Downriver and the Patriot War - 1838
by Kathy Warnes
Michigan became a state on January 26, 1837 and a year later the Michigan militia which was still being organized, was called up to serve in the “Patriot” War which like the War of 1812, turned out to be as much of a maritime as land war. Several trends and events came together in 1838 in Canada and across the border in the United States to cause the Patriot War to erupt. Residents of Upper Canada and the United States were discontented with their governments for different reasons.
When Upper and Lower Canada were organized under the Constitution Act after the American Revolution, the British minister theorized that Britain had lost its American Colonies because it had allowed the colonies too much political liberty. These ministers did not intend to repeat the same mistake in their remaining province of British North America, so they structured the legislative assemblies in the Canadian provinces to favor the privileged classes and allowed elected assemblies representing the people no control over the governing officials and policies.
The people in the provinces were not content to live under such autocratic rule, and their discontent erupted in the 1830s. Like their colonial counterparts in America, the reformers initially did not want to be disloyal to Britain or separate from England. They just wanted responsible, truly representative government.
The “Patriots” Plan to Invade Canada
Many Americans for their part, despite disastrous attempts in the War of 1812, still cast covetous eyes on the vast richness of Canada and dreamed of annexation. When in 1838, rebel leaders from Canada escaped to the United States, they found some Americans eager to listen and to fight to free Canadian colonies from the yoke of Great Britain. The plan was to form Upper Canada into an independent republic- one that would join the United States and make its liberators rich in the process.
These “Patriots” as they called themselves planned to annex the peninsula laying between the Michigan and the Niagara frontiers to the United States. In Michigan the Patriots organized secret groups known as “Hunter’s Lodges” which met at Fort Gratiot (Port Huron), Mt. Clemens, Detroit and Gibraltar. The patriots fanned out and called meetings, formed secret military organizations and prepared to act. Dr. E.A. Theller, an Irishman who opposed anything British, acted injudiciously and the Canadian authorities arrested, tried and convinced him. He was sentenced to the citadel of Quebec, but later escaped and made his way to Detroit.
At the beginning of the Patriot war, Colonel John Prince, a gentleman farmer, soldier, and a member of the Legislature, lived in the Sandwich District. The Canadian government gave him command of the Sandwich garrison that consisted of two companies of his own volunteer battalion. The entire border stood at attention and almost every citizen along the expected points of attack acted as night patrols. Captain Prince considered the invaders “pirates” and decided that he and his men would treat them as such.
The Patriots Land on Fighting Island
The first attempt the Patriots made to invade Canada was in January 1838. A group of Patriots or “Pirates,” met on January 1, 1838, and they raised $135.00 and ten rifles to aid their cause. Before dawn broke on January 5, about 20-25 Patriots crept to the Detroit jail where they seized jailor Thompson and his arms and ammunition. The next day they seized the schooner Ann and fortified with the arms from the Detroit jail and reinforcements of over 100 men, they set sail for Fighting Island across from Ecorse. An English steamer chased the Ann and when the Ann reached Ecorse a United States marshal and a posse of citizens hailed her. The Patriots aboard the Ann ignored the hail and as a stiff breeze filled her canvas, the Ann passed on down the river. A number of smaller boats joined the Ann and she landed at Gibraltar with at least 300 people aboard. Later that same evening a party of sixty men from Cleveland led by J.T. Sutherland arrived on the steamer Erie. The group of Patriots hatched a plot to capture Malden – Amhertsburg.
Their plot didn’t play out the way they had planned. At Amherstburg, “loyal” Canadians waited for them and cut the halyards of the leading schooner Ann with their first volley. The schooner drifted aground at Elliott’s Point and all on board were captured or killed. Colonel Prince and his men took part in this rout.[1]
The schooner Ann episode alarmed the more neutral Detroit citizens and they called a meeting at the Detroit city hall to discuss ways of maintaining neutrality.
Michigan Governor Mason Gets Involved
On February 12, 1838, Michigan Governor Stephens T. Mason and 220 volunteer militiamen started out on the steamers Erie and Brady to seize the schooner Ann for violating neutrality laws. The expedition turned out to be unpleasant because of the intensely cold weather and the attempts of two men to desert. They broke through the ice while crossing the Detroit River and drowned. When Governor Mason and the militia arrived at Gibraltar, he forced the Patriots to disperse, but the Ann escaped to Elliot’s Point near Amherstburg. Governor Mason and his troops returned to Detroit without capturing the Ann, but demonstrating their determination to abide by the neutrality laws.
