The soldiers and civilians who participated in the Patriot War, fought between 1837 and 1842, hoped to free Canada from supposed British tyranny, as the United States had done just over half a century before. Despite heavy losses throughout, the American and Canadian "Patriots" refused to give up their noble cause. The Patriots launched at least thirteen raids on Upper Canada from the American border states. The western front, which spanned the British colony from Ohio and Michigan in western Lake Erie and along the Detroit River, saw some of the fiercest fighting, including the failed 1838 Battle of Windsor. In the wake of this engagement, many Canadians were outraged at the retaliatory hangings, while Americans protested the transport of their kin to the Tasmanian penal colony. With stories from both sides of the border, historian Shaun J. McLaughlin recalls the triumphs and sacrifices of the doomed Patriots.

Resurrecting a forgotten chapter in transatlantic history, James G. Cusick tells how, just before the United States went to war against Great Britain in 1812, an ill-advised invasion of a Spanish colony became a stage on which the young republic clumsily acted out its imperial ambitions and racial fears. With the halfhearted backing of President James Madison and Secretary of State James Monroe, a party of Georgians invaded East Florida, confident that partisans there would help them swiftly wrest the colony away from Spain. The raid was a strategic and political disaster. Few sympathizers materialized, official U.S. support dissolved, and an extended guerrilla war ensued. This was the "other war of 1812," or the Patriot War. Cusick, a lively storyteller as well as a meticulous scholar, conveys the savagery of the borderlands conflict that pitted American adventurers and anti-Spanish partisans against Spanish loyalists and their allies, who included Seminole Indians and escaped slaves. At the same time, Cusick looks at the American motivations behind the invasion, including apprehensions about Florida's growing population of unregulated blacks and geopolitical intrigues involving Spain, Britain, and France.

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Excerpt from The Patriot War In 1763 when Gen. Gage, the British commander, drafted a contin gent of French Canadians to aid in revenging on the Indians the massa cre of the garrison at Mackinaw, the levies were treated as beasts of burden, and set to work at the point of the bayonet, while the British regulars sat at ease in their tents. The legislative council or senate excluded all natives of Canada from a share in the conduct of its affairs. N 0 correct idea can be given within the narrow limits of a newspaper history of the vexatious injustice practiced upon the French population. They were at one time denied the right of sitting as jurors, and were in many respects a proscribed class. Small wonder that many French Canadians joined the ranks of the heroes of the American revolution in 1776. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

During the Patriot War, fought between 1837-1842, hundreds of men on both sides of the New York-Canadian border took up arms to free Canada from supposed British tyranny. Infused with the Spirit of '76 and inspired by the recent Texas revolution, they fought bravely in battles, skirmishes and attacks, including November's Battle of the Windmill. Many sacrificed their lives, while others became slave laborers of the British in Tasmania. Among their leaders was Bill Johnston, a Thousand Islands smuggler, river pirate and War-of-1812 privateer, whose cunning was so feared by the British that they called out their military whenever his name made the newspapers. This book recalls the stories, triumphs and sacrifices of the brave on both sides of the border.