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Battle of Buffalo

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Battle of Buffalo
Part of War of 1812
DateDecember 30, 1813
Location
Buffalo, New York
Result British victory
Belligerents
 Great Britain  United States
Commanders and leaders
Gordon Drummond,
Phineas Riall		 Amos Hall
Strength
1,415[1] 2,011[2]
Casualties and losses
31 killed
72 wounded
5 captured
4 missing[3][4]		 50+ killed
60-70 wounded
11 wounded prisoners
56 captured[5][6][7]

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The “Battle of Buffalo” (also known as the “Battle of Black Rock”) took place during the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States on December 30, 1813 in the State of New York, near the Niagara River. The British forces drove off the hastily-organized defenders and engaged in considerable plundering and destruction. The operation was conceived as an act of retaliation for the burning of the New York Militia of the Canadian village of Newark.

Background

When Brigadier General George McClure of the New York Militia, commander of the garrison of Fort George, decided to abandon the post on December 10, 1813, he ordered the neighboring village of Newark to be destroyed. Giving the inhabitants only a few hours’ notice, he turned them out into the cold winter’s night and burned all but one of the hundred and fifty or so buildings to the ground.[8]

Meanwhile, north of the Border, Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond was planning an offensive against the American positions on Niagara frontier.[8] His first thrust came in the early hours of December 20, comprising Colonel John Murray’s Capture of Fort Niagara and Major General Phineas Riall’s raid, in which the villages of Lewiston, Youngstown, Manchester, Tuscarora and Sclosser were burned.[9] His second was an attack on the villages Buffalo and Black Rock.

Opposing Forces

Major General Riall commanded 370 of the 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment (Royal Scots), 240 of the 1st Battalion, 8th (King’s) Regiment, 250 of the 1st Battalion, 41st Regiment, 55 of the light infantry company of the 2nd Battalion, 89th Regiment, 50 of the grenadier company of the 100th Regiment of Foot (Prince Regent's County of Dublin Regiment), 50 Canadian militia and 400 British-allied Native Americans: total strength, 1,415 officers and men.[1]

Available to the American area commander, Brigadier General Amos Hall, the New York Militia, were 2,011 men; all of them volunteers or militia. Stationed at Buffalo were 129 cavalry under Lt. Col Seymour Boughton, 433 Ontario County volunteers under Lt. Col Blakeslee, 136 Buffalo Militia under Lt. Col Cyrenius Chapin, 97 of the Corps of Canadian Volunteers under Lt. Col Benajah Mallory, 382 of the Genesse Militia Regiment under Major Adams and 307 Chautauqua Militia under Lt. Col John McMahon. At Black Rock were 382 of Lt. Col. Warren’s and Lt. Col. Churchill’s Regiments under Brigadier General Timothy Hopkins, 37 mounted infantry under Captain Ransom, 83 Native Americans under Lt. Col Erastus Granger and 25 militia artillery with a six-pounder gun under Lt. Seeley.[10]

Battle

Riall crossed the Niagara around midnight on December 29 and landed with most of his men some 2 miles (3.2 km) downstream of Black Rock in the early hours of December 30. He delegated Lt. Col John Gordon and his 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment, to land at Black Rock itself in order to attack the Americans from a different direction.[11] The local American commander, Brigadier General Amos Hall of the New York Militia, was first alerted to the enemy presence when Riall’s advance guard, the light infantry company of the 89th Regiment,[1] drove off the American piquet at Conjunckaty Creek (now known as Scajaquada Creek) and captured the bridge and the battery there. Hall sent troops under militia Lt. Cols. Warren and Churchill to reconnoitre. When these ran off at the first enemy fire, Hall dispatched a second force under Lt. Cols. Adams and Chapin but exactly the same thing happened. Hall now took personal command of the remainder of his force. He ordered a detachment under Lt. Col. Blakeslee to attack the British left and advanced toward Black Rock with the rest of his men.[12]

