The Niagara frontier was the scene of desultory warfare, with varied fortune for both sides. The battle of Queenstown, October 13, 1812, although it resulted in the defeat and capture of the Americans engaged and witnessed a pitiable exhibition of cowardice on the part of militiamen who refused to cross the river to the aid of their countrymen, was attended by a loss for the Canadians that more than counterbalanced their victory, in the death of Major-General Isaac Brock, whose well-deserved monument is a conspicuous feature of the Niagara landscape. Among the Americans who surrendered on this occasion was Colonel Winfield Scott, who, while himself a prisoner, took a resolute and memorable stand against the British claim that certain Irishmen captured in the American ranks should be sent to England to be tried for treason. The Irishmen, twenty-three in number, were put in irons and deported to England, but in the following May Colonel Scott, after the battle of Fort George, selected twenty-three British prisoners, not of Irish birth, to be dealt with as the British authorities should deal with the Irish-Americans. The latter were finally released and returned to America, and the British doctrine of perpetual allegiance was shattered without treaty or diplomacy. CHAPTER XXVI. Battle of Lake Erie--Master-Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry--Building a Fleet--Perry on the Lake--A Duel of Long Guns--Fearful Slaughter on the Lawrence--"Can Any of the Wounded Pull a Rope?"--At Close Quarters-- Victory in Fifteen Minutes--"We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Ours" --The Father of Chicago Sees the End of the Battle--The British Evacuate Detroit--General Harrison's Victory at the Thames--Tecumseh Slain--The Struggle in the Southwest--Andrew Jackson in Command--Battle of Horseshoe Bend--The Essex in the Pacific--Defeat and Victory on the Ocean--Captain Porter's Brave Defence--Burning of Newark--Massacre at Fort Niagara--Chippewa and Lundy's Lane--Devastation by the British Fleet--British Vandalism at Washington--Attempt on Baltimore--"The Star Spangled Banner."