GENERAL SCOTT AT NIAGARA. 407 by the British, and in the summer of 1814, an advance was made upon Washington, where, after overcoming the militia at Bladensburgh, August 24th, the capitol, the Presidential mansion, and most of the public buildings, and the records, were given to the flames,* August 25th. General Ross, who had command of the expedition, proceeded to Baltimore with the intention of repeating the scenes of devastation, but was effectually resisted, though he bombarded the city, and his forces were obliged to retreat. General Ross lost his life in this attack, September 12th. During this year a third Canada campaign was planned, which was more successful than those of previous years had been. Though the first engagements resulted in disaster, there was a battle at the Chippewa River, at which the genius and persistence of Winfield Scott gained a victory, July 5th. The British General Riall retreated, and General Scott was detached to watch his movements. On the twenty-fifth of July, the two armies confronted each other near Niagara Falls, and the most severe battle of the campaign occurred, in which Riall was taken prisoner, Scott disabled for the war, and the British driven from the field by an inferior force, with great loss. *No American can hold his head up after this in Europe, or at home, when he reflects that a motley group of French, Spanish, Portuguese and English, amounting to only four thousand, has successfully dared to march forty miles from their ships, and ruin our best navyyard, invade our capital, and march in safety, nay, unmolested, back to their vessels. O Democracy! To what have you brought us! O Madison, Armstrong, and your conceited, ignorant, and improvident cabinet! How guilty are you towards this dishonored, unhappy nation! Breck's Recollections. In August, an expedition was sent to invade New York by way of Lake Champlain, and it reached Plattsburgh without opposition. It was the line so unsuccessfully followed by Burgoyne. With fourteen thousand men, the British met the Americans under General McComb and Commodore MacDonough, and the fight began on land and water, September 15th. The ships fought for more than two hours, when the British, having lost their commander, struck their colors. On shore the British were no more successful, and the General was forced to abandon his campaign and retire speedily to Canada, after having lost some twenty-five hundred men, and wasted two and a half million dollars. Florida was at this time in possession of the Spanish, but it was in August, 1814, practically taken possession of by the British, who landed a considerable force, with arms and supplies, and issued an address calling upon the inhabitants of the Southwest to rise and aid them in expelling the Americans from the territory. The London Times announced that the most active measures were in progress for detaching from the enemy a most important part of its territory; for it was plainly seen in England that whoever possessed New Orleans and the region about the delta of the Mississippi. would command a greater territory than was included by the boundary line of the whole United States besides. The commander at Pensacola endeavored to enlist the aid of a band of pirates who had preyed on the commerce of the world from the island of Barrataria, at the mouth of the Mississippi, but Commodore Patterson, then in charge of the squadron at New Orleans, attacked the BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS. 409 pirates, put them to flight, and took their entire fleet of vessels and prizes to New Orleans, September 16th. On the fifteenth of September the British made an attempt to take Fort Bowyer, off Mobile, but were repulsed and obliged to return to Pensacola. Jackson took this place on the sixth of November, after a smart action, and forced the British to take to their STATUE OF PRESIDENT JACKSON AT NEW ORLEANS. ships. Then, learning that the enemy had been for some time preparing an expedition against New Orleans, he took his comparatively small force thither to protect it. General Packenham, a veteran of the Peninsular Campaigns, and brother-in-law of Wellington, was in command of the British Expedition, which comprised fifty vessels, conveying a force of twelve thousand men, who had many of them been engaged in the war with Napoleon. It bore also English merchants who came out to buy the cotton that was expected to form a portion of the plunder of the city. After a preliminary skirmish on the twenty-third of December, in which the British had the advantage, New Orleans was attacked by the veterans, but they encountered a determined general who knew no fear, entrenched behind an impenetrable breastwork of cotton bales, with sharpshooters from Tennessee and Kentucky, and heroes of the Creek War who had lived on acorns and flinched at no danger. The struggle lasted from dawn to eight in the evening, when the British were forced to retire to their works, with the loss of Packenham and twenty-six hundred men. The Americans lost an insignificant number variously stated at from "thirteen" to "less than a hundred. The British soon after sailed to Jamaica. The intensity of party feeling magnified the importance of a convention of a few Federalists,* which was held at Hartford at the time that Jackson's Campaign was in progress. The Massachusetts Legisla ture, which in the earlier part of the war had refused the call of the President for troops, on the ground that it was the right of the Governor, and not of the President, to decide when the militia should be called out, now, October, 1814, called a convention from the States opposing the war, and appointed twelve delegates to deliberate upon the dangers to which the *The Hartford Convention-an innocent scheme with an ugly look -was taxed with treasonable or disloyal designs, although without good reason; and yet the Secession of 1861 justified itself by this unwise measure of a party which the States joining in the Secession had for that very measure strongly denounced.-Theodore Dwight Woolsey, LL.D., The Experiment of the Union with its Preparations. |