As dawn broke, Hall directed “a very heavy fire of cannon and musketry” at Lt. Col. Gordon’s force as they tried to land at Black Rock. Gordon was aided by the fire of a five-gun battery, but several of his boats grounded and his regiment took substantial casualties before they could forced their way ashore.[11] Riall now advanced with his main body against Hall’s center, sending a detachment from his left wing tried to hit the American right flank.[12] After half-an-hour of fighting, the American right wing broke into a route. In order to avoid being outflanked, Hall called a general retreat.[13] The British pursued all the way to Buffalo, two miles away.[11] Once in Buffalo, the British and Indians sacked it, burning down all but four of its buildings. The British troops destroyed the navy yard and three armed schooners (the Chippewa, Ariel, Little Belt) and one sloop Trippe. Then Riall’s force moved on to Black Rock, where all but one building was razed to the ground, before going back over the Niagara to Canada.[14]

Casualties

The British casualty return gave 25 British regulars, 3 militiamen and 3 Native Americans killed; 63 regulars, 6 militiamen and 3 Native Americans wounded; and 9 regulars missing: a total of 31 killed, 72 wounded and 9 missing. Of these, 13 killed, 32 wounded and 6 missing were from the 1/1st Regiment, who had endured a heavy cannonade while grounded in their boats.[15] The Americans took 5 prisoners.[4]

No official complete American casualty return for the engagement ever seems to have been published. An American officer who was slightly wounded in the battle wrote in a letter published in the ‘United States Gazette’ of Philadelphia on January 17, 1814, that the casualties were “about 40 killed, 60 or 70 wounded and 100 prisoners”.[5] The dead included Lt. Col Boughton.[16]General Hall wrote a report to Governor Tompkins of New York on January 6, 1814, saying, “It is not in my power to give a particular account of our loss in killed and wounded, as the wounded were generally got off by their friends and taken to their houses, and our dead mostly buried by the enemy. But from the best information I can collect, our loss is about 30 killed and perhaps 40 wounded”.[16] However, on January 13, Hall wrote again to Tompkins, saying, “I regret to add that our loss in killed on the 30th ulto. Proves to be greater than I had supposed. On repossessing the ground we found that our dead were yet unburied. There have already been collected about 50 bodies and probably there are some yet undiscovered in the woods”.[7] An American memorandum detailing those killed and taken prisoner on December 30 for six of the units involved (the regiments of Boughton, Blakeslee, Churchill, Warren and McMahon and Seeley’s artillery detachment) gives 32 killed and 53 captured.[17] but the document does not mention the units commanded by Chapin, Mallory, Adams, Ransom or Granger. The ‘Ontario Messenger’ of January 25, 1814, published a list of 67 American prisoners captured on December 30, 11 of whom were wounded. Lt. Col Chapin was among those captured.[6] Eight pieces of American artillery were captured.[18]

Aftermath

On January 22, 1814, Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost, British Commander-in-Chief in North America, issued a proclamation in which he expressed his regret that “the miseries inflicted upon the inhabitants of Newark” had necessitated such retaliation.[14]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Cruikshank, p. 70
  2. ^ Cruikshank, p. 93
  3. ^ Cruikshank, p. 73
  4. ^ a b Cruikshank, p. 79
  5. ^ a b Cruikshank, p. 84
  6. ^ a b Cruikshank, p. 88
  7. ^ a b Cruikshank, p. 112
  8. ^ a b Quimby, p. 355
  9. ^ Quimby, p. 358
  10. ^ Cruikshank, p. 93 for units, strengths, commanders and dispositions; Index, pp. iii, iv, x, xi, xv and xvii for the respective Christian names of Boughton, Chapin, Granger, Hopkins, Mallory and McMahon
  11. ^ a b c Cruikshank, p. 71
  12. ^ a b Quimby, p.359
  13. ^ Quimby, pp. 359-60
  14. ^ a b Quimby, p. 360
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cruikshank was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  16. ^ a b Cruikshank, p. 96,
  17. ^ Cruikshank, p. 91
  18. ^ Cruikshank, p. 74

References

  • Cruikshank, Ernest (1971 (first published 1908)). The Documentary History of the Campaigns upon the Niagara Frontier in 1812-4. Volume IX, December, 1813, to May, 1814. New York: Arno Press Inc. ISBN 0-405-02838-5. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |authorid= ignored (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Quimby, Robert S. (1997). The U.S. Army in the War of 1812: An Operational and Command Study. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press. ISBN 0-87013-441-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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