Ohio History Journal

GENERAL JOHN GRAVES SIMCOE--

The Canadian Governor Who Attempted to Make Ohio

a Part of Canada*

Annual Paper by

JAMES A. GREEN

Historian of the Club

 

American visitors to Canada are always struck with

the beauty and charm of Lake Simcoe which is situated

fifty miles north of Toronto in the midst of one of the

most fertile regions of Ontario. It is a lovely lake, blue

as Como. Joined to it by a short and narrow strait is

Lake Couchicing, equally lovely. In the city park of

Orillia which is built upon this strait stands a splendid

and heroic statue of Champlain. The great explorer was

overtaken at that place by winter and on the very spot

where his statue stands he made a camp and spent sev-

eral months. They must, even to such a bold and intrepid

spirit as that which possessed Champlain, have been

dreary and trying months. He lived on the wild meat

and the fish which the Indians provided. How he would

be amazed were he able to return to see these lakes as

they are now, with here and there upon their shores a

prosperous town, handsome cottages of the summer vis-

itors by the hundreds and all the country which he knew

as an unbroken forest occupied by farms, rich with corn

and oats and orchards and with the pastures filled with

cattle. Even the meanest of the houses of today would

 

* Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club.

(35)

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36      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

have seemed a palace for Champlain in that dreary

winter.

Lake Simcoe was named for John Graves Simcoe,

who was born February 25, 1752, and died in 1806. He

was an English soldier and saw seven years of service in

America during the Revolution. Unhappily for him he

was at Yorktown with Cornwallis and was there sur-

rendered as a prisoner of war. He returned to this con-

tinent in 1792 as Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada,

that is Ontario, and remained there for four years. He

was a good husband, a good soldier, a man of large

capacity, and estimable in his personal and public life.

This paper will be devoted not to a biographical sketch

of General Simcoe but to the crowded years of his

services in Canada.

Had General Simcoe been able to carry out his ideas

he would have profoundly changed the course of Ameri-

can history. I think it can be said fairly there never was

an Englishman, unless probably it was Lord North, who

was so entirely hostile to the United States, or who held

the New Republic in lighter esteem. He deliberately set

about putting into effect a policy which he hoped would

in a large degree undo the work of the Revolution. Had

I lived in his time doubtless I should have regarded him

as an extremely dangerous enemy, a man of force, char-

acter and resourcefulness with all his energies devoted

to wrongful ends. Now that nearly a century and a half

have passed since he was Governor of Ontario, I am

able to regard him detachedly and to admire and respect

him. With the exception of Champlain he is in my opin-

ion the most original and far-seeing of the Europeans

who governed in Canada. And I am not sure that he

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General John Graves Simcoe       37

was as impracticable and visionary as a hasty judgment

might pronounce. He was a Tory of the Tories, devoted

to King and Church, an Englishman with a mind and

body given solely to his country, her glory and her ex-

pansion. There was in him no negative quality. He was

positive in everything he said or did, with never any

hemming or hawing, always direct and outspoken. He

was one of those typical Englishmen of that fine old

school which planted English Colonies in every strategic

and important place in the world, until, as Webster said,

the morning drum-beat of the British garrisons follow-

ing the sun and keeping time with the hours encircles

the globe with the continuous and unbroken strains of

the martial airs of England.

The Governor General of Canada at the time was

Lord Dorchester, better known to Americans as Guy

Carleton, who gave our forefathers during the Revolu-

tion some very bad hours. I think we owe him a debt

of gratitude in that he checked Simcoe's plans and finally

made him resign his position and return to the old coun-

try. However, Lord Dorchester thoroughly approved of

General Simcoe's ideas. He too was a violently anti-

American. The trouble was that the two could not get

along together. So our debt of gratitude to Lord Dor-

chester should have its severe limitations. Had Simcoe

been Governor-General instead of merely Lieutenant-

Governor there is no telling what might have happened,

but there is every reason to suppose a good deal would

have happened which would have been exceedingly dis-

turbing to the peace and to the dignity of the United

States. As it was, General Simcoe went far enough to

make things decidedly unpleasant. He had inherited

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38      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

from his father a tradition which became with him an

obsession. His father had been one of the naval captains

in the fleet which played such a great part with Wolfe

in the taking of Quebec. This father had not lived to see

the destruction of the French power in America, nor to

see the English flag go up to float proudly on the Citadel

of Quebec. But he had a vision of a new and greater

England extending over a vaster area than even that

which was subject to the Roman Caesars. In 1755

Captain John Simcoe, R. N., in writing of Montreal

said--

it will become the center of communication between the Gulf of

Mexico and Hudson Bay--formed for drawing to itself the wealth

and strength of the vast interjacent countries, so advantageously

placed, if not destined to lay the foundation of the most potent

and best connected Empire that ever awed the world.

