Document generated on 09/25/2021 4:58 a.m.
Ontario History
Dismemberment at Windmill Point Violence, Manliness, and The Irish in Upper Canada Jane McGaughey
Volume 110, Number 1, Spring 2018 Article abstract Drawing on personal letters, published memoirs, and court martial records, this URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1044325ar article investigates the gendered and ethnic implications of the Battle of the DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1044325ar Windmill in November 1838. While this invasion of Upper Canada by the Hunter Patriots has often been seen as the final chapter of the 1837 Canadian Rebellions, See table of contents it was also an episode imbued with Irish fraternal societies, Irish politics, notions of Irish manliness, and the attempts of Irish settlers to earn their place within “respectable” Upper Canadian society. The scandalous castration of an Irish Publisher(s) officer and the mistreatment of dead soldiers’ bodies stood in direct contrast to the value each force placed on heroic martial manliness. Despite the relatively The Ontario Historical Society small size of the battlefield, the legacy of the battle itself significantly impacted how Irish settlers were treated in Upper Canadian society at the end of the 1830s. ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital)
Explore this journal
Cite this article McGaughey, J. (2018). Dismemberment at Windmill Point: Violence, Manliness, and The Irish in Upper Canada. Ontario History, 110(1), 35–58. https://doi.org/10.7202/1044325ar
Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2018 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/
This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 35 Dismemberment at Windmill Point Violence, Manliness, and The Irish in Upper Canada
by Jane McGaughey
n mid-November 1838, Windmill brought together in one of the more Point in Upper Canada became the violent episodes of nineteenth-century focus of much attention in British Canada. Orangemen fought alongside INorth America and the United States. Irish Catholic settlers and descendants of An invading force of some 250 men Irish United Empire Loyalists who were, landed just outside the hamlet of New in turn, supported by the regulars of the Wexford, about two kilometres east of 83rd (Dublin) Regiment of Foot against the town of Prescott. e Hunter Patri- the American invaders.2 is very Ca- ots were a group of American, European, nadian aair was imbued with Irish fra- and Canadian republican invaders who ternal societies, Irish politics, notions of crossed the narrows of the St. Lawrence Irish manliness, and the attempts of Irish intent on liberating Upper Canada from settlers to earn their place at last in re- British rule. Meetings held in New York spectable society through that most Irish State immediately prior to the invasion of tactics: violent force of arms. described their actions as an attempt to e traditional interpretation of the relieve “the suering Canadian Patri- Battle of the Windmill can seem more ots.” 1 foolish than fraught. Led by Nils von In the space of less than a week, four Schoultz, a brave yet doomed Polish aris- distinct strains of the Irish Diaspora were tocrat, the Hunters crossed the river in
1 Archives of Ontario (AO), F 37, Mackenzie-Lindsey Family Fonds, “Public Meeting In Favor of the Suering Canadian Patriots,” 10 November 1838. 2 While there were men of Irish birth and extraction amongst the Hunter Patriots who attacked Windmill Point, only one secondary source directly cites the nascent cause of the Irish Repeal movement, which sought to overturn the 1801 Act of Union that had made Ireland part of the United Kingdom, as a factor inuencing the Hunters’ decision to attack Upper Canada. See, Oscar A. Kinchen, e Rise and Fall of the Patriot Hunters (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956), 112. While the exact nature of the Hunter Patriots’ alignment with the Irish Repeal movement is worthy of further scholarly attention, the following argument will focus only on the Upper Canadian Irish elements at the Battle of the Windmill.
Ontario History / Volume CX, No. 1 / Spring 2018
inside pages spring 2018.indd 35 2018-02-19 9:26:34 PM 36 ONTARIO HISTORY
fought, with British forces laying siege to the stone wind- Abstract mill where the Americans had Drawing on personal letters, published memoirs, and court taken shelter from both their martial records, this article in estigates the gendered and enemies and the cold Novem- ethnic implications of the Battle of the Windmill in No- ber temperatures. British naval vember 1838. While this in asion of Upper Canada by the Hunter Patriots has oen been seen as the nal chapter ships bombarded the windmill of the 1837 Canadian Rebellions, it was also an episode from the river. Once they real- imbued with Irish aternal societies, Irish politics, notions ized they had been sorely mis- of Irish manliness, and the attempts of Irish settlers to earn taken about Canadians’ desire their place within “respectable” Upper Canadian society. e scandalous castration of an Irish ocer and the mis- to be free of British control, treatment of dead soldiers’ bodies stood in direct contrast the Hunters surrendered. Von to the value each force placed on heroic martial manliness. Schoultz was hanged—a er Despite the relatively small size of the battleeld, the legacy having been defended by a of the battle itself signicantly impacted how Irish settlers were treated in Upper Canadian society at the end of the young John A. Macdonald— 1830s. as were nine others; the rest were either deported back to Résumé: En nous inspirant de lettres personnelles, de mémoires publiés et de dossiers de cour martiale, nous ex- America or transported to a aminerons les implications ethniques et sexospéciques de penal colony in Van Dieman’s la bataille du Moulin-à-Vent en no embre 1838. Cette Land (modern Tasmania).3 in asion du Haut-Canada par les Frères-Chasseurs est e tale bears startling souvent considérée comme le dernier chapitre des rébel- lions canadiennes de 1837, mais c’est aussi un épisode rem- similarities to various Irish es- pli de mouvements aternalistes irlandais, de politique capades throughout the nine- irlandaise, de notions de virilité et masculinité irlandaise, teenth century. Like Emmett’s et de tentatives des colonisateurs irlandais à être admis aux Rebellion in 1803, the Hunter rangs « respectables » de la société du Haut-Canada. La castration scandaleuse d’un ocier irlandais et la profana- Patriots were attempting to tion des corps de soldats défunts ont fait vivement contraste provoke a rising in the a er- avec l’importance placée par les deux côtés sur la virilité math of a previously failed in- martiale héroïque. Malgré la taille relativement petite du surrection. Like the Young Ire- champ de bataille, l’héritage de la bataille elle-même aura landers a decade later in 1848, un impact important sur la façon dont les colonisateurs ir- landais seront traités dans le Haut-Canada vers la n des the Hunters believed they were années 1830. deliverers of liberty to a people too oppressed by the British yoke to ght for themselves. the dead of night only to be quickly sur- Like the Fenians in the 1860s, they cre- rounded by imperial troops and the colo- ated a vast network of fraternal societies, nial militia. For ve days, the two groups clubs, and information on either side of
3 Library Archives Canada (LAC), Registry Files, RG 22 A 1, Volume 1394, File Part 1, “Battle of the Windmill, Prescott, Ont.,” 2. For a traditional military account of the battle, please see G.F. Stanley, “ e Battle of the Windmill,” Historic Kingston 3 (1954), 41-56.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 36 2018-02-19 9:26:34 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 37
the border that believed to be, but much more of the loss of Canada would a charlatan, while Ogle be a mighty blow against Gowan, the leader of the British Empire and, Upper Canadian Or- like all of the others, the angeism, was blooded in Hunter Patriots found his rst military engage- out too late that their ment, but perhaps not plan would never suc- quite in the glorious way ceed. Some have claimed he had imagined. that, had it not been for e Battle of the the tragic loss of life dur- Windmill encapsu- ing those ve bloody lated a host of vibrant, days in November 1838, yet problematic images the entire scene would about Irishmen in the have made for a delight- Canadas at the end of ful comic opera; the ex- the colonial rebellions. act same sentiment has is article explores how been applied to the Fe- masculine imagery in- nian invasions of 1866 formed the manner in and 1870.4 which these Irishmen But there are also Nils on Schoultz
4 Donald E. Graves, Guns Across the River: e Battle of the Windmill, 1838 (Toronto: Robin Brass Studio, 2001), 11; Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (Oxford: OUP, 1985), 336.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 37 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM 38 ONTARIO HISTORY
Ogle Gowan om Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto, 1913.
