Raiders and Rebels

Thomas Jefferson Sutherland: Lots of Feathers But Not Much Chicken

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:04:00 +0000

The story of Thomas Jefferson Sutherland's (1801-1852) exploits in the Patriot War reads like a comedic adventure. As an idealist, the plight of the poorly governed Canadians drew him to their cause. As a writer and one-time sergeant in the US Marines, he had both the power of the pen and sword at his disposal. His skills at oratory brought him to center stage in the pro-Canada movement in Buffalo, New York. He looked like a winner.

Sutherland closely followed the polemics of William Lyon Mackenzie in 1837 and he knew Upper Canada lay on the verge of open rebellion. Two days before Mackenzie's botched assault on Toronto, Sutherland traveled to Toronto with a letter of support from sympathetic Americans (a trip he later denied happened).

After fleeing to Buffalo, Mackenzie spoke before a crowd of 3,000 supporters on December 11. Sutherland made certain he was on the list of speakers: he fancied himself a natural commander of men. That night, he requested men, money, ammunition and weapons to form an army of liberation. The response was immediate and generous. Mackenzie accepted Sutherland as his top general.

The next day, Sutherland demoted himself to make way for Rensselaer Van Rensselaer to become Patriot's commander-in-chief. Sutherland believed the cause needed a person better known than he to impart "a proper tone to the enterprise." Van Rensselaer accepted the role at the request of Mackenzie (he later proved to be a disastrous choice).

On December 14, Mackenzie and Van Rensselaer landed on Navy Island with 24 volunteers and two small cannons to occupy that bit of Canadian soil. As the news of the occupation spread, Canadian refugees and American volunteers from across the state flocked to Navy Island.

Brigadier-General Sutherland brought a company of volunteers to the island December 16 but soon departed for the Patriot's western front in Ohio and Michigan. Sent by Van Rensselaer to take command, he arrived in Detroit on January 7, 1838, and found the western commanders reluctant to cede control.

After leading a rebel force on one badly bungled campaign January 10, Sutherland blamed the loss on every other leader involved. He resigned his Patriot commission on February 5, 1838, and left Detroit only to be robbed of all his belongings on his journey. He returned to Detroit and discovered the possible identity of one thief. Sutherland set out for Sandusky, Ohio, where the culprit was said to be.

While taking a short cut across Lake Erie on the ice, Sutherland may have strayed into Canadian territory. True or not, a British squad under command of Lt.-Colonel John Prince arrested him. Prince knew Sutherland's reputation and knew he'd caught a big fish.

Sutherland had the dubious honor of being the first Patriot leader changed under the Lawless Aggressions Act, proclaimed on January 12, 1838. While no trial under that act could withstand close legal scrutiny, the evidence presented at Sutherland's trial in March 1838 had no foundation. For one, Sutherland pointed out that the court martial could not legally try him under a law that didn't exist when he allegedly committed the crimes.

The court allowed so much hearsay and unsubstantiated testimony that it gave Sutherland solid grounds for appeal. An experienced writer with a sound knowledge of law, Sutherland sent a lengthy letter to Lord Durham, Canada's Governor General, dated July 4, 1838, detailing the legal errors in the case.

Six weeks later, Lord Durham set aside the guilty verdict due to legal irregularities. Durham told Sutherland in writing that he could return to America if he posted a $4000 bond to ensure he would stay off British soil.

Sutherland then protested by letter to Lord Glenelg, secretary of state for the colonies, that he could not raise bail while in prison in a city (Quebec) where he knew no one. He questioned the flawed logic of the order, which required him to get bail in Canada and then leave never to return. What bailsmen would agree to that arrangement?

In May 1839, the British shipped Sutherland to Cornwall, Upper Canada, and released him without bail. He returned to the US and looked up his old rebel comrades, including Donald McLeod and Benjamin Lett. If he harbored dreams of new battles, they were futile. The Patriot War's military activity had passed never to be rekindled. Sutherland had missed most of the action.

By the 1850s, Sutherland was a drifter in the Midwest making a living writing and lecturing on phrenology. On September 7, 1852, he died of typhus fever in Kansas.

Benjamin Lett: 3. The Last Patriot Warrior

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:13:00 +0000

By the end of 1839, the Hunter and Patriot movements had atrophied into a pathetic club of old men who schemed and dreamed of impossible glories. With Bill Johnston either in jail or avoiding jail, one Patriot warrior kept Upper Canada on edge: Benjamin Lett.

Late on April 16, 1840, Lett and accomplices crossed into Upper Canada by boat with barrels of gunpowder. Their target was a stately stone spire at Queenston near Niagara built in 1824 to commemorate Sir Isaac Brock. He died while commanding the force that repelled an American army in the first year of the War of 1812.

Early on the morning of April 17, the monument splintered from the force of a massive explosion. Though he had no proof, Lieutenant-Governor Sir George Arthur said he had no doubt the perpetrator was Lett, whom he called the “Rob Roy of Upper Canada” after the infamous Scots bandit. Neither Benjamin nor his brother Thomas, who latter chronicled Benjamin's life, ever denied it. The attack fit Lett’s politics and modus operandi. (The government rebuilt the monument in the 1850s.)

Monument after the explosion

Aside: Patriot General Donald McLeod became furious on hearing the news of the monument's ruin. As a sergeant, he'd served under Brock at the fateful battle and harbored deep respect for his former commander. He ordered all Patriots and Hunters to cease their freelance raids. If anyone obeyed, Lett surely did not.

Lett Arrested for Steamer Attack

On June 5, 1840, the steamer Great Britain, the biggest on Lake Ontario, rested at a dock in Oswego, New York. A Canadian refugee named David Defoe carried a trunk containing explosive materials onto the steamer.

Dafoe was born in Upper Canada about 1802. A resident of Belleville, he fled Upper Canada when the rebellion started and lodged in Watertown, New York. He likely met Lett at a Hunter meeting or through Patriot contacts.

Defoe deposited the trunk near the ladies’ cabin, lit a fuse and departed. The trunk’s contents—ceramic jugs of flammable liquid—exploded. A fire ensued, but people quickly extinguished the flames.

Great Britain, watercolor by Henry Francis Ainslie

Constables arrested Defoe and Lett in Oswego that day. Their trial for arson took place on June 25. Defoe became a witness for the prosecution and blamed the whole plot on Lett. Witnesses testified they saw Lett near the dock before the explosion. Others testified they saw him carrying jugs similar to the fragments found at the scene.

The jury found Lett guilty, and the court sentenced him to seven years in the state prison at Auburn, New York.

While investigators proved Lett’s presence near the docks, the only hard evidence of his connection to the arson attempt came from Defoe. Benjamin’s brother Thomas later denied that his brother was involved and said Defoe perjured himself. The bomb detonated in daylight in front of witnesses, which did not fit Lett’s methodology. Of all the crimes attributed to Benjamin, the attempted destruction of the steamer—the only raid for which he was tried—may have been the one occasion he was innocent.

The train taking Lett to prison slowed going through a cedar swamp. Lett sprang from his seat, rushed through an open door and leapt into the ditch. Though heavily shackled, he disappeared into the forest.

Lett Blamed for Canal Explosion

On September 9, 1841, a gunpowder explosion destroyed a lock on the original Welland Canal in Upper Canada. Though blamed by many historians, Lett was not the bomber. American authorities had arrested him on September 6 boarding a steamer in Buffalo as the ship readied for a westward trip. (Benjamin may have been on his way to join his siblings in Illinois.)

Benjamin's mother and his siblings had left Canada for Texas early in 1838, likely to escape persecution for Benjamin's deeds. In 1839, Lett's siblings (their mother having died) moved to Louisiana, then onto in LaSalle County, Illinois, in 1840.

Aside: Historian Lillian Gates stated that Lett participated in the Welland Canal conspiracy but that Dr. Edward Alexander Theller, a brigadier general with the western Patriots, actually blew up the lock.

With his arrest and imprisonment, Lett’s personal war ended and with it the Patriot War. While gangs of men, calling themselves Hunters or Patriots, made short raids into Canada, they were bandits, not rebels.

Lett was the last Patriot warrior standing.

Thomas Lett (June 17, 1809-July 8, 1885) worked hard for Benjamin's early release as his brother fell ill in the harsh prison conditions. New York Governor Silas Wright pardoned Lett on March 10th, 1845. Benjamin moved to the family farm and left his terrorist life behind.

Lett's Death a Mystery

Benjamin Lett died December 9, 1858, under mysterious circumstances in Milwaukee. Thomas claimed agents of the Canadian government lured him away and poisoned him with strychnine. Thomas even named the killer—Stewart Wilson. Thomas' claims led to a trial, which acquitted Wilson. Bitter, Thomas claimed the trial was more like revenge than justice.

Benjamin's death did not go unnoticed. William Lyon Mackenzie sent a letter of condolence, adding that Benjamin “was warm-hearted and brave as Man can be.”

Bill Johnston: 15. No Prison Can Hold Him

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:04:00 +0000

After Bill Johnston skipped bail in mid-April 1839, he returned to the Thousand Islands. As they had in the summer of 1838, the Canadian and US military launched joint patrols to find him.

A US force, which included military observers from Upper Canada, raided Grindstone Island on July 11, 1839, to arrest Johnston. Bill escaped capture because his observant daughter Kate warned him the soldiers were coming.

Captain Williams Sandom, the British commander on the Great Lakes, believed gangs of Hunters and various brigands that inhabited the islands had rallied around Johnston. Sandom had good cause. Several times, unknown men in small boats or on secluded American islands had fired rifles at British seaman and ships. At least one cache of arms was discovered in an isolated bay on Lake Ontario.

In August, Johnston visited New York City. A sharp-eyed deputy-sheriff recognized and arrested him on August 19. Three days later, Bill and the deputy attended a bail hearing in Adams, New York, south of Watertown. The judge suggested bail of $10,000. Bill haggled him down to $5000. The judge, deputy and Bill travelled to Watertown so Bill could contact his bail bondsman.

Bill's relaxed and cooperative manner through the whole arrest caused the deputy to drop his guard. In a moment of slack security, Johnston slipped away and headed for the islands.

Early in October 1839, at John Johnston's insistence, Bill returned to the Albany jail voluntarily, with Kate at his side. With cold weather coming, a cell promised far more comfort to the aging troublemaker than a fugitive winter in the Thousand Islands.

Johnston Escapes One Last Time

Bill Johnston with Kate by his side, passed the wintry months of 1839 and 1840 in the relative comfort of an Albany jail. As usual, the warm weather and wafting scents of spring stirred his vagabond soul. Bill fashioned a cell key made of zinc smuggled in by friends.

One day in late May 1840, Kate went to visit family in Rome, New York. The next evening, Bill unlocked his cell, slipped past guards and walked 40 miles before daybreak. After resting, he continued to Rome. From there, he and Kate returned to the Thousand Islands. He never saw the inside of a prison again.

Following his final escape, Johnston tried to leave his pirate and fugitive past behind. He and Kate gathered names of prominent men on a petition for a pardon. Bill joined the Masons and used his new connections to advantage.

Johnston presented a petition for pardon to the outgoing president, Martin Van Buren, on March 2, 1841. He rejected Bill's plea; but 10 days later, William Henry Harrison granted the pardon (one of few accomplishments in his brief presidency).

Last Hunter Prisoners Sent to Tasmania

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:12:00 +0000

With the end of repatriation of Hunter prisoners, transport to the penal colony dominated every remaining prisoner's thoughts through the long hot summer.