There was an imperialist for you. These words were

written when Montreal had not an English resident,

when it was still hardly more than an outpost of the

French missionaries and of the fur traders. Certainly

its French residents had for it no such dreams of glory.

If there were many captains in the Royal Navy who

had such clear eyes to pierce the future, little wonder

the English drum-beat salutes the rising sun around the

world. At the beginning of the late War a German said

that one of the reasons for the war was they were tired

every time a German ship entered a foreign port of hav-

ing an English official tell them where to cast anchor,

and tired wherever they went of being obliged to learn

English if they would do business. It was just such men

as Captain John Simcoe and his son General John Graves

Simcoe who brought about that state of affairs. With

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General John Graves Simcoe       39

such a father no wonder the son had his own dreams of

empire.

The particular charm of the matter in the case of the

son was he could fashion things from their very begin-

ning. Up to the time of his arrival in Quebec when the

proclamation was issued dividing Canada into what we

know now as the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario,

there had been but one central administration for the

whole country. Now the westward portion was cut off

from the eastern part and General Simcoe was to be the

first governor, he was to lay the foundations of the state.

I suppose there is no man of high intelligence and gen-

uine imagination who has had the ordering of a new

government to be chopped out of the woods as it were,

but has had his dreams of a civilization which was to be

better than anything known previously. Governor Sim-

coe was justified in his large hopes, more than justified

because high aims need no excuse. He certainly aimed

high. His great purpose was to confine the United States

to the Atlantic sea coast and to make Ohio and the west-

ward country English. But his first labor was to make

Ontario secure--to make it strong enough to hold its

own and to make it so thoroughly British that nothing

could shake its loyalty. To do this it was necessary to

have a purely English population. Some start had been

made by settling there the Loyalists who had fled from

the Thirteen Colonies. They had proved their devotion

to England by giving up everything they possessed and

accepting the hard lot of exile. The King rewarded them

by liberal grants of land in Ontario. Today many of the

first families in Ontario were before the Revolution first

families in New England, New York or Virginia. We

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40      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

have been so accustomed to think of the Revolution as

a mass movement of all the American Colonists to throw

off the tyranny of England, it is somewhat startling to

realize how many thousands of Loyalists there were who

fled the country rather than desert their allegiance. And

Canada was their natural refuge. It was to these men

General Simcoe listened. They were filled with a deadly

hatred of the United States. But they also sincerely be-

lieved in its instability. They did not see how Thirteen

Colonies with their immense divergent interests could

hang together. They represented Vermont and Connec-

ticut as being secretly in the interest of the King and

ready to sever the bonds which united them to Congress,

as they put it. But the big scheme was to relocate the

boundaries of the United States by running a line from

Buffalo Creek south to the Ohio River. By 1792 the fur

traders in Montreal had developed a magnificent busi-

ness. It was the first big business on American soil. The

writer remembers as a boy a stately street in Montreal

called Beaver Hill. It was lined with pretentious grey

stone houses, the first houses of consequence built in

that city. These were the visible evidences of the wealth

and prosperity of the fur traders. There on a street of

their own somewhat apart then from the old city they

constructed what for the time were magnificent dwell-

ings. A year ago I went again to see Beaver Hill. Were

it in Cincinnati it would roughly speaking be at Fourth

and Broadway. The modern city has enveloped it,

spreading for miles around it. The houses of these mag-

nates of the fur trade are dingy and shabby, fallen from

their high estate, no longer the residences of the mighty.

But they still stand as monuments of the proud day when

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General John Graves Simcoe        41

the fur traders bombarded General Simcoe with letters

advising him that England had made a bad treaty after

the Revolution and it should be disregarded in their in-

terest especially and in the interests of the Empire gen-

erally. It is to be remembered when the Revolution ended

England was in possession of Detroit and of a string

of forts, always then called "the Posts," along our north-

ern border. These she held on the pretext they were

guarantees for the fulfillment of the treaty obligations,

principally the payment of pre-Revolutionary debts. We

did not pay the debts and England held the Posts. We

did not have the power to take them and Washington

instituted a policy of watchful waiting, thinking that

time would solve the trouble. As it was, England had

war ships on the Lakes and was wholly and absolutely

in possession of our northern boundary. The Montreal

fur traders had a practical monopoly of the fur trade

of the Great Lakes--their agents were in northern Ohio

and in Michigan, and by way of the portage at the Chi-

cago River they penetrated as far as the Mississippi.