manliness to analyze the events at Windmill Point and their legacies. It has long been doc- trinaire in gender studies to de- ne masculinities as being both multiple and uid. Created in speci c temporal and spatial settings, they are identi ers of social status and privilege that are forever changing, needing to be tested, demonstrated, and proved in order to carry cul- tural inuence in a given soci- ety or community.5 While Irish women have received some at- tention from a Canadian per- spective, gendered histories of Irish masculinities in Canada are virtually non-existent.6 In the nineteenth-century British world, a heroic form of manli- ness was central to the image of an ideal man, incorporating es- of the most basic and base stereotypes sentialized qualities of physical courage, about their ethnicity and gender. chivalric ideals, spiritual strength, and e following argument uses so- virtues rooted in martial, nationalistic, cial constructions of masculinities and and imperial images.7
5 Sonya Rose, What is Gender History? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 57-58; David Gilmore, Man- hood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 17. 6 For key texts on Irish women in Canada, see Sheelah Conway, e Faraway Hills Are Green: oices of Irish women in Canada (1992); Kevin James, “Sources for Further Research: Irish Female Domestics in Canada: Evidence from the 1901 Census Sample,” e Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 31:1 (2005), 86-89; Willeen Keough, “ e Riddle of Peggy Mountain: Regulation of Irish Women’s Sexuality on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860,” Acadiensis 31:2 (2002), 38-70; D. A. J. MacPherson, “Irish Protestant women and diaspora: Orangewomen in Canada during the twentieth century”, in D. A. J. MacPherson and Mary J. Hickman (eds), Women and Irish Diaspora Identities: eories, Concepts and New Perspectives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), 168-85. 7 Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire, and the Imagining of Masculinities (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 11; John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle
inside pages spring 2018.indd 38 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 39
“Manliness” in this context refers status, and acculturation allows for the not only to a maturation process wherein fracturing and reconceptualizing of myr- boys attained adult status amongst their iad notions attached to lived public and peers, but also stands as a socio-cultural private experiences of migration, settle- marker that denoted which men were ment, acculturation, and social mobility. valued most within the British North At- Gendered identities were very much part lantic—de ned here as Britain, Ireland, of the baggage that accompanied devel- and the Canadian colonies. Within this oping Irish societies in Upper Canada. transatlantic phenomenon, manliness e “manly arts” in Upper Canada acted as a philosophy and performed as- incorporated physical deeds as well as in- piration visible in social interactions, lit- tellectual philosophies.10 Men evaluated erature, education, and politics on both each other upon their actions, beliefs, sides of the ocean.8 It could, at times, and the slippage between lived realities form a distinctive and powerful moral and popular stereotypes. For the Irish code, oering sets of values that individ- in Upper Canada, the rough caricatures ual men and collective fraternities could so o en associated with their ethnicity apply to themselves and each other, af- o en were rooted in preconceived no- fecting virtually every facet of personal tions held by other colonials about Irish and communal experience.9 Manliness, violence, helped in no small part by sto- therefore, was not just a middle-class pur- ries of the 1798 Irish Rebellion, tales of suit of ambitious colonial intellectuals Irish troops from the Napoleonic Wars, and entrepreneurs, but also a performed and local examples of ethnic rivalries in identity adopted by Irish labourers, lum- the Canadas, such as the Ballygiblin Ri- berjacks, and farmers in Upper Canada ots in the 1820s and the Shiners’ Wars in order to further their own standing in in the 1830s.11 Irish manliness in early their new community. Using manliness nineteenth-century Upper Canada was a as a paradigm to deconstruct more famil- combination of dominant and demean- iar colonial themes of race, class, social ing cultural representations that were not
Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 189. For more on notions of British chivalry in the nineteenth century, see Mark Girouard, e Return to Camelot: Chiv- alry and the English Gentleman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). 8 Jessica Harland-Jacobs, “‘Hands across the Sea’: e Masonic Network, British Imperialism, and the North Atlantic World,” Geographical Review 89:2, Oceans Connect (1999), 244-45. 9 Angela Woollacott, Gender and Empire (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 54; J. A. Man- gan and James Walvin, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800-1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 2. 10 Catharine Anne Wilson, “A Manly Art: Plowing, Plowing Matches, and Rural Masculinity in On- tario, 1800-1930,” Canadian Historical Review, 95:2 (2014), 157-186. 11 Laura J. Smith, “ e Ballygiblins: British emigration policy, Irish violence, and immigrant recep- tion in Upper Canada,” Ontario History 108:1 (2016), 1-23; Michael S. Cross, “ e Shiners’ War: Social Violence in the Ottawa Valley in the 1830s,” Ontario History 54:1 (1973), 1-26.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 39 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM 40 ONTARIO HISTORY
only the product of lived experience, but tablishing their own sense of worth and also of fantasy.12 e “wild Irish” image achievement. As Robert McClory wrote already had followed United Irishmen to to his parents in Co. Londonderry in the United States in the 1790s, politiciz- 1819, “ is is a good country for a so- ing a crude cultural stereotype.13 Decades ber and industrious young man, but for a later, this same concept of unruly Irish- family it requires a great deal of toil and men was equally powerful in the Canad- trouble, before they are settled.”14 Manli- as, making settlers from Belfast, Wexford, ness was inextricably linked to the land: and Cork a strategic asset for colonial au- a connotation only increased by govern- thorities keen to increase the population, ment documents listing men according but also a potentially violent and uncon- to their roles as farmers, labourers, and trollable “other” in their midst. lumberers.15 e land that was available to e presumed violence and bellicos- both Irish Catholics and Protestants of- ity of the Irish was enhanced by the fact ten was poor and situated well back from that they lived along the edge of the co- the established road concessions near the lonial frontier, where stereotypes of the St. Lawrence River. However, as Glenn J. “wild Irish” encountered the supposedly Lockwood has shown, once the Irish had untameable savagery of the forest. In the established themselves in a given local- rst half of the nineteenth century, the ity or township, they were persistent in Upper Canadian frontier was a transi- staying put, giving various areas of east- tory space for masculine de nition, with ern Upper Canada a predominantly Irish new arrivals and established settler fami- character. e pre-famine Irish adapted lies pitting themselves against both the to a frontier farming lifestyle with a min- elements and each other as a way of es- imum degree of diculty.16
12 For more on the role of fantasy in the shaping of imperial masculinities, see Dawson, Soldier He- roes, 27-52. 13 David A. Wilson, United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 47. 14 LAC, MG40 R93, Collection relating to Irish emigration, military, political, exploration and travel matters, Letter from Robert McClory to his parents, 16 November 1819. 15 e Canadian censuses from 1831, 1842 and 1851 corroborate these titles. Interestingly, the Ca- nadian censuses are the only North American population surveys to list inhabitants according to religion alongside place of birth and/or ethnicity. is is crucial information in piecing together the Canadas as a post-1798 destination for veterans of the Rising and their descendants, as it undermines notions that Catholic men stayed mainly in urban centres rather than achieving success along the Canadian frontier and in rural farming settings. See, Donald H. Akenson, e Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History, rst published 1984 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- ueen’s University Press, 2009), 344-53. For more in- formation about historical Canadian census records, please see Collections Canada,
inside pages spring 2018.indd 40 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 41
