The Queenston Heights re-enactment is one of several events planned this year in the Lewiston area to commemorate the war between the United States and Great Britain that led to the burning of today’s Niagara-on-the-Lake, Fort Niagara, Lewiston, Black Rock, Buffalo, part of today’s City of Toronto and other communities in 1813-14.

Despite the huge loss of property and human casualties, most authorities agree that the war ended in a stalemate.

The U. S. and Great Britain never again made war against one another. Neither of the two major combatants lost any of its territory to the other, but the hopes of American Indians for their own independent nation in the western United States were ended.

The Historical Association of Lewiston, which is supporting many of this year’s commemorations, already has produced the spectacular and hugely successful “Flames Through Lewiston” reenactment of the fateful events of Dec. 19, 1813, when terrorized village residents fled their burning village in their nightclothes, with British forces in hot pursuit. The timely intervention of a band of friendly Tuscarora Indians enabled most of them to escape.

That re-enactment took place last Dec. 17, complete with musket fire and bonfires lighting Center Street as villagers made their escape.

Information on various other War of 1812 commemorative events is available from the historical association website at historiclewiston. org. Among the most ambitious of the events will be the bicentennial commemoration and reenactment of the Battle of Queenston Heights that will be presented Oct. 12-14 in Lewiston’s Academy Park and in Queenston, Ont., just across the Niagara River in Canada.

On the morning of Oct. 13, 1812, American Maj. Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer led a force of 300 soldiers and 300 members of the militia in an attack on Queenston Heights. He believed the British position was vulnerable because the concentration of troops there seemed to be smaller than at other locations along the “enemy” side of the Niagara River.

His contingent of militia could be compared roughly with today’s National Guard, though unpaid, largely untrained and undersupplied, and somewhat reluctant to invade foreign territory.

The American invaders seized the high ground, only to be challenged by British Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock, who arrived by horseback from nearby Fort George. An American sniper fatally shot the general, and his troops were beaten back down the hill.

But then, British Maj. Gen. Roger Hale Sheaffe arrived from Fort George with reinforcements and the Americans were quickly defeated.

Thus, the British won the battle but they lost Brock, a gifted commander who is memorialized to this day by a 185-foot-tall monument near the battle site and whose name is preserved at many locations in Canada.

The current monument was built between 1853 and 1856 and is the second such structure to occupy the battlefield after an earlier one was destroyed in an explosion in 1840.

Other significant engagements include the capture of Fort Niagara and the battles of Lake Erie, Chippawa and Lundy’s Lane, and the burning of Black Rock and Buffalo.

The American government declared war on Great Britain in 1812 because of trade restrictions imposed by the British during their war against the French, Britain’s seizure of American merchant sailors on the high seas, and British support of American Indian tribes against U. S. expansion in North America. Many Canadian and American Indians sided with the British during the war.

The signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Dec. 24, 1814, in Ghent, Belgium, led to the end of the war, restoring the original boundary between the United States and Canada while making no provision for an independent nation of American Indians.

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