Grievance

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 59-64

59

Chapter 8

Grievance

Men do not huzza, they grit their teeth, and talk of vengeance.

— ColuMn in the Buffalo Star extra1

“T   cutting out the ‘Caroline,’” wrote Lieutenant-

Governor Francis Bond Head to London in early January

1838, “is one which ref‌lects so much credit upon those by

whom it was executed, that I shall feel it my duty to bring their gal-

lant conduct under the especial consideration of Her Majesty’s Gov-

ernment.”2 But while heroes in Upper Canada, Commander Drew’s

Caroline raiders were villains — even monsters — in American eyes.

The American reaction in the northern frontier states was noisy, ani-

mated, and alarming. A newly restive northern frontier enormously

complicated British-American relations. The two countries teetered

on the edge of a broader conf‌lict, with the Caroline as casus belli. Given

this reaction, Mackenzie’s son-in-law and f‌irst biographer would later

excoriate the Canadian commander Allan Napier MacNab’s judgment

in launching the raid, calling it an act of “great rashness”:

A militia colonel, without the least authority from his superior,

orders the invasion of the territory of a nation with whom his gov-

ernment is at peace; and when that nation was using ef‌forts, not

very successful it must be confessed, to maintain neutrality in a

contest in which they were in no way concerned.3