ummer by
the English, and the Americans were repulsed in an attempt to seize the
fort at Michillimackinac. In eastern Canada there was no such record
of victory to show as Drummond and his officers had made in the west.
Prevost again gave a signal proof of his incapacity. His fleet
sustained a complete defeat on Lake Champlain, and so great was his
dismay that he ordered the retreat to Montreal of a splendid force of
over ten thousand troops, largely composed of peninsula veterans,
though Plattsburg and its garrison must have fallen easily into his
hands had he been possessed of the most ordinary resolution. This
retreat was confessedly a disgrace to the {334} English army, which
Canadian and English writers must always record with a feeling of
contempt for Prevost.

It is not necessary to dwell at any length on other features of this
war. The American navy, small though it was, won several successes
mainly through the superiority of their vessels in tonnage, crew, and
armament. The memorable fight between the British frigate _Shannon_,
under Captain Broke, and the United States frigate _Chesapeake_, under
Captain Lawrence, off Massachusetts Bay, illustrates equally the
courage of British and American sailors--of men belonging to the same
great stock which has won so many victories on the sea. The two ships
were equally matched, and after a sharp contest of a quarter of an hour
the _Chesapeake_ was beaten, but not until Captain Lawrence was fatally
wounded and his victorious adversary also severely injured. During the
war Nova Scotia and the other maritime provinces were somewhat harassed
at times by American privateers, but the presence of a large fleet
constantly on their coasts--Halifax being the rendezvous of the British
navy in American waters--and the hostility of New England to the war
saved these sections of British America from invasion. On the other
hand, all the important positions on the coast of Maine from the
Penobscot to the St. Croix, were attacked and occupied by the English.
The whole American coast during the last year of the war was blockaded
by the English fleet with the exception of New England ports, which
were open to neutral vessels. The public buildings of Washington,
{335} the federal capital, were destroyed by an English army, in
retaliation for the burning of York, Newark, and Moraviantown. The
attempt to take Baltimore failed, and a bold man from Tennessee, Andrew
Jackson--in lat