Battle of Beaver Dams
June 24 1813
Location: Beaver Dams
Duration: 3 hours
Soldiers Present
American: 600 US Army
British: 50 infantry of 49th Regiment, 465 warriors of the Seven Nations
Total Casualties
American: 480 Americans captured
British:
Military Leaders
American: Lt. Col. Charles G. Boerstler
British: Lt. James Fitzgibbon, Chief John Norton
Outcome: Decisive British victory
Summary:
In the summer
of 1813, American forces had made incursions into Canada and had
occupied Fort George opposite Fort Niagara. On the night of June 23,
1813, Laura Secord, a resident of Queenston, Ontario, overheard American
officers billeted in her home planning a raid on British Lieutenant
James FitzGibbons outpost at Beaver Dams, 20 miles away. Secord walked
the 20 miles (32 km) to warn the lieutenant and his force of fifty men
of the 49th Regiment plus 465 Seventh Nation Indians and militia of the
impending raid by Lt. Col. Charles Boerstler and his force of around six
hundred Americans. The advance warning may have had an effect on the
outcome of the subsequent Battle of Beaver Dams the following day, when
FitzGibbon and Mohawk chief John Norton surrounded the Americans and
forced Boerstler to surrender, persuading him that he was vastly
outnumbered by 1,500 regulars and 700 Indians. Fitzgibbon employed the
same ruse that Brock had used in forcing the capitulation of Detroit in
August 1812: he told Boerstler that he would be unable to restrain the
Indians from butchering the U.S. soldiers. On surrendering, Boerstler
found that he had surrendered 484 officers and men to a force less than
half their number.
The calamity at Beaver Dams had severe
repercussions for the Americans along the Canadian frontier and back in
Washington, D.C. British General John Vincent strengthened his
positions near Fort George and conducted raids near U.S.-held Fort
Niagara across the Niagara River. The criticism in the U.S. Congress of
General Henry Dearborn's conduct of the war on the frontier led to his
removal by Secretary of War John Armstrong.
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