They had a more accurate knowledge of the geography

of the country tributary to the Great Lakes than any-

one else. To them the giving up of this great region to

the Americans meant a serious loss of business. They

frothed at the mouth when they thought of it. They had

developed and established the trade, built stockades and

storehouses, equipped vessels for carrying and had an

immense capital at stake. The Treaty, so they wrote

Governor Simcoe, stipulated that the navigation of the

Mississippi should be free to both British and Ameri-

cans. They argued that implied free access to the Mis-

sissippi--when you sell a man a field in the middle of

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42      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

your property, you cannot deny him access to it--their

easiest road to the Father of Waters was by way of the

Chicago and Illinois Rivers. Their proposal was that

the boundary line should be redrawn so that all of Ohio,

Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin should be

British. To us this, in the light of present knowledge,

seems the most fantastic of dreams. Even when these

fur traders wrote in 1791 we were firmly established on

the Ohio with Fort Harmar at Marietta and Fort Wash-

ington at Cincinnati offering security to the settlers who

were crowding westward. To the fur traders these set-

tlers were an affront. To them it was essential the wide

western spaces should remain Indian, that the country

should remain in its primitive condition so that it might

continue to yield the harvests of furs on which they had

grown rich. This fitted in exactly with the Government's

idea. General Simcoe did not have a particularly tender

feeling for the fur traders but he and the others thought

it dangerous to permit American settlement on the bor-

ders of Canada. They wished between them and us a

great gulf. They watched with uneasy and anxious eyes

the preparations Governor St. Clair made for his expedi-

tion against the Indians whom they regarded as their

particular proteges. When General Washington, in

transmitting a speech to the Western Indians, called

himself their Father, Simcoe took offense. What lan-

guage was this! What presumption! Only the King of

England could call himself Father to the Indians. And

that year the English saw to it the Indians were boun-

tifully supplied--Governor Simcoe gave special instruc-

tions to the posts that the powder issued to the Indians

should be "prime." Officially England was neutral, but

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General John Graves Simcoe      43

it was a neutrality of fair words and not of deeds. And

there was rejoicing in Canada when St. Clair was de-

feated. Then it was that General Simcoe proposed

mediation between the Indians and the Americans, the

King to be the mediator. Simcoe had an idea that prob-

ably the King would make him his deputy in the media-

tion. There never was a more preposterous or arrogant

proposal. The King really was one of the main parties

at interest. Governor Simcoe had a hearty sympathy

with the Indians in their demand the Ohio River be made

the boundary--all the territory north of the river to be

forbidden to white men and to remain perpetually in In-

dian possession. General Washington was far too wise

even to listen to the polite suggestions of mediation. His

answer was to strengthen the western forts and to ap-

point General Wayne to command of the Army with in-

structions never to let up until the Indians were defeated

and recognized the power and sovereignty of the Re-

public. Perhaps a weaker President might have yielded.

The country had been profoundly depressed by St.

Clair's defeat. For a moment it seemed as if the western

Indians were invincible; as if the Government had no

ability to cope with them. A weaker President might

have thrown up the sponge and listened to the pacifists--

the country was full of them--who declared we could not

subdue the Indians and that St. Clair's defeat was the

judgment of God in that we were endeavoring to wrong-

fully dispossess the Indian of what was rightfully his.

That may be true but that argument in America has

never been of weight. We had no choice. This had

to be either a white man's country or an Indian country.

We determined it should be a white man's country and

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44      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

that was all there was to it. On grounds of sentimental

morality we can speak of our injustice to "Lo, the poor

Indian," but in our hearts we regard all such stuff as

nonsense.

Now that so many years have passed, now that the

Union is so firmly established and the Middle West

States are a fundamental part of it, this Canadian

project seems utterly foolish. But the English held

Detroit, they had fleets of warships on Lake Erie and

Lake Ontario, and we had none; they held the fort at

Oswego and denied Americans passage to the south

shore of Ontario. They had vast forces at their com-

mand while the Americans in the first battle they had

fought since the Revolution had suffered under St. Clair

a complete and humiliating defeat. The United Loyal-

ists whispering in Governor Simcoe's ear, the fur traders

boldly demanding aggressive action, found not only a

ready listener but a man ready to meet them half-way.