Captain Daniel Heustis strived to keep up his men's spirits. That included a surreptitious celebration on the Fourth of July in Fort Henry, described in his memoirs:

"Out of several pocket handkerchiefs a flag was manufactured, as nearly resembling the Star Spangled Banner as we could conveniently make it. This emblem of freedom and national independence we hoisted in our room, taking good care that the officers did not get a peep at it."

On September 23, 1839, blacksmiths arrived at Fort Henry after breakfast. They chained the remaining Hunter prisoners in twos at their wrists and ankles. Thirty pairs of men, mostly Americans, marched from the fort between lines of soldiers to a canal boat waiting in Navy Bay. As soon as guards secured them in the hold, they set out. A small steamer towed them up the Rideau Canal from Kingston to Ottawa, and then down the Ottawa River to Montreal.

Bill Johnston Seen as an Escape Threat

The trip through the Rideau Canal and Ottawa River is far longer than the direct route down the St. Lawrence River, the route by which all previous transportees made their way to Montreal. Why chose the longer way this time? There is no official explanation. But, Bill Johnston ruled the Thousand Islands and Captain Williams Sandom, the British commander on the Great Lakes, believed Johnston had squads of pirates under his command. Sandom and Lt.-Colonel Richard Bonnycastle probably expected an attack on any ship carrying Hunter prisoners.

In Montreal, the captives transferred ships and set out immediately for Quebec City, arriving the next day. In the harbor, a 700-ton sailing ship, the Buffalo, rode at anchor. The ship set sail on September 28, 1839, with the 60 windmill raiders, 18 Patriots taken in raids near Detroit, 58 Patriotes from the rebellion in Lower Canada, and five common criminals.

Prisoners Arrive in the Antipodes

Kept in cramped quarters through stifling tropical heat and fed foul rations, most men arrived sick but alive in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) on February 11, 1840. Among the windmill raiders, only Asa Priest, 45, died on the voyage.

Guards unloaded the Americans and presented them to the colony's governor, Sir John Franklin, the famous Arctic explorer. (The Buffalo sailed onto Sydney, Australia, where the French Canadians disembarked on February 26.)

William Gates wrote that Franklin lectured them astride a horse for two hours, speaking in meandering, unfinished sentences while staring at the sky. The gist of his message: they were very bad men who'd committed a crime worse than murder.

Guards escorted Heustis, Gates, and the others to the work camps. Over the next two years, they labored in slave conditions building roads, wearing tattered clothing and eating vile and skimpy rations.

Heustis, a casement captain at Fort Henry, always held the respect and trust of his comrades. They chose him as the cell leader during the long voyage to Tasmania, and as group leader at the penal colony.

Heustis' natural equanimity saved the lives and sanity of many men as he negotiated for better housing conditions, separation from the common criminals and a ban on flogging of the Americans.

Still, men succumbed. Lysander Curtis, 35, died within weeks from overwork. Others followed him to their graves: Andrew Leeper, 44, Foster Martin, 34, Alson Owen, 27, and Thomas Stockton, 40.

Prisoners Pardoned

On February 16, 1842, the penal bosses gave the Americans tickets of leave and the slavery period ended. They found paid jobs on farms and ranches, but could not leave the island. A few escaped on American whaling ships that plied the waters. Others, including Aaron Dresser and Stephen Wright, received a pardon and money for helping to catch escaped convicts who became bandits.

Between 1845 and 1848, the American prisoners received pardons. Abandoned by the US government, they had to find their own way home with little money. Most worked on ships to pay for passage. At least four stayed in Tasmania or Australia. Eighteen are unaccounted for. The majority returned.

Eight Patriots and Hunters sent to Tasmania wrote memoirs on returning home, while others gave interviews to newspapers. None were ashamed of their actions and all wanted the sacrifice of their comrades remembered.

Patriotes' End: 2. Twelve Hang

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Most of the men hanged for their parts in the Lower Canada rebellion did not start out as rebels at arms. Heavy-handed actions by the colonial executive in denying demands for responsible government, and by the British army in response to a peaceful assembly in October 1837, pushed men to the brink.

Those who paid the ultimate penalty in Lower Canada were Joseph-Narcisse Cardinal, Joseph Duquet, François-Marie-Thomas Chevalier de Lorimier, Pierre-Théophile Decoigne, François-Xavier Hamelin, Joseph-Jacques Robert, Ambroise Sanguinet, Charles Sanguinet, Amable Daunais, Charles Hindenlang, Pierre-Rémi Narbonne, and François Nicolas. Here is a brief history of several of them.

Sketch of mass execution in Montreal

Joseph Cardinal

One of those at the October assembly was Joseph Narcisse Cardinal (February 8, 1808-December 21, 1838), a notary, school trustee, militia officer, and member of the legislative assembly. Like most of the men eventually hanged for treason, he first tried to bring responsible government to Lower Canada through peaceful means.

Though he did not fight in any of the battles of 1837, he fled to Vermont at the urging of family. There he met the Patriote leader Dr. Robert Nelson. He convinced Cardinal that a viable rebel army was in place in America with plenty of weapons and support from Americans.

Cardinal returned to his village of Châteauguay and joined the Frères-Chasseurs secret society. When the uprising began November 3, 1838, Cardinal took command of local rebels as a brigadier-general. The next day, he took a detachment of Patriotes to the local Mohawk reserve to take their weapons. The natives, ever loyal to the Queen, arrested Cardinal and his men and turned them over to the army.

He hanged as part of the first group of Patriotes.

Joseph Duquet

Joseph Duquet (September 18, 1815 – December 21, 1838) was a notary who studied under Cardinal in Châteauguay. After the November 1837 uprising, Duquet helped his uncle, wanted by the British, to escape to the United States. Duquet joined Nelson's first raid on the colony in February 1838.

Following a general amnesty for most rebels, Duquet returned to Châteauguay where he helped found the local lodge of the Frères-Chasseurs. Duquet took part in Cardinal's ill-fated attempt to get weapons from the Mohawks.

Arrested with Cardinal, he joined him on the gallows.

Chevalier de Lorimier

François-Marie-Thomas Chevalier de Lorimier (December 27, 1803 – February 15, 1839) was a notary in Montreal. When the rebellion began, he joined 200 men in Saint-Eustache who tried to hold of an army eight times their number. De Lorimier escaped just before the final British assault.

He fled to the United States. He was at General Nelson's side during the brief invasion in February 1838. He next took part in the November 1838 uprising at Beauharnois and fought in a skirmish several days later in which the Patriotes drove away a British detachment. Several days later, when the British won the upper hand, he fled and was caught near the American border.

He hanged as part of the third group of convicted Patriotes.

Pierre-Théophile Decoigne

Pierre-Théophile Decoigne (March 13, 1808-January 18, 1839) was a notary. He joined the Frères-Chasseurs in September 1838 and he captained rebel troops in the November uprising near Napierville. The British captured him as he fled to America.

He hanged as part of the second group of convicted Patriotes.

Charles Hindenlang

Charles Hindenlang (March 29, 1810-February 15, 1839) was born in Paris and served in the French army. He moved to the United States and was drawn into the Patriote rebellion, where he offered to teach battle tactics to Nelson's troops. He faced defeat with Robert Nelson at the battle of Odelltown and was captured as he fled to America.

He hanged as part of the third group of convicted Patriotes.

Pierre-Rémi Narbonne

Pierre-Rémi Narbonne (1809- February 15, 1839) was a persistent Lower Canada rebel. In November of 1837, he fought the British at the fall of St. Charles and escaped to the United States. He joined Robert Nelson in his unsuccessful raid into Quebec in February 1838. Narbonne attacked the colony again a month later as part of a small raid. Captured during that attempt, he was released in July. He promptly rejoined Nelson in Vermont. In the November 1838 raids, Narbonne was captured at the battle of Odelltown.

He hanged as part of the third group of convicted Patriotes.

Patriote Leaders Pardoned

The rebellion started by Louis-Joseph Papineau, and Wolfred and Robert Nelson took the lives of over 300 rebels, and 27 soldiers or militiamen.

Louis-Joseph Papineau (October 7, 1786-September 25, 1871) stayed out of the fighting once he fled to America in November 1837. Pardoned in 1842, he returned to Canada in 1845 and was elected to the new Parliament of the unified Province of Canada in 1848.

Wolfred Nelson (July 10, 1791-June 17, 1863) was captured in February 1838 and exiled to Bermuda. Pardoned, he returned to Montreal in 1842 and was elected to Parliament in 1844. In 1854, he became mayor of Montreal.

As for Robert Nelson (August 8, 1794-March 1, 1873), he moved to California where he made and lost a fortune during the gold rush. In 1863, he relocated to New York City to practice medicine. Though pardoned, he never returned to Canada (except in a coffin after his death).

Patriotes' End: 1. 108 Face Court Martial

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:08:00 +0000

Following the rout of Robert Nelson's rebels during battles in the southern townships of Lower Canada November 3 to 10, 1838, the British began a long court martial of the captured rebels for treason. Between November 28, 1838, and May 6, 1839, 108 French Canadian Patriote's faced their life and death examination before a clutch of British officers in Montreal.

Sir John Colborne, the military commander in British North America, initiated the court martial. In preparation, he declared martial law, suspended habeas corpus, and forbade other courts from trying or bailing anyone charged with treason or suspicion of treason. He appointed Major General John Clitherow as president of the court martial, with 15 other officers acting as judges.

Fortunately, Lower Canada did not have a legal equivalent to the Lawless Aggressions Act used against prisoners in Upper Canada. Patriote prisoners could and did call witnesses in their defense and vigorously cross-examined the prosecution witnesses.

The Lower Canada judge advocates tried the senior officers alone and the rank and file in groups of between three and 19. Unlike the trials of captured Hunters in Kingston, where a group of men were tried and convicted in as little as an hour, the Patriote trials lasted between three and eight days. Much of that time passed as prisoners presented defense witnesses. Whereas the Upper Canada court martial managed to try 140 men in five weeks in Kingston, Clitherow and his officers spent five months to try 108 men.

In Montreal, the court accused 10 men of murder as well as treason. Murder convictions were flawed. The British treated a death of one of their own during a battle as murder. In most cases, no witness could positively identify the accused murderer because he was just one of many shooting at the time. The proximity of the accused to the victim seemed to be all the court needed to convict. Five accused murders hanged, three were transported, one was acquitted, and one was allowed bail.

In Montreal, the officers recommended a reduced punishment for 21 men sentenced to hang. Of those, 12 were released on bail or exiled and the rest transported.

While the legal process in Lower Canada met the British standards of justice for the time, the execution rate paralleled that of Upper Canada. Eleven of 140 men tried in Kingston hanged compared to 12 of 108 men court-martialed in Montreal. In both cases, hangings tended to apply to leaders. All those hanged met their fate in the Pied-du-Courant Prison in Montreal in three groups: December 21, 1838, January 18, 1839, and February 15, 1839.

Besides those hanged, authorities transported 58 to a penal colony in Australia, acquitted eight, exiled three from the colony, and granted bail to 26.

The transportees set sail on the Buffalo September 28, 1839, with 60 Hunter raiders from the Battle of the Windmill, 18 Patriots taken in raids near Detroit, and five common criminals. They landed in Australia near Sydney at a place still called Canada Bay February 26, 1840, after a stop in Tasmania to drop off their American compatriots.

The convicts spent two years in slave conditions building roads. In 1842, they received their tickets to leave, allowing them to work for wages if they cold find jobs. Between 1843 and 1844, Britain pardoned them. Except for two that died and one who stayed, they eventually all returned to Canada.

John A. Macdonald: 2. Starts Political Career

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 01:49:00 +0000

The Patriot War launched the career of a young, gangly, curly-haired barrister from Kingston Ontario. By taking on intensely political clients that others dared not touch and by winning cases that seemed lost from the start, John Alexander Macdonald (January 10, 1815-June 6, 1891) became a household name. He later leveraged that popularity (and his orator gifts) for a foray into politics.

