What constituted the literary record in Canada in the early 19th century was the ubiquitous religious tracts, the almanacs and gazetteers, printed government pronouncements, legislation and statutes, and the writings in the few newspapers, both English and French. During the War of 1812, Montreal (the Gazette and the Herald), Quebec (the Gazette) and Kingston (the Gazette) had newspapers and each liberally reported on the events of the war. Each of these early papers also have nearly complete sets stored at the National Archives of Canada at Ottawa, as well as at the provincial archival depositories.

    The archival records of the government and the participants are also collected, widely published, and available. British, Canadian and the traversing Americans each recorded, sometimes in minute detail and with remarkable accuracy, their respective roles in the war. From before the end of the war reminiscences appeared and extended to the decades after the participants had passed from the scene.

    The first attempt at a history of the war in Canada was written by naval writer William James (d. 1827) in his A Full and Correct Account of the Military Occurrences of the Late War between Great Britain and the United States (London, 1818), in two volumes. It was rushed into print and was never really “full” or “correct.” James, an Englishman who had been an attorney in Jamaica, was for a time an American prisoner. In this, and in his more famous five-volume work, Naval History of Great Britain from the Declaration of War by France in 1793, to the Accession of George IV (London, 1822-24), he frontally attacked what he believed were the errors in early American accounts. The American were not “demigods,” as the early writers would have the public believe, but rather low characters using “frontier” tactics fighting “crudely” to assure any success. However, even Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), writing some six decades later (The Naval War of 1812, New York, 1882), credited his accuracy of detail, but he always seems to show favor to the British efforts.

    Material for writers in Canada was piled about in profusion: the gallant soldiers and leaders, brave Indian allies, evil American invaders, naval exploits on the Lakes, sturdy yeoman farmers protecting their homesteads. It was all there, but as the first post-war decade came to an end only lawyer Levi Adams' (1802-1832) “Tecumthé,” which highlighted the pages in the Canadian Review in December, 1824, and later published in Scotland as part of the Tales of Chivalry and Romance (Edinburgh, 1826), took on these themes.

    Historian David Thompson (1796?-1868), not to be confused with Canadian explorer David Thompson (1770-1857), claimed also to know that American writers simply did not tell the truth. His History of the Late War between Great Britain and the United States of America with a Retrospective View of the Causes from whence it Originated... (Niagara, 1832) has few literary pretensions, claiming only to establish the truth for “generations yet unborn” needing to trace the struggles of their ancestors and emulate their virtuousness. Thompson claimed that America's only purpose was to tie up Britain needlessly and give Napoleon a free hand in his worldwide pursuit of power. This was the first important book to be published in Canada. It was also, however, a financial failure. Unable to meet even his printer's bill, Thompson was imprisoned for a time as a debtor.

    Major John Richardson (1796-1852) was a veteran of the war. Although born in Queenston he was raised near Fort Malden and when Colonel Henry Proctor (1763-1822) showed up at the beginning of the war, Richardson at age sixteen found himself in the 41st Regiment of Foot (today, the Welsh Regiment). In his youth he served in Upper Canada from the fall of Detroit until the defeat of Tecumseh on the Thames River in 1813 where he was captured by the Americans. He went on to serve in the British Army for 20 years in Barbados, Spain and, finally, England before returning to Canada in 1838 to continue his pursuit of a literary career.

    His early works, beginning in 1823, foretold his later efforts. While still in London he published a metrical romance, Tecumseh: or, The Warrior of the West (London, 1828). That was followed by his experiments with pseudo-moral and satirical novels before finishing his fictional masterpiece, Wacousta (London, 1832), a western tale surrounding Pontiac's War and siege of Detroit in 1763.

    Richardson's arrival in Canada coincided with the rise of the first large publishing house in Canada. As Armour and Ramsey, Andrew Armour and Hew Ramsey worked with Richardson on several projects. His Personal Memoirs, the first of his works with a Canadian imprint, was published at Montreal in 1840. His The Canadian Brothers; or, The Prophecy Fulfilled (2 volumes, Montreal, 1840), soon followed. The publishers found the subscription response to the future publication of Wacousta weak and set aside that project. Richardson, however, was determined to publish his own works.

    At Brockville he established a press and undertook his projects. The New Era or Canadian Chronicle was a weekly periodical. In it he ran serially a new novel, Jack Brag in Spain, and later the first part of The War of 1812. With a government grant he was able to publish The War of 1812, Containing a Full and Detailed Narrative of the Operations of the Right Division of the Canadian Army, in book form in 1841. Richardson hoped to have the book used as a text in Canadian schools to show “the brilliant feats of arms,” “and sterling loyalty” of the Canadians. The project failed when the district councils refused to recommend the book. This failure along with the apathy of  the reading public led to a situation where only thirty copies of Richardson's History were ever sold. At an auction of the remainder in Kingston only one bid for a single book was offered, and that was for a mere sevenpence halfpenny (that's 10-15 cents U.S., in 1842).

