o halt the retreat and
send for reinforcements. The reinforcements came to the number of a
hundred and fifty, but the British also appeared with forty-seven more
men. Colonel Boerstler thereupon surrendered his total of five hundred
and forty soldiers. General Dearborn, still the nominal commander of the
forces, sadly mentioned the disaster as "an unfortunate and
unaccountable event."

There is a better account to be given, however, of events at Sackett's
Harbor in this same month of May. The operations on the Niagara front
had stripped this American naval base of troops and of the protection of
Chauncey's fleet. Sir George Prevost, the Governor in Chief of Canada,
could not let the opportunity slip, although he was not notable for
energy. He embarked with a force of regulars, eight hundred men, on Sir
James Yeo's ships at Kingston and sailed across Lake Ontario.

Sackett's Harbor was defended by only four hundred regulars of several
regiments and about two hundred and fifty militia from Albany. Couriers
rode through the countryside as soon as the British ships were sighted,
and several hundred volunteers came straggling in from farm and shop and
mill. In them was something of the old spirit of Lexington and Bunker
Hill, and to lead them there was a real man and a soldier with his two
feet under him, Jacob Brown, a brigadier general of the state militia,
who consented to act in the emergency. He knew what to do and how to
communicate to his men his own unshaken courage. On the beach of the
beautiful little harbor he posted five hundred of his militia and
volunteers to hamper the British landing. His second line was composed
of regulars. In rear were the forts with the guns manned.

The British grenadiers were thrown ashore at dawn on the 28th of May
under a wicked fire from American muskets and rifles, but their
disciplined ranks surged forward, driving the militia back at the point
of the bayonet and causing even the regulars to give ground. The
regulars halted at a blockhouse, where they had also the log barracks
and timbers of the shipyard for a defense, and there they stayed in
spite of the efforts of the British grenadiers to dislodge them. Jacob
Brown, stout-hearted and undismayed, rallied his militia in new
positions. Of the engagement a British officer said: "I do not
exaggerate when I tell you that the shot, both of musketry and grape,
was falling about us like hail... Those who were left of the troops
behin