At just 22, Macdonald, a militia private, raced to Toronto in early December 1837 to help put down the rebellion led by William Lyon Mackenzie. He saw no direct military action then or for the rest of the war. He fought his battles in court rooms.

Young J. A. Macdonald

When Bill Johnston and other Patriots planned a raid on Gananoque in February 1838, hundreds of farmers gathered in Kingston to attack Fort Henry as part of the plot. Lt.-Colonel Richard Bonnycastle's successful defense of Kingston and Upper Canada included the arrest of 50 of those farmers.

Defends Farmers

In July 1838, nine farmers went on trial, charged under the British Treason Act. Eight had the great fortune to hire Macdonald as their lawyer. At the start, convictions looked assured, since the accused had signed confessions.

Ahead of the trial, Macdonald rigorously challenged jurors. During the trial, he cast grave doubts on the validity of the signed confessions and had them set aside. His cross-examinations caused prosecution witnesses to contradict one another, and he demonstrated the crown's failure to prove intent.

The court tried Nelson Reynolds, said to be the leader, on July 4. Macdonald's legal tactics saw Reynolds acquitted July 6. The prosecution dropped one case because evidence matched Reynold's case. The trials of the six others resulted in acquittals. Upper Canada newspapers ran the story and praised Macdonald's skill.

Defends Kingston Jailer

In late July, John Montgomery and 12 other political prisoners broke out of Fort Henry and successfully crossed the St. Lawrence River to America. The day before the big escape, Montgomery's gang suggested their jailer, John Ashley, who had married only days earlier, take his new wife to church on Sunday and skip the prisoners' usual exercise period. The jailer happily obliged, thus giving the prisoners enough time alone to execute their plans.

Lt.-Colonel Henry Dundas, commander of the British 83rd Regiment of Foot, believing the fort inescapable, hastily arrested Ashley for aiding the prisoners. When the escape's facts came to light, Dundas released Ashley. Ashley, his reputation tarnished, hired Macdonald to sue Dundas for damages. Macdonald won the case and further respect for his skills.

Defends Hunter Officers

After the capture of Hunter raiders at the Battle of the Windmill in November 1838, Macdonald agreed to defend three officers: Nils von Schoultz, Daniel George, and Dorephus Abbey. Von Schoultz, George and Abbey lost their cases and soon their lives. Macdonald lost no credibility with his strikeout.

Begins Political Career

In 1843, Macdonald successfully ran for city alderman. The next year, voters elected him to sit in the colony's legislature. He became a cabinet minister for the first time in 1847 and attorney-general in 1854.

In response to the rise of the Fenians in the 1860s and raids by Confederates from Canada into America during the Civil War, Macdonald formed Canada's first secret service to spy on both groups.

In 1867, Macdonald joined other colonial leaders in negotiations to unite into a single country. At the birth of Canada July 1, 1867, Macdonald became the first prime minister the same day he received his knighthood. He led Canada through its first formative decades.

Benjamin Lett: 2. Terrorizes Quiet Cobourg

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:57:00 +0000

Late on July 26, 1839, a Hunter gang carrying heavy trunks boarded a small schooner, the Guernsey, at Oswego, New York. The ship sailed at midnight. At daybreak, the strangers emerged on deck, drew weapons from their trunks and took over the schooner.

One leader was Benjamin Lett. By his side stood Samuel Peters Hart. Formerly a pro-reform publisher of material highly critical of the Family Compact, Hart's story echoed the tales of many Upper Canada dissidents. He fled to America after a Tory mob wrecked his printing office and dragged him through the snow. That episode warped Hart into a dangerous and vengeful man.

On the morning of July 28, the Guernsey anchored on the north side of Lake Ontario three miles from the quiet town of Cobourg. Hart, Lett and four others—Miles Luke, William Baker, William Watkins, Henry Wilson—disembarked. They carried a trunk loaded with armaments and combustible materials—the tools for murder and arson. They journeyed to a farm owned by a fellow Hunter and his son near Cobourg. There Henry Moon, a local Hunter, joined them.

Lett and his gang discussed a list of victims—including Sheppard McCormick, a veteran of the Caroline attack—they intended to rob, murder or abduct. They delayed for a day, waiting for repairs to their wagon. In that time, Moon had a change of heart. Though he supported Hunter and Patriot goals, he decided he couldn't be an accomplice to cold-blooded murder. He slipped away and informed Cobourg authorities.

Moon told everything he knew, and it was far more than just this raid by Lett and Hart. He said a network of Hunter cells in Canada, with a stock of arms from America, would soon rise up, commandeer all British steamboats on Lake Ontario and attack Upper Canada from within and without. The mastermind, according to Moon, was Bill Johnston.

Aside: Moon's description sounds like a plan Johnston and General Donald McLeod might have dreamed up. The scale was grand and the tactics clever. At this time, Johnston lurked once again in the Thousand Islands, acquiring boats and recruiting crews. Of course, Moon may have invented the story.

In Cobourg, a militia captain hastily assembled a band of armed men and hurried to the farmhouse where Hart's gang reposed. Bursting in, they captured everyone but Lett and Luke: they escape out of a first storey window and vanished in the night.

On September 13, 1839, the Cobourg conspirators were tried before Judge Jonas Jones and found guilty. The judge handed down jail terms between six months and seven years (for Hart). Moon, the prosecution's star witness, and his family disappeared; fleeing for safety after Moon's treachery to the Hunters.

Lett Strikes Again

The same day that Judge Jones sentenced the Cobourg conspirators, someone crossed the Niagara River from New York State and burned a church in Chippawa within eyesight of the dwelling of John Ussher, brother of Edgeworth Ussher murdered by Lett. Several days later, arson claimed nearby buildings owned by a prominent loyalist. While no proof existed, locals blamed Lett. He never denied it.

Bill Johnston: 14. Feted in Prison, Released, Accused of Robbery

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Following Bill Johnston's arrest at the hands of Captain William Vaughan in December 1838, Johnston awaited trial in an Albany, New York, jail cell. His faithful daughter Catherine (Kate), 19, moved into his cell to provide company, carry messages (she freely came and went) and attend to his needs. Theirs is an early example of celebrity incarceration.

Thanks to newspaper accounts of Kate's heroic efforts to avoid the British patrols as she took supplies to her fugitive father the summer before, Kate was as famous as her Bill. Together, they entertained an unending list of journalists, dignitaries and well-wishers. Kate reportedly turned down several marriage proposals from well-to-do admirers.

One newspaper account from January 26, 1839 reads in part: "He holds a sort of involuntary levee in his prison every day. People flock to see him, especially strangers. He is certainly a very respectable person in appearance; but there is a restlessness in his manner with a tremulousness in his eyes and an indisposition to look you honestly in the face, which gives a very unfavorable impression.

"His daughter, the adventurous girl of the Thousand Islands, is here also—the lioness of the hour. She was in the Senate Chamber the day, the object of course of much curiosity. I am also informed she attended a ball the other evening and was well received."

Bill's jailers provided privileges usually reserved for the rich and famous. Visitors came and went. In his scrapbook, he recorded the names of 84 people who donated money to help sustain him in prison.

On January 29, 1839, he attended, under police escort, a fund-raising benefit held in his honor in Albany. He appeared at another benefit March 5 in Auburn, New York, escorted only by Kate, through the journey was two days each way.

Not everyone spoke or wrote favorably of Bill. On the coach ride to Auburn, a journalist traveled part way with them. In his report, he wrote, "If Bill Johnston is not a pirate, he 'swears like one' at any rate and wears that sunken, degraded and cunning look which would condemn him anywhere justly or otherwise."

In the mid-April 1839, the court granted Bill bail. While he visited friends in New York City, Kate went home to Clayton. At the end of the month, Bill returned home and ordered new boats to be built in Cape Vincent. With winter over, spring on the river proved too strong a lure: he declined to return for his court appearance.

Royal Mail Robbed

While many of the men who helped Johnston burn the Sir Robert Peel were bona fide Patriots, a few were examples of the vagabonds and lawless breed of men who inhabited the islands in that era.

On April 24, 1839, a long and lightweight rowboat, painted bright red inside, pale red outside and decorated with black stripes, landed in a hidden cove near Gananoque, Upper Canada. In it were two of Johnston's crew, Robert Smith and John Farrow, accompanied by another ne'er-do-well named Washington Kelly.

As darkness fell, they ambushed the mail rider, Maxwell Greenwood, on his way to Kingston. With a gun pointed at the rider's chest, Kelly said he was Bill Johnston and ordered the rider down. (Greenwood had met Johnston and saw through Kelly's lie.)

The bandits tied Greenwood to a tree and departed with the horse and the mail bag containing ₤191. Greenwood wiggled free and went to the nearest farmhouse for help.

The British complained about the robbery to American authorities. Investigators suspected Kelly, Smith and Farrow but had no proof. But when the three started to spend money that everyone knew they could not honestly possess, that sealed their fates. Kelly, Smith and Farrow were arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned in New York State.

Several newspapers, especially on the Canadian side of the river, speculated that Bill Johnston was behind the robbery. While the boat used by the robbers matched boats used by Bill, he had not returned from New York by that point.

On August 9, 1839, Kelly, Smith, and Farrow escaped from jail and returned to the protection of the Thousand Islands. They were never recaptured.

Benjamin Lett: 1. Begins His Personal War

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:20:00 +0000

Throughout the Patriot War, the majority of Patriot and Hunter raiders tended to follow rules of engagement on par with their British enemy. That is, they behaved as soldiers, not murderers. While the British called them pirates and brigands, they were no more or less prone to abuses on the battlefield than the Upper Canadians. There was one notable exception, Benjamin Lett.

Lett (November 14, 1813-December 9, 1858) was born County Kilkenny, Ireland, to Samuel Lett and Elizabeth (Warren). They immigrated to Lower Canada in 1819 and settled in Chatham Township near the Ottawa River, northwest on Montreal.

In September, 1824, Samuel died from a fall, leaving his widow and seven young children. In 1833, Elizabeth moved her children (consisting of Benjamin, Robert, Thomas, Elizabeth, Anne, Maria and Sarah) to a farm in Darlington Township on Lake Ontario, east of Toronto.

Benjamin Lett took up the Reform banner in the 1830s, but did not start out as a rebel. Like many Canadians who supported William Lyon Mackenzie, he became radicalized after the rebellion by loyalist gangs in Upper Canada, usually referred to as Tories or Orangemen, who terrorized Reform sympathizers while the government turned a blind eye to their thuggery.

Lett, himself an Orangeman, refused to join them in their marauding and was in turn set upon and fled Canada. Legend has it, and it may be apocryphal, that Lett's hatred of the British solidified into rage after loyalists shot one of his brothers and sexually abused a sister.

Lett did not march on Toronto with Mackenzie in December 1837, but became an early volunteer in the Navy Island occupation. Historians list him as one of the handful of Patriot casualties. Whatever his wounds, they were minor.

Various sources described Lett as 5 feet 11 inches tall, rather slim with sandy hair and whiskers. He had a ruddy and freckled face, light-skin, and light blue eyes that were remarkably penetrating. His hands were large and muscular with long, round, very white fingers. Many published accounts state Lett wore four pistols and a Bowie knife hidden under his coat.

Lett's movements between the abandonment of Navy Island in January 1838 to the late autumn of that year are unrecorded, other than his initiation into the Hunters Lodge. In retrospect, it seems Lett fell in league with a small band of freelance rebels unsanctioned by the Patriot or Hunter leadership.

