The Patriot War was a conflict along the Canada–United States border in which bands of raiders attacked the British colony of Upper Canada more than a dozen times between December 1837 and December 1838. It was not a conflict between nations; it was a war of ideas fought by like-minded people against British forces, with the British and US governments eventually allying against the Patriots.
Participants in the conflict were members of a secret association known as the Hunter's Lodge, formed in the United States in sympathy with the 1837 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada. The organization arose in Vermont among Lower Canadian refugees (the eastern division or Frères chasseurs) and spread westward under the influence of Dr. Charles Duncombe and Donald McLeod, leaders of the short-lived Canadian Refugee Relief Association, and Scotland native William Lyon Mackenzie, drawing support from several different locations in North America and Europe. The Republic of Canada was also short-lived. After a heavy bombardment by the British on Navy Island, where the republic had been established, Mackenzie and his force of Canadian para-military fighters retreated to Buffalo, New York, where they were captured by the U.S. Army.
On charges of violating the neutrality between the United States and the British Empire, they were sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. This brought to an end what the British viewed as an inconsequential and unsupported colonial rebellion. The organizations were made up of grass-roots armed militants whose goal was to overthrow British rule in Canada. Their dispersal involved the largest deployment of U.S. troops against their own citizens since the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794.
Background
During the Upper Canada Rebellion American sympathisers were organising meetings along the Canada-American border. One meeting in Buffalo, New York met on December 5, 1837 and appointed a committee of 13 to organize support for the rebels. The rebellion in Upper Canada ended with the Battle of Montgomery's Tavern. Mackenzie and many other rebels fled to the United States to escape arrest by British forces.
William Lyon Mackenzie spoke at a meeting in Buffalo that caused Thomas Jefferson Sutherland to commit to an invasion of Upper Canada to bring about its independence from Britain. Other audience members committed to arranging resources and equipment for the planned invasion.
Navy Island Invasion and Republic of Canada
On December 14, 1837, Mackenzie, Rensselaer van Rensselaer and 24 rebels made a foray into Upper Canada, by traveling by boat to Navy Island. The plan was to launch an attack in support of an uprising led by Duncombe in the London district. Mackenzie on Navy Island declared the provisional government of the Republic of Canada and offered three hundred acres (120 ha) of government land to each volunteer.
During the month of December, large supportive meetings were held in towns in northern U.S., including Burlington, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit and aid was promised. By the end of the month, around 500 volunteers had joined Mackenzie on Navy Island, ferried by the Caroline. Allan MacNab and Andrew Drew of the Royal Navy crossed the international boundary and seized Caroline, chased off the crew, set her afire, and cast her adrift over Niagara Falls after killing a Black American named Amos Durfee.
In January 1838 a United States commandant outbid a Buffalo committee who was supplying resources to Navy Island, hampering their efforts. With the failure of Duncombe's revolt, the main purpose of seizing Navy Island disappeared and it was evacuated on January 14, 1838, ending the short-lived republic. Van Rensselaer was arrested for violating the Neutrality Act when he returned to the mainland.
Incidents
Schooner Anne and Bois Blanc Island (January 8, 1838)
Thomas Jefferson Sutherland was sent by the rebellion leaders on Navy Island in the Niagara River to raise a force in Detroit in December 1837. Sutherland arrived to find that Henry S. Handy and Dr. Edward A. Theller had already held public meetings and organized an invasion force. Handy was in Toronto in the fall of 1837 where he met Marshall Bidwell and learned of the rebellion from him. Handy and his brother-in-law Judge Orange Butler, then of the Michigan House of Representatives, joined G. M. Dufort of Montreal in travelling to Detroit where they formed a "war council" of influential citizens. Men came to Detroit from as far away as Illinois and Kentucky to join the movement. On January 5, 1838, the Detroit jail was raided and the Patriots seized the 450 muskets which had been stored there. The Patriots were reported to have stolen another 200 weapons from the unsecured office of the U.S. marshal in Detroit, perhaps with his help. James M. Wilson was appointed major-general; Elijah Jackson Roberts as brigadier-general of the first brigade; Dr. Edward Alexander Theller as brigadier-general of the first brigade of Irish and French troops to be raised. Sutherland and General E. J. Roberts disagreed over who would lead the invasion force on the Schooner Anne against Fort Malden, Amherstburg, Upper Canada. Handy appointed Theller was to command the schooner Anne, while Sutherland would lead a flotilla to Bois Blanc Island opposite Amherstburg on the understanding he was under Roberts' command. But for some reason Sutherland stopped in American territory on Sugar Island, a little further out, instead. Anne attacked Fort Malden on January 9, but was beached and Theller taken prisoner and ultimately jailed in the citadel in Quebec City. Further attempts to attack Fort Malden were stymied by American troops. Michigan Governor Stevens T. Mason helped by leading a militia force to thwart the Patriots fighting in the Battle of Windsor.
