Eleazer Wheelock Ripley was born in Hanover, in New Hampshire, in the year 1782. His father, the Reverend Sylvanus Ripley, was professor of divinity of Dartmouth College; his maternal grandfather was the Reverend Eleazer Wheelock, founder of the institution of which his father was professor, and the son a graduate. By the same side he was lineally descended from the celebrated Miles Standish, the Scanderberg of his day, whose memory is justly cherished as the early protector of the Plymouth colony. The Reverend Mr. Ripley dying early in life, left a large family under the care of his widow, to whose virtuous and devoted attention may be ascribed the future success of her offspring, particularly that of the subject of this memoir, then at the tender age of five years. At the age of fourteen, Eleazer was admitted to Dartmouth college, from which institution he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, in the year 1800, being only in the eighteenth year of his age. His course, while an under graduate, had been distinguished, and at the time of graduation he received the highest honors of the college. After leaving college, he commenced the study of the law in the town of Waterville, Massachusetts. In this memoir we can only give slight traces of his early life, but infer from the information of historians, that he gave early presages in youth of what has since been realized in manhood. He was assiduous and successful in his studies, and exemplary in his life and conduct; and the early eminence attained by Mr. Ripley in his profession, tested the assiduity with which he had devoted himself to the study of it. In the year 1807, he was elected to the legislature of Massachusetts, from the town of Winslow, in that state. At the period when the nation first felt the effect of the offensive edicts of the two great belligerent powers of Europe, Mr. Ripley’s political character strongly developed itself. He was aware that the insults and aggressions of France would lead to a war, for which just cause had been given, provided the equal avidity and greater means of annoyance of Great Britain did not make that country the mark of an equally just enmity. When, in the year 1808, their combined hostility became more apparent and oppressive, he conceived that was the moment for a declaration of war, for which the country would never be better prepared, a crisis which sooner or later must come. In 1811, Mr. Ripley was elected to the chair of the speaker of the house of Representatives of Massachusetts, vacated by the late Hon. Joseph Story; over which he presided with distinguished ability and impartiality. In 1812, he declared for the necessity of a war, and was induced to assume an active duty in it, by accepting a lieutenant-colonelcy in the army of the United States. On leaving his civil and legislative duties, Colonel Ripley was entrusted by the commander-in-chief with the charge of a sub-district, from Saco to the eastern frontier, with orders to place the same in the best posture of defence. To this was added the With this regiment he marched to Plattsburgh, on the northern frontier, where an army under the command of the late General Pike was encamped. The winter of 1812 he spent with his regiment at Burlington, Vermont, where he commenced that school of discipline and police which led his regiment to its subsequent fame, and made it the model of the army. In March, 1813, Colonel Ripley left his winter quarters for Sacket’s Harbor, to join General Pike’s brigade, and prepare for the attack on York, Upper Canada. On the 23d of April, the troops embarked on that enterprise, and on the morning of the 27th, arrived before the town which was the object of it. The immediate command of the assault was entrusted to General Pike. On entering the bay of York the ships were severely cannonaded by the forts defending the harbor, while they in turn covered with their guns a large portion of the beach, on which it was intended that the troops should form. On the debarkation of a body of riflemen under Major Forsyth, the enemy fled to the woods, giving time for the main body to form on the beach, and move in close column to the attack of the principal fort. The troops thronged into the works, when the awful explosion of the magazine took place, which annihilated the leading columns, and mortally wounded their gallant commander General Pike. During the confusion, the enemy called in his detached parties, and concentrated his force in the town. Colonel Ripley, who also had been wounded in the explosion, soon collected his scattered army and prepared to charge the enemy, who made a precipitate retreat, leaving an immense quantity of artillery and stores, some few prisoners, and the town to make its own conditions. A surrender was made, The enemy was posted on an eminence, his artillery in the centre, and from it, and a long line of infantry, poured on the At daybreak the army was arranged, and the march commenced, when they found the enemy had been reinforced since the battle of the preceding evening, and that it would be an act of madness to attack an enemy thus increased, with two-thirds only of the force in the previous conflict. The army consequently retrograded across the Chippewa, the bridge of which they destroyed, and likewise everything that might aid the enemy’s advance. They reached Fort Erie on the 27th of July, and commenced a course of labors that would now be deemed beyond the reach of accomplishment. The redoubts, abattis, traverses and entrenchments were instantly commenced, and the ability of an army in patience, vigor and hardihood, was