1796-1872   A Defended Border

The role of Fort Niagara changed significantly when the first United States troops marched through its gates. While still an important guard post for the American side of the Niagara Portage, it had also become a border forification. In the event of renewed hostilities between the United States and Britain, Fort Niagara would immmediately be on the front lines.

The American occupation of Fort Niagara signalled the beginning of settlement along the New York side of the river. Villages were established at Youngstown, Lewiston, Niagara Falls, Black Rock, and Buffalo in the decade after 1800. The safety of their inhabitants became an additional concern for the garrison of Fort Niagara. Troops also assisted with public works projects. Military Road (New York Route 265) was constructed by fatigue parties from Fort Niagara in 1802-05. Although it was intended to enhance the defense of the Niagara Frontier, such improvements also aided commercial develpment.

Despite the many responsibilities of the United States soldiers stationed in Fort Niagara, their numbers were always inadequate. Fortifications designed for nearly one thousand men were guarded by less than one hundred. The United States Army was thin, and few troops could be spared for any one post. The garrison soon found themselves hard-pressed just to maintain aging buildings and walls.

The inevitable deterioraton of Fort Niagara came at an inopportune time. Relations between Britain and the United States were often tense in the decade before the War of 1812. Several incidents led to war scares, and the inhabitants of both sides of the Niagara often felt threatened by their neighbors across the river. Despite the volatile international climate, however, relations remained suprisingly cordial between the Fort Niagara's garrison and their British counterparts in Fort George.

The War of 1812

Open conflict between the United States and Great Britain came in 1812. Congress declared war in June, and the Fort Niagara garrison found itself facing hostile troops situated only twelve hundred yards away. The post was woefully unprepared. Fortunately, so was Fort George. Both sides spent the summer of 1812 gathering their forces.

On October 13, 1812 United States troops crossed the Niagara River and invaded Canada at the village of Queenston. The Americans were defeated in the Battle of Queenston Heights, although the British lost their capable leader, General Isaac Brock. During this hard-fought battle, Fort Niagara and Fort George exchanged furious artillery fire. An equally violent but indecisive exchange between the forts occurred on November 21. Fort Geoge's slight advantage in elevation caused grave difficulties for the artillerymen in Fort Niagara. In an effort to increase the effectiveness of their fire, American troops removed the roof of the "castle" and the two stone redoubts and mounted cannon atop the three buildings. Both sides also erected batteries along the river banks. Aside from the bombardments of October 13 and November 21, however, the frontier remained quiet until the spring of 1813.

In May, after successfully capturing York (Toronto) an American fleet brought an army to the mouth of the Niagara River. A bombardment from Fort Niagara and the batteries along the river shattered Fort George on May 25. Two days later, United states troops landed on the Canadian shore. The British were forced to abandon Fort George after a fiercely contested battle and retreated westward along Lake Ontario toward Burlington Bay.

The capture of Fort George was the last success for this army. Although they controlled the mouth of the Niagara River, United States troops soon met defeat in battles at Stoney Creek and Beaver Dams and spent the rest of the summer bottled up in Fort George. By autumn, the United States army on the Niagara had been greatly reduced by losses, transfers and expiration of militia enlistments. By December the American commander, militia General George McClure, had decided to abandon Fort George and retire to the United States. McClure then gave an unfortunate order. He instructed his troops to destroy both Fort George and the village of Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario) to deny shelter to the British. With the town in flames, the Americans withdrew to Fort Niagara.

The Capture of Fort Niagara

The British wasted no time reoccupying the ruins of Fort George and planning an assualt on Fort Niagara. More than five hundred soldiers crossed the Niagara River to Five Mile Meadows on the night of December 19,1813 and silently turned north toward Youngstown. American pickets stationed in the village were taken by suprise, and the attackers obtained the garrison password. A short march carried them to Fort Niagara where they burst through a partially open gate and caught the garrison unprepared. With Fort Niagara secured, the British and their Indian allies marched back upriver, destroying farms and villages on the New York side as far as Manchester (modern Niagara Falls). A second British raid at the end of December burned Buffalo and completed the devastation of the Niagara Frontier. Only the buildings of Fort Niagara were left intact to shelter a British garrison.


Military action centered chiefly on the Upper Niagara River during the campaign of 1814. United States forces, although successful in the field, were unable to besiege Fort Niagara. Anticipating a siege, the British strengthened the deteriorated fortifications. The old post was important to their efforts to deny the mouth of the Niagara River to United States naval forces and tie down additional troops. The occupation of American territory also provided political leverage in peace negotiations.

The American Return

The War of 1812 was ended by the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814. The settlement stipulated that captured territory be returned to the status quo ante bellum. Fort Niagara once again passed to the United States by treaty, and American troops reoccupied it on May 22, 1815. United States engineers soon made recommendations for improving the defenses. By January 1816 plans had been prepared for constructing a seawall and rebuilding the fortifications with the goal of securing them against artillery fire from the Canadian shore. Only a small part of the proposed work was executed, however, due to the cost and improved relations with Great Britain after 1817. By the early 1820s Fort Niagara was once again a decrepit and poorly guarded border post.


