The Story of Butler's Rangers and the Settlement of Niagara

MANY thousand descendants of the brave men who formed Butler's Rangers are now living in Ontario and other British Provinces. I hold that they have no reason to be ashamed of ancestors who were eminently distinguished by the none too common virtues of inalterable loyalty, unfailing courage, and unconquerable endurance, and who sacrificed everything for the cause which they had embraced. To them, at least, I feel that no apology is necessary in presenting a narrative which will not be found unduly eulogistic. It has been my aim to make a fair statement of the facts by sifting the evidence on both sides. It may be said that these •were hard, fierce, and revengeful men, but it should be remembered that they lived in a stormy time, in a hard, fierce, and revengeful world. Their story has never yet been told from a sympathetic, or even a fair-minded, point of view. The present narrative is based chiefly upon unpublished official documents, but every book and pamphlet bearing in any way upon the subject, within the writer's reach, has also been consulted.