The most westerly bastion of the British in the War of 1812 was at
Fort St. Joseph on St. Joseph Island, 50 kilometers east of Sault Ste. Marie on Lake Huron. Although it was a lowly fort that was nothing but a wooden blockade with a couple of 6 pounder guns, it proved to be the staging ground from which a successful invasion of the United States was executed. Through a coalition of NorthWest Company voyageurs, Natives of the Upper Great Lakes and British militiamen, an invasion of the Upper Penninsula of Michigan was mounted whose goal was the submission of Fort Michilimackinac on Mackinac Island in the Straits of Mackinac. The American fort was positioned to challenge the British control of the lucrative Fur Trade Route that flowed through Lake Superior. The war represented a profound challenge to the territorial integrity of Canada as a British protectorate, and the Fur Trade was the economic engine that gave the territory legitimacy. Fort Michilimackinac was subdued without a shot fired and, for a brief period after the invasion the Upper Penninsula of Michigan was a British possession, thereby ensuring British dominance of the Fur Trade. In 1814, the Treaty of Ghent between the United States and Britain ended the War of 1812. The two countries returned to the status quo ante bellum, or the exact same state of affairs as before the war, and the Upper Penninsula again became an American territory.
Image of Fort St. Joseph, courtesy of Clements Library, University of Michigan.
