The Battle of Stoney Creek was a battle fought on June 6, 1813 during the War of 1812 near Stoney Creek, Ontario. British units made a night attack on an American encampment. Although the British were repulsed, the American force subsequently withdrew.

Background

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On May 27, the Americans had captured the British position at Fort George. The British, under Brigadier General John Vincent retreated to Burlington Heights. The Americans under the overall leadership of General Henry Dearborn, were slow to pursue. When they did so, a force numbering 3,400 under Brigadier Generals John Chandler and William H. Winder advanced to Stoney Creek, where they encamped on June 5. The two generals set up their headquarters at the Gage Farm.

One of Vincent's staff officers, Lieutenant Colonel John Harvey, reconnoitred the American position and determined that it was badly placed and inadequately protected. He recommended making a night attack. The British column, 700 men from the 8th (King's) and 49th Regiments, were guided to the American camp by a local farm hand, Billy Green, who had also discovered the American challenge and password.

The Battle

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The British arrived in position at two in the morning of June 7. An advanced American outpost in a log church was surprised and bayonetted. The British began advancing towards the American campfires, but stumbled into American soldiers. Either Indians or British soldiers raised the Indian war whoop immediately, and the Americans were alerted. Harvey had ordered the flints to be removed from the British muskets to avoid premature firing. Some units even had unloaded muskets. A small party under Major Charles Plenderleath (commanding the 49th) rushed forward to capture four American guns with the bayonet, but most of the British, trying to load and prime in the middle of the fighting, became as confused as the surprised Americans.

The American commander, John Chandler, was wounded and captured. Winder mistook British troops for his own men and was also captured. (He was later exchanged, and subsequently commanded the Tenth Military District around Washington.) On the British side, Vincent was thrown from his horse and wandered lost in the woods until daylight. As dawn broke, Harvey ordered the outnumbered British to retreat. They succeeded in carrying away two of the captured guns.

The Aftermath

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Casualties in the confused fight had been roughly even, but the Americans had been shaken. With their Generals captured, the American colonels decided that a Dragoon commander named James Burns was the senior officer present. Burns had already been criticised for failure to trap the retreating British at Fort George. Now, he ordered the Americans to burn the stores at Stoney Creek, and retreat.

Meanwhile, the American flotilla on the Lake, which had been protecting and supplying their forces ashore, abruptly disappeared as Commodore Isaac Chauncey heard that the British flotilla were attacking his own base at Sackett's Harbor. Deprived of their support and harrassed by British warships, the American troops retreated into a small defensive perimeter around Fort George, where they remained until abandoning the fort and retreating across the Niagara River into U.S. territory in December.

Legacy

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Although a monument is raised in honour of the soldiers involved, to this day no Mohawk warriors are credited in it for doing battle. The battle is now re-enacted annually, by Canadians and Americans, in a public park (called Battlefield Park) located in Stoney Creek (now part of the City of Hamilton), Ontario.

See also

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• 8th (King's)
• Fort George.

Sources

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John R. Elting, Amateurs to Arms, Da Capo Press, New York, 1995, ISBN 0306806533 Morris Zaslow (ed). The Defended Border, Macmillan of Canada, 1964, ISBN 0770512429

1813 | Battles of Canada | Battles of the United Kingdom | Battles of the War of 1812