History of a different sort was soon being made at Fort Niagara. A new post surgeon, Dr. William Beaumont, arrived in May 1825 accompanied by a young patient named Alexis St. Martin. Three years earlier, St. Martin had been seriously wounded by a close-range shotgun blast to his abdomen. The young man survived this terrible wound, but his side never properly healed. Beaumont found himself with an opportunity to observe the workings of a living human stomach. St. Martin eventually agreed to submit to experiments, and the first published series of investigations was completed at Fort Niagara during August 1825. Surgeon Beaumont later published more sophisticated observations and is remembered today as the first physician to accurately explain the workings of the human digestive system.

A second event of 1825 had a much greater impact on the future of Fort Niagara. Completion, in that year, of the Erie Canal permitted horse-drawn barges to travel swiftly from Albany to Buffalo. The Niagara Portage suddenly lost much of its importance, and with it much of the strategic value of Fort Niagara. The Erie Canal so changed the defense needs of Western New York that the garrison was withdrawn from Fort Niagara in 1826. Only a caretaker guarded the walls for the next two years. The final blow to the portage came three years later when the first Welland Canal allowed small sailing vessels to pass between Lakes Ontario and Erie.

The Morgan Affair

One of the most bizarre incidents in New York history occurred at Fort Niagara during its 1826-28 deactivation. William Morgan, a resident of Batavia, had joined the Masonic Order. He soon became disillusioned, however, ad published a booklet exposing the "secrets" of Freemasonary. The Masons of Western New York considered Morgan a renegade, and radical members resolved to silence him. In the fall of 1826 they kidnapped Morgan, carried him to the Niagara Frontier and eventually confined their prisoner in fort Niagara's powder magazine. The vacant fort's caretaker was a Mason, so Morgan was effectively isolated.

What occurred next is a mystery. William Morgan disappeared from Fort Niagara's magazine and was never seen again. Anti-Masons claimed that Morgan had been murdered. Masons insist that he had left the country and settled in Canada. Neither version of his fate has ever been confirmed, but the Morgan affair stimulated a tremendous anti-Masonic backlash throughout New York and the rest of the United States.

The Rebellion of 1837

Despite its diminished strategic value, troops reoccupied Fort Niagara in 1828. They saw only routine duty until most were sent westward to fight against the Indians of Wisconsin in the Black Hawk War of 1832. Two years later, Fort Niagara was deactivated a second time and not reoccupied until 1838 in response to a new crisis on the northern border. Disaffected Canadians had risen in rebellion against their government in 1837, and the rebels sought arms and shelter in the United States. Anglo-American relations quickly deteriorated. Fort Niagara was in no condition to resist attack should war actually come.


Heightened tensions caused American authorities to reexamine the defenses along the Canadian border. Recommendations made in 1838 caused Congress to authorize repairs and improvements to Fort Niagara. Work commenced in 1839. The land defenses were rebuilt, the 1816 seawall was completed, a masonary wall and shot furnace were constructed along the river side, and repairs were made to several buildings. By 1843, Fort Niagara was once again defensible.

The border tensions of 1837-38 had subsided by the time renovations were completed. War with Mexico in 1846 again diverted United States military resources, and the Fort Niagara garrison was withdrawn a third time. Troops returned at the conclusion of the conflict in 1848, only to depart once again in 1854. The decreased importance of the United States Army to the western frontier dictacted such sporadic occupation of Fort Niagara. During its vacant periods in the 1840s and 1850s the post was guarded by a lone ordnance sergeant, Lewis Leffman.

The Civil War

Although Fort Niagara was unoccupied at outbreak of the Civil War, tensions between Great Britain and the United States caused a garrison to be sent there late in 1861. British intervention on the side of the Confederacy was feared by the United States and would have inevitably led to fighting along the Canadian border. Following an 1861 Anglo-American diplomatic incident known as the "Trent Affair", Britain sent large numbers of troops to North America. Because of these potential threats, Niagara's fortifications were again inspected with an eye toward modernization.

Construction of new concrete and brick revetments and artillery casements along the land front began in 1863. Relations with Britain had improved by the time the work had advanced very far, and Fort Niagara's garrison was sent to the front in 1863, but the fortifications had been carried to completion by the end of the decade. The artillery casemates were never armed, however, and the new defenses were obsolete by the time of their completion.

The Fenian Invasion

Fort Niagara was again garrisoned late in 1865. Troops would thereafter occupy the post almost continuously for the next ninety-eight years. One justification for the return of soldiers to Fort Niagara was a new source of border tension, the Fenian Brotherhood. This organization was devoted to the liberation of Ireland, by military means if necessary. Many of its members were Civil War veterans, so the Fenians had an experienced and willing pool of soldiers. Their plans included the conquest of Canada as a stroke against Britain.

Activity along the Niagara Frontier reached its peak in June 1866 when a Fenian army crossed into Canada from Buffalo. The Fenians occupied the village of Fort Erie and defeated Canadian militia at Ridgeway, Ontario but were forced to withdraw to New York. Although United States authorities intervened to prevent further incursions, border tensions persisted into the early 1870s.