Fighting Island (February 24, 1838) and Hickory Island (February 22, 1838)
A series of simultaneous attacks set for Washington's birthday (February 22) were next planned. On February 23 the steamboat Erie headed for Fighting Island, seven miles (11 km) south of Detroit, carrying more than 400 troops from Cleveland under General Donald McLeod. They were poorly equipped as their arms were captured by the American authorities. The British troops crossed the ice and dispersed the Patriots on February 25. The British military announced their intention to pursue the Patriots into the United States but U.S. troops put a line of red flags on the ice in the river marking the border and were under orders to shoot any British troops that crossed it. The British did not cross the line and the U.S. captured some Patriots but soon released them.
On February 22, General van Rensselaer and Daniel Heustis travelled to Hickory Island with less than 100 men to prevent arms from being seized under the Neutrality Act of 1794. They hoped that over 1000 men would follow and they would be able to capture Kingston, but the troops never arrived and the plan was abandoned.
Battle of Pelee Island (March 3, 1838)
Most of the men from the earlier expeditions now collected at Sandusky Bay, Ohio, and under the leadership of Captain George van Rensselaer (a relative of the General) and General Thomas Jefferson Sutherland, took Pelee Island in Lake Erie. However, their expected arms were again captured by the US authorities, leaving them with only 200 guns for all the men. They were attacked by the British and Van Rensselaer, along with 10 of his troops, were killed, with numerous others captured; 5 British soldiers were killed. The retreating Patriots were forced to surrender their arms by the US authorities and disbanded.
At the end of this period, William Lyon Mackenzie was at odds with other Patriot leaders and soon was arrested for breach of the American Neutrality Laws. Thomas Jefferson Sutherland was captured by the British near Detroit and taken to jail in Toronto, where he was witness to the hanging of Samuel Lount, an organizer of the attack on Toronto.
Canadian Refugee Relief Association
In March 1838, a committee consisting of General Donald McLeod, William Lyon Mackenzie, Dr. Charles Duncombe, Dr. Alexander Mackenzie and a number of other Canadian refugees met at Lockport to form the "Canadian Refugee Relief Association." Dr. A. Mackenzie became the president, and General Donald McLeod the general organizer. This organization was loosely connected with the attack on the steamer Sir Robert Peel and the Short Hill raid. McLeod went on, with Duncombe, to form the Hunter's Lodges soon thereafter.
Burning of Sir Robert Peel (May 29, 1838)
On May 29, 1838 a band of Patriots disguised as Aboriginals attacked the steamer Sir Robert Peel at Well's Island and burned it. The expedition was under the command of General Donald McLeod and William Johnston.
Short Hills Raid (June 21–23, 1838)
Twenty four men, largely Canadian, under the leadership of Colonel James Morreau assembled at Clark's Point near Lewiston, New York, on June 11, 1838 and crossed over the Niagara River. They hoped to provoke a general uprising of sympathizers in the Niagara area. They attacked troops stationed at a tavern in Short Hills on June 20. The Patriots were captured, including Morreau, Major Benjamin Wait, and Donald McLeod.