As a gendered case study, we know an amendment without the aid of our su- very little about rural masculinities and periors.”17 Such local incidents of Orange the creation of frontier identities. What mayhem were emblematic of similar con- is discernible is that the Orangemen liv- cerns throughout Upper Canada about ing in eastern Upper Canada at the time Orangemen and their apparent predilec- of the Battle of the Windmill were aware tion for violence as a tool for gaining lo- of this Canadian ‘frontier spirit’ and felt cal and colonial power.18 that their actions suited it, to the detri- Don MacRaild has argued convinc- ment of their wider social standing. For ingly that Orangeism and its correspond- instance, the Catholic inhabitants of ing violent ethos stands as one of the Perth, Upper Canada, were shocked in early nineteenth century’s best examples the spring of 1830 by the behaviour of of the “British world” phenomenon, fa- their Orange neighbours and made a cilitating cultural transfer through mi- complaint to His Grace, Bishop Alex- gration and the imperial network. Or- ander Macdonell. Benjamin Delisle and angeism encapsulated the loyalty to the John Doran were concerned that the Crown that was so prized in much of Orangemen’s “rancour [became] more Upper Canada—though certainly not rigorous” as the spring marching season universally—and which helped migrants approached; a Perth Catholic was at- to negotiate the assimilation and accul- tacked with rocks the night of a local fair turation processes through male cama- and le with such severe head trauma raderie.19 is ascendance of Orangeism “that his life was despaired of for more in Upper Canada also coincided with than a week by the physician.” e fol- the rise of the cult of manliness, a nine- lowing night, the Orangemen paraded teenth-century trend that combined a down the street with clubs and made an new appreciation for “the working man” attempt to force their way into the local or the man of trade with more tradition- Catholic church. “We fear these repeated ally chivalrous elements of moral cour- insults will stimulate the energy of the age, sexual purity, stoicism, and—when human mind,” they wrote, “and sooner called for—physical prowess. omas or later turn to an explosion which will Carlyle’s famous phrase invoking mod- have bad eect. We see little prospect of ern men as ‘Captains of Industry’ ts the
17 AO, F 971, Alexander Macdonell Fonds, Letter from Benjamin Delisle and John Doran to Mac- donell, 3 June 1830. 18 For a small sample of similar complaints about Orange violence from the pre-rebellion period, please see: AO, F 971, Alexander Macdonell Fonds, Letter from Macdonell to his parishioners regarding Or- angeism, 4 March 1828; LAC RG 9 I B 1, Volume 19, Adjutant General Files for Grenville, Leeds & Misc., Letter from Charles Jones to Adjutant General Talbot, 26 April 1833; AO F 533-2, Rogers Family Corre- spondence, Mary Rogers Cassady to her brother, James, 17 July 1826; e Vindicator, 21 July 1837, 2. 19 Donald MacRaild, “ e Orange Atlantic,” in David Gleeson (ed.), e Irish in the Atlantic World (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 309.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 41 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM 42 ONTARIO HISTORY
colonial framework, with Irish migrants point of view, performed demonstrations who chose to be entrepreneurs or ‘career of self-assertion, physical dominance, and men’ becoming soldiers of the new age, manly honour. By 1838, Orangemen’s replacing a more chivalric, knightly, and quest for respectability needed a more intangible ethos. As Carlyle wrote, traditional channel to gain true social Captains of Industry are the true acceptance. e Battle of the Windmill, Fighters, henceforth recognizable as the coming at the end of the rebellion period, only true ones: Fighters against Chaos, oered them exactly that. Necessity and the Devils and Jotuns; Leading the Hunter Patriots in their and lead on Mankind in that great, and attack against the Canadian and Irish ele- alone true, universal warfare; the stars in ment at Prescott was an unlikely ocer: their courses ghting for them, and all Nils von Schoultz, a charismatic scoundrel Heaven and all Earth saying audibly, Well who made a remarkable impression on the done!20 Canadian population in only a few hours’ Numerous Irish fraternities, from time.22 Born in Finland, von Schoultz was the Orangemen, the Shiners, and nonde- a Polish freedom- ghter against the Rus- nominational St. Patrick’s Societies stood sians, who then joined the French Legion as all-male organizations that worked and had served in Africa long before he as sites of masculine performance, with ever dreamed of invading British North the expected Irish traits of physical bel- America. His interest in salt works took ligerence, schism, sectarianism, and mar- him to Syracuse, New York, where he set- tial skill coming to the fore in many of tled while awaiting a patent on his proc- them. Contemporary sociologists have ess of extracting salt from brine. He was a explored the intersection of violence and dashing, romantic gure who fell prey to masculinities, highlighting the historical the Hunter Patriots’ rhetoric of liberating roots of imperialism as an avenue for the Canada from British oppression. Recruit- exportation of manliness and perceived ed in the fall of 1838, von Schoultz land- brutality.21 e irony in accounts of Irish ed in a schooner just east of Prescott with bellicosity is the fact that what many ag- some 200 men. As the rest of the Ameri- gressive Irish migrants—Orange or oth- can party failed to materialize—whether erwise—most desired in the Canadas was through poor strategy or last minute chi- the aura of respectability. What others canery—von Schoultz suddenly found saw as savage, unprovoked actions in rural himself in charge as the highest-ranking or urban settings were, from a dierent ocer. In this, von Schoultz became one
20 omas Carlyle, Past and Present (London: Chapman and Hall, 1843), 363; see also Adams, Dan- dies and Desert Saints, 6. 21 Raewyn Connell, e Men and the Boys (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 46-50. 22 Ronald J. Stagg, “Schoultz, Nils von,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003,
inside pages spring 2018.indd 42 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 43
Battle of Windmill Point
23 Henry Archacki, “America’s Polish Gi s to Canada,” Polish American Studies 25:2 (1968), 76.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 43 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM 44 ONTARIO HISTORY
version of Paul Revere—riding into town Gowan, had led the infamous Wing eld to spread the news. By 1pm on the 12th Yeomanry in Wexford against the Unit- of November, Gowan and his 9th Provi- ed Irishmen during the 1798 Rebellion. sional Borderers were on the road, taking is battle against American invaders in nearly ve hours to cover the distance be- 1838 created an opportunity for Gowan tween Brockville and the site of the Mc- and his men—many of whom were Irish ueen Brothers’ windmill. immigrants—to prove that the Orange is was a signi cant opportunity principles of imperial loyalty could com- for Ogle Gowan to accentuate his popu- bine with a more discernible incarnation lar interpretations of Irish loyalty, man- of martial heroic manliness. As Gowan liness, and martial skill, which had pre- himself wrote, “We are told that we Irish viously found an outlet in the fraternal are a restless and turbulent people.... e rites of the Orange Order and electoral time has come when we must assume a violence at the polls.24 Only six hours be- more manly front.”27 fore the Hunters invaded, he had penned e actual Orange element present a missive to Colonel Bullock that “the at the Windmill is dicult to ascertain. notorious William Johnston has assem- Gowan personally estimated that half of bled with a force of some 150 to 200 the 9th Provisional Battalion were Or- armed men on the opposite frontier” and angemen; however, cross-referencing the that “little doubt could be entertained list of 1830s members from Loyal Orange that this desperate Brigand meditated Lodge (LOL) #1 with veterans’ pensions an attack immediately.” Gowan’s orders from the battle reveals a dierent story. for preparation in Brockville had been In terms of members from Gowan’s own obeyed “with great alacrity” and a large lodge, eighty-one men joined Gowan’s number of the townspeople as well as the personal branch of the Orange Order be- militia had “evinced the nest spirit of de- tween its inception in 1830 and 1836;28 voted loyalty.”25 e Battle of the Wind- out of these, only twelve appear as veter- mill was Gowan’s rst major military ans of the Windmill on the ocial gov- engagement, following a minor skirmish ernment militia paylist, and only four of earlier in the year at Hickory Island.26 these men—Gowan, John Stewart, James Forty years earlier, his father, Hunter R. Willson and David Mair—were enlist-
