St. Clair and Wayne 123 



brightly; but the conduct of the British was black, 

 indeed. On the Northwestern frontier they be- 

 haved in a way which can scarcely be too harshly 

 stigmatized. This does not apply to the British civil 

 and military officers at the Lake Posts; for they 

 were merely doing their duty as they saw it, and 

 were fronting their foes bravely, while with loyal 

 zeal they strove to carry out what they understood 

 to be the policy of their superiors. The ultimate 

 responsibility rested with these superiors, the 

 Crown's high advisers, and the King and Parlia- 

 ment they represented. Their treatment both of 

 the Indians, whom they professed to protect, and 

 of the Americans, with whom they professed to be 

 friendly, forms one of the darkest pages in the an- 

 nals of the British in America. Yet they have been 

 much less severely blamed for their behavior in this 

 matter than for far more excusable offences. Amer- 

 ican historians, for example usually condemn them 

 without stint because in 1814 the army of Ross and 

 Cockburn burned and looted the public buildings of 

 Washington; but by rights they should keep all 

 their condemnation for their own country, so far 

 as the taking of Washington is concerned ; for the 

 sin of burning a few public buildings is as nothing 

 compared with the cowardly infamy of which the 

 politicians of the stripe of Jefferson, and Madison, 

 and the people whom they represented, were guilty 

 in not making ready, by sea and land, to protect 

 their Capital and in not exacting full revenge for its 

 destruction. 



