throughout, and as late as 1814 two-thirds of the army of Canada
were eating beef supplied by Vermont and New York contractors.
Weak as was the militia of the Canadas, it was stiffened by
English and Canadian regulars, hardened by frontier experience,
and led for the most part by trained and able men, whereas an
inefficient system and political interference greatly weakened
the military force of the fighting States., Above all, the
Canadians were fighting for their homes. To them the war was a
matter of life and death; to the United States it was at best a
struggle to assert commercial rights or national prestige.

The course and fortunes of the war call for only the briefest
notice. In the first year the American plans for invading Upper
Canada came to grief through the surrender of Hull at Detroit to
Isaac Brock and the defeat at Queenston Heights of the American
army under Van Rensselaer. The campaign ended with not a foot of
Canadian soil in the invaders' hands, and with Michigan lost, but
Brock, Canada's brilliant leader, had fallen at Queenston, and at
sea the British had tasted unwonted defeat. In single actions one
American frigate after another proved too much for its British
opponent. It was a rude shock to the Mistress of the Seas.

The second year's campaign was more checkered. In the West the
Americans gained the command of the Great Lakes by rapid building
and good sailing, and with it followed the command of all the
western peninsula of Upper Canada. The British General Procter
was disastrously defeated at Moraviantown, and his ally, the
Shawanoe chief Tecumseh, one of the half dozen great men of his
race, was killed. York, later known as Toronto, the capital of
the province, was captured, and its public buildings were burned