America Takes Toronto

At dawn on Tuesday, April 27, 1813, a squadron of American warships bore down upon the town of York, situated on the northwest corner of Lake Ontario. Aboard USS Madison, a 24-gun corvette, Major General Henry Dearborn, a 62-year-old veteran of the Revolutionary War, surveyed the shoreline where his army would land. Beside the general, Commodore Isaac Chauncey gave orders to bring the vessels as close to shore as possible. Throughout the squadron, armed men prepared to disembark. The initial invasion of British soil during the War of 1812's second year was about to begin.But why would the Americans initiate hostilities against a weak garrison and a town of barely 700 people? The disappointing failure of American armies to conquer the Canadian provinces during 1812 had prompted Secretary of War John Armstrong to devise a new plan of attack for the 1813 campaign. He identified the important British military and naval base at Kingston and the vital transportation route of the St. Lawrence River as the prime targets of the invasion force. Gaining control of those points would isolate British posts on the lakes and make them easy prey for subsequent attacks. At first Dearborn and Chauncey, who were making preparations at Sackets Harbor, N.Y., had intended to implement Armstrong's plan late in the winter. They changed their scheme, however, after a successful British sortie at Ogdensburg, on the St. Lawrence, and after hearing a rumor that the garrison at Kingston had been reinforced to the strength of 6,000 to 8,000 men. In addition, ice continued to clog the eastern end of Lake Ontario through April. Rather than risk their military and naval forces on a risky assault on Kingston, the two commanders selected York, whose harbor was already free of ice, as an alternate objective for their first expedition of the season. Armstrong reluctantly gave his consent.