24 Elva M. Richards, “ e Joneses of Brockville and the Family Compact,” Ontario History 60 (1968), 169-84; Akenson, e Irish in Ontario, 174. 25 LAC, RG 9 I B 1, Volume 23, Adjutant General Files, Miscellaneous 1838, Letter from Ogle Gow- an to Colonel Bullock re: preparations against attack from America, 12 November 1838. 26 Akenson, e Irish in Ontario, 194. 27 Gowan as “Hibernicus” in e Antidote, 29 January 1833 quoted in Hereward Senior, “Ogle Gow- an, Orangeism, and the Immigrant uestion 1830-33,” Ontario History 66 (1974), 208. 28 For an unknown reason, LOL #1 records stop in 1836 before resuming the early 1840s, obscuring the exact number of members in that branch during the rebellion years of 1837-38. “Membership Roll, 1830-36,” Loyal Orange Lodge #1 (private archive), Rocksprings, Ontario.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 44 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 45
ed in the 9th Battalion. e other men— 83rd Regiment and the Royal Marines Robert Edmundson, John Gillespie, had also arrived in force and plans were James Hall, omas Johnston, John quickly drawn up to attack the windmill Johnston, Wiliam H. Johnston, Adam itself. Von Schoultz increasingly realized Reilly, Alexander Smyth, and William that no reinforcements would be com- Sellar—were in the Brockville Independ- ing from America; there was no sign of ent Company, the 1st or 2nd Grenville Bill Johnston, the Pirate of the ousand Militia Regiments, or Hamilton Jessup’s Islands who had promised to appear, Prescott Volunteers.29 By this calcula- but who was, in fact, taking his ease in tion, the Orange presence at Windmill Ogdensburg throughout the battle.31 Point was minimal, even with Gowan, e martial manliness of the soldiers the Grand Master of the Orange Lodge on either side of the entanglement soon of British America, serving as a lieuten- came under severe questioning with the ant colonel. However, it should be noted rst casualties of 13 November. Mrs. that a vast number of lodges had sprung Belden Taylor, who lived near the battle up in the wake of LOL #1 with recruits, site, attempted to escape the onslaught of according to Gowan, numbering over armed men along with her teenage daugh- 13,000 by 1834; therefore, it is quite pos- ter when she unfortunately ran straight sible that members of other local lodges into an advance party of Ogle Gowan’s were present at Windmill Point.30 Un- 9th Provisional Battalion. ey red fortunately, many of these early member- at the pair, killing Mrs. Taylor instantly ship rolls from the Orange Order’s rst and severely wounding her daughter in decades in Upper Canada have been lost, the jaw. Hunter Captain Daniel Heus- making any complete roster of all Or- tis’ memoir of the attack recalled the angemen by name throughout the colony shock felt amongst the Americans who from its inception nigh on impossible. witnessed the Canadians’ mistake: “ is Orange or not, the men at Windmill unprovoked and barbarous act of cruelty Point found that the ghting truly turned would have disgraced a band of savages.” nasty on 13 November. e Ameri- rough this racist language comparing cans were no longer able to return to the Irish Canadians with natives, Heus- Ogdensburg because Captain Sandom’s tis denied Gowan’s recruits any sense of naval eet from Kingston had blocked heroic chivalry or martial prowess, both the route across the river. e Dublin of which were integral in de ning nine-
29 For more information, see Graves, Guns Across the River, Appendix C (Arthur J. Robinson), 218- 226; LAC, RG 9 II A 1, Volume 353, File 21643, Secretary of State – Order of the House of Commons for a Return showing names of parties who took part in the Battle of the Windmill near Prescott, and who have since received pensions, 30 April 1902. 30 Cecil J. Houston and William J. Smyth, e Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Or- ange Order in Canada, rst published 1980 (Toronto: Global 1999), 111. 31 AO, F 37, Mackenzie-Lindsey Family Fonds, Letter from Hiram Denio to his wife re: Windmill Point, 14 November 1838.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 45 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM 46 ONTARIO HISTORY
teenth-century manliness on the battle- ists that had le America a er 1776 as eld.32 Miss Taylor later visited Heustis part of Edward Jessup’s Loyal Rangers. while he was held as a prisoner at Fort e Dulmages’ Irish connections began Henry, where he noted that her face was in 1709, when they had arrived in Ire- “still bandaged up, in consequence of the land as refugees from the wars of reli- wound she had received.”33 gion in the German principalities; Irish November 13th proved to be a costly Palatines had been oered sanctuary in day for more families than just the Tay- Ireland by ueen Anne. Lieutenant Dul- lors. e death of Lieutenant John Dul- mage’s grandfather had been born in Co. mage illustrated Gowan’s success at con- Limerick; he, along with dozens of other vincing United Empire Loyalist Irishmen families, had moved to New York State in the region to join the Orange Order, in the mid-eighteenth century, only to be even without the immediacy of the Wex- uprooted again by the American Revolu- ford migrant connection, which had tion.35 is group of Irish Loyalists fought been at the heart of Gowan’s initial suc- alongside Sir John Johnson—son of the cess in public life a er his arrival in Upper famed Irish colonial administrator, Sir Canada.34 John Dulmage, the grandson William Johnson—and Mohawk leader of an Irish-born United Empire Loyal- Joseph Brant before being granted land ist, was killed during the advance of the in Grenville County in what was then 2nd Grenville Regiment. His death soon the province of uebec in the 1780s. became a matter of public record beyond Since coming to Upper Canada, the Dul- the casualty lists when Gowan acted as mages—along with dozens of other Irish a champion of sorts for the Dulmages Palatine families, including the Hecks, in the a ermath of the battle. is re- Shiers, Ruckles, and Switzers—had been vealed Gowan’s connections to the Dul- local Irish United Empire Loyalists who mage family and his ecacy at creating seemed to distance themselves from the social relationships within the broader newly-arriving Orangemen, aligning Irish community outside those who had themselves instead as Tory supporters of known his family in Co. Wexford before the Family Compact.36 emigrating to Upper Canada. However, an exchange of letters John Dulmage was part of an Irish between Ogle Gowan and his cousin, Palatine family of United Empire Loyal- James, suggests something dierent. In
32 Dawson, Soldier Heroes, 1-2. 33 Daniel Heustis, A Narrative of the Adventures and Su erings of Captain Daniel D. Heustis and His Companions in Canada and Van Dieman’s Land during a long captivity (Boston: S. W. Wilder, 1848), 47. 34 Bruce Elliott, “Emigration from South Leinster to Eastern Upper Canada,” in Wexford: History and Society, ed. Kevin Whelan (Dublin: Geography Publications, 1987), 438. 35 AO, F 485, Edward Jessup Papers, Jessup’s Loyal Rangers Company Book, 1782. 36 Denis Jones and Howard Lawrence, “Ontario Descendents of Irish Palatines – 300th Anniversary of 1709 Palatine Emigration,” Loyalist Trails – UELAC Newsletter, 30 (24 August, 2008),
inside pages spring 2018.indd 46 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 47
the a ermath of the battle, James wrote Prescott on the anniversary of the Battle from Toronto lamenting, “Alas the un- of the Boyne” through his insistence on fortunate Major Dulmage, whose melan- decorating “his person with orange and choly death we heard of here—the same purple” and parading through the streets you once introduced at the Edenborough in direct violation of an order against Or- [sic] Castle.”37 James had met Dulmage at ange parades from Lieutenant Governor the Edinburgh Castle, an Orange-friend- Sir George Arthur.39 Lieutenant Colonel ly tavern in Toronto. However, this turns Philip Dulmage was a respectable veter- out to have been John’s father, Lieutenant an of 1812; for him not only to disregard Colonel Philip Dulmage, a well-known a direct order from the lieutenant gover- and respected ocer from the War of nor, but apparently to disrespect the gov- 1812. Ogle corroborated this by correct- ernor’s authority in public demonstrates ing his cousin in one of his rare direct just how fervently Dulmage had melded references to the Battle of the Windmill, his United Empire Loyalist background in a letter dated December 15th, 1838, with the more inclusive principles of Or- roughly one month a er the attack. “Mr ange delity to the Crown.40 Dulmage, who was killed,” he wrote, “was Frances Dulmage, John’s widow, also Son to the Gentleman I introduced at the had public dealings with Ogle Gowan, Edinburgh Castle.”38 which made the Orange Grand Master ere is no further elaboration in the appear to be her social patron and a per- Gowan papers regarding this meeting or sonal friend. In late February of 1839, to explain what precisely an Irish-Cana- three months a er the battle, Gowan went dian United Empire Loyalist farmer from before the Legislative Assembly of Upper north of Prescott was doing in Toronto Canada to petition in favour of Frances with the Gowans. What is known is that receiving her late husband’s military pen- ve years later, Philip Dulmage—then sion.41 ere was never any real question in his seventies—was arrested and ned that Frances would not receive the set- for “improper conduct” during Prescott’s tlement from the government, but as the Twel h of July parade in 1843. A petition only widow of a Canadian ocer killed at from George Nichols, a Dubliner living Windmill Point, her petition in the public in Prescott, cited that Dulmage had been records of the Upper Canadian Assembly “in a great measure the cause of a riot in conferred a courtly image on Gowan as
