The War of 1812 by Jeanne T. Heidler David S. Heidler

Author:Jeanne T. Heidler David S. Heidler [David S. Heidler, Jeanne T. Heidler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Greenwood 2002
ISBN: 0313316872
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

1814:

THE YEAR OF CRISIS

The spring of 1814 ushered in major changes on both sides of the world.

Napoleon’s defeat was complete by April, and his exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba signaled not only peace for Europe but the transformation of the war in North America as well. British veterans now free to wage war against the United States would bring British strength to 30,000

men in Canada alone, and a serious offensive would loom from that quarter as a result. The Royal Navy also appeared in greater strength and joint operations occurred on both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Lake Erie

U.S. control of Lake Erie remained secure, but the reprisals McClure had set off the previous year at Newark continued. On 15 May, American forces under Colonel John B. Campbell crossed to Port Dover on Lake Erie’s northeastern shore and razed the town in revenge for the British raid on Buffalo. Trying to stop these gruesome retaliations, the U.S. government reproached Campbell for destroying Port Dover, but the British would cite the raid as another instance of American savagery that justified their ransacking expeditions on Chesapeake Bay later that summer.

Meanwhile, British fortifications on Mackinac Island held firm when American naval and land forces assailed them in late July 1814. In the aftermath, it became untenable for the United States to maintain any naval presence on Lake Huron, so the situation on the Upper Lakes had stabi-lized into a stalemate.

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THE WAR OF 1812

Lake Ontario

At best, Lake Ontario remained an uncertainty in the last year of the war. Chauncey and Yeo refused to engage one another, each hoping that his own building program would make victory certain in any battle. The resulting arms race on Lake Ontario put into service ships of remarkable size as British yards at Kingston and American ones at Sackets Harbor matched efforts. In late 1814, both sides laid keels for two ships of the line each, but the war ended before they were completed. In fact, Yeo and Chauncey never faced off on Lake Ontario as Barclay and Perry had on Lake Erie. Their impressively growing armadas instead became transports and provisioners for their armies.

Even the activities of those armies were indecisive, for they mainly consisted of British attempts to hinder Chauncey’s naval-building program and American efforts to defend it. In May, General Gordon Drummond and 750 troops rode Yeo’s ships to Oswego, New York, where a fort garrisoned by about 300 Americans guarded a supply depot for Sackets Harbor.

Two assaults in as many days finally saw the British on 6 May in possession of the post, which they destroyed and abandoned, but with little long-term effect. Two weeks later, Master Commandant Melancthon Woolsey was transporting thirty-four cannon to Chauncey’s ships at Sackets Harbor when the presence of a British squadron obliged him to duck into Sandy Creek some seventeen miles east of his destination. When a British force followed him, American riflemen and Oneida Indians stopped it with a stinging attack, allowing Woolsey to proceed and deliver Chauncey’s ordnance.

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