Joseph Willcocks and the Canadian Volunteers

Sometimes referred to as "Canada's Benedict Arnold," Joseph Willcocks was a major source of discontent in Upper Canada in the lead-up to the War of 1812, and by 1813, he had declared for the United States and led a company of Upper Canadians - his volunteers under American colours. But what motivated Willcocks to take up arms against the government of Upper Canada, in which he had previously been a sheriff and then legislator? The complex motivations behind loyalty in Upper Canada during the War of 1812 shows a different story than the simple narrative of loyalty and treachery which the story of Willcocks often takes.

Joseph Willcocks was born in Palmerston, Ireland in 1773, coming to Upper Canada in 1799 to pursue greater opportunities. After becoming secretary to his distant cousin Peter Russell, the Receiver-General for the province, he became aligned with Chief Justice Henry Allcock, whose political underhandedness had won him a seat in the provincial legislature. Allcock's political success in the early 1800s led to Willcocks, his protege of sorts, being appointed sheriff of the Home District in 1803 until 1807.

After Allcock left Upper Canada in 1804, Willcocks became increasingly hostile to the Tory establishment that ran the Upper Canadian political structure (later known as "the family compact"), embodied by John Graves Simcoe, who Willcocks saw as running Upper Canada as his own personal fiefdom. The perceived unfairness of Canadian politics, combined with a renewed interest in the cause of Irish independence, led to Joseph Willcocks becoming one of the most outspoken critics of the Upper Canadian administration. For Willcocks, the evils and excesses of absolutism were encapsulated by the Prince Regent, later to become George IV in 1820. Unlike his pious (if mad) father George III, the Prince Regent was well known for his extravagant tastes and disconnect from the harsh realities which his subjects faced.

In 1807, Willcocks would move to Newark (present-day Niagara-on-the-Lake) to start a newspaper, The Upper Canada Guardian. Initially presenting his publication as the journal of freemen in Upper Canada, Willcocks' early articles called for a free press and an end to the arbitrary exercise of power in Upper Canada under a liberal, constitutional monarchy system. His moderate reformist views were supported by many of the recent immigrants of Upper Canada, who had come from the United States not out of loyalty to the crown, but rather for the incentives of cheap land and plentiful opportunities. The political content of his newspaper, by all accounts the most popular publication in Niagara at the time, resulted in his being elected to the Upper Canada legislature, being jailed for contempt of the house for his fierce opposition. Willcocks remained a legislator until 1813.Excessive loyalty to the crown was not a civic obligation but rather a hinderance to the achievement of a better, utopian society in Upper Canada, according to Willcocks' editorials. Many of these calls for expanded liberties would be repeated twenty years later by William Lyon Mackenzie, another Canadian firebrand opposed to the patrician and illiberal government of Upper Canada.

In the lead-up to the outbreak of War in June of 1812, Willlcocks led a liberal faction within the Upper Canadian legislature which rejected Isaac Brock's push for increased militia readiness in preparation for conflict. Despite this, Willcocks and Brock had a civil, if not amicable, rapport, possibly due to their belonging to the same masonic lodge; Willcocks represented the Upper Canadian government in negotiations with Six Nations indigenous leaders in the early months of the war. With the death of Brock at Queenston Heights (where Willcocks fought alongside indigenous allies in retaking the Redan Battery), any hope of compromise with the tory-dominated government was crushed. The imposition of military rule on Niagara in 1813 and the replacement of Brock with Roger Hale Sheaffe pushed Willcocks beyond his beliefs in the Upper Canadian administration. In his mind, the reciprocal relationship between the state and individual had become tyrannical and abusive, so as a sitting member of the Upper Canadian Legislative Assembly, Joseph Willcocks enlisted with the American Army as a Major in June of 1813.

Willcocks' dream was to recruit men from Niagara to fight in his unit, the Canadian Volunteers, to throw off the rule of the Family Compact and establish an egalitarian, liberal state in its place. Willcocks did indeed attract some volunteers, although more more than 150 men joined the unit. Willcocks and his men were engaged in the Niagara Campaign of 1813, leading skirmishes and raids on British troops and loyalist homesteads. The unit wore a distinctive green hatband as a tribute to their leader's Irish heritage; a standardized uniform would only be established later in the war. The men, natives of the Niagara region, often took these raids as opportunities to settle old scores with neighbours and local rivals. The Volunteers' participation in the burning of Newark in December of 1813 led to their being vilified by most of the Upper Canadian populace, regardless of political persuasion. The Volunteers were present at the Siege of Fort Erie in 1814, where their commander's active if short-lived career was cut short when he was shot in the chest and killed on September 4 while leading an assault on a British battery by a former neighbour serving in the Upper Canadian Militia. Following Willcocks' death, the Volunteers continued to serve the United States, although internal struggles to replace Willcocks as commander weakened the abilities of the men. When peace came in 1815, the veterans of the Canadian Volunteers, unable to return to their homes in British-controlled Niagara, were indemnified for their Canadian holdings and given land grants in accordance with American policy at the time, many settling in Illinois and Iowa.

The War of 1812's enduring legacy in the Canadas would be the purging of discontent. In the administrations in Upper and Lower Canada which emerged after the war, any disloyalty or questioning of authority was harshly cracked down upon, and loyalty to the crown became crystallized in the Family Compact of Upper Canada, and the Château Clique of Lower Canada. It would take the actions of William Lyon Mackenzie and Les Patriotes of Lower Canada to spur political change in the 1840s with the Durham Report, leading to a more democratic and constitutional Canadian state.

Niagara Falls Museums. 2020. Why, Joe, why? The question behind the nefarious career of Joseph Willcocks.

This location is the former site of the Newark courthouse and jail, where Willcocks' trial in 1808 was held for contempt of the Upper Canadian Legislature. This was one of the buildings destroyed in the burning of Newark in December, 1813.