He did not regard the Americans as worthy of respect

--he habitually referred to the Thirteen States as the

revolted Colonies and he was quite sure that presently,

humbly, hat in hand, they would come knocking at the

King's door and ask to be taken back. One of the odd

arguments of the fur traders was that when the Revolu-

tionary War ended the English were in undisputed

possession of New York. They had given that up, the

fairest prize in America, without a suitable quid pro

quo. Therefore, in payment for the city and harbor of

New York it was quite proper for England to demand

the North West. Among these fur traders was James

McGill who had gone out to Canada from Scotland and

made a fortune. He bitterly complained that unless

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General John Graves Simcoe       45

the Americans were checked he would be ruined. But

somehow in spite of the fact that he was foiled in his

schemes to undo the work of the Revolution he man-

aged to grow richer and richer and on his death he left

his money to found that noble University in Montreal

which bears his name. Its original endowment came

from

"Beaver-skins packed in ninety-pound bales

Carried for miles over Indian trails."

On our side of the border there was the utmost re-

sentment against Canada and particularly so in Ken-

tucky and the North West Territory. They blamed

every Indian outrage on the Canadians. This feeling

grew in intensity until in the War of 1812 it was the

frankly avowed intention of the West to conquer and

annex Canada. They felt there never could be peace

with such a pestilential neighbor to the North. Gover-

nor Simcoe's policies had a good deal to do with this

feeling. As an Englishman he could see only those

things that were for the benefit of England. Yet to do

him justice he did not at first propose to go to war with

the United States, though he was preparing for that

eventuality. He had a great vision of making Ontario

such a model British state it would shine when compared

with the states of the Union. It was to be so much

better than anything else on the Continent that the

Americans seeing the beauty of the operation of the

British Constitution inevitably would be led back to the

paths of rectitude and return to their old allegiance.

He proposed to build a capital city--the present Lon-

don. It was to have a bishop and an established church

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46       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

on the English order. It was to have a university and

a public library. He wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, presi-

dent of the Royal Society, the foremost scientist of his

day, asking his aid in the establishment of a botanical

garden. He wrote:

I mean to be prepared for what ever convulsions may happen

in the United, States and the method I propose is by establishing

a free, honorable British Government, and a pure Administration

of its Laws which shall hold out to the Solitary Emigrant and to

the several States advantages that the present form of Govern-

ment does not and cannot permit them to enjoy. There are in-

herent defects in the Congressional form of Government, the

absolute prohibition of an order of nobility is a glaring one. The

true New England Americans have as strong an Aristocratical

spirit as is to be found in Great Britain; nor are they anti-mon-

archial. I hope to have a hereditary council with some mark of

Nobility. * * * This Colony which I mean to show forth with all

the advantages of British protection as a better Government than

the United States can possibly obtain, should in its very Founda-

tion provide for every assistance that can possibly be procured for

the Arts and Sciences, and for every establishment that hereafter

may decorate and attract Notice and may point it out to the

neighboring States as a Superior, more Happy and a more pol-

ished form of government."

Of course all this was highly commendable--and

Governor Simcoe must have had a fine sense of self-

satisfaction in building such magnificent air-castles not

in Spain, but in Canada.

I have read many a fantastic prospectus issued by

Americans trying to sell town lots in cities yet to be.

These remarkable documents promised the ideal city,

but I have never read one, not even those of the wild

real estate boomers of California, that was more glit-

tering in its promises than the proposals made by Gov-

ernor Simcoe.

His original intention, however, was to call this mar-

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General John Graves Simcoe       47

velous city Georgiana, after His Majesty George III.

Not long ago in touring through Ontario I stopped

overnight at London. It was in 1793 that Governor

Simcoe chose its site to be the capital of the province.

The Home Government, however, did not take kindly to

the idea. They could not see, as the Governor did, that

London was destined to be the metropolis of the West

--drawing to itself the commerce of Hudson Bay and

of New Orleans. As a matter of fact the London which

he designed and of which he had such great hopes did

not materialize in his lifetime. It was not until 1826

that the first building was erected on its site. But to

do it justice now it has two bishops, one Anglican, the

other Roman; it has a college and a public library and a

fine park. Its 40,000 people are prosperous and it is

an exceedingly attractive and up-to-date city. The

great thing which the Governor thought would make it

a mercantile and a military center, its location on the

River Thames, has little or no value. He thought of

the River Thames as a navigable stream, which, flow-

ing through the heart of the Province, would be a short

cut between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. Now, of

course, London's commerce is carried by the great

Canadian Railway systems and by superb highways.