    It was unfortunate that his career following the failure at Brockville also took a bumpy, downward spiral, although in his case the length of his voyage was shorter than Thompson's. Initially in Canada he was a temporary correspondent of The London Times. His arguments with serving military officers led to both his dismissal from The Times and the publication of his other War of 1812 work, Eight Years in Canada (Montreal, 1847). The Canadian appetite for the past temporarily fell as the quest for their future unfolded and, unfortunately for Richardson, interest in the War of 1812 waned. Hoping to benefit from the renewed recognition of the war caused by the political careers of William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) and Richard Mentor Johnson (1780-1850) in the United States during the early 1840s, he moved to New York City in 1847 or 1848 where, both neglected and destitute, he died. Major Richardson's War of 1812 received excellent editing and re-publication in 1902 by Alexander C. Casselman (1852-1940). His place in this narrative is largely due to his autobiographical and documented non-fiction works.

    Almost contemporaneous with Richardson, Dr. William Dunlop (1792-1848) published his Recollections of the American War 1812-1814 (Montreal, 1847). “Tiger” Dunlap, who earned his sobriquet through his post-war hunting expertise in India, arrived in Canada as an army surgeon and saw service with the Connaught Rangers on the Niagara Peninsula and at Fort Erie. After later service in India, presumably at times hunting, and in England, he returned to Canada in 1826, served in the Canadian parliament and held numerous appointed positions of note in the colony. This remarkable, sturdy character is himself the subject of numerous biographies. A reprint of his Recollections appeared in 1905.

    By 1852, The Reverend Robert Jackson MacGeorge (1811?-1884), the “Solomon of Streetsville,” was editing the Anglo-American Magazine (Toronto, 1852-1855). His associate was Gilbert Auchinleck who unfortunately left no other impression on Canada but for the 26 essays that appeared in Publisher Thomas Maclear's Magazine. With interest of the war rising at this time, MacGeorge and Auchinleck began serial articles with a clearly Canadian viewpoint. Their contribution to literature was Auchinleck's A History of the War between Great Britain and the United States of America during the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814, first published in 1855. Despite having valuable manuscript and documentary materials attached, this highly biased account should be used in conjunction with other research to balance the view of the events described. Republished in 1972, even the renown chief librarian from the Toronto Public Library, Henry Cummings Campbell (b. 1919), could only surmise that Mr. Auchinleck must have arrived in Canada shortly before 1853 and left almost immediately after the publication of this work.

    In the midst of the American Civil War, Canadian soldier and civil servant, William F. Coffin (1808-1878) presented 1812: The War, and its Moral: A Canadian Chronicle (Montreal, 1864). The War of 1812 in Canada was a national experience of suffering and enduring, he said. It was also an “honorable exertion.” Told with a purely Canadian point of view, this partisan, romantic narrative principally concerned with the frontier sought to support an awakening of the Canadian national character. Remember, this was the decade immediately before the establishment of the Confederation. Like the truncated Richardson book which discussed those events prior to the Battle of the Thames, regrettably, Coffin's only carried his narrative to Charles-Michel de Salaberry's (1778-1829) victory at Châteauguay. The whole of the story following October 1813 had yet to be told.

    The Confederation in 1867 can be said to have, in a 21st century phrase, “taken all the air out of the room.” It was more than 30 years before another significant War of 1812 book was to appear in Canada. James Hannay (1842-1910) was a New Brunswick lawyer and journalist. Between 1879 and the turn of the new century he wrote extensively on New Brunswick and eastern Canada. By 1901 he joined the War of 1812 writing fraternity with his History of the War of 1812, between Great Britain and the United States of America. Too frequently inaccurate on details and intensely bias, his image of Americans as enslavers, ravagers, and slaughterers was, perhaps, over the top. The title of his book in England was How Canada was Held for the Empire: The Story of the War of 1812. Hannay noted briskly that the war ended without an American word regarding the right of search or impressment: proof, in his view, that this was a war of conquest. With the inaccuracies and bias aside, the story was well written and for the first time a Canadian history carried the narrative to the end of the war.

    At the same time Hannay was writing, Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas (1853-1931) prepared his Canadian War of 1812 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toronto: N. Frowda, 1906). Lucas was a lawyer, a civil servant and an historian who headed the Dominion Department at the British Colonial Office before his knighthood in 1907. With in a decade William Charles Henry Wood (1864-1947) penned Volume 14 of the Chronicle of Canada Series as War with the United States (Toronto, Glasglow Brook Co., 1915). Wood, a soldier and conservationist, also compiled Select British Documents of the Canadian War of 1812 (3 volumes in 4, Toronto: 1920-1928) for The Champlain Society in the 1920s. He was born in Quebec.