Lett settles a Score

Lett harbored a grudge for the British burning of the Caroline, and he made it his personal business to avenge that act. Late on November 15, 1838, while all eyes were turned to the siege of Hunters near Prescott, Upper Canada, Lett and two accomplices crossed the Niagara River by boat from Navy Island. The next morning, they knocked on the door of Captain Edgeworth Ussher's home. Ussher had piloted Captain Andrew Drew's fleet of boats during the attack on the Caroline.

Ussher awoke and sleepily opened his door. Seeing armed men he slammed the door. Lett fired his pistol through the door's sidelight, killing his victim instantly with a ball in the heart. Lett's gang returned to the United States.

Sir George Arthur posted a reward of ₤500 for Lett and demanded that the American government capture and return the murderer. The comeback from New York Secretary of State, John C. Spencer (January 8, 1788-May 17, 1855), was priceless. He replied he would hand over Lett if Arthur first agreed to turn over Colonel Allan MacNab and Captain Andrew Drew for the murder of Amos Durfre.

By that point, the British had already knighted Colonel MacNab for the Caroline raid that killed Durfre--a fact Spencer must surely have known.

Arthur would later have more reasons to post rewards for Benjamin Lett.

Uncle Tom Fights for Canada

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:07:00 +0000

In January 1838, Canadian militia repulsed Brigadier-General Thomas Jefferson Sutherland at Fort Malden. The militia also captured the Patriot's schooner and her commander, Brigadier-General Edward Alexander Theller.

One of the curious footnotes of the Patriot War is the makeup of the militia. It included an all-black company, with Rev. Josiah Henson, 48, as captain. Like many, he was an escaped American slave. Canada gave the black militiamen freedom and the opportunities available to free men, and they were grateful.

Henson (June 15, 1789-May 5, 1883) was born into slavery in Maryland. Over the years, he witnessed his father brutalized and all of his family, except his mother, sold off.

He escaped to Upper Canada with his wife and children in 1830 and founded a settlement for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden in Western Ontario. Dawn prospered, with about 500 residents at its peak. They exported black walnut lumber and furniture to the United States and Britain. Henson became a Methodist preacher.

Many accounts say Henson inspired the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a tribute he never disputed.

In his autobiography, he gives a brief account of his part in Upper Canada rebellion. "I was appointed a captain to the 2nd Essex Company of Coloured Volunteers. Though I could not shoulder a musket [because of his religion], I could carry a sword. My company held Fort Malden from Christmas till the following May, and also took the schooner Anne and captured all it carried, which were three hundred arms, two cannons, musketry, and provisions for the rebel troops. This was a fierce and gallant action, and it did much towards breaking up the rebel party, for they could not obtain provisions while we held the fort, which we continued to do till we were relieved by the colonel of the 44th Regiment from England. The coloured men were willing to help defend the government that had given them a home when they had fled from slavery."

Aside: Henson is the first black man to have his portrait on a Canadian stamp. Matthew Henson, his great-grand nephew, accompanied Admiral Robert Peary to the North Pole in 1909.

Hunter Prisoners Sent Home, But Not All

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:13:00 +0000

Following the hanging of Lyman Leach in February of 1839, 146 prisoners, mostly Americans, continued to languish in Fort Henry, Kingston. Officially, 123 faced the death sentence. As the cold grip of a Canadian winter began to thaw that spring, so did the chilly attitude of the Upper Canada government.

Lt-Governor Sir George Arthur never intended to hang all the prisoners, despite their verdicts and sentences. With most of the Hunter officers dispatched, and with public sentiment turning away from additional executions, Arthur and the colonial establishment commenced a period of repatriation.

Repatriation Begins

This new policy coincided with an organized and concerted effort by American civic leaders in the border states, especially Jefferson county, to plead for mercy and to not antagonize the Upper Canada establishment. Promises were made to prevent further raids. (Bernard Bagley, Bill Johnston's friend and lawyer, was among the American organizers.)

Men of means contacted colleagues and friends in Canada asking them to release specific people. Pardoned men, some barely literate, submitted eloquent letters to local papers on their return thanking the British for their leniency. It paid off. Numerous men, especially young men, were pardoned and sent home that spring.

In his memoirs, Captian Daniel Heustis wrote that by "the first of May, 64 of our number were pardoned and sent home to the United States, and 22 others were discharged without a trial, making in all 86, leaving 60 still in captivity."

Repatriation Ends

Heustis said that 25 others, including himself and William Gates, were on another list of men to be repatriated but that listed was torn up. He gave no reason, but Gates, another Hunter who wrote his memoirs, gave this version.

"Free pardons for myself and 24 others were made out and sent down to sheriff [Alan Macdonell], who, in the plenitude of his power, kept them in his own hands for two weeks. During this time, a British officer for some unknown purpose crossed the lines to French Creek, in Jefferson county. Our American friends not relishing his presence, treated him with that attention which they thought most befitting such gentlemen. Not having the right sort of perceptions to appreciate such honors, he became greatly enraged with the favors bestowed. Making his way back to Kingston, he gave an embittered account of the affair to the high sheriff, who forwarded a still more exaggerated report of it to the lieutenant-governor, accompanying it with the pardons which he had so unjustly withheld from us. The old sinner, Sir George Arthur, was so incensed that he committed them all to the flames."

Gates appears to refer to Captain James Macfarlane. He escorted young Hunter Vaughan home to his father, Captain William Vaughan, in Sackets Harbor, New York. Macfarlane, a militia officer who sat on the court martial of the captured Hunters, was threatened by a mob in Oswego while returning home and claims he had to flea for his life.

While the Macfarlane incident did arouse resentment in Upper Canada, historian John Northman presents a different reason for quashing of the 25 pardons that seems more likely. He wrote that, on May 4, 1839, Sheriff Alexander McMartin escorted seven pardoned American raiders, captured on the schooner Anne in January 1838, to the border near St. Regis. Awaiting them was Judge H. W. Tucker. Instead of humbly thanking the sheriff, he complained of British tyranny and mistreatment of the prisoners. Stupidly, Tucker broke the fragile protocol upon which repatriation subsisted.

The Macfarlane and McMartin incidents made it politically impossible for Arthur to continue being lenient. He shut the door to further repatriation. But Arthur did tell the remaining prisoners through Sheriff Macdonell that the hangings were over. Transport to Tasmania was now there fate.

Long Wait Begins

With the period or pardons at an end, the remaining 60 prisoners sat out the hot summer inside the fort. In June, 18 men convicted for the bloody raid on Windsor joined them in their cells.

The men sought whatever solace and amusement they could. Heustis, the senior ranking Hunter still alive, worked hard to maintain the men's spirits.

"On the ever glorious Fourth of July," he wrote, "we celebrated as well as circumstances would permit. Out of several pocket handkerchiefs a flag was manufactured, as nearly resembling the star spangled banner as we could conveniently make it. This emblem of freedom and national independence we hoisted in our room, taking good care that the officers did not get a peep at it. We procured some lemons and sugar, which enabled us to pass round a refreshing bowl of lemonade. We then let off our toasts, in which the heroes of '76 were duly remembered."

Heustis recounted how Arthur visited them once during their imprisonment. "He was a short, stout-built man, and had a tyrannical look about him, which did not belie his character. Just before he left, he made a brief address to us; in which, among other things not so complimentary, he said, 'If you had been fighting in the right cause, you would have been an honor to your country'."

Heustis and the other Hunters never viewed themselves as criminals, preferring the role of liberators in a losing battle. Heustis put it this way: "…we had faced the enemy, as did the heroes of Bunker Hill, if not with equal success in the final result, at least in the same spirit and for the attainment of the same object, and we saw no cause for self-reproach."

Battle of Windsor: 3. Prisoners Executed

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:24:00 +0000

Executions of the Hunters and Patriots captured at the Battle of Windsor began in London, Upper Canada, in early 1839.

An American, Hiram Benjamin Lynn, 26, was the first to fall through the scaffold's trap door. A rebel leader accused of leading the bloody assault on the Windsor barracks, he hanged January 7, 1839.

On January 11, Canadian Daniel Bedford, 27, died next. Bedford, a former innkeeper from the village of Norwich, and a father of three, was a committed rebel. He'd marched with Dr. Charles Duncombe in the aborted rebellion in the London district the previous December. He was captured as Duncombe's army fled, but granted bail January 9, 1838. He absconded to the U.S, where he joined the Patriot army. (His wife Lydia remarried and had six more children.)

A young American from New Hampshire, Albert Clark, 21, hanged January 14.

While it was the intent of the colonial government to make an example, the crowds at the public executions were smaller and less enthusiastic than for the hangings in Kingston. The inhabitants of the London area harbored some sympathy for the rebel cause.

American-born Cornelius Cunningham, 32, had resided in Upper Canada for eight years. He held the rank of colonel among the Patriot raiders. The British policy was the hang officers and Cunningham met his fate February 4. His final words were: "Let it be remembered that I die a martyr in the cause of liberty."

Amos Perley, a young Canadian originally from New Brunswick, had long resided in the United State. He joined the Patriots to help liberate his fellow Canadians and rose to the rank of major. He hanged February 6, 1839 and sprang “into eternity, without a struggle” according to one newspaper report.

Joshua Doan

On the gallows that day with Perley was Joshua Gwillen Doan, 28. Doan and his parents were Quakers. His family moved from Pennsylvania in 1811 shortly before Joshua was born. His father, Jonathan, founded the Quaker community of Sparta where Joshua grew up. Like his father, Joshua became a farmer. In 1832 he and his brother Joel started a tannery.

The brothers were both caught up in the reform movement lead by William Lyon Mackenzie and abandoned their non-violent teachings to join in Dr. Duncombe's uprising in December 1837. Joshua and Joel fled to the United States as the rebel army dissolved. The British posted a ₤100 reward for Joshua, a lieutenant in the rebel army.

Joshua's last letter to his wife, Fanny, survived for posterity.

London, January 27th, 1839 Dear Wife, I am at this moment confined in the cell from which I am to go to the scaffold. I received my sentence today, and am to be executed on February 6th. I am permitted to see you tomorrow, any time after 10 o'clock in the morning, as may suit you best. I wish you to think of such questions as you wish to ask me, as I do not know how long you will be permitted to stay. Think as little of my unhappy fate as you can; as from the love you bear me, I know too well how it must affect you. I wish, you to inform my father and brother of my sentence as soon as possible. I must say good-bye for the night, and may God protect you and my dear child, and give you fortitude to meet that coming event with the Christian grace and fortitude which is the gift of Him, our Lord, who created us. That this may be the case, is the prayer of your affectionate husband, JOSHUA G. DOANE. At their final meeting, Fanny had to be torn from her husband's arms by jail guards. (She later married Joshua's brother Joel.)

The modern town of Sparta exists as a few houses at a crossroad. West of Sparta is the old Quaker cemetery. In it lie the graves of Joshua Doan and Amos Perley.

The remaining 18 convicted prisoners had their death sentences commuted to transport for life to the harsh penal colony in Van Dieman's Land (now Tasmania). In June, authorities shipped them to Fort Henry in Kingston to wait for a ship.

Battle of Windsor: 2. Prisoners Go on Trial

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 14:56:00 +0000

The Hunters and Patriots captured at the Battle of Windsor faced a trial by court martial in London, Upper Canada, under the same rules and restrictions as their fellow combatants imprisoned in Fort Henry at Kingston. Convictions were almost guaranteed and hanging a likely result.

The judge advocate for the London court martial was Henry Sherwood (1807-1855). Sherwood, 31, was a tightly connected member of the Family Compact, the cabal of elites than ran Upper Canada and provided the catalyst for the rebellion. He was related to the colonial Solicitor General Henry John Boulton and Judge Jonas Jones.

