For Honour's Sake by Mark Zuehlke

superiority.
    Armstrong’s plan was bold, but not as bold as it might have been. American estimates of British strength at Montreal were absurdly inflated. In fact, excluding militia, there were only a little more than 9,000 troops in all the Canadas, and 2,000 of these were provincials considered of dubious quality. 12 Nor were the British able to depend on significant numbers of Upper Canadian militia responding to a call to arms. Prevost had admitted to Lord Bathurst in May that call-ups were causing “growing discontent [and] dissatisfaction of the Mass of the People of Upper Canada, in consequence of the Militia Laws upon a population thinly scattered over an extensive range of Country, whose zeal was exhausted & whose exertions had brought want and ruin to the doors of many.” A good number of the American settlers were packing up and crossing the border to the south. His only recourse had been to move more regulars out of Lower Canada to create a thin screen that might withstand the expected American assault. The militia, Prevost lamented, had “been considerably weakened by the frequent desertion of even the well disposed part of them to their farms, for the purpose of getting seed into the ground before the short summer of this country had too far advanced.” 13
    If Armstrong had seriously overestimated the numbers of British regulars in the Canadas, his calculations were conservative in the extreme compared to those added up by Dearborn. Claiming sources “entitled to full credit,” Dearborn reported that Prevost had assembled 6,000 to 8,000 men in Kingston alone. He expected Prevost to concentrate there for operations against Sackets Harbor, a fear he had harboured throughout the winter and which had been reinforced in his mind by a British raid in February against the small fort garrison at Ogdensburg—the only real base the Americans had managed to establish on the St. Lawrence River. In a daring attack out of Prescott, the fort standing on the opposite shore, British troops had crossed the frozen mile-wide river on foot, driven off the small garrison, burned several ice-bound ships, and carried off the military stores on sleighs back to Canada. 14 Dearborn was so rattled he was quick to believe any reports that large British forces threatened Sackets Harbor.
    Chauncey little credited Dearborn’s fears. Rather, he believed the British were massing in order to march against Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison’s army out on the western frontier. But he agreed that there were at least sufficient men garrisoning Kingston to ensure that an attack against its forts would bog down in a drawn-out siege that would limit the American ability to conduct further operations in 1813. He proposed instead to abandon the attack on Kingston and destroy only the ships and shipbuilding facilities at York. Chauncey believed this would sufficiently weaken the British on Lake Ontario to ensure America retained supremacy. Once York was reduced, the two corps would carry out Armstrong’s Niagara plan. British loss of Fort Erie would free several American ships currently confined in Black Rock by its overlooking guns. Once these vessels were free, the Americans would control Lake Erie and be able to assist Harrison in recovering Detroit and capturing Fort Malden. With the British presence in the west eliminated, it would be a simple matter to sail the length of Lake Huron and reoccupy Fort Michilimackinac, leaving the Americans in control of the frontier. Harrison could then either eliminate Tecumseh’s Indian confederacy at leisure or impose a new treaty should they sensibly decide to sue for peace. The British would be left with Kingston and Montreal, but little else.
    Chauncey’s was a tidy plan that looked good when little wooden boats and soldiers were moved about on a map, but it failed to address the fact that even if it succeeded the Americans would not have conquered Canada. And