The disbanding of Patriot ranks at Gibraltar halted them temporarily, but they remained extremely active. On February 14, 1838, Captain Johnson and a company of regulars arrived from Buffalo and the Brady Guards left Detroit for Gibraltar to escort provisions to troops at Monroe.
J.T. Sutherland and his group of Patriots tried to capture Bois Blanc (Bob-Lo Island), but a small group of English regulars and Canadian militia drove them back. Sutherland and his Patriot group retreated to Fighting Island, and the Canadians who feared that the Patriots were planning to attack Amherstburg quickly marched there to defend it. Sutherland had ordered Dr. Theller who commanded the Ann to join him. When the Ann attempted to join Sutherland’s forces, the Canadians on shore fired at her and shot so badly tore her rigging and sails that she drifted helplessly ashore where the Canadians captured her. When Sutherland heard about the capture of the Ann and Dr. Theller, he dropped back to Sugar Island and then to Gibraltar. The Canadians sent Dr. Theller to Quebec as a prisoner.
In the meantime, Colonel Prince and about 150 volunteers left Sandwich in the steamer United for Bois Blanc Island where as the Sandwich Western Herald put it, “the rebels, it seems, purposed to establish a post, and elevate a standard of liberty, forsooth!”[2]
On the night of February 23 and 24, 1838, a small group of Patriots rowed from Detroit to Fighting Island, in the middle of the Detroit River between Ecorse and LaSalle, Ontario. The Patriots planned an attack against Sandwich and the following day General Donald McLeod, a British Army veteran and former resident of Prescott, and several hundred supporters came to join the Patriots.
The American General Hugh Brady notified the British regulars and Canadian militia of the proposed attack and on February 25, the Canadians and British and the Patriots sharply skirmished. Colonel Prince and his men were again in the thick of the fight. The poorly armed Patriots retreated to the Michigan shore and American troops broke up their ranks. [3]
The United States government entered the fray by sending the steamer Robert Fulton from Buffalo to Detroit with three companies of United States regulars commanded by Colonel Worth. The government frequently sent troops to patrol both up and down the Detroit River to stem the Patriot movement, but the Patriots survived.
Return to Fighting Island
On February 23, 1838, a force of 200 men gathered at an inn kept by a man named Thomas five miles below Gibraltar. Under the cover of a heavy snowstorm, they marched up the river in three divisions to Ecorse. At Ecorse people driving sleighs met them and transported their arms, ammunition, and supplies across the ice to Fighting Island.
Observing the Patriot activity from the Canadian shore opposite Fighting Island, the Canadians gathered their troops. In the meantime, the Brady Guards had left Detroit for Ecorse to arrest the Patriots. On the frosty Sunday morning of February 25, the Canadians shelled the Patriot stronghold, killing 13 Patriots and wounding 40 0f them. The Patriots once again retreated to Gibraltar and along the American shore at points below Gibraltar. American troops met them, captured their arms and took two leaders prisoner, charging them with violating the neutrality laws.
The Canadians vowed to attack Detroit and Detroiters held public meetings in the city hall on March 7 and March 10 and decided that they would stand firmly against American violation of neutrality laws. Detroiters protested vigorously against the speeches in the Canadian parliament charging them with sympathizing with and aiding the Patriots. They clearly demonstrated that Colonel Prince who accidentally met T.J. Sutherland, the Patriot leader on the ice, had captured him in Canadian territory.
People on both sides of the Detroit River fired at each other in early summer the United States government sent ten thousands muskets to the arsenal at Dearborn. That summer, more than 200 Patriots camped at Bloody Run in Detroit waiting for the time and reinforcements for another foray against the Canadians.
The Battle of Windsor
In November, United States authorities captured a schooner carrying several hundred arms for the Patriots near Gibraltar. General Brady chartered the steamer Illinois and stationed troops along the Detroit River. On November 23, the Patriots seized the arms of the Brady Guards, but the Guards recaptured them a few days later. The Patriots didn’t have an organized military strategy, and for a time it seemed that they had abandoned their plans to attack Canada.
The Battle of Windsor, the next and final assault took place on December 3 and 4, 1838. American Lucius Versus Bierce of Akron, Ohio, commanded the American assault. He and his troops captured the steamboat Champlain at the foot of Rivard Street in Detroit and he and about 140 men landed near the present site of Walkerville after midnight on December 4, 1838. The American force marched on Windsor, setting fire to the military barracks. The men who were not burned to death were shot as they escaped from the burning building. The Americans also set fire to the steamer Thames which was at the dock.
