Raiders and Rebels

In early November, Hunter General John Ward Birge put the word out for the Hunter fighters to assemble for war at various towns along eastern Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands. He timed this to coincide with a state election so that crowds of strangers on the move might look less suspicious.

While top Hunter commanders Lucius Bierce and Donald McLeod cautiously plotted raids on Upper Canada, an independent Hunter army began to assemble in northeastern New York in the autumn of 1838. Under the command of John Ward Birge, the army boasted a stunning amount of cannon and modern rifles, and thousands of volunteer recruits.