Henry S. Handy's "Secret Order of the Sons of Liberty"
Henry S. Handy (1804–1846) was a lawyer, newspaper editor and military engineer. He was appointed to oversee the construction of the Chicago Harbour in 1833 by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. After the failure of earlier efforts, in which US authorities had intervened, he organized lodges of the "Secret Order of the Sons of Liberty" along both sides of the Michigan border with Upper Canada. Handy, as "Commander-in-chief of the Patriot Army of the Northwest" planned for a revolutionary army of 20,000 to capture Windsor on the 4th of July. The organization soon merged into the Hunters' Lodges.
The first Hunters' Lodge (Frères chasseurs) was formed in north Vermont by Dr. Robert Nelson early in the spring of 1838 and spread rapidly within Quebec. Early in the summer, Donald McLeod, a rebel Upper Canadian schoolmaster, and newspaper editor, was initiated in the "Brother Hunters" and informed them of the existence of Henry S. Handy's "Secret Order of the Sons of Liberty". They were distinct, yet again, from a third organization forming in Cleveland under Dr. Charles Duncombe, who were planning an invasion of Upper Canada for the 4th of July. Under McLeod's influence, the Cleveland group adopted the form of the Hunters' Lodge. The Sons of Liberty disappeared after their failed raid on Windsor, and were absorbed into the Hunters' Lodge.
Lodge organization
The Hunters Lodges were modelled on Masonic lodges, and adopted similar secret signs, hierarchical orders, and rituals. The Grand Lodge was at Cleveland, where Duncombe was a tireless promoter. The four degrees of the Lodge were: Snowshoe, Beaver, Grand Hunter and Patriot Hunter. Soldiers without rank were of the first degree, commissioned officers of the second, field officers of the third, and the highest ranking commissioned officers of the fourth degree.
Convention and military organization
In September 1838, 160 delegates from the western Hunters' Lodges attended a secret, week-long "Patriot Congress" in Cleveland, Ohio. They appointed a provisional Canadian republican government that included:
- President A.D. Smith, "chief justice of the peace at Cleveland"
- Vice-President Colonel Nathan Williams, "a wholesale grocer" in Cleveland
- Secretary of the Treasury Judge John Grant Jr, Oswego
- Secretary of War Donald McLeod
- Commander-in-chief of the "Patriot Army of the West," Lucius V. Bierce, "an attorney at Akron."
- Commodore of the Patriot Navy on Lake Erie, Gilman Appleby, former captain of Caroline
- Commodore of the Patriot Navy on Lake Ontario, Bill Johnston
Battle of the Windmill (November 13–18, 1838)
The Hunters Lodges in both the Eastern and Western Divisions agreed that they would launch a general invasion of the Canadas on November 1. The Eastern division began their attack on Quebec on November 3 under the direction of Grand Lodges in Montreal and St. Albans, Vermont. The Western division, under the general command of the "vice-president of the provisional government" of the Republic of Canada, Col. Nathan Williams of Cleveland, planned an attack at Detroit.
However, "Major General" John Ward Birge convinced the eastern New York lodges to join him in an attack at Prescott, on the St Lawrence River instead. The leader of the attack was to be Nils Szoltevsky Von Schoultz, a Finnish-Swedish soldier who had been part of the Polish Rebellion. On November 11, four hundred men boarded the steamboat United States at Sackets Harbor, New York. Disagreements arose between Birge and Von Schoultz on the plan of attack, and Birge withdrew with 200 men to Ogdensburg for reinforcements that were never to appear. Von Schoultz and 150 men aboard Charlotte of Toronto reached Windmill Point near Prescott on November 12 where they set up camp. All supplies to Windmill Point were cut off by British and American troops and the Canadian Hunters who had come in support were forced to withdraw.
The standoff that resulted ended November 16 when artillery was brought from Kingston. 137 prisoners were taken, and 80 were killed. The Patriot prisoners were defended by John A. Macdonald, a lawyer in Kingston who was to become Canada's first prime minister.