Sherwood was elected to the colonial parliament in 1836. When William Lyon Mackenzie and his ill-prepared band of rebels marched on Toronto in December 1837, Sherwood was in the force that defeated the rebels. (From 1846 to 1850, Sherwood served as the fourth premier of Canada West, the renamed Upper Canada.)

Henry Sherwood

In contrast to the trials at Kingston, where William Draper allowed prisoners to cross-examine prosecution witnesses and address the court directly, Sherwood kept a tighter reign on the London proceedings. He insisted that the prisoners' statements to the court be written in advance and read by him. In a strange twist, Sherwood cross-examined witnesses on behalf of the prisoners; thus being at times the prosecutor and the defense counsel.

Sherwood tried 44 men between December 27, 1838, and January 18, 1839. Sherwood tried the rebel officers singly and others in groups.

As Draper had done in his first trial, that of Daniel George, Sherwood's first trial was of a single rebel officer, Hiram Lynn. Sherwood went methodically through the evidence and explained each provision of the Lawless Aggressions Act.

That act provided prisoners little room for defense, disallowed court participation by prisoners' lawyers, and allowed evidence that would have been disqualified under similar laws, such as the British Treason Act. The latter required two prosecution witnesses for a conviction, respected the defendant's right to legal representation, and permitted defense counsel to have an advanced look at the prosecution's evidence.

Just as some invaders captured at Prescott had done, many London prisoners stated in their defense that they were coerced or misled and had not meant to fight. As at the Kingston trials, that defense was worthless. The men had been caught bearing arms "against the Queen" and that was all that mattered.

In the end, 43 men were convicted and 38 sentenced to death. Only Abraham Tiffany was acquitted. The state produced no evidence against him and Sherwood later wrote the court believed him to be insane.

Five of the London prisoners became witnesses for the prosecution in exchange for a promise of mercy: David McDougall, Daniel Sweetman, George Putnam, Sidney Barber, and William Bartlett. Putnam and McDougall were pardoned. (The exact disposition of the other three is not known but they were not executed or transported.)

As had occurred in Kingston, the executions began before the trials completed.

Bill Johnston: 13. Arrested, Sent to Prison

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Sun, 22 May 2011 15:30:00 +0000

After Bill Johnston escaped custody late on November 28, 1838, following his acquittal and re-arrest, one man made it his mission to track down the fugitive and apprehend him by whatever means possible. Few men had the skills and daring to find, corner and confront Johnston but this pursuer was Johnston's equal.

As a steamship skipper, Captain William Vaughan knew the Thousand Islands as well as Johnston. As a young naval lieutenant during the War of 1812, Vaughan had been Johnston's ally and friend. Together, they had raided British supply ships. But, when the British captured Vaughan's son, Hunter, after the Battle of the Windmill, Vaughan held Johnston at least partly responsible.

Captain William Vaughan

To find Bill Johnston, Vaughan enlisted the help of Bill's son John. John agreed because he believed his father would be granted bail and get little jail time if convicted. John wanted his father to abandon his life on the lam and come home.

On December 8, an informant told Vaughan that Bill was at Salina (near Syracuse). Vaughan, John and a deputy-marshal set out. During travel conversation, John learned there was no chance his father would be granted bail; so he abandoned the pursuit.

Vaughan arrived in Salina but Johnston was gone. Based on a tip, Vaughan set out alone in a sleigh December 10 for a 46 mile journey through the early winter countryside. His destination was a farm near the small town of Rome, where Vaughan heard Johnston was staying with family. (These may have been relatives of Johnston's wife Ann, several who lived near Rome.)

Vaughan walked unannounced into the farm house at 9 that night and demanded Johnston return to Salina with him. Though armed with pistols and a dirk, Bill gave no resistance. Vaughan and his prisoner arrived at Salina at 6 the next morning, where Vaughan handed Johnston to the deputy-marshal.

From there, the three men journeyed to Syracuse, and Johnston again found himself in the custody of US Marshal Nathaniel Garrow. Two days later, Garrow locked Johnston in an Albany prison cell.

Johnston Sets the Record Straight

On December 14, the Albany Evening Journal published a letter supposedly written by Johnston from prison. In it he said he did not help plan the raid on Prescott, as many believed. Further, he stated he tried to dissuade the leaders against the raid because he believed they had insufficient men, ammunition and experienced officers, and would hang if captured. The letter's last paragraph showed his frustration at the state of the Patriot movement and specific but unnamed persons.

"The Patriot cause has suffered and is still suffering more from pretended friends in the States than from its open enemies in Canada. It is from the treachery of a pretended Patriot that your humble servant is within the walls of this prison."

As usual with Bill's published letters, the writing was far above what he could produce himself (as the one surviving sample shows) and suggests the hand of a ghost writer or a respectful newspaper editor.

Many in the press vilified Captain Vaughan as a traitor to Bill Johnston. By Vaughan's efforts paid off. In gratitude for the capture of Johnston, the British pardoned Hunter Vaughan and shipped him home that spring.

Why did Johnston surrender to Vaughan without a fight, one might ask? There are many reasons. Bill's war was never with Americans. And despite his pirate reputation, he shied away from murder. In fact, there is no record of him killing anyone outside of the War of 1812. Also, Bill believed he could escape when it suited him.

That cold December, it suited him to stay put. Bill Johnston settled in to spend the winter in prison, but was not alone in his cell for long.

Lyman Leach: A Raider and Rebel Hangs

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 09 May 2011 01:45:00 +0000

After the executions of four Hunter raiders in Kingston on January 4, 1839, weeks passed without additional hangings. The remaining 150 prisoners in Fort Henry, who'd seen their comrades taken away to die every week or two, began to believe that the hangings had ceased. The Upper Canada public was tiring of the brutal executions. The time was right to show some mercy.

The colonial boss, Lt.-Governor Sir George Arthur, never intended to hang every Hunter, despite the death sentence almost every prisoner faced. He had a list of Hunter officers who the colonial government believed had to die as a deterrent against future raids. After 10 executions, he had one more name on his list: Lyman Leach (a.k.a. Lyman Lewis).

There is no record that Leach was a Hunter officer at the Battle of the Windmill. He had commanded a company during the occupation of Hickory Island; so, he may have had a leadership role. But that is not why Arthur hanged him. He had information that Leach helped burn the Sir Robert Peel with Bill Johnston in May 1838.

Leach may have plotted with Johnston but he never set foot on the Peel. He was one of many who got lost in the woods that night. True or not, people believed it. In its February 12, 1839, edition, the Upper Canada Herald stated that "Lewis" was second in command to Johnson in the burning of the ship. And the Upper Canada authorities desperately wanted to punish the Peel raiders.

Lyman grew up in the village of Cicero Center on Oneida Lake, New York. His father was one of the earliest settlers there and ran a tavern in a log building. At about 15, Lyman enlisted in 1813 to fight the British in the War of 1812.

At the start of the Patriot War, Lyman was 40 and lived in the village of Liverpool on Onondaga Lake. He ran a brick works, and was an early member of the Patriots and then of the Hunters.

Lyman was not shy about his anti-British sentiments and, according to stories in the Liverpool Telegraph, he use to antagonize an English immigrant named Dr. Petit.

"The doctor was a firm believer in John Bull, and during the [Patriot War] espoused with ardor the cause of the British. He and Leach were often brought face to face in wordy combat and many battles of this kind were fought between them during the period of the struggle along the Canadian border. During the heated controversies, neither could find the words corresponding to their hot tempers and their feelings toward one another. The village Post Office was usually the scene of these encounters, which often ended in the doctor's prediction that if Leach ever ventured across the border he would be caught and hanged, and 'damn you, Leach,' he would declare, 'I hope they will string you up without judge or jury'."

The doctor's prediction played out, February 11, 1839. Lyman Leach, died in the Kingston jail, the eleventh and last captured windmill raider to face the gallows.

In his memoirs, Daniel Heustis wrote a paragraph about Lyman that must serve as his epitaph as none other exists. His words sum up both Lyman's strengths and failings.

"He was one of the most daring and fearless men I ever saw. He was so perfectly reckless of danger that nothing could intimidate him. Not having finished his breakfast when the officer came to escort him to the gallows, he insisted on being allowed to enjoy his last meal, and kept the officer waiting till he had coolly and deliberately concluded his repast. This heedless indifference in regard to his fate was characteristic of the man. Aside from his bravery, there were not so many attractive points in his character as were exhibited by the other martyrs."

Like most of the executed Hunters, the British buried Lyman in an unmarked grave.

Hanging of Hunter Raiders Continues

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 17:43:00 +0000

Throughout December, 1838, the Upper Canada solicitor-general, Lt.-Colonel William Draper, 37, kept up the relentless pace of his show trials in Kingston. In concert, Lt.-Governor Sir George Arthur, 54, confirmed the execution orders that kept the town’s hangmen busy.

A steady parade of American men, who were seen as freedom fighters by many in upstate New York, paid the ultimate price for their misguided heroics.

Following the executions of Nils von Schoultz, 31, on December 8, and Daniel George, 27, and Dorrephus Abbey, 47, on December 12, Colonel Martin Woodruff mounted the gallows on December 19.

Woodruff, 40, was the sheriff of Onondaga County, New York, a colonel in the state militia, and the last senior Hunter officer to hang. By all accounts, the hangmen that day were amateurs. Woodruff—a big man, over six feet tall and well past 200 pounds—dropped through the trap door and, in front of 250 witnesses, died a slow and agonizing death.

In his memoirs, William Gates relates what he read about Woodruff’s last minutes from newspapers: “The knot, instead of drawing tightly under the ear, slipped to the chin, leaving considerable space, and throwing the weight of the body upon the jack of the neck. In this manner he remained writhing in torment, till the spectators cried out for shame, when two hangmen stepped out and strove to strangle the poor sufferer! Failing in this, one ascended to the cross-bar, where, grasping the rope, he jerked the body upward and downward, as he would have done a sheep-stealing dog, four successive times, before the neck was broken and the lamp of life extinguished in its mortal clay.”

Woodruff’s body lies in the cemetery of St. Mary's Catholic Church, Kingston, next to Nils von Schoultz.

Joel Peeler, 41, a farmer, and Sylvanus Swete (a.k.a Sweet), 21, a cooper, faced their executions December 22. Both men pleaded guilty to being part of the Prescott raid. Evidence against Swete suggested he was the sniper who killed Lieutenant William Johnson on the first day of the windmill siege. Peeler was accused of mutilating Johnson’s corpse.

After a pause for the Christmas holidays, four more men hanged January 4, 1839: Christopher Buckley, 30, a Hunter captain and salt manufacturer; Sylvester Lawton, 28, a Hunter captain and farmer; Russell Phelps, 38, a tailor; and Duncan Anderson, 48, a laborer. Like Woodruff, Phelps and Anderson were also veterans of the aborted Hickory Island raid the previous February. Some suggested Phelps had also helped Bill Johnston burn the Sir Robert Peel.

In his memoirs, Daniel Heustis wrote about Anderson’s hanging: “Poor Anderson was sick, and could not have lived many weeks, if they had taken the best care of him! He was so weak that his murderers were obliged to support him on the scaffold! Comment on such atrocious barbarity is needless. In the evening, after this inhuman execution, Colonel [Henry] Dundas and his officers had a gay and mirthful pleasure party! O, shame! Where is thy blush?”

The day Anderson and the others died coincided with the last trial of the 161 Hunters captured after the windmill battle. Of those, Draper managed to court martial 140 in about five weeks. Of those, four were acquitted, two were given prison terms, and 134 others were sentenced to death. Another 16 men were released without trial, including many Hunter wounded and informers like Levi Chipman. Five wounded captives died.

