When Major Daniel McFarland left the quiet fields of Washington County, Pennsylvania, to join the U.S. Army in 1812, he embodied both the optimism and the anxiety of a young nation heading once more into war. His surviving letters, published by historian John Newell Crombie in “The Papers of Major Daniel McFarland: A Hawk of 1812” offer a rare, unfiltered window into the moral and emotional landscape of an early-nineteenth-century officer.
Together they reveal a man whose patriotism was principled, whose conscience was shaped by faith, and whose frontier roots defined his endurance to the end.
Patriotism vs. Disillusionment
McFarland’s first preserved letter, written in March 1812 just after his commission as Captain, 22nd U.S. Infantry, captures his sense of duty and inner conflict.
He told his cousin Dr. Daniel Millikin of Hamilton, Ohio:
“I am about exchanging the peaceful occupation of the farmer and mechanic for the noisy and sanguine employment of the soldier.”
(Crombie, p. 103.)
He viewed the war as a just defense of American liberty. Yet within a year, from the camps at Fort Niagara and Fort George, his tone hardened. In late 1813 he wrote of “neglect in the Commissary Department” and “an army suffering less from the enemy than from its own administration.” (pp. 110–111.)
Despite the frustration, he refused resignation on moral grounds, telling Millikin he would “not abandon the cause while the cause remains righteous.” (p. 111.)
McFarland’s letters thus balance deep loyalty with honest criticism—a voice that represents the reality of many citizen-soldiers of the War of 1812, whose patriotism endured even as their faith in the system faltered.
Religious Conscience
Throughout his correspondence, McFarland’s moral reflection is unmistakable. On April 3, 1813, after witnessing the suffering of wounded men near Fort George, he confessed:
“War is a fearful school for virtue. The sword may be righteous when the cause is just, yet it remains a dreadful instrument in the hand of man.”
(Crombie, p. 108.)
Such reflections echo the Presbyterian moral framework of his family. His father, Senator Abel McFarland, recorded by the Pennsylvania Senate Library as a long-serving legislator from 1811 to 1818, was known locally for integrity and civic piety. The younger McFarland carried those convictions into the field, often invoking divine providence in moments of danger.
In one 1814 letter from Sackett’s Harbor, he wrote, “If it please Heaven to preserve me, I shall again see my native hills; if not, I trust my country will remember that I fell in her service.” (p. 113.)
Frontier Perspective
Born and raised amid the rolling farmland of Amwell Township, McFarland’s worldview was steeped in frontier experience. His descriptions of army life echo the same rugged self-reliance found in western Pennsylvania settlements. Traveling from Pittsburgh to Bellefonte on his march east, he noted that the soldiers “sleep beneath the open sky and call the wilderness our barracks.” (p. 112.)
He marveled at “the lights of the North dancing over our bivouac," a vivid reference to the aurora borealis seen during his 1814 movement toward Oswego.
This blend of natural observation and endurance linked home and war. Crombie observed that McFarland’s writings “join the rural character of western Pennsylvania with the soldier’s frontier ordeal,” illustrating how the same stamina that carved farms from forest also sustained men through forced marches and shortages.
Legacy of Sacrifice
On July 25, 1814, at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane near Niagara Falls, McFarland was killed in action while commanding elements of the 23rd U.S. Infantry.
The U.S. Army Center of Military History lists him among the officers who fell during that night-long struggle, one of the war’s costliest engagements. His body was likely interred near the battlefield.
Back home, his father Abel McFarland executed a Power of Attorney on October 15, 1814, authorizing his son Demis Lindley McFarland to settle Daniel’s estate and retrieve his effects from New York, an image of parental duty echoing the family’s tradition of service. (Crombie, pp. 124–125.)
Thirteen years later, in 1827, Treasury correspondence confirmed payment of the arrears due to his estate. Nearly a century afterward, the U.S. Army honored his name once more by dedicating Battery McFarland at Fort Armistead, Maryland, in memory of “Major Daniel McFarland, 23rd U.S. Infantry, killed in action in Canada in 1814.” (FortWiki entry; U.S. Army Coast Artillery records.)
His death completed a line of public service spanning three generations, from Colonel Daniel McFarland, a Revolutionary-era landholder, to Senator Abel McFarland, a lawmaker, and finally Major Daniel McFarland, a soldier who gave his life for the same ideals they governed by.
References
- John Newell Crombie, “The Papers of Major Daniel McFarland: A Hawk of 1812,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 51 (2) (Apr 1968): 102–125.
- Pennsylvania Senate Library, Member Biography: Abel McFarland Sr., sessions 1811–1818.
- U.S. Army Center of Military History, The Canadian Theater, 1814 (War of 1812 campaign summaries).
- FortWiki, Battery McFarland (Fort Armistead, Maryland)