The Thames is a mere bit of pleasant water where one

may swim and boat in the summer and skate in the

winter. But Governor Simcoe in putting such high

value on the Thames was in good company. Our fore-

fathers regarded every stream as navigable. We have

before our eyes a glaring example. John Cleves

Symmes in locating North Bend did so because it was at

the junction of the Big Miami with the Ohio. He

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48      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

gravely stated that the Big Miami would open the

interior of Ohio to trade. As a matter of fact the

Thames is vastly more navigable than the Big Miami

having a much gentler current and three or four times

as much water. Certainly no man of Governor Sim-

coe's generation would have regarded his estimation of

the Thames as too high.

The most practical thing that Governor Simcoe did

was to revive the Queen's Rangers. This was the regi-

ment he commanded as Colonel during the Revolution,

and about whose exploits he wrote a readable book.

These Rangers were something of free lances. He was

fortunate in being able to get together a good many of

his old officers and men--all of whom seem to have been

greatly devoted to him. The King allowed the Rangers

to wear their old uniform of green. For years the

Queen's Rangers did good service in Canada. One of

the features of the Rangers which followed the old

Roman precedent was that on retirement they were

given land. In this way they became settlers. As

Rangers they did all kinds of frontier duty, cleared land,

built roads and bridges, constructed forts and were

generally handy men. Another thing was that having

served against the Americans in the Revolution, indeed

many of them were Americans who had remained loyal

to the King, they were most truly pro-British.

The Governor had selected the site of London from

a study of the map. It must have given him a genuine

thrill to visit the place and see for himself he had made

no mistake. That was in the winter of 1793 when he

made his first visit to the English garrison at Detroit.

The Major of the Green Rangers kept a diary and

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General John Graves Simcoe       49

stated that on arriving at the forks of the Thames they

stopped a day "as the Governor wished to examine the

situation and its environs. He judged it to be a capital

situation eminently calculated for the metropolis of all

Canada." He was pleased with everything he saw, par-

ticularly a "Pinery upon an adjacent high knoll and

other timber" so that material for the construction of

the first houses was at hand. I myself am enough of

a woodsman greatly to have envied the Governor this

trip through the wilds even though it was made in Feb-

ruary and March. The start from Fort Niagara was

made in sleighs. Occasionally on the ice of a river they

had easy going but apparently they walked most of the

way. The party consisted of eight Mohawk Indians

and six English officers. In August this year I went

over the same route between lunch and dinner--a long

afternoon automobile ride, but it took them from Feb-

ruary 4th to the 20th to accomplish the journey. It is

always a regret to me the men who laid in the wilderness

the foundations on which our civilization rests cannot

return to see the fruits of their labors. I thought as I

swiftly rode over the magnificent Ontario highways

it was a pity Governor Simcoe could not have been with

me. How pleased he would have been with the flourish-

ing little city of Simcoe. It is on the highway and well

may have been one of the spots where he made a camp.

At night the party slept in the bark wigwams which the

Indians constructed so dexterously. They stopped at

the Moravian village and the diary noted that there they

received a seasonable refreshment of eggs, milk and but-

ter. Otherwise their fare was salt pork and venison

except when they killed a raccoon, the flesh of which

Vol. XLIII--4

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50      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

they found good in part but rather rancid. They also

killed a porcupine which they thought tasted like young

pig. They must have been hungry--at least my ex-

perience with porcupine is that it tastes like shoe leather

and is equally tough. But it is odd how even in a grave

official journal mention is made with gusto of food.

The reason of course is they were always ravenously

hungry and food had a value many times greater than is

the case with the man who is well fed and who has no

apprehensions regarding his next meal. At the Mo-

ravian village their host was the famed missionary

David Zeisberger, whose journal was so admirably

translated and annotated by a former member of this

Club, Eugene Bliss. Apparently Governor Simcoe did

not fully appreciate the historical significance of the

Moravian Mission. Zeisberger said the breakfast he

gave the party tasted "right good to them." The Gov-

ernor told Zeisberger flatly no one could act as a min-

ister in the Province unless he took an oath of allegiance

to the King. He also objected when he found the Mis-

sion was a branch of the Moravian Church at Bethle-

hem, Pennsylvania, reporting to the Bishop there. He

directed in the future the Moravian chief correspond-

ence should go directly to England. These poor Mo-

ravians certainly had a hard time of it--massacred at

Gnadenh??tten by our people, given a friendly shelter in

Canada only to suffer again and have their town burnt

when in the War of 1812 General Harrison fought the

Battle of the Thames within sight and sound of their

little settlement. The destruction of the Moravian vil-

lage by our troops was a war outrage which no one can

possibly excuse.

