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War of 1812, Part 12: The Battle of Lundy’s Lane
A few days after the resounding American victory at Chippawa, General Phineas Riall moved the British Army north along the Niagara River to Fort George and began to gather a force adequate to strike the Americans and push them from Canadian soil. The American commander, General Jacob Brown, meanwhile was imploring Commodore Isaac Chauncey, commander of the Lake Ontario fleet, to come to his assistance and help drive the British from the Niagara peninsula. But as was often the case, the Army and Navy did not see eye to eye on the matter and that would cause a problem in the days ahead.
War of 1812, Part 11: Americans Seize the Offensive
On March 31, 1814, the allied armies marched into Paris and with that came the collapse of Napoleon's empire. That was good news for Europe who had been fighting French armies for more than two decades, but it was bad news for the United States as with Napoleon's demise, Wellington’s veteran British regiments would now be freed up to fight in North America, and by mid-summer, four brigades of Wellington's best troops sailed from Bordeaux for Canada.
War of 1812, Part 10: The Battle of Sackett’s Harbor
While General Henry Dearborn was trying to make headway along the Niagara front, the British were busy launching an offensive of their own against Sackett’s Harbor. This was not the first British attack on the American outpost, as the previous summer, on July 19, a British fleet had attempted to destroy Sackett’s Harbor’s critical navy yard, but the British were repulsed in that attack which marked the first armed engagement in the War of 1812.
War of 1812, Part 9: An Opportunity Lost for the Americans
In early May 1813, Commodore Isaac Chauncey loaded General Henry Dearborn’s army onto his waiting ships and sailed back across Lake Ontario for the second phase of Dearborn’s campaign, the capture of Fort George. Between the men stationed at Fort Niagara and Dearborn’s contingent, the American force consisted of roughly 4,000 men, with command of the army falling to 26-year-old Colonel Winfield Scott, destined to be one of the great military commanders in American history.
War of 1812, Part 8: Americans Burn a Capital
The man to whom President James Madison and Secretary of War William Eustis gave command of the overall war effort for the War of 1812 was Henry Dearborn from New Hampshire. In addition to the overall command, Dearborn was assigned the right wing of the three-pronged American attack into Canada, up the Lake Champlain corridor to the St. Lawrence River and then onward to Montreal. Arguably, this invasion sector was the most critical, as the St. Lawrence represented the only means of communication between Lower Canada and Upper Canada.
War of 1812, Part 7: Disaster at Queenston Heights
The center thrust of the three-prong American advance into Canada was along the Niagara River frontier. This thirty-five-mile stretch was the most contested piece of real estate during the War of 1812 and would change hands several times over the course of the war. Secretary of War William Eustis entrusted the command of this sector to Stephen van Rensselaer.
War of 1812, Part 6: The Battle of the Thames
On September 12, 1813, General William Henry Harrison received word of Captain Oliver Hazard Perry's great victory on Lake Erie two days before. Recognizing that the Navy had done their part and cleared the lake of British warships, Harrison knew the time had finally come for the invasion of Upper Canada, and the General immediately put the wheels in motion to strike the British while he held the advantage.
War of 1812, Part 5: We Have Met the Enemy
The key to controlling Upper Canada in the War of 1812 was gaining naval mastery of the Great Lakes, especially Lakes Erie and Ontario. Given the lack of adequate roads in that area, neither side could hope to sustain an army of any size in the field without the ability to deliver supplies and reinforcements via these lakes. As 1813 opened, the British were in firm control of both and, despite the clamor of the Madison administration and Americans living west of the Appalachians to invade Canada, General William Henry Harrison, commander of the western army, was painfully aware that he must wait for a situational change on Lake Erie before beginning his advance.
War of 1812, Part 4: British Invade Ohio
Following the American disaster at Frenchtown, General William Henry Harrison gathered another force to turn the tide in the West. On February 1, 1813, Harrison returned to the rapids of the Maumee with 1,800 Pennsylvania and Virginia militiamen and tasked Major Eleazer D. Wood of the Engineers, an early graduate of West Point, to construct Fort Meigs. Wood finished the fort by the end of the month, but unfortunately the enlistments of most of the men expired at the same time and Harrison was left with a formidable fort but a garrison of less than 500 soldiers.
War of 1812, Part 3: Debacle on the River Raisin
Following General William Hull’s ignominious surrender of Fort Detroit, the outlook for the United States in Upper Canada was bleak. The western army essentially had been eliminated with Hull’s surrender, and a new army had to be raised. But perhaps more importantly, a new commander had to be found, and that man would be William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory and acclaimed in the West as the hero of Tippecanoe.
War of 1812, Part 2: The Surrender of Detroit
Early in 1812, when war with Great Britain seemed imminent, President James Madison named William Hull, the Governor of the Michigan Territory and a veteran of the American Revolution, to command the western war effort. Hull was a reluctant warrior who initially declined the post recognizing his best years were behind him, but when President Madison could not find a suitable replacement, Hull agreed to take the command.
War of 1812, Part 1: A Divided America Goes to War
In June of 1812, President James Madison asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain for refusing to honor American maritime rights. In some ways, Madison’s hand was forced by the young firebrands who made up the Twelfth Congress with its unprecedented seventy new members and dominated by Democratic-Republicans.