News of the marauding expedition from the American side soon reached Sandwich, but before Colonel Prince and his militia could reach Windsor, surgeon John J. Hume rode out to see what aid he could provide to the wounded. The Patriots immediately shot him to death. The militia met the patriots in Francois Baby’s orchard near what is now the foot of Douglass Avenue, attacking from two sides. One volley scattered the Patriots who fled to what is now Walkerville, the militia is hot pursuit. Colonel Prince ordered all of the captured Patriots bearing arms to be shot, an action that caused much controversy.
Twenty-one Patriots were killed and many of them froze to death. They were fired on by Canadians and by Colonel Pyne of the United States Army and his men as they escaped to Belle isle. During the fighting Detroit blazed with excitement and city officials appointed a night watch of 50 men to patrol the city. The next day they swore in approximately 100 prominent citizens as peace officers.
By January 1839, the Patriot or Pirate War, depending upon perspective, had ended and by the next month the British government appointed the Earl of Durham Commander-in-Chief of all the British North American provinces except Newfoundland, High Commissioner for special purposes in Upper and Lower Canada and Governor General of all British North America. He investigated the situation in the provinces and presented a report to the House of Commons on February 11, 1839, after the Times of London had revealed some of its contents without his knowledge. Perhaps American history would have been much different if Britain had applied his words to its American Colonies:
I believe that no permanent or efficient remedy can be devised for the disorders of Lower Canada, except a fusion of the government in that of one or more of the surrounding provinces; and as I am of the opinion that the full establishment of responsible government can only be permanently secured by giving these colonies an increased importance in the politics of the empire, I find in union the only means of remedying at once and completely the two prominent causes of their present unsatisfactory condition…[4]
After the Patriot War, ferry and tugboat companies resumed operating on the Detroit River without international incident.
[1] John Prince & the Patriot War of 18.38 http://www.mnsi.net/~masonic/colonel.htm))
[2] Western Herald, Sandwich, UC, Tuesday, January 3, 1838.
[3] The County of Essex- La Salle web site http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Locations/Essex/Webpages/W12.html
[4] The Times of London, February 11, 1839.
References
McLaughlin, Shaun J. The Patriot War Along the New York-Canada Border: Raiders and Rebels. The History Press, 2012.
A History of Detroit, Volume One
Michigan became a state on January 26, 1837 and a year later the Michigan militia which was still being organized, was called up to serve in the “Patriot” War which like the War of 1812, turned out to be as much of a maritime as land war. Several trends and events came together in 1838 in Canada and across the border in the United States to cause the Patriot War to erupt. Residents of Upper Canada and the United States were discontented with their governments for different reasons.
When Upper and Lower Canada were organized under the Constitution Act after the American Revolution, the British minister theorized that Britain had lost its American Colonies because it had allowed the colonies too much political liberty. These ministers did not intend to repeat the same mistake in their remaining province of British North America, so they structured the legislative assemblies in the Canadian provinces to favor the privileged classes and allowed elected assemblies representing the people no control over the governing officials and policies.
The people in the provinces were not content to live under such autocratic rule, and their discontent erupted in the 1830s. Like their colonial counterparts in America, the reformers initially did not want to be disloyal to Britain or separate from England. They just wanted responsible, truly representative government.
The “Patriots” Plan to Invade Canada
Many Americans for their part, despite disastrous attempts in the War of 1812, still cast covetous eyes on the vast richness of Canada and dreamed of annexation. When in 1838, rebel leaders from Canada escaped to the United States, they found some Americans eager to listen and to fight to free Canadian colonies from the yoke of Great Britain. The plan was to form Upper Canada into an independent republic- one that would join the United States and make its liberators rich in the process.
These “Patriots” as they called themselves planned to annex the peninsula laying between the Michigan and the Niagara frontiers to the United States. In Michigan the Patriots organized secret groups known as “Hunter’s Lodges” which met at Fort Gratiot (Port Huron), Mt. Clemens, Detroit and Gibraltar. The patriots fanned out and called meetings, formed secret military organizations and prepared to act. Dr. E.A. Theller, an Irishman who opposed anything British, acted injudiciously and the Canadian authorities arrested, tried and convinced him. He was sentenced to the citadel of Quebec, but later escaped and made his way to Detroit.
At the beginning of the Patriot war, Colonel John Prince, a gentleman farmer, soldier, and a member of the Legislature, lived in the Sandwich District. The Canadian government gave him command of the Sandwich garrison that consisted of two companies of his own volunteer battalion. The entire border stood at attention and almost every citizen along the expected points of attack acted as night patrols. Captain Prince considered the invaders “pirates” and decided that he and his men would treat them as such.