By the time the last trial ended, 10 of the captured Hunters had made the one-way trip to the gallows. In the cold, stone casements of Fort Henry, 124 others awaited their fates. Unbeknownst to them, the hangings were almost over.

Battle of Windsor: 1. The Final Campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 01:28:00 +0000

While all eyes were riveted on the trials and executions of captured Hunters at Kingston in eastern Upper Canada, a new army of Hunters and Patriots prepared to attack the colony’s western border near Windsor. It turned out to be the final organized invasion of the Patriot War and a bungled bloody affair like all the raids before it.

The man elected as top general of the Hunter army at the Cleveland convention in September, 1838, Lucius Verus Bierce, decided it was his turn to try and win the western front—after three spectacular failures by other commanders in the opening months of 1838. He gathered an army of Hunters and Patriots south of Detroit in late November of 1838.

Bierce

US General Hugh Brady—the man who had muted the Hunter armies before by confiscating their weapons—dealt the same blow to Bierce’s army. On November 24, Brady captured a ship carrying 250 weapons bound for the raiders.

Because of their limited weaponry, Bierce hesitated to press on with the attack. However, a group of eager Patriots, led by self-appointed general William Putnam, refused to back down.

Raiders Land and Attack Windsor

In the predawn darkness of December 4, Putnam and 165 raiders commandeered the steamboat Champlain at its moorings in Detroit. They sailed the short gap across the Detroit River and landed in the farmland south of colonial Windsor (then a village of about 300).

According to William Lyon Mackenzie, Bierce’s only role in the battle was to read a proclamation on the Canadian shore that stated: “Soldiers! The time has arrived that calls for action—the blood of our slaughtered countrymen cries aloud for revenge. The spirits of Lount, and Matthews, and Moreau, are yet unavenged. The murdered heroes of Prescott lie in an unhallowed grave in the land of tyranny. The manes of the ill-fated Caroline's crew can only be appeased by the blood of the murderers. Arouse, then, soldiers of Canada! Let us avenge their wrongs! Let us march to victory or death and ever, as we meet the tyrant foe, let our war cry be: ' Remember Prescott’."

With Putnam in charge, the raiders marched quickly to Windsor and attacked the militia barracks. Deciding to burn it down, they burst into the nearest house, owned by a black man named Mills, to get embers from the fire. They invited him to join their cause. He refused, proclaimed three cheers for the queen, and was immediately shot dead.

With the barracks aflame, Putnam’s men shot militiamen as they fled, killing at least two. Two others died in the flames. Next they set a small steamer on fire in the Windsor docks. A local surgeon, Dr. John J. Hume, heard of the attack and rode into the fray to tend to the wounded. The raiders killed him, too.

Militia repel attackers

A company of Canadian militia, followed the flames and encountered the raider army in an orchard on the edge of town. Though just 60 in number, the well trained militia attacked from two sides and quickly routed the marauders, who stampeded back to the Champlain in a panic. Twenty-two raiders died in the assault and retreat, including Putnam.

The militia commander was John Prince. Due to his effective leadership in repelling earlier Patriot assaults at Fighting Island, Pelee Island and Bois Blanc Island, he’d been promoted to colonel. At some point in the nine months since his last encounter with the raiders, Prince’s ego and patriotic fervor turned him into a demon.

His first order that day was to have five captured raiders summarily shot. The order was carried out despite objections from some of Prince’s junior officers.

By the early afternoon, the full militia force of 400, backed by a regiment of regulars, had secured the river from Windsor south many miles and captured more raiders. Prince, still in a bloodthirsty mood, ordered seven more shot in front of the burned-out barracks. This time, a group of Windsor citizens persuaded him to have mercy.

At the end of the day, 46 prisoners where chained and sent on a journey to London, Ontario, to face the Queen’s justice.

Prince’s battlefield executions did not go unchallenged. Local citizen’s complained to the government. Prince faced a court martial for his actions, but was exonerated. The Upper Canada government, which abhorred his methods, liked the results. The Hunter assaults ceased.

Hunter Prisoners Endure Legal Meat Grinder

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 23:15:00 +0000

Following the single trials of the first three Hunter officers—Nils von Schoultz, Daniel George, and Dorrephus Abbey—the Upper Canada court-martial machine shifted into high gear. The colony’s solicitor-general, Lt.-Colonel William Draper, began trying the windmill prisoners in batches.

The first group included Colonel Martin Woodruff, William Gates and three others. Guards led them before 14 officers on December 3, 1838. Draper as Judge-Advocate ran the trials but it was the officers—representing the infantry, navy, artillery and militia—that determined the verdict.

Woodruff pleaded guilty: the others, not guilty. Draper presented evidence against Woodruff despite his plea. As with previous trials, Draper relied heavily on the testimony of Levi Chipman, who had agreed to become a state witness in exchange for clemency. All five were convicted.

On December 5, Draper tried 11 prisoners at once. On December 10, he tried 12 more, including Hunter Vaughan. All were convicted. Each mass trial was astonishingly brief. William Gates wrote about his trial in his memoirs:

"In a similar manner were all our comrades tried, often a dozen or fifteen at a batch, whilst the whole time occupied, from the moment they left the room till their return to it again, would not exceed generally over one hour. All that seemed necessary was to bring the culprit into the presence of the court to hear his indictment, and to give him the opportunity of repeating 'Guilty' or 'Not Guilty' either of which was sufficient to warrant a condemnation."

Stephen Wright confirmed Gates' report in his memoirs.

A guilty verdict required a two-thirds majority of the judging officers. Trials were short, deliberations brief and, in most cases, the verdict was guilty and the penalty death.

Draper held the trials at Fort Henry, Kingston, in a barracks casement like one of these.

Even by 19th-century standards, each court martial of Hunters under the Lawless Aggressions Act was unfair, one-sided and a mockery of British justice. As an example, examine the trial of Daniel Heustis and 11 others December 17, 1838.

Captain Daniel Heustis tried

The prisoners filed in between rows of guards and stood facing a table of officers: one colonel, four lieutenant-colonels, two majors and six captains, plus Colonel Draper. Each officer swore to God and the Queen to be true and honest. None of the prisoners believed a word of it.

Next, Draper read the long-winded charges. "Between the twelfth day and sixteenth day of November in the second year of the reign of our Sovereign Lady Victoria, by the Grace of God ruler of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and defender of the faith, with force and arms at the township of Edwardsburg in the Province of Upper Canada, being citizens of foreign states at peace with the United Kingdom, that is to say, the United States of America, having joined themselves to divers subjects of said Lady the Queen, who were then and there unlawfully and traitorously in arms against our said Lady the Queen, the defendants did then and there make war on our said Lady the Queen, armed with guns, bayonets and other warlike weapons, and did kill and slay divers of her Majesty’s loyal subjects."

When asked to plea, each prisoner replied not guilty. To convict each American prisoner under the act, Draper had to prove three things: that each was a citizen of a foreign country at peace with Britain, each conspired with British subjects bearing arms against the Queen, and each actively participated in the hostilities.

Draper called a barrister to the stand. He had previously interviewed the prisoners and he stated they all claimed to be citizens of the US.

Chipman admitted he was a citizen of Upper Canada and fought at the battle. He then identified Heustis and several others as men definitely involved in the hostilities.

A British sergeant testified that he arrested all the accused at the battle and was certain they must have been active participants based on the amount of weapons found at the scene.

Navy Lieutenant George Leary told the court he was present on the final day of the battle and that any man captured that day was surely involved in the hostilities. Another officer read a list of British and Canadian dead and wounded.

Two officers of the court, who previously interviewed the prisoners, read statements of facts about each man describing their role in the battle. While supposedly part of a prisoner’s defense, the testimony was far from impartial.

In his memories, Heustis wrote each prisoner was asked to sign a statement “colored to their disadvantage” during the prisoner interviews. When he balked, the official said, “There is no need to be stubborn, you are sure to be hanged.” And Heustis replied, “If the government has already decided to hang us, do not expect us to provide the rope.”

Lastly each prisoner read their own defense statement. Heustis admitted he was at the battle but claimed (lied) that he was forced to bear arms and was told he would be shot if he tried to escape. While the prisoners had a right to question any witness, none did.

In short order, Draper had met the three tests needed for a conviction. Each prisoner was an American who conspired with a British subject (Chipman) to bear arms against the Queen. The fact that the testimony of the lieutenant and sergeant amounted to hearsay evidence bothered Draper not. In his view, it was enough proof of every prisoner’s active participation in the hostilities.

Several days later, Heustis and the other 11 learned they were all convicted and sentenced to hang.

John A. Macdonald: 1. Defends Three Hunters

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:01:00 +0000

Following the bloody Battle of the Windmill, the Canadian colonial public wanted blood in return, and the Upper Canada government eagerly gave it to them. Just four days after the smoke cleared, Lt-Governor Sir George Arthur, 54, laid the groundwork for a series of trials in Kingston. The colony’s solicitor-general, Lt.-Colonel William Draper, 37, took charge as Judge-Advocate with a goal to try all prisoners before the end of December. So certain was Draper of guilty sentences, he allowed almost no time for prisoners to prepare.

Like the Patriots who raided Upper Canada near Short Hills that spring, Britain charged the windmill prisoners under the Lawless Aggressions Act (that is a short version of the long name). An absolute abomination of a law, it permitted the most flimsy evidence from the prosecution and few avenues of defense for the accused.

Unlike the Hunter prisoners captured at Short Hills, who faced a civilian jury with many sympathizers, the Hunters faced a military court martial whose members were openly hostile to the American raiders.

To convict each American prisoner under the act, Draper had to prove three things: that the accused was a citizen of a foreign country at peace with Britain, he conspired with British subjects bearing arms against the Queen, and he actively participated in the hostilities. Evidence against British subjects was similar for the last two tests. A conviction meant a death sentence regardless of nationality.

William Draper

Four captured Hunters (three Canadians and one American) agreed to become state witnesses in exchange for clemency. Canadian Levi Chipman, 45, an early Hunter recruit with plenty of inside information, turned out to be Draper’s best resource when he needed to establish a prisoner’s role in the battle.

Macdonald takes lead cases

The upcoming trials were the talk of Kingston—an unparalleled news event. John A. Macdonald, a 23-year-old Kingston lawyer, agreed to defend three Hunter officers: Nils von Schoultz, 31, Daniel George, 27, and Dorrephus Abbey, 47. Macdonald had success earlier in 1838 defending eight farmers captured as part of the Hickory Island raid.

Portait of John A. Macdonald from 1843

Macdonald took a professional risk defending the Hunters because the raiders were so reviled in the colony, but Macdonald was a man of principle who believed justice was the right of all men. He also faced enormous legal roadblocks. Under the Lawless Aggressions Act, Macdonald could not openly defend his clients in court; he could only coach them on how to manage their own defense. (The men he defended in July were charged under the Treason Act, which allowed a fair defense.)

Aside. For readers outside of Canada, John A. Macdonald became Canada’s first prime minister in 1867.

Daniel George faced court martial first on Wednesday, November 28, 1838, in front of sixteen officers in dress uniforms at Fort Henry. Guards lined the wall. The Hunter flag taken from the windmill hung on the wall. A pile of confiscated weapons lay on display for all to see.

George’s trial consumed all that day and the morning of the next. Being the first case, Draper was thorough in covering the three key points of evidence under the act. George claimed he was just out for a row to watch the battle. (He was arrested in a small boat mid-river the first evening of the battle.) On the stand, Chipman testified to George’s real role in the battle. Also, the court martial heard that when arrested, George’s pockets contained receipts from the captain of the United States for towing the two rebel schooners on November 11. They found George guilty.

