Book Description

Stenographic record of the trial of Alexander McLeod for the murder of Amos Durgee and the burning and destruction of the steamboat Caroline, a notorious incident in the 1837 Rebellion. The American steamer Caroline had been used by the rebels and their American sympathizers to bring men and supplies to the rebel camp on Navy Island above Niagara Falls. On the night of December 29, 1837, determined to cripple this supply line, a party of Canadians under Captain Andrew Drew seized the vessel, cut her adrift and set her ablaze. During the incident, one American named Amos Durfee was killed. Three years a[f]ter, Alexander M'Leod, former deputy sheriff of the Niagara district, who allegedly took part in the affair, was arrested in Buffalo and charged with Durfee's murder. He was imprisoned for eleven months before he was tried and acquitted. This is a substantially more detailed and scarcer account than the one published the same year at the Sun office (see TPL 2469).