The Patriots Land on Fighting Island
The first attempt the Patriots made to invade Canada was in January 1838. A group of Patriots or “Pirates,” met on January 1, 1838, and they raised $135.00 and ten rifles to aid their cause. Before dawn broke on January 5, about 20-25 Patriots crept to the Detroit jail where they seized jailor Thompson and his arms and ammunition. The next day they seized the schooner Ann and fortified with the arms from the Detroit jail and reinforcements of over 100 men, they set sail for Fighting Island across from Ecorse. An English steamer chased the Ann and when the Ann reached Ecorse a United States marshal and a posse of citizens hailed her. The Patriots aboard the Ann ignored the hail and as a stiff breeze filled her canvas, the Ann passed on down the river. A number of smaller boats joined the Ann and she landed at Gibraltar with at least 300 people aboard. Later that same evening a party of sixty men from Cleveland led by J.T. Sutherland arrived on the steamer Erie. The group of Patriots hatched a plot to capture Malden – Amhertsburg.
Their plot didn’t play out the way they had planned. At Amherstburg, “loyal” Canadians waited for them and cut the halyards of the leading schooner Ann with their first volley. The schooner drifted aground at Elliott’s Point and all on board were captured or killed. Colonel Prince and his men took part in this rout.[1]
The schooner Ann episode alarmed the more neutral Detroit citizens and they called a meeting at the Detroit city hall to discuss ways of maintaining neutrality.
Michigan Governor Mason Gets Involved
On February 12, 1838, Michigan Governor Stephens T. Mason and 220 volunteer militiamen started out on the steamers Erie and Brady to seize the schooner Ann for violating neutrality laws. The expedition turned out to be unpleasant because of the intensely cold weather and the attempts of two men to desert. They broke through the ice while crossing the Detroit River and drowned. When Governor Mason and the militia arrived at Gibraltar, he forced the Patriots to disperse, but the Ann escaped to Elliot’s Point near Amherstburg. Governor Mason and his troops returned to Detroit without capturing the Ann, but demonstrating their determination to abide by the neutrality laws.
The disbanding of Patriot ranks at Gibraltar halted them temporarily, but they remained extremely active. On February 14, 1838, Captain Johnson and a company of regulars arrived from Buffalo and the Brady Guards left Detroit for Gibraltar to escort provisions to troops at Monroe.
J.T. Sutherland and his group of Patriots tried to capture Bois Blanc (Bob-Lo Island), but a small group of English regulars and Canadian militia drove them back. Sutherland and his Patriot group retreated to Fighting Island, and the Canadians who feared that the Patriots were planning to attack Amherstburg quickly marched there to defend it. Sutherland had ordered Dr. Theller who commanded the Ann to join him. When the Ann attempted to join Sutherland’s forces, the Canadians on shore fired at her and shot so badly tore her rigging and sails that she drifted helplessly ashore where the Canadians captured her. When Sutherland heard about the capture of the Ann and Dr. Theller, he dropped back to Sugar Island and then to Gibraltar. The Canadians sent Dr. Theller to Quebec as a prisoner.
In the meantime, Colonel Prince and about 150 volunteers left Sandwich in the steamer United for Bois Blanc Island where as the Sandwich Western Herald put it, “the rebels, it seems, purposed to establish a post, and elevate a standard of liberty, forsooth!”[2]
On the night of February 23 and 24, 1838, a small group of Patriots rowed from Detroit to Fighting Island, in the middle of the Detroit River between Ecorse and LaSalle, Ontario. The Patriots planned an attack against Sandwich and the following day General Donald McLeod, a British Army veteran and former resident of Prescott, and several hundred supporters came to join the Patriots.
The American General Hugh Brady notified the British regulars and Canadian militia of the proposed attack and on February 25, the Canadians and British and the Patriots sharply skirmished. Colonel Prince and his men were again in the thick of the fight. The poorly armed Patriots retreated to the Michigan shore and American troops broke up their ranks. [3]
The United States government entered the fray by sending the steamer Robert Fulton from Buffalo to Detroit with three companies of United States regulars commanded by Colonel Worth. The government frequently sent troops to patrol both up and down the Detroit River to stem the Patriot movement, but the Patriots survived.
