Isaac Brock and the Warring Politicians

In 1811, when Francis Gore departed for England, Brock became the colony's acting lieutenant governor. Long frustrated by his isolation from the European battles against Napoleon, where other commanders won fame, Brock felt delighted in June 1812 when war came to him in Upper Canada. He expected to win glory by foiling the American invasion.

To defend the province, Brock needed to heal the divisions provoked by Gore's irascible administration. Upper Canada's leading men were bitterly polarized between the dominant officials, who had reaped Gore's patronage, and a feisty opposition, led by Joseph Willcocks, who resented being marginalized. Brock vowed to "act with the utmost liberality and as if no mistrust existed, for unless the Inhabitants are given an active and efficient aid, it will be utterly impossible... to preserve the Province."

--Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 149.

The American Revolution Continues

Despite the 1783 peace treaty ending the American Revolutionary War, a cold war persisted between the United States and the British empire. British officials regretted the treaty's new boundary through the Great Lakes as too generous to the United States and detrimental to Canadian security. They longed to shift that flawed boundary southward, and to prevent the Americans from pushing northward to swallow Canada, driving the British from North America. In violation of the peace treaty, the British clung to frontier forts on the American side of the new border, and they supplied weapons and advice to Indian nations resisting the American expansion in the Ohio Valley.

--Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 15.