Von Schoultz’s short trial began the same day, November 29. From the start, any defense was impossible. The Hunter colonel took full responsibility for the attack. He admitted that, although he invaded Upper Canada in a complete misunderstanding of the inhabitants real circumstances, he was guilty and should pay for his crimes. The court had no choice but to convict him.

Nils von Schoultz

Abbey’s trial took place November 30. He followed Macdonald’s guidance, insisting he was an unwilling participant in the battle, essentially kidnapped and forced to fight. Again Chipman’s evidence shot holes in the story. Abbey was convicted.

Men Condemned to Hang

The court martial sentenced all three to death by hanging. Von Schoultz was first on December 8, with Abbey and George following December 12.

Macdonald prepared a will for Von Schoultz. The colonel left ₤400 to four widows of British soldiers killed during the battle and another sum to a Roman Catholic College being built in Kingston. Macdonald refused to accept payment.

On a cool and hazy day, a British guard transported von Schoultz by wagon to a hillside next to Fort Henry to a special gallows built just for him. Those gallows and the uniform he was allowed to wear were concessions to his rank. Those minor privileges may also be attributable to the respect von Schoultz garnered among the military for his honesty and gallantry. A report in the Oswego Palladium, December 12, 1838, stated that several British officers sent a petition to the Lt. Governor asking for clemency. It was not granted.

One eye-witness account of the colonel’s last hour comes from a seven-year-old boy named William Allen, who lived across from the Kingston jail on Wellington St. Years later he wrote: “The morning Von Schoultz was to be hanged I was ordered to keep at home, but I got out… Von Schoultz came out [of he Kingston jail] attended by two priests, one on each side of him. He was placed in a cart and the company proceeded to the fort. I followed and was soon trudging along with the soldiers across the bridge and up the fort hill. When the gallows was reached, an upright post with an arm and a rope, the cart drove under the arm, the rope was adjusted, the prayers said, and then the cart drove ahead, leaving the man dangling from the rope." (His memory was faulty. Von Schoultz dropped through a trap door, not off the end of a wagon.)

Four days later, Abbey and George dropped through the gallows’ trap door in the Kingston jail. Information suggests they are lying in St. Paul's Churchyard in downtown Kingston. An admirer paid to have von Schoultz’s body buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery. They were fortunate in one sense: most prisoners were buried in unmarked graves on prison grounds.

The execution train had just started rolling. Nine more would soon follow.

Bill Johnston: 12. Arrest, Trial, and Escape

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 02:19:00 +0000

Bill Johnston spent two days and nights on roof tops in Ogdensburg observing the Battle of the Windmill. He hardly ate. Twice he scoured the town in a vain effort to encourage men to cross in boats to take men off. It tore at him cruelly to be safe while his friends faced peril. And worse, some people called him a coward for not being in the battle. Some wind went out of his mighty sails that week.

Bill was tired. The battle and months of hiding from the law had worn him out. He hatched a scheme with his son John to give himself up but an eager deputy marshal ruined his plans.

Johnston arrested

Historical accounts vary about the actual circumstances of Bill Johnston’s arrest. The best source, in my opinion, is Benson Lossing. Chapter 29 of his 1869 book, Pictorial Field-Book of the War Of 1812, includes information based on actual interviews with elderly Bill. Here’s what Lossing wrote.

“He saw that all was lost, and, weary of hiding, he resolved to give himself up to the authorities of the United States, and cast himself upon the clemency of his country. He made an arrangement with his son John to arrest him and receive the $500 reward. On the 17th of November, he left for Ogdensburg in a boat with his son, when Deputy Marshal McCulloch pursued him in a boat over which floated the revenue flag. Johnston was overtaken about two miles above Ogdensburg. He was armed with a Cochran rifle [an early multi-round rifle], two large rifle-pistols, and a bowie-knife.”

According to historian John Northman, when men in McCulloch’s posse grabbed Bill, he shook them off and then leveled his pistols at them ready for a fight. But Bill hesitated, not wanting to kill fellow Americans. Instead, he and John negotiated surrender where Bill gave up his arms to his son.

McCulloch delivered Johnston to US Colonel William Jenkins Worth, the local military commander, at Ogdensburg. Worth imprisoned Johnston on the steamer Telegraph, where he joined other captured men including: the Hunter General, John Ward Birge; William Sprague, captain of the Hunter ship Charlotte of Oswego; and, Isaac Tiffany, the man who fired a cannon blast from that ship at the Experiment on the first day of the battle.

Johnston acquitted

US Marshal Nathaniel Garrow took the prisoners by steamer and train to Cayuga, New York, where they were cheered by the townsfolk, and then on to nearby Auburn for trial. Rather than placing his prisoners in jail, Garrow lodged them in rooms near his in the American Hotel with guards at the doors.

On Friday, November 23, the prisoners and their guards assembled before Judge Alfred Conklin for a preliminary hearing on charges that they contravened the US Neutrality Act. Conklin held them over for trial on November 28. Isaac Tiffany had no stomach for a trial and escaped on the 26th.

At trial, Bill Johnston was acquitted because there was no evidence to prove he was involved in the Battle of the Windmill. The marshal promptly arrested him on an outstanding warrant related to the Hickory Island affair in February of that year.

Johnston escapes second arrest

Late that night, Johnston and Birge (who had not been acquitted) slipped from their shared hotel room past three guards and vanished into the night. Garrow posted a $200 reward for Admiral Johnston and a mere $50 for General Birge.

Bill always said no prison could hold him if he chose not to stay.

Windmill Battle: 9. Hunters Surrender

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 19:58:00 +0000

The morning of Friday, November 16, 1838, again dawned cold and clear. Hungry, sleep-deprived, and disillusioned, 117 Hunters prepared for the final battle they knew they could not win. As the day progressed, the trapped raiders watched the force of British regulars and Canadian militia surrounding their stronghold steadily grow.

Lt.-Colonel Henry Dundas arrived with 300 seasoned infantry of the British 83rd Regiment of Foot. Lt.-Colonel Plomer Young, commander of Canadian militia in Prescott, assembled at least 600 citizen soldiers. A company of the 93rd Regiment of Foot, comprised of battle-hardened Highlanders, joined the swelling army. Captain Williams Sandom arrived with a fleet of gunboats towing barrages packed with additional cannon.

The Hunters’s biggest threat came from Major Forbes Macbean and his artillery squads. Early that day, he landed two massive cannon at Prescott and had the 7300-pound weapons hauled by teams of horses to a position 400 yards north of the windmill. Macbean’s men spent several hours digging in and readying the powder and 18-pound iron cannonballs. Unlike the carronades on Sandom’s ships and the lighter cannon on the field, Macbean’s guns were long-range building smashers. The Hunter commander, Colonel Nils von Schoultz, whose European military expertise was in artillery, must have known what was in store for them.

At 1 PM, Colonel Dundas sent a flag of truce on the battlefield to request an hour to remove the last bodies. Lyman Leach met the flag bearer and conveyed the message to Von Schoultz, who agreed.

During the truce, von Schoultz met Dundas in mid-battlefield and returned two Canadian militia prisoners captured two days earlier. Von Schoultz offered to surrender to prevent further bloodshed, if Dundas would treat the Hunters as prisoners of war. Dundas denied the request, saying that he’d accept only an unconditional surrender. Von Schoultz refused.

At 3 PM, all cannon on Sandom’s seven vessels and barges began their final bombardment of Newport. A half hour later, Macbean fired the first shot from one of his massive guns. The 18-pound cannonball smacked into the windmill and deflected, leaving the tower unscathed yet again. The first shot from the second cannon caved in a wall of the nearest stone house sending Hunters running.

Macbean’s experienced artillery crews began to steadily dismantled Newport. Each cannon fired once every two minutes and every cannonball hit its target. At the same time, 15 lighter field cannon and Sandom’s fleet continued to rain iron on the hamlet. Their intent was to keep the Hunter snipers pinned down. It worked. The Hunters fired only an occasional shot that afternoon in their defense.

As dusk began to darken the short November day, most Hunters occupied just two structures. The majority huddled in the windmill under command of Colonel Martin Woodruff. A dozen or so Hunters under von Schoultz defended the stone tavern. A few snipers remained in the ruins of other buildings.

Shortly before the final British troop assault began, the Hunter officers gathered at the tavern. Colonels Dorephus Abbey and Woodruff wanted to surrender. Von Schoultz refused. Woodruff returned to the windmill. Abbey quietly exited the tavern, walked to the British lines and surrendered.

The foul-tempered militia colonel, Richard Fraser, spotted Abbey. Fraser road over on horseback and smacked Abbey’s buttocks with the flat of his sword. Abbey dropped to his knees in intense stinging pain.

About 4:30 PM, Dundas ordered the British regulars and Canadian militia to advance on the Hunters. Macbean’s cannon ceased their work to avoid hitting their own men.

The British regulars methodically advanced, setting fire to each house to drive out remaining Hunters. As the unstoppable wall of death moved closer to the center of Newport, Captain Daniel Heustis and Colonel Woodruff marched out of the windmill under a white flag. Members of the Canadian militia ignored the flag and fired at them, sending them scurrying back to the windmill.

Captain Sandom witnessed the episode. A man of unimpeachable honor, he ordered his marines to shoot the militia if they fired on a flag of truce again. After conferring with Dundas, Sandom sent a naval lieutenant with a flag of truce to the windmill. The Hunters surrendered and marched out between two lines of British regulars, who protected the Hunters from the militia who wanted no quarter given.

At the tavern, von Schoultz told his men to surrender or flee as they chose. Two who attempted to surrender were bayoneted by militiamen. Von Schoultz fled into the dark with Hunter Vaughan and several others. Scouts captured the colonel within two hours. Vaughan remained free for two days. Several men did successfully escape back to America, including an unnamed Pole who walked through the battle lines wearing the British uniform taken from Lieutenant William Johnson’s body on Tuesday.

The battle over, the surviving Hunters plodded under guard to Prescott. The next day they boarded ships for Fort Henry in Kingston where their final fates would be decided.

The British recorded 161 captured Hunters, including 17 wounded. At least five men were known to have escaped during the battle. Heustis’ memoirs state that 17 died during the battle, 17 were wounded, and three died later of their wounds. This matches British records.

The official toll of British and Canadian casualties is 82: 13 Canadian militia, and British officers and soldiers killed and 69 wounded. The toll seems suspiciously low. Eye-witness accounts suggest a much greater toll.

William Gates wrote that nine wagons piled with enemy bodies left the battle area the first day. Stephen Wright estimated the British casualties at between 400 and 600. Daniel Heustis wrote: “The loss of the enemy was stated on our trial, by a government witness, to have been about 20 officers, and upwards of 300 men, killed, and a very large number wounded.” (The trial transcript does not include the information Heustis quoted.)

We do know that bodies so littered the battlefield after the first day that it took a truce on the second and fourth day to remove them all. For propaganda reasons the real count of British and Canadian dead may have been downplayed, though the published Hunter estimates were certainly exaggerated.

Even if you accept the official casualty list, the Battle of the Windmill was the bloodiest encounter of the Patriot War—but it was not the last.

Windmill Battle: 8. Trapped Hunters Given One Escape Chance

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:43:00 +0000

The morning of Thursday, November 15, 1838, dawned cold and clear. For once, no cannon barrage greeted the dawn. The small steamer Experiment patrolled alone, the other British gunboats being upriver. Desultory sniping from both sides shattered the morning’s rare peace. The day began low key but unfolding events gave the trapped Hunters a brief opportunity to escape.

