The siege of Fort Erie, also known as the Battle of Erie, from 4 August to 21 September 1814, was one of the last engagements of the War of 1812, between British and American forces. It took place during the Niagara campaign, and the Americans successfully defended Fort Erie against a British army under Gordon Drummond. During the siege, Drummond's troops suffered high casualties in a failed storming attempt; they also suffered casualties from sickness and exposure in their rough encampments. Unaware that the British were about to abandon the siege, the American garrison launched a sortie to destroy the British siege batteries, during which both sides again suffered high losses.
After the British abandoned the siege, the reinforced American army followed up cautiously and forced a second retreat at Cook's Mills but, with the onset of winter and shortage of supplies, they withdrew. They demolished Fort Erie before leaving the area. The attempted siege ended one of the last British offensives along the northern border, the other being the failed British assault on Plattsburgh.
American forces under Major General Jacob Brown had crossed the Niagara River and captured Fort Erie on 3 July 1814. After defeating a British force at the Battle of Chippawa, they advanced north but the British reinforced their troops in the Niagara peninsula. On 25 July, the bloody but indecisive Battle of Lundy's Lane was fought, during which Brown was severely wounded. Following the battle, the outnumbered American troops, now under the command of Brigadier General Eleazer Wheelock Ripley, withdrew to Fort Erie. Ripley advocated abandoning the fort and retreating across the Niagara, but Brown overruled him and summoned Brigadier General Edmund P. Gaines from Sackets Harbor to assume command.
The British, under the command of Lieutenant General Gordon Drummond (the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada), had suffered high casualties at Lundy's Lane. Drummond nevertheless claimed that the Americans had been forced to retreat in disorder, and he intended to drive them from the Canadian side of the Niagara. His troops followed the Americans slowly and reached the fort on 4 August. Drummond's division numbered 3,000, but Drummond complained about the quality of the troops and the degree to which the units were composed of mixed detachments and companies. His slow advance gave the Americans vitally needed time to reorganise and to reinforce their defences.
The original British fort consisted of two two-story barrack buildings, with fortified cannon bastions connected to them. The barracks were connected by a thick stone curtain with the main gate located in the centre. The rear of the fort (facing away from Lake Erie) consisted of an open terreplein, raised 6 feet (1.8 m) above the base of the dry ditch which surrounded the fort, with two redoubts located on the corner. The redoubts were incomplete and offered little protection. The front of the fort was protected by a large earth wall with a forward gun emplacement. The fort was also divided in half by an earth wall and ditch, but this too was incomplete. At least a third of the rear defenses were makeshift wooden walls or earthworks, some of which were only 1 metre (3.3 ft) high. A gun emplacement was located in the centre redan (raised platform). The fort contained a total of six guns.
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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