The Battle of Ogdensburg was a battle of the War of 1812. The British gained a victory over the Americans and captured the village of Ogdensburg, New York. Although small in scale, it removed the American threat to British supply lines for the remainder of the war.
When the war broke out, a flourishing illicit trade was soon established between Ogdensburg and Prescott, Upper Canada (later to become the province of Canada West in 1841), on the Northern side of the Saint Lawrence River. This was checked early in October 1812 when the Americans reinforced the militia with some of the regular 1st U.S. Rifle Regiment under Major Benjamin Forsyth, who occupied a fort and barracks alongside the Oswegatchie River at the western edge of the town.
The British made an abortive attack on Ogdensburg with their own militia on October 4, which was quickly repulsed by the American forces, after which the militia dispersed. During the next few months, Forsyth's riflemen made several raids across the river, sniping at British troops and occasionally capturing boatloads of supplies on their way to Kingston, Ontario.
On February 21, 1813, Lieutenant General Sir George Prevost, the British Governor General of Canada, passed through Prescott on his way to review the situation in Upper Canada, accompanied by several detachments of reinforcements. He appointed local Lieutenant Colonel "Red George" MacDonell as commandant of British troops in Prescott and left him instructions that he was to attack Ogdensburg only if the Americans weakened their garrison.
The reinforcements, although there temporarily, allowed MacDonnell to improvise an attack against Ogdensburg. He planned for a company of the Glengarry Light Infantry, 70 militia and some light guns mounted on sleighs to make a frontal attack on the fort which housed Forsyth's riflemen. The main column, consisting of 120 men of the 8th (King's), 30 of the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles and 230 of the local militia flank companies, would cross the river lower down and attack from the flank.
The Americans were used to seeing British troops drilling on the frozen Saint Lawrence and were taken by surprise when they suddenly charged. The regimental Chaplain of the Glengarry Light Infantry, Alexander Macdonell, is reputed to have accompanied the attack, wielding a crucifix to encourage lagging soldiers. He was also believed to be supported by a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. John Bethune of Williamstown.
The American riflemen in the fort held out against the frontal attack, mainly because the British guns became stuck in snow drifts, and American artillery, under Adjutant Daniel W. Church of Colonel Benedict's regiment and Lieutenant Baird of Forsyth's company, fired on the British with mixed results. At the outskirts of the town, American militia bombarded the British force with their artillery. A British flank party maneuvered to the least guarded part of the ground and broke through the weak part of the defense. American militia who had been dislodged from their position fell back while conducting a harassing fire by shooting at the British from behind houses and trees. More British flankers maneuvered through the gap to strike the American militia’s main defense from behind. Soon, the British attacking from the front and rear overran the position. The remaining American militia ran farther into the village where some of them took cover in or behind houses while providing harassing fire against the British. The British overran them, leaving Forsyth’s position as the only remaining obstacle.
The early republic period saw the United States move from the weak Articles of Confederation to the federal Constitution ratified in 1788, with the Bill of Rights added in 1791. George Washington served two terms as president (1789–1797), establishing precedents for executive authority, and the federal capital moved permanently to Washington D.C. in 1800. The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's territory for roughly $15 million, opening vast trans-Mississippi lands to American expansion. The War of 1812 against Britain ended inconclusively but produced a surge of American national identity and eliminated most British support for Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi. The Northwest Indian Wars (1785–1795) and the Creek War (1813–1814) broke Indigenous confederacies that had resisted US expansion. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily balanced slave and free states as the nation expanded westward, but embedded the contradiction of slavery in every subsequent territorial debate.
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