriously injured, and the loss on these vessels was probably four-fifths of the men disabled or killed. When the ceremony of surrender was over, Perry tore off the back of an old letter, and using his hat for a writing-desk, wrote to General Harrison, stationed with reënforcements on the Sandusky River: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.”

Perry’s victory was immediately followed up both by himself and by General Harrison. Within a week the remnant of the fleet was ready to convey land forces to Malden, where they disembarked on the 27th of September. The timidity and incompetence of the British general, Proctor, gave the Americans a great advantage. To the utter scorn of Tecumseh and his Indians, who were supporting the British, General Proctor evacuated Malden, Detroit, and Sandwich without a stroke in their defence, and retired along the road to Lake Ontario even before the Americans landed. With such a start Harrison thought that the English with their thousand horses would be out of his reach, but he prepared to follow them. This Proctor seems not to have included in the range of possibilities.

By easy marches the British proceeded to Chatham, fifty miles from Sandwich on the River Thames. Here Proctor halted the army while he himself went on to the Moravian town twenty-six miles beyond. The American army appeared, and the British tried to follow their commander to Chatham. The organization of the whole army was by this time completely demoralized. They had, however, no choice but to turn and fight, as the younger officers and soldiers had long desired. The British were so stationed as to give the advantage of position to their opponents; and the American force was strengthened by a mounted regiment commanded by Richard Johnson, who had won a great reputation for himself and his men in previous battles on the frontier. The Americans lost only fifteen men in the engagement, with thirty wounded. The British list of dead and wounded was also short, but nearly five hundred were taken prisoners, and their supply of provisions and ammunition fell into the hands of the Americans. Only two hundred of this whole division of the British army returned to report at headquarters a month later. The Indian warrior, Tecumseh, was killed in this battle, and with his death the remote prospect of an Indian confederacy was gone. After these two victories the western Indians fell away from their alliance with the British and took no active part in the war.

The last year of the war, the year 1814, was marked by constant and active operations on Lake Ontario and about Niagara. The naval movements were not particularly effective on the American side, nor did they win great results. The possession of the Niagara River was sharply contested, and the American troops distinguished themselves by their bravery at the battles of Chippewa Creek and Lundy’s Lane. Cut off from any other lake position, the British could concentrate their forces at this point and throw the Americans on the defensive. These battles concerned, nevertheless, only a small portion of the Great Lakes, which were again the northern boundary of the United States. By Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, the subsequent recovery of the Detroit River, and the defeat of the British army at the Thames, Lake Erie and the whole Northwest were saved to the United States. The close of the war by the treaty of Ghent in the winter of 1814 brought to the lake frontier a well-earned and a lasting peace.