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My Dearest Aunt
Ethel,
I am writing you to let you know I am safe and sound. The
past few days have been really exciting but seeing you live
quite a ways away and don’t get the news too often, I figured
I’d start from the beginning.
Here’s the story, the British were having it out with this
French guy named Napoleon over on the other side of the pond
(that’s the Atlantic Ocean according to the British folk).
Well, we got in the middle of things trying to trade with both
the British and the French. During their little “fight”
(we’ll just call it the Napoleonic Wars) the French and British
both initiated a blockade. Our merchant friends didn’t want to
side with either of those countries so we sent supplies to both
sides. While we were doing this we ran into trouble every
now and again with the French and British capturing our ships.
The British seem to be doing a good more capturing than the
French, I think that’s because they have a larger Navy.
They also do this thing called impressment. That is where
they capture men from our ships and force them to serve in the
Royal Navy saying that they were deserters. I’m sure glad
they never captured me, it makes me spitting mad how they can do
this sort of thing.
It got ugly a few years back in 1807 when the British disabled
one of our ships called the USS Chesapeake. I remember
they impressed several members of the crew. Me and the guys
here were all fired up about this when we read it in the paper
and all. That President guy, Thomas Jefferson, didn’t seem
quite as mad as we were; he just ordered a blockade so we didn’t
trade with anyone. Well not really, I know some merchants
who still traded but not as much and a lot of the merchants
didn’t trade at all. I guess that President guy was pretty
smart because it almost worked. I talked to the guys at
the pub and they said the British Foreign Minister announced
that they wouldn’t be as hard on the American ships so they
could trade and all. The British had a bad grain harvest
and really needed our supplies. Unfortunately, that
President guy who started the blockade was no longer President,
we elected this guy named James Madison and he was up for
re-election so he decided to go to war with the British because
he didn’t know they weren’t going to harass our ships anymore.
We declared war on June 18, 1812 two days after the British said
they won’t harass our ships. Too bad it takes us over a
month to get any news from them.
That’s the start of this whole war thing. Now that we were
at war, the Secretary of War, John Armstrong, decided we should
try to take Canada. He figured we should take Montreal,
cutting off communications and divide Canada in two. This
sounded good but not everyone around here was in favor of the
war; in fact I even know some people from Vermont and New
Hampshire who are helping the British and Canadians out by given
them supplies and all. The settlers to the west of us are
all for the war. They say the British has been helping out
the Indians when they raid their new settlements. Mr.
Secretary of War might have done better if they started the
fight there.
From what I heard things went bad from the beginning even in the
western parts. The Secretary of War put this old guy in
charge of Ohio’s forces, his name was General Hull. He had
a lot of men under his command but he wouldn’t do much fight-n’.
I guess he was gun shy after all the time he spent chasing the
British in the Revolutionary War. He did well back then
but now he keep having our guys run away. After losing
Fort Michilimackinac and surrendering Fort Detroit and Fort
Dearborn, he was court-martialed. They sentenced him to be
shot but he was pardoned. He lost us all of Ohio.
The Secretary of War did a better job selecting our General.
Major-General Henry Dearborn seems to really know his stuff.
He had a bunch of ships attack York and we took the town.
I remember it was the 24th of April, 1813. Some of the men
got real excited and started burning things down, I don’t think
Major-General was too happy about that. He sent another
party out again on 17th of May to attack Fort George. They
didn’t stay to take the fort but their attack was successful. It
must have been fun watching the British run away from us.
It was some time after that where things started to get
interesting around here. There was me and almost 600 other
guys, 200 of us regulars and some 250 militia from Albany.
We also had 40 artillery guys and about 80 sick and wounded.
The British General Prevost had figured out there wasn’t too
many of us around, so he decided it might be a good time to raid
us from Kingston, burn our ships take our supplies, and high
tail it back to Canada. Major-General Dearborn wasn’t here
at the time cause he was still out raiding Fort George so
someone else had to take charge. I thought it would be my
Lieutenant-Colonel, Electus Backus but this Brigadier-General
named Jacob Brown from Brownsville came up and took charge.
I guess he was supposed to take charge in case of an emergency
and if we were being attacked, that was definitely an emergency.
Major-General Dearborn must have known what he was doing putting
Brigadier-General Brown in charge, he got us all charged up once
he made it to town. I remember it well, it must have been
past midnight on the 28th of May when I heard the canons go off.
Some Sloop Ship must have seen General Prevost and his men
heading out from Kingston so he came back to warn us. Not
too long after he sounded the alarm there were a whole mess of
canons firing and church bells ringing waking up every living
sole for miles. They sent men out on horse back to roundup
as many men as they could especially General Brown who was in
Brownsville.
General Brown barked out orders to us all. He had the
militia guys line up around the shore and had us regulars stay
back in the rear. He knew those militia guys being new and
all would probably run once things heated up. The British
would then chase them and we’d be there to attack their flank.
It was a great plan but we never had to fight that day.
General Provost ordered his men out of the big ship and into
their small boats. When they were rowing towards us they
spotted some soldiers from the Boston Militia on their way to
Fort Oswego. General Provost had some Indians with him and
they took off after the Boston Militia so he decided to call off
the attack on us and go after the Boston guys. The pursuit
by the British kinda worked, they captured 70 of the Boston
Militia but about 100 made it to shore and came to join us.