That morning, prominent American citizens in Ogdensburg, NY, met to discuss ways of rescuing the Hunters trapped across the river. Among them was Colonel William Jenkins Worth, 44, the commander of the American forces trying to enforce the US neutrality laws. He proposed a meeting with Lt.-Colonel Plomer Young, 41, commander of Canadian militia in Prescott. A man who knew Young crossed the river with the invitation. Young agreed and met Worth on board the US ship Telegraph in mid-river.

In order to prevent further bloodshed, Worth proposed to Young that the Hunter’s be allowed to return to America. In turn they would face charges in the US, and American authorities would ensure no further outbreaks along the frontier of northern New York. While Young sympathized with Worth’s position, he explained he would face severe military sanction and probably court martial by letting the enemy escape.

At some point in the conversation, Young told Worth that the big British gunboats were in Kingston, and that the Experiment would soon return to Prescott for maintenance. History does not tell us if Young let this military secret slip inadvertently or by design. Young wished Worth well and departed.

Worth seized the opportunity. He berthed the Telegraph in Ogdensburg and released the ferry steamer Paul Pry from impoundment. He organized a group of volunteer citizens, under the town’s postmaster Preston King, to undertake the actual rescue.

When the Experiment returned to Prescott in mid-afternoon, the Paul Pry steamed out of Ogdensburg and anchored off shore near the besieged windmill. One man, identified only as a Hunters Lodge member, volunteered to go ashore and speak with Colonel Nils von Schoultz.

That man falsely told von Schoultz that he had two choices: he and his men could escape on the Paul Pry or he could accept 600 reinforcements in the morning. Perhaps because of lack of sleep and food or a monumental ego, von Schoultz choose to wait for the phantom reinforcements. Hearing von Schoultz’s decision, postmaster King rowed ashore and pleaded with the Hunter colonel to cast away any notion of fresh troops. In the end, all King received was a promise from von Schoultz to allow the wounded to board the Paul Pry.

King took one wounded man with him back to the steamer while the von Schoultz’s men carried the other wounded to the rocky beach. When the Paul Pry tried to come closer to shore, Canadian militiamen fired on her. The shots alerted Lieutenant William Fowell and he steamed out in the Experiment, her repairs finished ahead of schedule. The Paul Pry fled to US waters.

Gathering clouds began dumping snow and sleet. For three hours Hunters both wounded and well huddled in the foul cold hoping for the return of the Paul Pry.

Stephen S. Wright, in his memoirs, wrote that once it was evident the ship would not return, “Our fortunes grew desperate; the last glimmer of hope went out.” Wright also lamented that, if the wounded had been removed, the remaining Hunters could have broken through the British cordon and escaped.

A few men did escape that night, according to the memoirs of Captain Daniel Heustis. He wrote that two Hunters found a canoe and asked Heustis to go with them. The idealistic Hunter captain refused, saying he could not forsake the many men he brought to the battle. He wished the men well. They found a third volunteer and departed for America only hours ahead of the final battle.

Windmill Battle: 7. Hunters Fortify Their Position

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 20:54:00 +0000

The morning of Wednesday, November 14, 1838, dawned cold, windy, and clear. The wet snow that covered the bodies the day before had hardened to icy coffins. Shortly after dawn, the three British gunboats returned and lobbed 18-pound balls of iron into Newport, doing little physical damage but rattling the Hunter raiders’ nerves. Both sides traded shots at each other, more to stifle boredom than for military value.

In mid-morning, several companies of militia joined the cordon around Newport, not to attack but to reconnoiter. Under the local militia commander, Colonel Plomer Young, they fired on the outer ranks of Hunters, forcing them closer to the stone buildings. This allowed two British officers to get a good view of the hamlet.

One officer was Lt.-Colonel Henry Dundas, commander of the British 83rd Regiment of Foot. The other was Major Forbes Macbean, an artillery expert. While the officers watched, the Cobourg gunboat fired at the windmill. As usual, the cannonball bounced off. Dundas and Macbean concluded that much heavier ordinance was required. They returned to Kingston to arrange for it.

Hunter Captain Daniel Heustis relates that a band of Canadian militia occupied one of the stone houses on the periphery of Newport that morning and began sniping at the Hunters. In response, Hunter Colonel Nils von Schoultz led 11 men (some towing a small cannon) to retake the house. The Hunters drove off the enemy, set the house on fire, and returned with two wounded militiamen as prisoners.

Later that morning, Canadian militia Colonel Richard Fraser called a truce so that both sides could recover their dead and any remaining wounded. Von Schoultz agreed, and for an hour both sides politely helped each other recover most of the dead from their wintry tombs.

At some point during the brief peace, von Schoultz asked to speak to Colonel Fraser. Historians speculate that Hunter commander wanted to discuss terms of surrender. The bad tempered Fraser refused to speak to him. To Fraser, von Schoultz was a brigand somehow aligned with Bill Johnston, worthy only of hanging and not treatment as a gentleman.

For the rest of the day, the Hunters fortified their positions by blocking windows and doors with stone blocks. They entered these fortresses by ladders to second-story windows. Heustis related that his men behaved in good spirit. He singled out Garret Hicks, 45, a farmer from Alexandria Bay, NY, who amused them for hours with endless stories of the antics of dogs.

In contrast to Hicks’ high spirits, one young raider named Hunter Vaughan, 19, from Sackets Harbor, NY, strolled in solitude along the river. Once a fervent Patriot and recruiter for the Hunter army, he now stood forlorn and disillusioned, gazing out at the lights of the American steamer Telegraph. His father, William Vaughan, captained that ship and it was his duty to prevent Hunters on the American side from bringing aid to his son and his comrades. Witnesses saw Hunter feebly wave a white handkerchief at the passing vessel.

Another snowstorm struck that night. Without candles, lamps, or firewood, the Hunters shivered through the long night in complete darkness.

Windmill Battle: 6. Trapped Raiders Get Message to General Birge

noreply@blogger.com (Shaun J. McLaughlin) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:58:00 +0000

As the first attack on the windmill petered out on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 13, 1838, snow began to fall, soon shrouding the unclaimed bodies in the no-mans-land of the battlefield. As night approached, Hunter Colonel Nils von Schoultz made two attempts to get a message to General John Birge on the American side of the river.

In the fading light of the short November day, the Hunters found an old boat on the beach. Though leaky, five men (including Daniel George, William Gates, and Aaron Dresser) set off to cross the river in the fading afternoon light with a message for Birge requesting food and medical supplies.

Paddling with boards, the men took advantage of a gap in the gunboat patrols. They were nearing the invisible river border when the steamer Cobourg appeared out of the dusk. Its cannon fired. Geysers erupted near the boat as balls hit the water. George’s men paddled harder. The cannon boomed again. A load of grapeshot caused multiple splashes around the boat. George’s crew paddled for their lives. Witnesses that evening swore the fleeing Hunters were in American waters by that point.

The Cobourg, under the command of Captain Williams Sandom, ignored the border and came within musket range. British marines fired on the boat’s occupants. Musket balls whizzed past their heads. As the big steamer closed in, the Hunters surrendered. They were hauled aboard, searched, and taken to Prescott. Daniel George’s pockets contained receipts from the captain of the United States for towing the two rebel schooners on November 11. The discovery would be his undoing.

Hours later, von Schoultz tried again to get a message to Birge. A young man named Tom Meredith, a Hunter spy in Prescott who joined the raiders the evening before, volunteered to cross the river. He built a narrow raft from fence rails and an old board, and set out to cross 1800 yards of nearing freezing water. Paddling with his arms, he struggled in the cold, snow and darkness. Despite the odds of success, he made it to Ogdensburg and sought out Birge.

Two hours after midnight, Meredith awoke the sleeping general in an Ogdensburg hotel. Meredith, a man reborn, snatched from death and now afraid of nothing, hovered menacingly above Birge demanding he do something.

In response, Birge composed a letter to Bill Johnston.

With his letter, Birge created a publicly credible but militarily impossible solution to the tragedy unfolding at Newport. Simultaneously, he set up Johnston to become a scapegoat for the Hunter defeat at Newport.

Meredith searched the town all night for Johnston to no avail. Bill later said he spent several days and nights watching the battle from a roof near the harbor.

At some point that night, Hunters stripped the body of British Lieutenant William Johnson of his sword and uniform. Lyman Leach gave Johnson's to Daniel Heustis. The uniform was never recovered. (One of the Hunters later put it on and sauntered through the British lines to safety.)

Later that night, someone or something mutilated Lt. Johnson’s corpse. Canadian sources claim American raiders did the dirty deed. American sources claim hogs wandering the village fed on the body. This is backed up in Heustis’ memoirs. Von Schoultz later claimed he had the pigs shot for the atrocity.

The dwindling force of Hunters huddled around fires fed by a meager supply of firewood—remains of roofs torn off by cannonballs—wagering whether Meredith succeeded, and wondering what daybreak would bring.

Stephen S. Wright, another Hunter raider who published his memoirs, wrote: “The night was lonely—perhaps the loneliest that it ever will be my lot to experience: the wind whistled shrilly through the arms of the old mill, blending with the groans of the stricken and the dying, who lay shelterless in the night's wild storm.”

Raiders and Rebels

Thomas Jefferson Sutherland: Lots of Feathers But Not Much Chicken

Benjamin Lett: 3. The Last Patriot Warrior

Lett Arrested for Steamer Attack

Lett Blamed for Canal Explosion

Lett's Death a Mystery

Bill Johnston: 15. No Prison Can Hold Him

Johnston Escapes One Last Time

Last Hunter Prisoners Sent to Tasmania

Bill Johnston Seen as an Escape Threat

Prisoners Arrive in the Antipodes

Prisoners Pardoned

Patriotes' End: 2. Twelve Hang

Joseph Cardinal

Joseph Duquet

Chevalier de Lorimier

Pierre-Théophile Decoigne

Charles Hindenlang

Pierre-Rémi Narbonne

Patriote Leaders Pardoned

Patriotes' End: 1. 108 Face Court Martial

Further Reading

John A. Macdonald: 2. Starts Political Career

Defends Farmers

Defends Kingston Jailer

Defends Hunter Officers

Begins Political Career

Benjamin Lett: 2. Terrorizes Quiet Cobourg

Lett Strikes Again

Bill Johnston: 14. Feted in Prison, Released, Accused of Robbery

Royal Mail Robbed

Benjamin Lett: 1. Begins His Personal War

Lett settles a Score

Uncle Tom Fights for Canada

Further Reading

Hunter Prisoners Sent Home, But Not All

Repatriation Begins

Repatriation Ends

Long Wait Begins

Battle of Windsor: 3. Prisoners Executed

Joshua Doan

Battle of Windsor: 2. Prisoners Go on Trial

Further Reading

Bill Johnston: 13. Arrested, Sent to Prison

Johnston Sets the Record Straight

Lyman Leach: A Raider and Rebel Hangs

Hanging of Hunter Raiders Continues

Battle of Windsor: 1. The Final Campaign

Raiders Land and Attack Windsor

Militia repel attackers

Hunter Prisoners Endure Legal Meat Grinder

Captain Daniel Heustis tried

John A. Macdonald: 1. Defends Three Hunters

Macdonald takes lead cases

Men Condemned to Hang

Bill Johnston: 12. Arrest, Trial, and Escape

Johnston arrested

Johnston acquitted

Johnston escapes second arrest

Windmill Battle: 9. Hunters Surrender

Further Reading

Windmill Battle: 8. Trapped Hunters Given One Escape Chance

Further Reading

Windmill Battle: 7. Hunters Fortify Their Position

Further Reading

Windmill Battle: 6. Trapped Raiders Get Message to General Birge

Further Reading