37 AO, F 28, Gowan Family Fonds, Letter from James R. Gowan to Ogle R. Gowan, undated. 38 AO, F 28, Gowan Family Fonds, Letter from Ogle R. Gowan to James R. Gowan, 15 December 1838. 39 “Petition of George Nichols of Prescott, in the Johnstown District to His Excellency the Right Honorable Sir Charles Metcalfe, 16 September 1843” (copy) in Journals of the Legislative Council of the Pro ince of Canada, Volume 16, Issue 7 (Toronto: 1858), Appendix No. 39. 40 Hereward Senior, “ e Genesis of Canadian Orangeism,” Ontario History 60, 2 (1968), 28-29. 41 “Petition of Frances Dulmage,” in Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, 28 February 1839, 7; see also petitions made on her behalf on 2 March 1839 and 18 March 1839.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 47 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM 48 ONTARIO HISTORY
her personal defender and champion. that was the only time I ever saw the woman A later petition to the United Prov- till she gave her evidence for Gowan. Her ince of Canada complicated the exact general character is that of a woman of ill- nature of Frances Dulmage’s friend- fame, living evidence of which exists in her illegitimate ospring.42 ship with Gowan. In 1858, the same George Nichols sued Ogle Gowan for Given that Frances Dulmage was the libel, claiming that he, Nichols, had been only female witness for either the prose- falsely accused of attempting to assassi- cution or the defence, it is hardly surpris- nate Gowan. e ensuing case before the ing that Nichols attempted to destroy judiciary involved mutual claims of per- her testimony by besmirching her per- jury; Frances Dulmage was called upon sonal character as a woman of “ill-fame” to act as a witness in Gowan’s favour to and low sexual morality as the mother the eect that Nichols had been a tai- of illegitimate children (the children, lor in Prescott in the early 1840s, rather Samuel Coates Dulmage and Ann Eliza- than a school teacher as he claimed in beth Dulmage, were both the legitimate court. Nichols was surprised at Frances’ ospring of the late Lieutenant John testimony, wherein she declared that she Dulmage). e public sphere of Upper had brought her son to his shop to be Canada was decidedly masculine and it measured for clothes. He swore that her was easy to cast doubt on a woman’s tes- evidence was “new and unexpected; fresh timony in the Canadian courts of law by from Gowan’s witness factory in Leeds.” questioning her sexual mores.43 However, Nichols believed that Frances testi ed the fact that Gowan asked Frances Dul- out of spite, in retaliation for his claims mage to testify on his behalf, along with against her father-in-law, Philip, regard- his championing of her nancial remu- ing the 1843 Orange parade. “I have a neration a er her husband’s death, and clear recollection,” he testi ed, Philip Dulmage’s pro-Orange public dis- plays underscores the association—how- of the witness Dulmage coming to my shop ever personal or professional—that ex- in the fall of 1843, in company with her isted between the Dulmage and Gowan father, the said Philip Dulmage; they had with them a copy of the complaint alluded families. It appears that by the late 1830s to above... but instead of patronage in the and early 1840s, Ogle Gowan had been way of business, I got nothing but abuse, and successful in uniting some, if not all, Irish threats of vengeance. I most solemnly declare Protestants near Prescott and Brockville
42 “Petition of George Nichols of Toronto, 10 June 1858,” in Journals of the Legislative Council of the Pro ince of Canada; Being the First Session of the Sixth Parliament 1858, Volume 16, Issue 7, Appendix 39. George Nichols was found guilty of perjury and sentenced to three months imprisonment and a ne of £150. 43 Cecilia Morgan, “‘When Bad Men Conspire, Good Men Must Unite!’: Gender and Political Dis- courses in Upper Canada, 1820s-1830s,” in Kathryn McPherson, Cecilia Morgan, and Nancy M. Forestell eds., Gendered Pasts: Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada (Oxford: OUP, 1999), 12-13.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 48 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 49
under the Orange banner, regardless of occurred before the battle was over. when they had come to the Canadas. When news of the death of Lieuten- e loss of Lieutenant John Dulmage ant William Staord Johnson began to was not the only blow Gowan faced on be whispered throughout the area on the November 13th: during a bayonet charge night of November 16th, the Battle of to clear out any remaining invaders from the Windmill took on a far more scan- open ground, Gowan overreached him- dalous tone. Ocial records from the self, leapt over a wall and found himself Lieutenant Governor’s Oce noted the surrounded by Hunters. Trying to back severe loss of life at Windmill Point and up, he impaled himself on the bayonet of that a lieutenant of the 83rd was killed one of his own men. In a letter to his cous- along with “several of the respectable in- in James, Ogle described this as a “slight” habitants of the country”47—giving John wound “a little below the hip.” In fact, he Dulmage the mark of social acceptance had been stabbed in the buttocks and had from the Upper Canadian establishment to withdraw from the rest of the ghting.44 that Ogle Gowan had desired so much As he himself noted, “One inch further to for himself. However, the reality of John- the right would probably have nished son’s demise was much more sordid. me.”45 is was hardly the type of wound Born in Co. Wicklow, Johnson had that heralded a man as a valiant soldier joined the army as an ensign in 1815 of the queen. It is rather ironic, therefore, and served in Ceylon before coming to that he was a erwards cited for bravery, North America. At age 39, he was a trie despite the rather inglorious nature of his old still to be a lieutenant and, perhaps, wound in the backside.46 Gowan’s impaled wanted to prove himself in this battle bottom, and the ignoble status that ac- where he at last had the opportunity for companied such an injury, is a somewhat advancement.48 A chivalrous aura already frivolous example of the violation of men’s surrounded the 83rd Regiment: at their bodies at Windmill Point. Far more un- customary billet in Kingston they were fortunate displays of corporeal desecra- thought of as “gallant regulars who were tion, and its inherent loss of manhood, supposed to be invincible.”49 Whatever
44 Akenson, e Irish in Ontario, 196. 45 AO, F 28, Gowan Family Fonds, Letter from Ogle R. Gowan to James R. Gowan, 15 December 1838. 46 LAC, MG 27 I E 30, Ferguson Family Fonds, Volume 7, Miscellaneous. 47 National Archives Kew (NA), PRO 30/9/6/13, Charles Abbot, First Baron Colchester Papers, Correspondence, memoranda, etc. relating to American military activities on the Canadian border, Upper Canada Gazette Extraordinary, 16 November 1838. 48 Memoirs and Services of the Eighty- ird Regiment, County of Dublin, om 1793 to 1907, including the campaigns of the Regiment in the West Indies, A ica, e Peninsula, Ceylon, Canada, and India (Lon- don: Hugh Rees, 1908), 46-47. 49 William John Macdonell, Reminiscences of the Late Hon. and Right Rev. Alexander Macdonell, First Catholic Bishop of Upper Canada and (incidentally) of Other Old Residents of the Pro ince (Toronto: Williamson and Co., 1888), 32.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 49 2018-02-19 9:26:35 PM 50 ONTARIO HISTORY
