Excerpt from Historical Sketch of the Second War Between the Unites States of America and Great Britain, Declared by Act of Congress, the 18th of June, 1812, and Concluded by Peace, the 15th of February, 1815 Owing, probably, to Gene1 als Biown and Scott being disabled by wounds, no official accounts of that engagement reached us till the middle of August, when the British marched upon ivashington, and superseding Canada in public interest, absorbed atten tion. Dissension among generals, infecting whole corps, and prejudicing individuals, produced conflicting and invidious accounts from oflicers in the action. The confusion of a night conflict, its vicissitudes, contra dictions, mistakes, and disputed catastro 'phe controverted between English and Americans, and among the latter them selves, obscure and perplex the realities of that affair, of which, from all these causes, no full or satisfactmy account has been published. Militaiy 1eports of battles, be ing compiled f1om the various statements of difi'erent officers, no one witnessing meie than pa1t, few ag1ee in what they did wit ness. Any sketch taken f1 om them may be wrong, and must be 1mpe1fect. Jealousy of the different kinds of troops, of brigades, regiments, and individuals, of each other, to say nothing of national prejudices, beget charges of injustice, to which this sketch, though made from all reliable information, American and English, may be obnoxious. But without motive to misrepresent, care has been taken to describe, correctly, that 111ema1kable conflict. The batt1e of Bridgewater was unexpect ed to both a1mies. General Riall had fol lowed Brown from the neighborhood of Queenstown to the Falls, without his being aware of it; and General Drummond fol lowed Riall. But thei1 attack was not in tended till day bicak on the 26th of July. On the 25th, all the Biitish fe1ces and ar tillery not having arrived, General Scott, more courageously than, perhaps, prudent ly, without the design of either commander, or either army being prepared, precipitated the strange and severe nocturnal contest, by which, of six thousand combatants, seventeen hundred killed, wounded 011 cap tured, were sacrificed to the point of hon01. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.