%266.  Campaign of 1814.%—­In 1814 better officers were put in command, and before winter came the Americans, under Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott, had won the battles of Chippewa and Lundys Lane, and captured Fort Erie.  But the British returned in force, burned Black Rock and Buffalo in revenge for the burning of York, and forced the Americans to leave Canada.

The fighting along the Niagara River, by holding the army in that place, prevented the Americans from attacking Montreal, and enabled the British to gather a fleet on Lake Champlain, and send an army down from Quebec to invade New York state just as Burgoyne had in 1777.  But the land force was defeated by General Macomb at Plattsburg, while Thomas McDonough utterly destroyed the fleet in Plattsburg Bay.  This was one of the great victories of the war.

%267.  The Sea Fights.%—­While our army on the frontier was accomplishing little, our war ships were winning victory after victory on the sea.  At the opening of the war, our navy was the subject of English ridicule and contempt.  We had sixteen ships; she had 1200.  She laughed at ours as “fir-built things with a bit of striped bunting at their mastheads.”  But before 1813 came, these “fir-built things” had destroyed her naval supremacy.[1] With the details of all these victories on the sea we will not concern ourselves.  Yet a few must be mentioned because the fame of them still endures, and because they are examples of naval warfare in the days when the ships fought lashed together, and when the boarders, cutlass and pistol in hand, climbed over the bulwarks and met the enemy on his own deck, man to man.  During 1812 the frigate Constitution, whose many victories won her the name of “Old Ironsides,” sank the Guerriere; the United States captured and brought to port the Macedonian; and the Wasp, a little sloop of eighteen guns, after the most desperate engagement of the whole war, captured the British sloop Frolic.

[Footnote 1:  One reason for the success of the American navy was the experience it had gained in the clash with France, and also in a war with Tripoli in 1801-1805.  At that time the Christian nations whose ships sailed the Mediterranean Sea were accustomed to pay annual tribute to Tripoli and other piratical states on the north coast of Africa, under pain of having their ships seized and their sailors reduced to slavery.  A dispute with the United States led to a war which gained for our ships the freedom of the Mediterranean.]

When these sloops were some two hundred feet apart, the Wasp opened with musketry and cannon.  The sea, lashed into fury by a two days’ cyclone, was running mountain high.  The vessels rolled till the muzzles of their guns dipped in the water.  But the crews cheered lustily and the fight went on.  When at last the crew of the Wasp boarded the Frolic, they were amazed to find that, save the man at the wheel and three officers who threw down their swords, not a living soul was visible.  The crew had gone below to avoid the terrible fire of the Wasp.  Scarcely was the battle over when the British frigate Poictiers bore down under a press of sail, recaptured what was left of the Frolic, and took the Wasp in addition.