This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan. CHRONICLES OF CANADA Edited by George M. Wrong and H. H. Langton In thirty-two volumes Volume 14 THE WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES A Chronicle of 1812 By WILLIAM WOOD TORONTO, 1915 CONTENTS I. OPPOSING CLAIMS II. OPPOSING FORCES III. 1812: OFF TO THE FRONT IV. 1812: BROCK AT DETROIT AND QUEENSTON HEIGHTS V. 1813: THE BEAVER DAMS, LAKE ERIE, AND CHATEAUGUAY VI. 1814: LUNDY'S LANE, PLATTSBURG, AND THE GREAT BLOCKADE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE CHAPTER I OPPOSING CLAIMS International disputes that end in war are not generally questions of absolute right and wrong. They may quite as well be questions of opposing rights. But, when there are rights on both sides; it is usually found that the side which takes the initiative is moved by its national desires as well as by its claims of right. This could hardly be better exemplified than by the vexed questions which brought about the War of 1812. The British were fighting for life and liberty against Napoleon. Napoleon was fighting to master the whole of Europe. The United States wished to make as much as possible out of unrestricted trade with both belligerents. But Napoleon's Berlin Decree forbade all intercourse whatever with the British, while the British Orders-in-Council forbade all intercourse whatever with Napoleon and his allies, except on condition that the trade should first pass through British ports. Between two such desperate antagonists there was no safe place for an unarmed, independent, 'free-trading' neutral. Every one was forced to take sides. The British being overwhelmingly strong at sea, while the French were correspondingly strong on land, American shipping was bound to suffer more from the British than from the French. The French seized every American vessel that infringed the Berlin Decree whenever they could manage to do so. But the British seized so many more for infringing the Orders-in-Council that the Americans naturally began to take sides with the French.