Events on the Niagara Frontier

THE British, made bold by their success at the Beaver Dams, as we have observed, not only closely invested Fort George, but made incursions upon the soil of New York. On the night of the 4th of July, 1813, a party of Canadian militia and Indians, under Lieutenant-Colonel Clark, crossed over to Schlosser and captured a guard, with arms, ammunition and stores, and returned in triumph to Canada. On the 11th of the same month, Lieutenant-Colonel Bisshopp, with a motley party of regulars, Canadians and Indians, about four hundred in number, landed a little below Black Rock, near Buffalo, before daylight. His object was to surprise and capture the little garrison there, and seize or destroy the large quantity of stores collected by the Americans, together with the ship-yard. They were defended by only about two hundred militia, and a dozen men in a block-house. These, with some infantry and dragoon recruits from the south and a few Indians,--a little more than one hundred in all, of the latter--were at Buffalo, under the command of General Peter B. Porter.

Bisshopp surprised the post at Black Rock. The militia fled toward Buffalo, and General Porter barely escaped capture in his own house, near by. He hastened toward Buffalo, rallied a part of the militia, and with fifty volunteer-citizens proceeded to attack the invaders. At the same moment forty Indians crossed from an ambush in a ravine, and with the fearful war-whoop rushed toward the foe. The frightened British, after brief resistance, fled in confusion to their boats, and, with Bisshopp, hastily departed, followed by volleys from American muskets. In this flight Bisshopp was mortally wounded, and died five days afterward.

At about the same time, a small party of Canadians, covered by a large body of western Indians under Blackbird (the chief who conducted the massacre at Chicago the year before), encamped a short distance from Fort George, had a skirmish with the American pickets. Lieutenant Eldridge, a dashing young officer, went out from the fort, with forty followers, to the relief of the pickets. They fell into an Indian ambush, and only five escaped. Those who were captured were butchered and scalped by the Indians, with horrible attendant circumstances. After that, no military movement of much importance occurred on the Niagara frontier, until late in the autumn of 1813.

While Wilkinson was concentrating forces at the western end of Lake Ontario preparatory to another invasion of Canada, or to the striking of a "deadly blow somewhere," orders came from the Secretary of War to strengthen Fort George, and garrison it with at least six hundred regulars. Wilkinson left eight hundred regulars at the fort, with some militia under Colonel Scott, and, with the remainder of the army on the Niagara frontier, sailed eastward on the 2d of October. He instructed Scott, in the event of the British leaving that frontier, to put Fort George in charge of General McClure of the New York militia, and with the regulars to join the expedition destined to go down the St. Lawrence. This contingency soon occurred. When General Vincent heard of the defeat of Proctor on the Thames, he called the British troops from the Niagara to Burlington Heights. Then Scott crossed the river, and marching eastward as far as Utica, he there met the Secretary of War who had come from Washington to reconcile the difference between Wilkinson and Hampton, and to assume the conduct of the invading expedition. The Secretary permitted Scott to leave his troops and to press northward to join Wilkinson. Armstrong established the seat of the War Department at Sackett's Harbor.

Meanwhile there had been stirring events on Lakes Champlain and Ontario. In the spring of 1813, Captain Macdonough, who had been charged with the construction of a fleet on Lake Champlain, placed two stanch armed vessels on those waters, named Growler and Eagle. At the beginning of June they were sent to the foot of the lake to look after some British gun-boats that were depredating there. They ran down the Sorel with a stiff breeze almost to Isle-aux-Noix, when they turned and ran back, chased by British armed vessels and by a land force on each side of the narrow river. A heavy cannon-shot sunk the Eagle, and the Growler was captured with the crews of both vessels. This disaster stimulated Mac-donough to greater exertions; and at the beginning of August he had placed on the lake, and fitted and manned, three armed schooners and six gun-boats. At about the same time Plattsburg (on the west side of the lake), entirely uncovered, had been seized, plundered and scorched by a British land and naval force, fourteen hundred strong, under Colonel Murray, while General Hampton, with four thousand troops at Burlington, about twenty miles distant, had made no attempt to oppose the invaders. Such was the condition of affairs on Lake Champlain at the close of the summer of 1813, when Wilkinson took command of the army of the north.