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General John Graves Simcoe      51

At Detroit the Governor was welcomed by a royal

salute, reviewed the 24th Regiment, then went to the

River Rouge where Henry Ford now makes automo-

biles, to visit the place where Pontiac had made a stand

and where the slaughter of British troops had been so

great the place still bore the name of the Bloody Bridge.

They were pious and patriotic for prayers were read

each morning and evening--as they retired they sang

"God save the King." His visit to Detroit had an

unusual significance for the United States. Prior to

the Revolution the English had some kind of a small

post at the "rapids of the Miami of the Lake," that is

on the Maumee River 12 miles south of our present

Toledo. In Indian days that was a place of importance.

Our present Fort Wayne and its vicinity was the home

of a large Indian population. So was the valley of the

Maumee. There was an easy water route between To-

ledo Bay and the Mississippi by way of the Maumee,

the St. Mary's, then a portage at Fort Wayne to the

Wabash and so on down-stream to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Rapids of the Maumee necessitated a transshipment

and was a natural place for trading. The British did

not believe that St. Clair's expedition had been pri-

marily against the Indians, they believed he aimed at

Detroit. And now that Wayne was gathering an army

Governor Simcoe proceeded with frantic haste to make

a strong fort out of the old post. As you drive south-

ward on the great highway that runs to Cincinnati you

go through lovely suburbs on the banks of the Maumee.

There by the side of the road you will see high grass-

grown ridges and mounds of earth. That is all that is

now left of the impudent fort which the British built

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52      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

in Ohio. Well might it have been called Fort Simcoe.

It was intended not only as "the Citadel of Detroit," to

use Governor Simcoe's words, but as an effectual control

of the Indian trade. It will be remembered that Wayne

in his march rebuilt and strengthened the forts which

St. Clair had constructed. These forts were intended

as depots of supply and as refuges in case of trouble.

They were Forts Hamilton, St. Clair, Jefferson, Green-

ville and Defiance. Governor Simcoe in his desire to

make Ontario secure proposed that the English meet

this threat by destroying all the forts as far south as

Fort Jefferson. The great fortified camp which Wayne

had constructed at Greenville was of course to be de-

molished. If this were not done, he wrote to the Home

Office in London, soon all Ohio would swarm with

American settlers. Ontario, so he wrote, could not be

defended from within. The way to defend it was to

keep the Americans as far away as possible. So he in-

tended to march southward in Ohio almost as far as

Hamilton and take possession. Governor Simcoe wrote

to the Duke of Portland that he had matured a plan of

campaign. It was the dearest wish of his heart for

Great Britain and the United States to go to war--this

he thought would be a war in the West. He continued

in his letter to the Duke--

I have no doubt that the President, Mr. Washington, in person

must have marched to crush it [that is the army of invasion

which Governor Simcoe was to lead into Ohio]. The first object

of my heart would certainly be, with adequate force and on a just

occasion, to meet this gentleman face to face. * * * The President

I believe to be among the most treacherous of mankind and most

hostile to the interests of Great Britain.

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General John Graves Simcoe       53

There it was in a nut shell. Governor Simcoe was

such a complete John Bull that anyone, even President

Washington, who was not attached to the interests of

Great Britain, was a traitor. And his idea of a great

occasion was the affront to Great Britain offered by the

United States in daring to build a line of forts in Ohio

--territory which no one questioned was ours. Yet

making ourselves strong within our own borders so the

Indians could no longer kill and pillage was to Governor

Simcoe a cause for war. Shortly before Wayne's cam-

paign the great speculation of Mr. Duer in lands in

northern New York had failed and these lands were to

be sold at bankrupt sale. The Governor proposed that

the British Government buy them, not openly of course,

but by agents, and then occupy them by a military force.

In that way the Americans were to be shut off from the

St. Lawrence and the south shore of Lake Ontario.

The Miami Fort on the Maumee and a naval force were

to keep them from the south shore of Erie. Vermont

and New Hampshire, so the Loyalists said, were ready

on the first opportunity to return to their old allegiance.

Ah, what large and delightful dreams of empire! And

the Governor had a new argument--the United States

had no right in the Middle West because

"of the ancient principles of British Policy which

sought only to establish Maritime Colonies."