his reason, Johnson attempted to capture dalous court cases like the trials of Oscar what looked like an abandoned cannon Wilde and the arrest and execution of in the road near the windmill; coming Roger Casement; the same heightened under re from the Hunters above, he was concerns about young boys’ masculine t- knocked to the ground and then taken ness also were behind Lord Baden-Pow- prisoner behind enemy lines. When the ell’s creation of the Boy Scouts following ghting ended on 13 November, John- the Second South African War.52 Men’s son was dead—whether from the shot bodies mattered in Upper Canada and red that a ernoon by eighteen year-old throughout the British Atlantic world, Syvanus Swete from Jeerson County particularly when they were bound up in or from being assaulted with rie butts the machinery of empire and, even more that evening remains unclear.50 Swine so, when located within the spatial con- began to eat his corpse; the Americans nes of a battle eld, with its manifold then took the body and strung it by its gendered connotations of honour, fear, heels from a nearby tree. At this point, death, and blood sacri ce.53 some of von Schoultz’s men decided to e vulnerability of a body—its mutilate the body with their new Bowie eshiness and fragility—overwhelmed knives—a recent fashion trend carried by the discourse of heroic manliness that many American men as a tribute to the later became emblematic of the lan- fallen of the Alamo two years earlier. e guage used to describe the Battle of the Hunters cut o Johnson’s penis, in full Windmill in primary sources. Johnson’s view of his men. mutilation was certainly an attempt by A variety of medical and political dis- the Americans to shock their enemies; courses in the rst half of the nineteenth however, their actions also worked, con- century centred in dierent ways on how sciously or otherwise, as a means of em- a man’s fundamental identity resided in bodied dialogue. Johnson’s corpse be- the sex of his body. According to gender came a text to be read and feared by his historian Sonya O. Rose, a man’s “sexual fellow soldiers. In her study of wartime capacity and practice were continuing is- sexual violence, Miranda Alison has ar- sues of public concern.”51 Intellectually, gued that sexual violence “can function this anxiety eventually manifested itself as a form of communication between he- in apprehensions about sexual degener- gemonic and subordinate masculinities” acy within the empire, resulting in scan- as well as between men and women along
50 Graves, Guns Across the River, 118. 51 Rose, What is Gender History?, 64. See also Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 52 Ari Adut, “A eory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde,” Ameri- can Journal of Sociology 111:1 (2005), 213-48; Brian Lewis, “ e ueer Life and A erlife of Roger Case- ment,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 14:4 (2005), 363-82; Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys (London: Horace Cox, 1908). 53 Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (London: Virago Press, 2005), 7-8.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 50 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 51
the masculine/feminine binary. Male to men—Johnson no longer numbered male sexual violence during war or battle among such fellows. Following the sur- is “both gendered and ethnicised, acting render of the Hunters, this violation be- to feminise its victims…while mascu- came one of the more infamous rumours linising perpetrators.”54 While extremely about the battle, particularly a er John- shocking in the moment, cutting o son’s body was brought back to Prescott. Johnson’s penis was also an action loaded Gossip certainly held sway as citizens with gurative meaning. on both the American and Upper Cana- e discourse of sexual violence and dian side of the border sought informa- violation in the early 1800s was recorded tion about what had happened during by men for men, to the point where his- the battle. A townsman of Prescott felt torian Sharon Block has described this that “our Ogdensburg neighbours of that era as a time of “rape without women.”55 day were not what they should have been. Given this state of aairs, it should be no I am sure the present generation would surprise that the most famous assault of not encourage a lot of cutthroats from the 1837-38 Rebellion period was not a Watertown, Oswego and other places to rape: it was a castration. e sudden ef- come over and murder us.”57 Hiram Den- feminization of Johnson’s body was as io wrote to his wife from the steamboat much an attack on British authority in US Ogdensburg on the 14th of November the Canadas as it was a personal attack that it was evident the Patriots had been on an enemy ocer. e de lement of beaten and that “the orders of the British his corpse refashioned his body into a are to give no quarter, but to slay every performative text that underscored the man found in arms. e probability, I Hunters’ lack of masculine honour in the think, is that the poor fellows are, or will minds of the Irish and Canadian soldiers. be, principally cut to pieces.”58 is was Castration and penile dismemberment exactly what the Orangemen and Cana- were weighted actions. e sexual muti- dian militia wanted to do—not only as lation “of a single man of the ethnically vengeance for Johnson’s gruesome treat- de ned enemy is symbolic appropriation ment, but also for the act of invasion it- of the masculinity of the whole group.” self. Conicting reports appeared in the It was not only proof that the victim “is American newspapers—some claiming a lesser man, but that his ethnicity is also that the Hunters had all been speared to a lesser ethnicity.”56 Real men looked like death as they le the windmill; others
54 Miranda Alison, “Wartime Sexual Violence: Women’s Human Rights and uestions of Masculin- ity,” Review of International Studies 33:1 (2007), 85-86. 55 Sharon Block, “Rape without Women: Print Culture and the Politicization of Rape, 1765-1815,” Journal of American History 89:3 (2002), 849-68. 56 Alison, “Wartime Sexual Violence,” 87. 57 AO, F485, Jessup Family Fonds, Battle of the Windmill – “Recollections!!”, 4. 58 AO, F37, Mackenzie-Lindsey Family Fonds, Letter from Hiram Denio to his wife, 14 November 1838.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 51 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM 52 ONTARIO HISTORY
suggested that von Schoultz had killed abused by the loyalist crowds that many himself rather than be taken alive.59 of the men broke down in hysterics. e actual condition of the living and Wright described it as a time when he and the dead was dierent, but still dire. Al- the other men endured the “inclemency most all of the Canadian and Irish dead of a Canadian autumn amid jeers, scos, had been “stripped to their underclothes” insults and reproaches almost beyond by the Hunters and wild hogs “had nearly description. e militia resembled raven- eaten some of them up.” Lieutenant John- ous ends more than decent Christian son’s body was cut down from its humili- men” while he, personally, was “bueted ating display and it was felt that few, if any, and spit upon by the Prescott mob.”62 of the Crown’s forces would respect the e language used to describe both Americans’ eventual white ag of surren- the victors and the vanquished at the der. Ocers repeatedly ordered their men Battle of the Windmill highlighted how to “give no quarter and take no prisoners” much manliness and visions of loyalty while the stone houses once occupied by were intertwined in the rebellion period. the Hunters were burned to the ground.60 Reading the ocial dispatches and com- e butcher’s bill was over 80 killed and mendations from a gendered perspective wounded for British and Canadian units, highlights speci c terms and phrases while as many as 50 of the Hunters were that emphasize the value British colonial dead, along with 160 captured. Compared authorities put on masculine strength to the casualties a year earlier in Toronto, and imperial delity. e ocial Mili- this was a truly costly aair. tia General Order from Adjutant Gen- In an ironic twist on Irish soldiers’ eral Colonel Richard Bullock noted that presumed bellicosity and aggressiveness, both the Lieutenant Governor and the Hunter Patriot Stephen S. Wright wrote Major General Commanding felt “much in his memoirs that he was grateful dur- pride in congratulating the brave and gal- ing the surrender to have led out of the lant Militia of Upper Canada, upon the windmill alongside Dubliners from the distinguished conduct of the Ocers 83rd Regiment, for “I verily believe the and Men engaged in the destruction and ferocious militia would have torn us to capture of the Piratical Force” near Pres- pieces, had it not been for their timely cott. In particular, Bullock highlighted protection.”61 e captured Hunters the men’s “zeal, devotion and bravery” were tied separately to a long rope and and rejoiced that they had immediately marched to Prescott, where they were so volunteered for active service when the
59 Niles National Register, 24 November 1838, 200. 60 Ibid.; NA, PRO 30/9/6/13, Charles Abbot, First Baron Colchester Papers, Correspondence, mem- oranda etc. relating to American military activities on the Canadian border, copy of a letter from Colonel Dundas to Captain Goldie, 16 November 1838. 61 Stephen S. Wright, Narrative and Recollections of Van Dieman’s Land, During a ree Years’ Captivity of Stephen S. Wright, together with an Account of the Battle of Prescott (New York: J. Winchester, 1844), 11. 62 Ibid.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 52 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 53