Return to Fighting Island
On February 23, 1838, a force of 200 men gathered at an inn kept by a man named Thomas five miles below Gibraltar. Under the cover of a heavy snowstorm, they marched up the river in three divisions to Ecorse. At Ecorse people driving sleighs met them and transported their arms, ammunition, and supplies across the ice to Fighting Island.
Observing the Patriot activity from the Canadian shore opposite Fighting Island, the Canadians gathered their troops. In the meantime, the Brady Guards had left Detroit for Ecorse to arrest the Patriots. On the frosty Sunday morning of February 25, the Canadians shelled the Patriot stronghold, killing 13 Patriots and wounding 40 0f them. The Patriots once again retreated to Gibraltar and along the American shore at points below Gibraltar. American troops met them, captured their arms and took two leaders prisoner, charging them with violating the neutrality laws.
The Canadians vowed to attack Detroit and Detroiters held public meetings in the city hall on March 7 and March 10 and decided that they would stand firmly against American violation of neutrality laws. Detroiters protested vigorously against the speeches in the Canadian parliament charging them with sympathizing with and aiding the Patriots. They clearly demonstrated that Colonel Prince who accidentally met T.J. Sutherland, the Patriot leader on the ice, had captured him in Canadian territory.
People on both sides of the Detroit River fired at each other in early summer the United States government sent ten thousands muskets to the arsenal at Dearborn. That summer, more than 200 Patriots camped at Bloody Run in Detroit waiting for the time and reinforcements for another foray against the Canadians.
The Battle of Windsor
In November, United States authorities captured a schooner carrying several hundred arms for the Patriots near Gibraltar. General Brady chartered the steamer Illinois and stationed troops along the Detroit River. On November 23, the Patriots seized the arms of the Brady Guards, but the Guards recaptured them a few days later. The Patriots didn’t have an organized military strategy, and for a time it seemed that they had abandoned their plans to attack Canada.
The Battle of Windsor, the next and final assault took place on December 3 and 4, 1838. American Lucius Versus Bierce of Akron, Ohio, commanded the American assault. He and his troops captured the steamboat Champlain at the foot of Rivard Street in Detroit and he and about 140 men landed near the present site of Walkerville after midnight on December 4, 1838. The American force marched on Windsor, setting fire to the military barracks. The men who were not burned to death were shot as they escaped from the burning building. The Americans also set fire to the steamer Thames which was at the dock.
News of the marauding expedition from the American side soon reached Sandwich, but before Colonel Prince and his militia could reach Windsor, surgeon John J. Hume rode out to see what aid he could provide to the wounded. The Patriots immediately shot him to death. The militia met the patriots in Francois Baby’s orchard near what is now the foot of Douglass Avenue, attacking from two sides. One volley scattered the Patriots who fled to what is now Walkerville, the militia is hot pursuit. Colonel Prince ordered all of the captured Patriots bearing arms to be shot, an action that caused much controversy.
Twenty-one Patriots were killed and many of them froze to death. They were fired on by Canadians and by Colonel Pyne of the United States Army and his men as they escaped to Belle isle. During the fighting Detroit blazed with excitement and city officials appointed a night watch of 50 men to patrol the city. The next day they swore in approximately 100 prominent citizens as peace officers.
By January 1839, the Patriot or Pirate War, depending upon perspective, had ended and by the next month the British government appointed the Earl of Durham Commander-in-Chief of all the British North American provinces except Newfoundland, High Commissioner for special purposes in Upper and Lower Canada and Governor General of all British North America. He investigated the situation in the provinces and presented a report to the House of Commons on February 11, 1839, after the Times of London had revealed some of its contents without his knowledge. Perhaps American history would have been much different if Britain had applied his words to its American Colonies:
I believe that no permanent or efficient remedy can be devised for the disorders of Lower Canada, except a fusion of the government in that of one or more of the surrounding provinces; and as I am of the opinion that the full establishment of responsible government can only be permanently secured by giving these colonies an increased importance in the politics of the empire, I find in union the only means of remedying at once and completely the two prominent causes of their present unsatisfactory condition…[4]
After the Patriot War, ferry and tugboat companies resumed operating on the Detroit River without international incident.
[1] John Prince & the Patriot War of 18.38 http://www.mnsi.net/~masonic/colonel.htm))
[2] Western Herald, Sandwich, UC, Tuesday, January 3, 1838.
[3] The County of Essex- La Salle web site http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Locations/Essex/Webpages/W12.html
[4] The Times of London, February 11, 1839.
References
McLaughlin, Shaun J. The Patriot War Along the New York-Canada Border: Raiders and Rebels. The History Press, 2012.
A History of Detroit, Volume One