rrendered on this occasion was Colonel Winfield
Scott, who, while himself a prisoner, took a resolute and memorable stand
against the British claim that certain Irishmen captured in the American
ranks should be sent to England to be tried for treason. The Irishmen,
twenty-three in number, were put in irons and deported to England, but in
the following May Colonel Scott, after the battle of Fort George,
selected twenty-three British prisoners, not of Irish birth, to be dealt
with as the British authorities should deal with the Irish-Americans. The
latter were finally released and returned to America, and the British
doctrine of perpetual allegiance was shattered without treaty or
diplomacy.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Battle of Lake Erie--Master-Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry--Building a
Fleet--Perry on the Lake--A Duel of Long Guns--Fearful Slaughter on the
Lawrence--"Can Any of the Wounded Pull a Rope?"--At Close Quarters--
Victory in Fifteen Minutes--"We Have Met the Enemy and They Are Ours"
--The Father of Chicago Sees the End of the Battle--The British
Evacuate Detroit--General Harrison's Victory at the Thames--Tecumseh
Slain--The Struggle in the Southwest--Andrew Jackson in Command--Battle
of Horseshoe Bend--The Essex in the Pacific--Defeat and Victory on the
Ocean--Captain Porter's Brave Defence--Burning of Newark--Massacre at
Fort Niagara--Chippewa and Lundy's Lane--Devastation by the British
Fleet--British Vandalism at Washington--Attempt on Baltimore--"The Star
Spangled Banner."

And now came the struggle for the control of Lake Erie--a struggle on
which depended whether England should succeed in preventing the western
growth of the United States, or be driven forever from the soil which
Americans claimed as their own. Master-Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry was
but twenty-six years of age when the Navy Department called him from his
pleasant home at Newport and sent him to command a navy summoned from the
primeval forests of the Northwest. Young as he was Perry had seen service
in the wars with France and Tripoli, and he had requested the Navy
Department at the commencement of the conflict with England to send him
where he could meet the enemies of his country. Perry arrived at Erie,
then known as Presque Isle, in March, 1813. Sailing Master Daniel Dobbins
and Noah Brown, a shipwright from New York, were busily at work on the
new fleet. Two brigs, the Niagara and the Lawrence, were built with white
and black oak