need arose. e dispatch chronicled the By comparison, the words used to “loyal exertions” of the militia and bol- describe the Hunters were a romantic- stered the notion that the combined ef- yet-derogatory blend of synonyms: “gang forts of the regulars and militiamen had of desperadoes,” “pirates,” “brigands,” made them “brothers in Arms—they “piratical force” and, in the American have once more fought side by side—they papers, “deluded countrymen” full of have bled and died together.”63 While “wickedness and folly.”67 In dismissing many might surmise that the phrase the Hunters as misguided adventurers “once more” ghting together implied and cocksure scoundrels, the Upper Ca- the eorts of the regulars and volunteers nadian military establishment defused in 1837, the Battle of the Windmill also the republican threat of invasion while had brought together those with memo- simultaneously making their own sol- ries of the 1798 Irish Rising and the role diers appear as valiant heroes, whereas that volunteer militias and regular troops the Hunters were, at best, impressionable had played in defeating the United Irish- children playacting at war.68 men.64 e fallen lieutenant of the 83rd e court martial for the Hunter Regiment had been a Wicklow man, Patriots began at Fort Henry in King- while sons of 1798 Wexford veterans had ston on 26 November 1838. Colonial been in nearly all of the militias present court proceedings are a valuable way of at the battle; furthermore, the presence ascertaining early Victorian social and of the Glengarry Highlanders in the lat- cultural constructions of masculinity ter stages of the battle also had echoes of and manliness. e discourse of a court- the ’98, as that rising had been the Glen- room—the questions posed by the at- garries’ rst military encounter a er their torneys and ocials, the responses of the creation in Scotland;65 now, the next gen- accused, the coverage in the press and eration of Highlanders were making a in private memoirs, the legends that can name for themselves in both Upper and arise from the outcome—are all cultural Lower Canada as the “shock troops” of texts with potentially revealing gendered the post-rebellion period.66 results. Conceptions of violence, and the
63 AO, F 485, Jessup Family Fonds, Militia General Order, Adjutant General’s Oce, 24 November 1838. Emphasis as in original. 64 Daniel Gahan, e People’s Rising: Wexford, 1798 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1995), 299. 65 National Archives, Kew (NA), CO 295/6, Letter from Alexander Macdonell to e Right Hon- ourable Henry Addington, 1 January 1803. 66 Elinor Kyte Senior, Redcoats and Patriotes: e Rebellions in Lower Canada, 1837-38 (Ottawa: Canadian War Museum Historical Publication No. 20), 1985, 187-189. 67 LAC, MG 27 I E 30, Ferguson Family Fonds, Volume 7, Colonel C. Foster, A er District Gen- eral Order, 19 November 1838; Ibid., “Return of Killed and Wounded in action with the Brigands near Prescott on the 13th of November 1838”; Ibid., “Extract from ‘Militia General Orders’ promulgating the above”, 24 November 1838; Niles National Register, 8 December 1838. 68 “Home Intelligence,” e Advocate of Peace (1837-1845), 5, 2 (1843), 21.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 53 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM 54 ONTARIO HISTORY
impressions of manliness that accompa- of what had happened to the Irishman. nied them, are historical constructs and Perhaps von Schoultz’s discomfort with imaginings prone to contestation and this public recitation of Johnson’s grim change. Social expectations and the cul- fate had more to do with the destruction tural context of trials are integral to any of his own carefully constructed perso- history of violence, as the courtroom can na as a gallant romantic and misguided illuminate not only the force used or the adventurer, rather than as the de ler of injuries inicted upon the victim, but corpses. Whatever the colonel’s feelings, also any sense of intentional violation the implication was obvious that he, as that accompanied them.69 Courts mar- commanding ocer of the Hunters, was tial that carried with them the prospect responsible for the actions of his subor- of a hanging were even more lled with dinates.71 moral dilemma and, simultaneously, the A er taking an evening to contem- blood lust of the mob. plate his next move, von Schoultz asked During the trial, it became clear that to address the court when proceedings von Schoultz was being held directly re- resumed on 30 November. Reading from sponsible for the mutilation of Johnson’s a prepared statement, he swore that “[a]s body. Surgeon William Gardener of the regards the treatment of Captain John- 83rd Regiment was called as a key wit- son’s body—I tried to get the body away ness. He testi ed that the cause of death but the re was such that I could not. was most likely several gun-shot wounds Two men were wounded in the attempt. to Johnson’s hip that had passed through I put a sentinel to shoot the hogs that his body; however, Gardner also pointed might approach the body and he red out that there had been “a mutilation, to keep them o. is may show that I which I perceive to have been performed had no concern in mutilating his body.”72 by a sharp instrument, the excision of Von Schoultz was not a sadist; however, the penis.”70 is news apparently was a Gardner’s testimony that the penis had shock to von Schoultz, although consid- been cut o with a sharp instrument ering the blatant manner in which John- rather than nibbled or gnawed exonerat- son’s body had been displayed, and given ed the hogs and condemned the colonel. the relatively small size of the battle eld Immediately following this statement, around the windmill, it seems hardly the court rendered its verdict: Nils von credible that von Schoultz was not aware Schoultz was to be hanged by the neck
69 Martin J. Wiener, Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 7-10. 70 LAC, RG 5 B 40, Civil Secretary, Records relating to the Rebellions, Upper Canada: Fort Henry, Militia General Court Martial of Nils Szolteocky von Schoultz, 1838. 71 Graves, Guns Across the River, 175. 72 LAC, RG 5 B 40, Civil Secretary, records relating to the Rebellions, Upper Canada: Fort Henry, Militia General Court Martial of Nils Szolteocky von Schoultz, 1838.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 54 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 55
until dead. das. Such violence simply did not happen Lieutenant Johnson’s pubic mutila- here: not with British troops as the per- tion was the most infamous aspect of the petrators, and certainly not with British battle and its a ermath in the popular ocers as the victims. consciousness; however, this instance Nils von Schoultz’s execution took of sexual violence was more or less ex- place on the 8th of December on the punged from any later commemoration grounds of Fort Henry; his body was lat- of the invasion. A plaque located within er buried in Kingston’s Roman Catholic the windmill lists Lieutenant William S. cemetery. Nine other men also met with Johnson rst on its tribute to the dead the hangman’s rope for their actions at and wounded; nearly all contemporary Windmill Point, while dozens of others and historical accounts of the event were sent to a penal colony in Van Die- mention his death, but with little or no man’s Land. A er the Upper and Lower elaboration about what speci cally oc- Canadian Rebellions in 1837, Lord Dur- curred. e entry for Nils von Schoultz ham had sought a compromise in how in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography prisoners were punished. According notes his employment of a young John to Jean-Philippe Warren, Durham em- A. Macdonald as his counsel at the trial, braced a more nuanced liberal attitude but it highlights the colonel’s insistence that attempted to balance the severity on pleading guilty, not the gory details of rebellion against the Crown with le- revealed in the courtroom.73 Physical vio- niency towards political prisoners.75 e lence was an expected, if not necessarily 1830s were a time of new legal rights acceptable, aspect of life in the Canadian for those accused of political crimes, as colonies; sexual violence was something well as institutional changes from pu- else.74 e masculine arena of social and nitive punishments to sheltered reha- cultural respectability, which some Irish- bilitation.76 Durham devised a system of men sought to attain through their ac- banishment to non-penal colonies, such tions during the rebellions, was at its as Bermuda, following 1837 in order to most powerful in omitting any history deter opponents from future protests of rape or sexual de lement in the Cana- and risings without invoking the stigma
73 Stagg, “von Schoultz, Nils,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography. 74 Elsbeth Heaman, “Constructing Innocence: Representations of Sexual Violence in Upper Canada’s War of 1812,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Societe historique du Canada 24:2 (2013), 114-155; Sandy Ramos, “‘A Most Detestable Crime”: Gender Identities and Sexual Violence in the District of Montreal, 1803-1843,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 12:1 (2001), 27-48. 75 Jean-Philippe Warren, “Detention and punishment in a time of legal reform: Lord Durham and the question of Lower Canadian political prisoners,” in Margaret Kelleher and Michael Kenneally (eds.), Ireland and Quebec: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on History, Culture and Society (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), 64-65. 76 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: e Birth of the Prison, rst published 1975 (London: Pan- theon Books, 1977).