By the time they finished, it was getting late so they decided
to wait another day before they attacked us. General Brown
was real happy about this because it gave him more time to set
things up for when they did come back.
General Brown thought there might be a night attack from the
Indians so he had all the militia guys he put on Horsehead
Island come back to shore. Horshead is just a small Island
50 feet from the shore that the British were going to land on.
General Brown then went and had the militia men form up into
three different groups. One led by Lieutenant-Colonel John
Mill one led by Colonel Sprague and the last one led by Colonel
Tuttle. He gave them each different places to defend.
The Militia under Lieutenant-Colonel Mill would get to see the
British first, they were of the shoreline the other two groups
were further back.
I was back even further with the rest of the regulars. The
Boston Militia men who weren’t capture also joined us for the
fight. I liked their guy in charge. His name was
Lieutenant-Colonel Aspinwall, he did a great job at leading his
men. Our Lieutenant-Colonel Backus had the Boston Militia stay
on our left side right next to the woods. We blocked the
only route the British could take to get to the harbor. We
figured the militia guys would run but we would stand our
ground.
The fight started out early in the morning on the 29th, before
sunrise. Someone said it was like 0400. I hadn’t
sleep at all during the night being outside and all and I heard
a bunch of gunshots. Next thing I know one of the militia
guys from Albany said that their Lieutenant-Colonel Mill was
shot dead. It was crazy, I guess after the first few
rounds the British started coming ashore and after one volley
shot Lieutenant-Colonel Mill and almost everyone started running
away including the Colonels. General Brown took this
pretty hard and took off on his horse. He ran back and
forth telling the men to hold their positions; a few did but not
enough to do much. The British were able to unload and
form up in the open field.
It was still dark out when the British were coming ashore and in
the confusion they shot 8 of their own men. Once they
unloaded a British Colonel Baynes sent two groups out to explore
the paths in front of them. One group ran into our Captain
McNitt, he’s from the town of Adams, he manage to convince about
100 militia men to stay and fight. They were behind some
fallen trees so they could shoot at the British. These men
did better than the other militia guys, they would fight and
then pull back anytime it got too intense slowing the British
down. The other party sent out ran into us regulars.
We stood our ground and let them know it was not going to be an
easy fight. Unfortunately, there were too many of the
British and they slowly moved us back towards Navy Point.
I think General Brown must have rode around and encourage some
of the militia to return because there were people shooting and
skirmishes happening in the woods next to us.
We fought very hard but the British kept coming. My
Lieutenant-Colonel Backus was shot and had to be carried off the
battle field. That was hard watching them carry him off
like that, he looked like he was in bad shape and they would
probably have to put him on profile for quite a while. We
finally had to pull back to the barracks but General Brown was
with us all the way telling us that we’re going to win. It
was nice to fight from the barracks I was able to hide behind a
corner of one while I reloaded my musket so I didn’t have to
worry about being shot. General Brown must have been mad
about all those militia guys who left so he sent some guys into
town to tell them we had won and the British were leaving.
He figured they would not come back to fight but they would come
for a victory celebration.
The militia men came pouring out of the town and gathered a ways
behind us. It took them some time to figure out what was
going on but by that time General Brown was there yelling that
they “must fight” , “they can’t all be cowards” and “it
was their job and duty to fight for their country.” He
yelled and scolded them all while still on his horse. He
convinced about 300 of them to come fight with us.
While General Brown was rallying the men, the British took the
offensive. They were fierce when they charged at us.
They would come at us with their bayonets drawn, muskets firing
and it was scary, but we stood our ground. They charged at
us twice like that and both times we drove them back.
There was a group of our guys to the left of me who had just
formed up and looked like they were about to attack from the far
side. I think this scared the British because the British
General Prevost had his men retreat. He must have known
that our guys could have cut off his route to the boats.
They started to retreat in their columns and all but we kept
shooting at them and next thing you know they were all running
like mad to their boats. Me and the other guys were too
tired to run after them so we just let them go. I’m sure
there were plenty of guys left in the woods who were taking
shots at them so they didn’t need us.
We were all feeling good about the victory when someone came up
to us and said some British guy came back and talked to General
Brown. The guy demanded that we surrender! I can’t
remember laughing so hard when I heard that one. When
General Brown refused he then asked if they could have the
British surgeon land to care for their fallen comrades.
Our General assured him that we would take good care of them and
sent the guy away. It was about noon when we saw the
British set sail for Kingston. I don’t think we’ll ever
see them again.
Twenty-one of our guys died that day. It was really sad
and I don’t like to think about it. I’m going to a
memorial service tomorrow in their honor. I’ve been to see
Lieutenant-Colonel Backus, he’s not doing so good. I don’t
know if he’s going to make it. They also burnt some of the
building in the navy ship yard. When the Militia started
to run away the men at the ship yard thought the worse so they
were going to destroy everything. Luckily General Brown
got their in time to tell them we were winning and they were
able to save most of what was there.
I know I probably talked your ear off but I had to write
someone. My mom would be a nervous wreck if I wrote her
about all this. I hope all is well with you, tell little
Joey I say hi and if you get a chance please write me a letter.
It’s getting late now and I’m exhausted so I’m going to bed.
Yours truly,
Private Joe
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