    Between 1896 and 1908, Canadian Brigadier General Earnest Alexander Cruikshank (1853-1939) completed and published the Documentary History of the Campaign on the Niagara Frontier in nine volumes for the Lundy's Lane Historical Society. This effort was the most prodigious of the prodigious career of this noted authority on the War of 1812 in Canada. The Documentary History is perennially valuable for the official and unofficial letters, accounts, speeches and other documents collected by General Cruikshank, even though at times they are presented in a confused chronological format. He was also the author of many additional books, pamphlets, essays and articles on the War. No opportunity to slip into the published record escaped him and from his perch as Chairman of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, as a member of the Royal Society of Canada, and as President of the Ontario Historical Society, he dominated the historical genre for decades. No present student of the War of 1812 can go far into his research without tripping onto “E. A. Cruikshank.”

    Between the major works of Cruikshank and the later 20th century authors, Canadians were busy. It will take several more decades for the world to appreciate the tremendous contributions this relatively lightly-populated country made to the Allies' efforts during World Wars I and II. Scholarship was not completely set aside over those years. For example, starting in 1905 The Champlain Society of Canada, mentioned above, sponsored some of the most detailed documentary examinations into Canadian history and in 1959 published Kingston Before the War of 1812 by Richard A. Preston (b. 1910), a Professor of History at the Royal Military College of Canada. Dr. Preston had previously wrote extensively on Kingston and the navy.

    By mid-century and coinciding with the rise of convenience and leisure, the public, perhaps, had their fill of scholarship and interpretation. The art of the narrative and readability was taking their place. The War of 1812 community is fortunate to have found “readability” in a new crop of Canadian authors.

    The first bridge between scholarship and readability can be discovered through a close reading of Morris Zaslow's (b. 1918) anthology, The Defended Border: Upper Canada and the War of 1812 (Toronto, 1964). Here are Cruikshank, George F. G. Stanley and Richard Arthur Preston between the pages with J. Mackay Hitsman (1917-1970), Ronald L. Way (1908-1978), and C. P. Stacey (b. 1906). These are key essays in Canadian history of the era and should be closely read by all with an interest. From a purely American standpoint, it should be noted that the most extreme views of James, Thompson, Richardson and Hannay are absent from this fine anthology.

    The new trends are amply demonstrated by the eminently readable The Incredible War of 1812: A Military History (Toronto, 1964) by J. Mackay Hitsman. This book focuses on the events affecting Canada to the exclusion of other theaters, but it is regarded by many in the field as the best one volume history of the Canadian War of 1812 ever. It may be merely the latest. It's enduring value is that it seeks and succeeds in correcting discrepancies of conventional knowledge and understanding of the war that had crept into the historical record. Donald E. Graves (b.1949), noted below, updated this work, and it was republished in 1999.

    Also with regard to readability as the new standard, for nearly four decades, Pierre Berton (1920-2004) stood along the road and guided a new generation into historical thought. His Invasion of Canada: 1812 and 1813 (Boston, 1980) and Flames Across the Border: The Canadian-American Tragedy, 1813-1814 (Boston, 1980) are standards in public and personal libraries across both nations. In them he argued that Canada warded off the American invasions because the colony was better prepared, less inept, and more fully supported by Indian allies. The war he said produced a distinctly Canadian identity. His ventures with Canadian publishers McClelland & Stewart into children's literature excited young minds. Initially a travel writer, columnist Pierre Berton livened a subject that was too close to being lost in re-interpretative gibberish.

    In the last 30 years there has been in Canada as well as the United States a virtual explosion of exposition. The following list is incomplete, but shows for the reader the candidates for inclusion in the next essay regarding the Literary History of the Canadian War of 1812.

    Review these:

Stanley, George F. G. The War of 1812: Land Operations (Montreal, 1983).

Turner, Wesley B. The War that Both Sides Won (Toronto, 1990).

Malcomson, Robert. The Battle of Queenston Heights (Niagara-on-the-Lake, 1994).

Graves, Donald E. Where Right and Glory Lead: The Battle of Lundy's Lane (Toronto, 1997).

Antal, Sandy. A Wampum Denied: Proctor's War of 1812 (Ottawa, 1997).

Benn, Carl. The Iroquois in the War of 1812 (Toronto, 1998).

Malcomson, Robert. The Lords of the Lake: The Naval War on Lake Ontario (Toronto, 1998).

Graves, Donald E. Fields of Glory: The Battle of Crysler's Farm, 1813 (Toronto, 1999).

Turner, Wesley B. British Generals in the War of 1812 (Montreal and Kingston, 1999).

    As the bicentennial of the War of 1812 approaches and as we move further into this century, each of the mentioned authors and many more unnamed have multiple works in multiple venues on the War of 1812. All are completing for literary excellence. To each: “Fair winds, and traveling seas!”