inside pages spring 2018.indd 55 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM 56 ONTARIO HISTORY
of arriving in Botany Bay. e year 1798 mill itself was important within the Re- was given as a direct example of what bellion context.”80 So, what exactly was was no longer permissible under a more the Battle of the Windmill? How can it enlightened form of imperialism.77 Dur- qualify as a particularly Irish event dur- ham’s idea of transportation to a non-pe- ing the Canadian rebellions? How does nal colony was meant to be emblematic it add to our understanding of Irish mi- of a less brutal age; however, by the time grants’ representations of violence and of the Battle of the Windmill, Durham manliness? had already returned to Britain, and Certainly the fact that so many the prisoners in both Upper and Lower strains of the Irish Diaspora—Wexford Canada at the end of 1838 faced a much migrants, Orangemen, the 83rd (Dub- harsher reality.78 Executions, banishment lin) Regiment, Irish Palatine United to the Antipodes, and being treated like Empire Loyalists—came together in one common criminals were the order of the relatively tiny peninsula of land along the day. In this, the sentences passed at the St. Lawrence makes it a microcosm of the end of 1838 followed the well-worn pat- various Irish communities that had found tern already set by the defeated United a new home in Upper Canada prior to Irishmen of 1798, as opposed to what the 1840s. e battle also stands as a sin- the rebels of only a year before in 1837 gularly bloody event, not only in the heat had faced with deportation to Bermuda. of the ghting or with the dismember- Of the men whose sentences were com- ment of Lieutenant Johnson, but also in muted from death to exile in Australia, the number of casualties, prisoners, exiles only three were Irish-born: John Bradley, and hangings that it produced. at said, Hugh Calhoun, and Patrick White; the this was Irish violence in a theoretically others were merely treated as if they were acceptable place: on a battle eld against the equivalent of Irish rebels. e one- an invading American force. Unlike the time Hunter Patriots arrived at Hobart troublesome Shiners’ Wars and the Bally- in February 1840 and served four years giblin Riots or Ogle Gowan’s use of elec- of their sentence before receiving par- toral intimidation and violence in the dons.79 1830s, the Battle of the Windmill’s type e Canadian government’s o- of Irish-related mayhem was respectable cial report on the battle concluded that to Upper Canadian gentlemen.81 e “while this military action was not of ma- numerous references in the military dis- jor proportions, the Battle of the Wind- patches to “zeal,” “gallantry,” “devotion,”
77 Warren, “Detention and punishment,” 67. 78 Warren, “Detention and punishment,” 71-73. 79 LAC, MG 24 B 162, Notebook of Aaron Dresser. 80 LAC, Registry Files, RG 22 A 1, Volume 1394, File Part 1, “Battle of the Windmill, Prescott, Ont.,” 13. 81 Richards, “ e Joneses of Brockville and the Family Compact,” 169-84.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 56 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM Dismemberment at Windmill Point 57
and “duty” echo down through the rest derstandable context, such as a battle eld of the nineteenth century as hallmarks with recognizable soldier heroes forming of British imperial heroic masculini- line and square, the Irish in the Cana- ties; what was dierent in this case was das were acceptable, if not yet perhaps that the accolades of manly action and entirely respectable. e wildness of the comportment came at the beginning of Irish, however, was not wanted among ueen Victoria’s reign rather than at its the good people of the Johnstown Dis- end, when the apogee of the Second Em- trict anymore than it had been desired in pire created a more jingoistic and patri- the back concessions of Kitley and Eliza- otic era. Orange “respectability” was not bethtown when they arrived in the early only attainable at the end of the 1800s, 1820s, or on the edges of the frontier but was one of the prevailing power blocs in Bytown’s Irish ghettoes or the darker of Ontario politics that lasted well into corners of Irish Montreal’s Grintown. the twentieth century.82 e 1830s, how- e question going forward into the ever, were a dierent time and place for 1840s was whether or not the likes of Orangeism in Upper Canada. eir vio- Ogle Gowan and his Orangemen could lent defence of the colony only bought convincingly transform their “wild Irish” a certain measure of toleration, not full heritage into something more agreeable acceptance into the social hierarchy of to the colonial Canadian establishment, the Loyalist establishment. e Irish- which still retained much of its small-‘c’ men in the Canadas who fought for conservative insular attitude, even in the the Crown during the rebellions found wake of the 1837-38 risings.83 themselves in a period of masculine and A telling portent of the diculty martial rhetoric that bridged the time of of this endeavour came in 1840, when the Duke of Wellington and Waterloo to Colonel Richard Fraser of the 2nd that of Sir Henry Havelock, the Siege of Grenville Militia and Ogle Gowan had Lucknow, and even the Great War. is a very public falling out. Despite their socially constructed language of manli- one-time status as allies and colleagues ness—informed by local events, but car- against the Family Compact, Fraser now rying universal tones of conquest and accused Gowan of being both a coward stoicism—changed the Irish immigrants and a fool. In the wake of these insults, into Canadians through their perceived Gowan demanded satisfaction; however, loyalty to a grander imperial design. So his challenge of a duel was rejected. De- long as violence was con ned to an un- spite Gowan’s ocial accolades from the
82 William J. Smyth, Toronto, e Belfast of Canada: e Orange Order and the Shaping of Municipal Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 23. 83 For more on the character of conservatism in Upper Canada, see S. F. Wise, God’s Peculiar Peoples: Essays on Political Culture in Nineteenth Century Canada, eds. A. B. McKillop and Paul Romney (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1993), 169-84; see also Akenson’s critique of Wise in e Irish in Ontario, 173- 4, fn 48 and his analysis of the term “family compact”, 191, fn 108.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 57 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM 58 ONTARIO HISTORY
Battle of the Windmill, Fraser refused to service in defence of the young ueen ght him because the colonel felt that Victoria and her territories. However, to the Wexford Irishman “was beneath the make the eect permanent, they had to station of a gentleman and not a worthy take their newfound status as successful opponent.”84 Respectability continued to defenders of the country and begin to elude Gowan just as much a er the battle navigate the intricacies of public life in as it had beforehand. the new United Province of Canada in e heroic aura surrounding the Bat- the 1840s. ey could not have known as tle of the Windmill seemed to oer Cana- that decade began that, within ten years, dian Irishmen the chance to mollify their the horrors of the Irish Famine would supposed coarseness and lack of gentility change everything about the image of through the nobility of active military Irishmen in the Canadas.
84 Colonel Richard Fraser quoted in Graves, Guns Across the River, 203.
inside pages spring 2018.indd 58 2018-02-19 9:26:36 PM