JUNE 2019 61
T
O
P:
N
A
TI
O
N
A
L^
LI
B
R
AR
Y^
O
F^
A
US
TR
A
LI
A,
P
IC
U
39
10
N
K
46
56
;^ B
O
T
TO
M
:^ L
IB
R
A
R
Y^
A
N
D
A
R
C
H
IV
ES
C
A
N
A
D
A,
1
98
9
-^4
6
6 -
6
1
Hazel-eyed Linus Miller, six feet tall and 20 years old, with
brown hair and whiskers, joined one such invasion. An
upstate country boy from Stockton who wanted to be an
attorney, he was in Maysville, New York, reading the law
when he surrendered to the excitement spreading across New
York’s western frontier over Canadians’ determination to
establish their own government. Miller volunteered to join
the fight. He crossed onto the Canadian Niagara Peninsula in
advance of a Patriot Army invasion planned for July 4, 1838.
When the attack stuttered and failed, Miller tried to return
to the United States but found the border too closely guarded.
He rejoined the raiders, now being pursued by loyalist militia.
“Little did I dream of the dark cloud which was fast gathering
Sover my head,” he wrote later. Miller hid in patches of woods
until he had no choice but to take to the open
road, where a pair of British cavalry officers
took him prisoner. On trial for his life
at Niagara on charges of sedition,
Miller, drawing on his legal train-
ing, at first made a bold defense,
but then, at his lawyer’s suggestion,
pleaded insanity, to no avail. After
hanging insurgent James Morreau,
Canadian authorities set a date of
August 25, 1838, to hang Miller and three
compatriots. “There was no bitterness in the
thought; no regret that I had joined my fate with
the struggling Canadians,” Miller wrote in his
basement cell. “For conscience told me I had
done my duty, fearlessly and faithfully.” Interces-
sions by friends and family led officials to
commute his death sentence and 12 others to transportation
to Van Diemen’s Land—now Tasmania—for life (see “Propul-
sive Punishment,” p. 63). Miller felt relief but, he wrote much
later, “could I have foreseen one fourth part of the sufferings
which that commutation entailed on me, I would certainly
have preferred immediate death.”
The prisoners to be transported were held for nearly three
months at Fort Henry near Kingston, Canada, before being
shipped by steam vessel to Quebec.
On November 22, 1838, riveted into irons pinioning them
hand and ankle, 33 rebels were ferried to the three-masted
Captain Ross, about to depart Quebec harbor for Liverpool,
England. The men crowded into a fetid, dark hold 12 by 14
feet. “I was horror stricken,” Miller wrote. “I always knew they
meant to kill us, but didn’t think of being buried
alive in such an infernal hole as this!”
The prisoners were 25 days crossing
the Atlantic. Britons had been fol-
lowing the Canadian border distur-
bances in sensational newspaper
coverage, so when the shackled
North Americans stepped onto a
quay at Liverpool on a chilly Decem-
ber morning they had an audience. Wag-
ons carried the prisoners to a jail where, in a
spacious yard, guards unshackled and unchained
the men. Magistrates addressed them in not
unkindly terms. “We were soon made to feel that
we had come less to a land of strangers than of
friends,” Miller wrote. He and his companions
Held in Hulks
Miller and fellow convicts
spent part of their stay in
England confined aboard
prison ships like this one
in Portsmouth Harbor.
Less Than Lucky
Some convicted
rebels were hanged
on a gibbet outside
Montreal Gaol.