page_title: Patriot War
section_title: Caroline affair (December 29, 1837)
hierarchical_section_title: Patriot War / Caroline affair (December 29, 1837)
caption_attribution_description: English: The destruction of the Caroline steamboat by fire, on the Falls of Niagara, Upper Canada, on the night of Friday the 29th Decr. 1837 by George Tattersall
context_page_description: The Patriot War was a conflict along the Canada–United States border where bands of raiders attacked the British colony of Upper Canada more than a dozen times between December 1837 and December 1838. This so-called war was not a conflict between nations; it was a war of ideas fought by like-minded people against British forces.
  Participants in the conflict were members of a secret association known as the Hunter's Lodge, formed in the United States in sympathy with the 1837 Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada. The organization arose in Vermont among Lower Canadian refugees and spread westward under the influence of Dr Charles Duncombe and Donald McLeod, leaders of the short lived Canadian Refugee Relief Association, and Scotland native William Lyon Mackenzie, drawing in support from several different locations in North America and Europe. The Republic of Canada was also short-lived. After heavy bombardment by the British on Navy Island, where the republic had been established, Mackenzie and his force of Canadian militia retreated to Buffalo, New York, where they were captured by the U.S. Army.
context_section_description: The steamship Caroline, captained by Gilman Appleby, carried supplies between Buffalo and Mackenzie's encampment on Navy Island. On December 29, Colonel Sir Allan MacNab and Captain Andrew Drew of the Royal Navy crossed the international boundary and seized Caroline, chased off the crew, set her afire, and cast her adrift over Niagara Falls, after killing one black American named Amos Durfee.  The incident sparked an international outcry. The case was finally disposed of by U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster and Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton, in the course of their negotiations leading to the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842. This case is a basis for the principle of the preemptive strike.
caption: The Destruction of the Caroline by George Tattersall
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