Raiders and Rebels

With the end of repatriation of Hunter prisoners, transport to the penal colony dominated every remaining prisoner's thoughts through the long hot summer.

Late on July 26, 1839, a Hunter gang carrying heavy trunks boarded a small schooner, the Guernsey, at Oswego, New York. The ship sailed at midnight. At daybreak, the strangers emerged on deck, drew weapons from their trunks and took over the schooner.

Throughout the Patriot War, the majority of Patriot and Hunter raiders tended to follow rules of engagement on par with their British enemy. That is, they behaved as soldiers, not murderers. While the British called them pirates and brigands, they were no more or less prone to abuses on the battlefield than the Upper Canadians. There was one notable exception, Benjamin Lett.

After the executions of four Hunter raiders in Kingston on January 4, 1839, weeks passed without additional hangings. The remaining 150 prisoners in Fort Henry, who'd seen their comrades taken away to die every week or two, began to believe that the hangings had ceased. The Upper Canada public was tiring of the brutal executions. The time was right to show some mercy.

While all eyes were riveted on the trials and executions of captured Hunters at Kingston in eastern Upper Canada, a new army of Hunters and Patriots prepared to attack the colony’s western border near Windsor. It turned out to be the final organized invasion of the Patriot War and a bungled bloody affair like all the raids before it.

Compared to the series of rebel raids in the winter of 1838, summer was quiet along the border. Other than the ineffectual Short Hills raid and Bill Johnston's mischief, Upper and Lower Canada faced no serious threats. Farmers, by far the largest faction of the rebel armies, needed to stay close to their crops. But, as harvest season approached, the Hunters Lodge and Robert Nelson's Patriotes began to plan new campaigns, for soon the farmers would be free to march.