never more fully elicited; nor can any monument of military exertion show a greater amount of labor accomplished in a shorter period, than can the works of Fort Erie from the 27th of July until the 3d of August. The impediments given to the advance of the enemy by General Ripley, had retarded his approach until that day. By one or two days of previous advance, he might have found the American army unintrenched and exposed; he now found it in a situation to defy him. He arrived and planted his main camp about two miles distant, and in front of it a line of circumvallation extending On the 14th of August, about midnight, General Ripley perceived indications of an attack, which he had been for some time anticipating; accordingly, about one o’clock on the morning of the 15th, the firing of the piquet confirmed General Ripley’s impressions. Lieutenant Belknap, who commanded the piquet, perceiving the enemy’s column approach through the darkness, fired and retreated to the works. The assailants were allowed to approach near to the works, when the fire from the 21st and 23d regiments, and the incessant blaze of the battery, drove them back in confusion, without the enemy having made the least impression. The charge was again renewed on the abattis between the battery and the lake, which was again and in the same manner frustrated. A third and last attempt was made to pass the point of the abattis, by wading into the work by the lake. Like the other attempts, this also was defeated, and the part of the enemy which survived the destruction to which it had been exposed, fell back in confusion from the works. Throughout these several and varied attacks from a force so overwhelming, the second brigade evinced its accustomed discipline, and its officers the high and gallant spirit they held in common with their leader. Reinforcements were detached to different points, changes of position made, new shapes of the enemy’s attack on the right, a part deemed the least vulnerable, were found more effectual. He had succeeded in making a lodgement in the bastion, which was left to the defence of artillery only, unsupported by infantry, as had been the previous custom. From this, however, he was soon dislodged, and after The only prisoners taken during the night, were made by a sally ordered by General Ripley. His position was deemed the least of any part of the force engaged, while he inflicted on the enemy the greatest. The enemy now commenced with batteries in every direction. Hot shot, shells and other destructive implements were showered in vast profusion; every house, tent and hut were perforated, and many of our best soldiers destroyed. This warfare was kept up at intervals, by daily skirmishes, until the 17th of September, the day allotted for the sortie which terminated the siege; when the besiegers yielded to the besieged, and a force regular and irregular, of two thousand men, drove the enemy from his entrenchments, beat and scattered a regular enemy of four thousand men. Extract of an official letter to the secretary of war, after the sortie of Fort Erie:—“On the morning of the 17th, General Miller was directed to station his command in the ravine, which lies between Fort Erie and the enemy’s batteries, by passing them by detachments through the skirts of the wood; and the 21st infantry, under General Ripley, was posted as a corps of reserve, between the new bastions of Fort Erie, all under cover and out of the view of the enemy. About twenty minutes before three, P. M., the left columns, under the command of General Porter, which were destined to turn the enemy’s right, were within a few rods of the British entrenchments. They were ordered to advance and commence the action. Passing down the ravine, it was judged from the “Soon after fears were entertained for the safety of General Miller, and an order sent for the 21st to hasten to his support, towards battery No. 1. Colonel Upham received the order and advanced to the aid of General Miller. General Ripley had inclined to the left, and while making some necessary inquiries was unfortunately wounded in the neck, severely, but not dangerously. By this time the object of the sortie was accomplished beyond the most sanguine expectations of the commander and his generals. General Miller had consequently ordered the troops on the right to fall back. Observing this movement, the staff of General Brown was directed along the line, to call in the other corps. Within a few minutes they retired from the ravine, and from thence to camp. Thus one thousand regulars, and an equal portion of militia, in one hour of close action, blasted the hopes of the enemy, destroyed the fruits of fifty days’ labor, and diminished his effective force at least one thousand men.” After the battle, General Ripley was removed to the American On the return of General Ripley’s health, he removed to his estate at Baton Rouge, near New Orleans, from whence he was elected to Congress. He died in 1834, in the fifty-second year of his age, respected by a numerous circle of friends, who admired his bravery as a soldier, and his virtues as a man. DESCRIPTION OF THE MEDAL.Occasion.—Battles of Chippewa, Niagara and Erie. Device.—Bust of General Ripley. Legend.—Brigadier-General Eleazer W. Ripley. Reverse.—Victory holding up a tablet among the branches of a palm tree, inscribed with “Niagara, Chippewa, Erie.” In her right hand, which gracefully hangs by her side, are a trumpet and laurel wreath. Legend.—Resolution of Congress, Nov. 3, 1814. Exergue.—Battles of Chippewa, July 5th, 1814; Niagara, July 28th, 1814; Erie, Sept. 17th, 1814. |