It was eminently right for the British to grab the

seacoast for their maritime colonies and to drive out the

Indians, but when the Americans began to drive out

the Indians in the Middle West then that was an "en-

croachment"--a violation of the sacred rights of the

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54      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

Indians as well as being against the ancient policy of

Britain! Governor Simcoe's letters were published by

the Ontario Historical Society in 1924, four bulky vol-

umes of them. So it is only recently they have been

available to students. The letter in regard to Britain's

idea of maritime colonies only was addressed to Baron

de Carondelet, the Spanish Commander at New Orleans.

Governor Simcoe quite boldly suggested that the Span-

iards drive the Americans out of the Southwest and that

the English would drive them out of the Northwest.

Had this letter been given publicity at the time it was

written it would have been almost a cause of war.

Meanwhile General Wayne settled the question. By

slow and cautious marches he brought his army unin-

jured and in perfect fighting trim to the very gates of

Fort Miami. There he met the Indians and defeated

them so decisively that the border had peace for 15 years.

Then it was that Tecumseh made a last desperate at-

tempt to stop the westward flow of civilization. At

Tippecanoe General Harrison destroyed the Indian

power just as General Wayne had destroyed it at Fallen

Timbers. The Commandant at Fort Miami, when

Wayne appeared, was in a quandary--he dared not open

the gates of his fortress to shelter the fleeing Indians--

that would have been too glaring a breach of the neu-

trality which Britain professed. Nor did he dare, much

as he desired, to open fire on Wayne's troops. The fort

was armed with heavy cannon--Wayne had only small

field pieces. It is probable that had an attack been made

upon it the English would not have been able to hold it.

General Simcoe stated that. But Wayne felt he was

not authorized to attempt the fort and so after destroy-

• 20
 

General John Graves Simcoe       55

ing the houses of the Indian traders within the very

shelter of its guns as well as spoiling the fields of the

Indians he withdrew to lay waste the Indian towns in

northern Indiana and to construct a fortification to

which his men proudly gave the name of Fort Wayne,

and Fort Wayne it is today. In the "Tippecanoe and

Tyler Too" campaign of 1840 General Harrison deliv-

ered an address on the site of Fort Meigs, which he had

built in 1813 on the opposite side of the Maumee from

Fort Miami. The British had reoccupied their old fort

and we held our new fort. General Harrison spoke to an

immense audience. He recalled the time when as a young

captain he had marched with Wayne to the gates of

Fort Miami; he remembered when as the Commander

of the Army of the Northwest he had forced the British

to evacuate their stronghold--the last ground they ever

occupied in Ohio. Pointing across the river to the ruins

of the old Fort the General exclaimed,

"There the indignant American eagle frowned

upon the British lion."

Wayne's victory ended in making Ohio secure. It

did not end Governor Simcoe's grand ideas, but the

Government at London saw the situation was impos-

sible. All along the boundary named in the treaty--a

boundary which the officials in Canada thought it pre-

sumptuous and insolent for an American to approach

(indeed the little settlements along Lakes Erie and On-

tario Governor Simcoe thought should be wiped out by

military action)--all along that border there was

trouble. Besides, the power of America was growing

at an extraordinary rate. Wayne had demonstrated

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56      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

that the Indians could not be made an effectual barrier

between Canada and the United States. So it was that

London gracefully even though tardily yielded and

agreed to give up the Posts. It was more than poetic

justice that General Wayne himself was sent to receive

them from the hands of the English. But even in such

a matter Governor Simcoe tried to interfere. He wrote

the Duke of Portland that if it could be managed with

propriety he hoped Colonel Pickering would not be Com-

missioner of the United States. He strongly recom-

mended General Hull who in his behavior was very ac-

ceptable to His Majesty's officers. This is the same

General Hull who later gave himself an immortality of

disgrace by weakly surrendering Detroit. Then, as in

General Simcoe's time, his conduct must have been very

acceptable to His Majesty's officers.

Our reading and study of American history is

usually one-sided. Most of us here, I take it, are fairly

familiar with our own local history. We know of St.

Clair's defeat, we know of Wayne's victorious march

across the State of Ohio, and we are not unmindful of

the past. There is that little monument in Cincinnati

marking the site of Ft. Washington. It is the least

worthy of them all. At Hamilton is a really fine re-

production in stone of the old Fort. At Eaton the site

of Ft. St. Clair is a State Park--a lovely place--and so

on to Ft. Jefferson, Greenville, Ft. Defiance, all of the

old forts are now marked by fine monuments. On the

heights above the battlefield of Fallen Timbers stands

Wayne's statue, an heroic piece of bronze. We have not

marked the British Fort Miami which Simcoe built. In

a way it deserves a monument even more than the

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General John Graves Simcoe        57

others. The grass-grown ramparts and ditches there

represent the last stand of the English on our soil.

