Battle of Crysler's Farm
The Battle of Crysler's Farm (11 November 1813) was a major battle in the War of 1812. Fought along the banks of the St. Lawrence River, it saw a British and Canadian force defeat a much larger American army, thwarting the United States' attempt to capture Montreal.
Battle of Crysler's Farm
Adam Sherriff Scott (Public Domain)
Background
By the autumn of 1813, the St. Lawrence Valley had been left largely untouched by the War of 1812, even though the conflict had been raging for over a year. This was partially because the Americans were focused on taking the Niagara Peninsula for political and strategic reasons, but also because David Parish, one of the largest landowners in the St. Lawrence region, had loaned millions of dollars to the Madison administration in the understanding that the US would leave the valley alone. For a while, Parish's bribes paid off, and the only action along the St. Lawrence were minor raids conducted by US Major Benjamin Forsyth and his riflemen, who attacked and plundered the Canadian settlements of Gananoque and Elizabethtown on their own volition. But by mid-1813, as the Americans fumbled their invasion of Niagara, they began to look at the St. Lawrence Valley as an enticing place to open a new front. After all, the river was a major supply line for British Canada, and its capture could allow the Americans to threaten vital Canadian outposts like Kingston or even Montreal.
Such an operation would be led by Major General James Wilkinson, who had recently replaced the outgoing General Henry Dearborn as commander of all US troops along the New York–Canadian frontier. To say that Wilkinson was controversial would be somewhat of an understatement. He was almost universally disliked; Winfield Scott, one of the army's up-and-coming officers, once said that serving under Wilkinson "was as disgraceful as being married to a prostitute" (quoted in Taylor, 281). Indeed, Wilkinson's reputation for treachery stretched back to the American Revolution, when he was implicated in the Conway Cabal, which had unsuccessfully tried to force General George Washington out of command. Since then, Wilkinson had undermined his superior officer, General Anthony Wayne, in the Fallen Timbers campaign of 1794, and had later plotted with Aaron Burr to illegally attack Mexico – when this conspiracy was uncovered in 1807, Wilkinson threw Burr under the bus to minimize his own involvement. To top it all off, Wilkinson was secretly in the pay of the Spanish, having promised to promote their interests in the American West. His detestable reputation stretched well beyond his own lifetime; President Theodore Roosevelt would later say of Wilkinson that "in all our history, there is no more despicable character" (nps.gov).
The fact that a man like Wilkinson had been given such an important command was a testament to the lack of experienced general officers in the US Army. In late August, he arrived at the military camp at Sackets Harbor, New York, where, despite his unsavory reputation, he was cheered by the men. "General Wilkinson has infused new spirit into the troops at this post," reported one captain. "He inspired a degree of confidence in every officer and soldier that I never saw equaled" (quoted in Taylor, 279). The reason for this outpour of jubilation was because the soldiers were in desperate need of hope – under the sluggish leadership of their previous commander Dearborn, they had suffered defeat after defeat and, moreover, were undersupplied and poorly trained, lacking enough officers to properly drill them. What was worse was that they were suffering from disease caused by their tainted food supply; for weeks now, the men had been subsisting on rotten meat, stagnant water, and bread that was found to have been mixed with bits of soap, lime, and even fecal matter. By September, 700 officers and men were incapacitated by illness, and a month later, that number had doubled. The men, therefore, hoped that this change in command would lead to a change in fortune and would save them from their wretched condition.
James Wilkinson, c. 1820
John Wesley Jarvis (Public Domain)
Shortly after his arrival in Sackets Harbor, Wilkinson met with US Secretary of War John Armstrong, Jr., to concoct a plan. While it was agreed that Wilkinson would lead his 8,000-man army down the St. Lawrence River, the two men disagreed as to their target; Armstrong preferred an attack on Kingston, which housed the main British naval base on Lake Ontario, while Wilkinson advocated for the riskier – yet more glorious – assault on Montreal. The successful capture of Montreal, Wilkinson argued, would sever the British supply line and cut the Canadian provinces in two. Armstrong ultimately relented, viewing the plan with a great deal of optimism. "If our cards are well played," he told Wilkinson, "We may renew the scenes of Saratoga" (quoted in Taylor, 283).
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