r using every honorable overture for friendship, only issued
theirs in October, couching it, besides, in terms of regret and
reproach at the unfairness in which Madison's party persisted. Owing
to that unfairness and other causes the enterprise also was by no
means unanimously popular in the States. A convention of delegates
from the counties of New York, held in the capitol at Albany, on the
17th and 18th of September, and called the New York Convention,
condemned Madison's party for declaring the war, on account of its
injustice, and "as having been undertaken," they said, "from motives
entirely distinct from those which have been hitherto avowed." The New
England States treated it coldly. Maryland disapproved through her
Legislature. Many persons everywhere looked on it as a mere political
scheme, and when drafted for service in frequent cases bought
themselves substitutes.

It was soon found that a mistake had been made in attacking Canada.
That happened which might be expected where bodies of men with
inflated ideas of glory and no experience attack men fighting
desperately for their homes, and officers and veterans who had seen
such service as the Napoleonic wars. The British, with an astuteness
which is oftener the character credited to their opponents, managed to
get earliest word of the Declaration sent to their own forts on the
Lakes, and promptly captured the American fort Michilimackinac. They
then followed with the daring capture of the stronghold of Detroit,
amply equipped and garrisoned, by a little handful of men under the
heroic General Brock, who simply went before it and demanded its
surrender, whereupon it was given up, together with the whole
Territory of Michigan. The presence of such trained British officers
as Brock and of army veterans in the ranks was a very great advantage.
Poor Brock soon afterwards died in his memorable charge at the victory
of Queenston Heights.

That year--the first of the War--is known as a succession of fiascos
for the Americans. The other conspicuous aspect of it is that the
attacked points were, with the exception of a little skirmishing at
St. Regis and Lacolle, all in the Province of Upper Canada.

It was only towards the close of the campaign of the next
year--1813--that Lower Canada was gravely threatened.

The Americans, emboldened by several successes, and having put a great
many men into the field, believed that the struggle might easily be
terminated by ca