The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 by Walter R. Nursey
page 78 of 176 (44%)
page 78 of 176 (44%)
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floating above the basalt cliffs of the Gibraltar of the north, and also
over two of the enemy's vessels laden with furs. It is not on record that Captain Roberts was recommended by General Sir George Prevost for promotion! The Indians at Amherstburg were now ready to support the British. Foremost among these was the great Shawanese warrior, Tecumseh. General Hull, having meantime billeted himself in Colonel Baby's big brick house at Sandwich, issued a proclamation to the "inhabitants of Canada." As a sample of egotism, bluff and bombast it stands unrivalled. He told the inhabitants of Canada that he was in possession of their country, that an ocean and wilderness isolated them from England, whose tyranny he knew they felt. His grand army was ready to release them from oppression. They must choose between liberty and security, as offered by the United States, and war and annihilation, the penalty of refusal. He also threatened instant destruction to any Canadian found fighting by the side of an Indian, though General Dearborn, in command of the United States forces at Niagara, had been authorized by the United States Secretary of War "to organize the warriors of the Seneca Indians" _for active service against Canada_. The United States Secretary of War wrote to Hull, saying his action respecting Canadian Indians "met with the approval of the Government." Evidently ashamed, upon reflection, of Hull's threat, that same Government later instructed its commissioners at the Treaty of Ghent, when peace was restored, "to disown and disavow" their former Indian policy. Hull's extraordinary production, which proved a boomerang, was really the work of Colonel Lewis Cass, his Chief of Staff; but while Hull and Cass were "unloading their rhetoric at Sandwich," our hero was "loading |
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