Don Gutteridge: Death of a Patriot

While Captain Stanhope was being fêted, another raiding party of Patriots, all Americans we believe, crossed the Niagara frontier and carried out several forays in the Short Hills below St. Catharines. Most of them were eventually rounded up and imprisoned. James Morrison, their leader, was hanged at Niagara, and a series of courts-martial have been staged over the spring and summer, all of which keep the pot boiling, so that the divisions in the community-the established administrators v. more recently arrived settlers, Orange Lodge loyalists v. republican sympathizers, Tories v. Reformers-are only made deeper.

Then in July, three more incursions occurred along the western border, one of them repulsed by local Chippewas. There are persistent rumours that the Hunters’ Lodges in the United States have recruited ten thousand men, all eager to liberate the enslaved populace of the province. In September, a convention of the lodges was held in Cleveland and a “Republic of Upper Canada” declared under the presidency of a U.S. citizen, Lucius V. Bierce. The Hunters are also reputed to be in league with rebels from Lower Canada, now living fugitive in Vermont and New York.

The only encouraging result of all this commotion and uncertainty, including the loss of Lord Durham’s conciliatory leadership, is that most of the ordinary folk here have rallied to meet the external military threat, though no one is fooled by this apparent cohesion into believing that domestic political differences have been moved an inch closer to compromise. As I say, we are in the grip of a tension-filled lull, momentarily resigned to the reality that our immediate future is in the hands of a new lieutenant-governor, Sir George Arthur, and Her Majesty’s army. Only when our physical safety has been assured can we turn our attention to the task of rebuilding the polity-with, I trust, the guidance of Lord Durham’s report.

Have I not, you may ask, been tempted or shamed into taking up arms again, as so many with less experience have willingly done? I have not. I have been there and have the scars to prove it. I see my own role clearly, and it is to use my talents for the law to help with the necessary reconstruction. Of course I would defend my city and my home, as any man would, but the presence of three thousand regulars and nearly twenty thousand militia suggests to me that we have little to fear other than these nuisance border raids, and these too are nearing their climax.

We are informed, for example, that Mackenzie and other rebel leaders have withdrawn from active involvement with the Patriots, and that President Van Buren is at last about to move against these vigilante soldiers disrupting life on both sides of the border. We are bracing for a “final push” to be made sometime this month by the Chasseurs in Vermont and the Hunters in Michigan. In this regard, our own Pelee Island Patriot has taken up Governor Arthur’s request for the embodiment of eight new militia regiments (with “regular” army uniforms promised). Stanhope has formed one of two Toronto units, has been promoted to lieutenant-colonel as its commander, and has been observed marching his recruits up and down Front Street, with his battle limp poorly disguised. Indeed, he has been so impressive that he and six of his NCOs have been dispatched to Fort Malden at Amherstburg to help train the latest volunteers from the Essex region and provide an inspiring example to all and sundry. I’m sure we’ll hear more from that quarter before the “war” is finally won.

I realize that all this may sound picayune to one seasoned at the side of the Iron Duke and tempered in the hellfire of Waterloo, but as you also know, any battle however modest is, to each individual in its midst, both an ordeal and a testing ground for personal courage. A bullet is a bullet, particularly if it be aimed at you!

On such a pleasant note, I sign off for now. Write soon, and tell me only of vintage harvests and hearth stories in ancient Normandy.

Your loving nephew,

Marc

December 4, 1838

Billy McNair was sweating and shivering at the same time. He could see his breath, like a visible exhalation of fear, floating before him on the icy, predawn air. Yet this morning was what he had wished for every day since he’d cheered the triumphant return of the York militia, marching to fife and drum up Yonge Street from their successful excursion in the Short Hills: he was going into battle. When the formation of new militia units was approved in July, he had been the first to enlist and the first corporal to be promoted to sergeant. Dolly had done her best to dissuade him, but even she had come around in the end. Her farewell kiss lingered still on his lips. And he had promised her that he would proudly don his “regular” uniform on their wedding day, should that glorious tunic of scarlet and green ever arrive.

He and his companions were marching north along the well-travelled road towards the village of Windsor, all of them members of the raw and untried Windsor militia whom Lieutenant-Colonel Stanhope and his elite corps had been doing their damnedest to whip into shape before the anticipated invasion. An hour earlier, Sergeant Walsh and a dozen of his regular troops had stumbled into their makeshift barracks at Sandwich, bloodied, scorched, and exhausted. Theirs was a hair-raising tale. The American Patriots, it seemed, had come across the river from Detroit, three hundred strong, and landed under cover of darkness just above Windsor. There they set fire to a ship in the harbour, routed the small picket on duty, and moved against the village. Before the alarm could be raised, Sergeant Walsh and thirty of the 2nd Essex were surrounded and trapped in their own barracks. They held out as long as their ammunition lasted and surrendered only when the Patriots set the compound afire. In the ensuing mêlée many of them escaped, leaving their dead and wounded behind. As Walsh was scuttling into the bush, he saw General Lucius V. Bierce climb onto a beer barrel and begin reading a proclamation which informed the local citizenry that they had been liberated and would be welcome recruits in the inalienable struggle for freedom and democracy.

Lieutenant-Colonel Stanhope had neither flinched nor hesitated to act at this news. Now the interim leader of the new Windsor regiment-thanks to the titular commander having been felled by the gout, again-he had integrated the NCOs he’d brought with him from Toronto into the fledgling units to stiffen them. With the presence of mind and steadiness of purpose that had prompted Governor Arthur to dispatch him to the battle zone along the Detroit River, he directed some two hundred men, a six-pounder, and a dozen pack animals towards Windsor, three miles upriver.

The colonel, as Billy and others invariably referred to Gideon Stanhope, led the way, tall and lordly upon Pegasus, his alabaster Arabian gelding. He was fully accoutered in scarlet and green, and the sabre in his gilded scabbard tinkled like a sleigh bell. Slightly behind him rode the company captains, Charles Onslow and Jonathan Muttlebury, each of whom had seen action at Pelee Island in March, and who welcomed the fortuitous arrival of their comrades in arms from Toronto.

“Are you scared, Billy?”

The urgent whisper came from Corporal Melvin Curry, who was striding alongside his friend Billy on the snow-packed trail. The young men had been comrades in every adventure since they had first met in the schoolyard, fist-fought to a draw, shook hands, and pledged themselves to mutual protection and eternal friendship.

Anxious not to break the colonel’s interdiction against conversation, Billy mouthed his response: We all are.