There the meteor flag of England streamed in the face

of Wayne. There again it flew in the face of Harrison

in 1812. As Simcoe studied the map that fort was to be

his base. From there the redcoats of the King were to

march southward and take the forts which we had built

as our outermost line of defense. That he could do it,

he was sure. No doubt ever crossed his mind of the

invincible power of Britain. And so the site of that

fort representing at once the pride and the humiliation

of England should be marked. We might even put upon

it the words of Scripture as applied to the sea:

"Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further;

and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."

Still that would be bad taste even though it be the

literal truth. More gracious on our part would it be to

erect a statue of General Simcoe, as an antagonist

worthy of our steel and whose defeat was of the great-

est importance.

But we record the story of these frontier campaigns

leaving for the most part the English out of the picture.

One reason why we have done this is because we did

not have the other side of the picture. Our students

have not been able to read Simcoe's letters and to see

the great preparations he had made to meet the Ameri-

can advance, not only to check it but to hold us per-

manently in check. And Simcoe was no ultra Britisher

acting without authority remote from the seat of gov-

ernment. In every way he had the active and sym-

pathetic support of London. Lord Grenville, the prime

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58      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications minister, wrote to Mr. Hammond, that curious diplo- matic personage who represented England in this country, that he had not hesitated to propose to Mr. Jay, the mediation of King George, to settle our differences

with the Indians. And for Heaven's sake, said His Lord- ship in effect, do not deal with Edmund Randolph, secre- tary of state in Washington's cabinet. He is unfriendly to us.  Deal with Alexander Hamilton if possible. Lord Grenville seemed to feel that Mr. Jay was favor-

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General John Graves Simcoe       59

able to the idea of the mediation of George III, but Mr.

Jay was too sagacious to think of anything like that.

The opinion that King George was to render was vir-

tually prepared in advance.  It was that he would

declare that the Indians should have the Ohio River as

their southern boundary, the Lakes as their northern

boundary. In this way, of course, the Indians would be

satisfied, the Canadian fur trade would be preserved

and the progress westward of the republic would be

halted. It sounds to us in the light of later days like

utter nonsense. Unconsciously we are all believers in

manifest destiny. The triumphant march of Columbia

for a century across the continent seems to us as fore-

ordained, inevitable and as belonging absolutely to the

eternal scheme of things, fitting in generally with the

organization of the universe. But Governor Simcoe

did not look at it in that way. He believed he could

hold all our Northwest for Britain, and there were even

great Americans in that formative and uncertain period

who felt that the blood and treasure the republic was

expending to reach the Mississippi was a waste. There

was that bitter and narrow John Randolph of Roanoke,

who sneered at the West--called these great regions

mere geographical divisions. To him there was only one

part of America worth while and that was Virginia.

John Randolph lived until 1833; he saw the wilderness

transformed into imperial states, greater in population

and wealth than even Virginia, but he never ceased to

sneer.

Of course, the men of the West knew perfectly well

of General Simcoe's ideas. For their part they had ex-

actly the same idea except in reverse. General Simcoe

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60      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

thought there would be no peace or security for Canada

as long as they had Americans for neighbors. We

thought there would be no peace or security for us as

long as England held Canada. The men of the West

went to war in 1812 not because England impressed our

seamen but because they intended to annex Canada and

end that menace forever. Our own John Cleves Symmes

wrote his son-in-law General Harrison that we would

march through Canada and only the Citadel of Quebec

would be able to give us trouble. This feeling we had

against Canada was not a mere holdover from the feel-

ing that the Revolution was not ended until the whole

of the continent became the United States of America--

it was intensified by the policies of Governor Simcoe.

When the Posts were given up he thought England had

abandoned Canada to the wolves, as it were. Unhappy

and disappointed, he returned home. He did not live

to see the War of 1812. Had he lived, undoubtedly he

would have rejoiced to see our armies thrown back when

they invaded Canada. But that war really did end our

boundary troubles. Canada gave up the idea of con-

tinually vexing us; we gave up the idea of military con-

quest. For a hundred and fifteen years we have been

the best of neighbors. All the old Forts are gone. Some

of them are children's playgrounds.  The guns that

once frowned upon their ramparts have been trans-

formed literally into plows and pruning hooks. Gov-

ernor Simcoe's Ontario is still English--and Ohio, thank

God, is still American.

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