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BRADDOCK'S EXPEDITION: A MONOGEAPH.

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THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

AfTOH, LENdX AN* TtLBEN F»<jNOATieN».

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THE

HISTORY

oi-

AN EXPEDITION

AGAIXST

FORT DU QUESNE,

IN 1755;

MAJOR-GENERAL EDWARD BRADDOCK,

GENERALISSIMO OF H. B. M. FORCES IN AMERICA. EDITED

FKOM THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS,

WINTHROP SARGENT, M.A.,

MEMBER OF THE H 1 S W H I .J^A « S 0 0 I E T y, O f P E N N S V L V A M A.

' ' ' If I - , , ^ >^J —

PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO

FOR THE

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF TENNSYLVANIA.

> 1856.

Jhi*

ipUBLIC U»KAr>>

^g.OR. t-ENOX *MC TILOfcN fOUNDATlONI » 1912 ^

On the 13th of February, 1854, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania established a Publication Fund ; by the terms of which any person what- ever, on the payment of twenty dollars, becomes entitled to receive a copy of all of its future publications during the term of his life. The money thus received is invested on a special trust, and the interest alone is ap- plied to purposes of publication. It already amounts to four thousand dollars. The present volume is the first fruit of this undertaking, and it is proposed to follow it with others of a like character. It is proper to add, that considerable aid is derived from the Society itself, and from the anticipated sale of the works thus produced.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by

THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

MEMOIES

OF THE

HISTORICAL SOCIETY

PENNSYLVANIA.

VOL. V.

PHILADELPHIA: J. B. L I P P I N C 0 T T & CO.,

FOR THE

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA.

1855.

THEKEWYORKl

PUBLIC LIBRARY!

531U)S5

«T6ft, LENOX AND TiLOeN FOUNDATIONS.

fi 1912 L

TO

JOSEPH R. INGERSOLL;

THROUGH WHOSE PUBLIC SPIRIT

THE MATTER WHICH FORMS ITS BASIS WAS PROCURED,

THIS VOLUME

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.

CONTENTS.

Page

Introductory Memoir 15

Captain Orme's Journal 281

The Morris Journal 359

Braddock's iNSTRVCTioviS, &c. (Ajypendix) 393

Fanny Braddock (Appendix) 401

GtEorge Croghan's Statement (^Appendix') 407

French Reports op the Battle (Appendix) 409

Verses on Braddock (Appendix) 414

Braddock's last Night in London (Appendix) 417

Index 419

(vii)

ILLUSTRATIONS.

View of the Scene op Braddock's Defeat Frontispiece.

Fort Du Quesne Page 182

Braddock's Route 198

Plan of the Battle-Field 219

Braddock's Grave 280

Map of the Country between Forts Cumberland and Du

QuESNE 283

Line of March with all the Baggage 317

Line of March op Detachment from Little Meadows 336

Encampment of Detachment from Little Meadows 336

Distribution of Advanced Party 353

Plan of Battle 354

(ix)

PEEFACE.

During the term of Mr. J. R. Ingersoll's official residence at London, he procured, for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, copies of the three jour- nals which constitute the basis of this volume. A few months since, these were committed by the So- ciety to the hands of the editor, with a request to prepare therefrom such a work as he now has the honour to lay before it and the public.

It is a matter of reasonable surprise, that the narrative of what Mr. Sparks has justly styled "one of the most remarkable events in American history," has never before been formally and cir- cumstantially related. Perhaps the secret rests in the fact that much of the original material neces- sary to such an undertaking has hitherto slumbered in undisturbed repose, its very existence almost for- gotten, upon the shelves of State-Paper Offices and public libraries in various parts of the world.

XU PREFACE.

A sketch of the combat, brief, but admirably exact, is given by the distinguished author before cited in the Appendix to the second volume of the Writings of Washington; and other notices, incidental and of less value, are to be found in numerous historical works. There are also two obscure and obsolete contemporaneous pamphlets, professing to give an account of Braddock's defeat, which, although not so rare as to be unknown to Rich, are hardly pos- sessed of sufficient worth to save them from the limbo of Ariosto. The first of these is " A Letter to a Friend; giving a concise but just Account, according to the Advices hitherto received, of the Ohio Defeat," &c. (Boston, printed; Bristol, re- printed, 1755; 8vo., pp. 30.) The second, to which the editor has had access only since the body of his volume was stereotyped, is entitled "The Expedi- tion of Major-General Edward Braddock to Virginia, with the two Regiments of Hacket and Dunbar. Being Extracts of Letters from an Officer in one of those Regiments to his Friend in London," &c. (Lon- don, 1755; 8vo., pp. 29.) This seems to be a mere catch-penny production, made up, perhaps, from the reports of some ignorant camp-follower. The pri- vations and insubordination of the army, and the paltry and despicable character of the colonists and their country form the burthen of his strain. The only facts he relates concerning the expedition that

PREFACE. Xni

we do not find elsewhere, are that the General was somewhat of a bon vivant, and had with him "two good Cooks who could make an excellent Ragout out of a pair of Boots, had they but Materials to toss them up with;" and that the soldiers, for lack of ovens, were compelled to bake their maize bread in holes in the ground.

Of a very different value are the copies of the French official reports of the action of the 9th of July, 1755, so kindly placed at the editor's disposal by Mr. Sparks; to whom the Society is also indebted for the use of the copper-plate from which the plan of the battle-field is taken. To Mr. Neville B. Craig, of Pittsburg, it is under like obligations for the plate of Braddock's route ; and to Mr. Paul We- ber, of Philadelphia, for the drawing of the wood-cut of Braddock's grave, and for the elegant original landscape painting engraved as a frontispiece to this volume. To these gentlemen, and to Mr. John Jordan, junior, of Philadelphia, the Rev. Mr. Fran- cis-Orpen Morris, of Nunburnholme Rectory, York- shire, England, Dr. William M. Darlington, of Pitts- burg, and Mr: Edward D. Ingraham, of Philadel- phia, both the Society and the editor must confess their obligations. To Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Bucha- nan, the late and present Ministers to England, and to Mr. Townsend Ward, the Librarian of the Society,

XIV PREFACE.

acknowledgments are also due for the valuable as- sistance they have, in various ways, rendered him. So far as regards the manner in which the editor has accomplished his task, he has only to say that, within the limits prescribed him, he has carefully endeavored to fulfil his duty. The Introductory Memoir was considered, by those whose views he felt called upon to regard, desirable to Jbring clearly before the reader's mind the origin and ulterior causes of this campaign ; which was, in fact, but the prologue to the Seven Years' War. An Appen- dix is also added, in which will be found much matter bearing more or less directly upon the sub- ject in hand. It may be objected that the notes abound too much in " matter needless, of importless burthen;" yet in such a place, it is submitted that no unimportant part of an editor's duty consists in elucidating neglected facts; nor should he spare to dwell upon the personal history of the obscurest name upon the roll :

il figlio

Del tale, ed il nipote del cotale Nato per madre della tale.

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

On the night of the 30th of April, 1748, the preliminar ries of what was boldly asserted to be a definitive and lasting peace, were signed by the diplomatic representatives of England, Holland, and France, at the city of Aix-la- Chapelle. Exhausted by the fatigues of a long, harassing, and unsatisfactory struggle, the two great parties in this arrangement embraced, if not eagerly, at least without reluctance, a scheme which would give to each an oppor- tunity to extricate itself from any unprofitable enterprise or dangerous dilemma in which it had become involved, and to prepare, at leisure, plans for a future and more successful war. "Never," says Lord Mahon, "never, perhaps, did any war, after so many great events, and so large a loss of blood and treasure, end in replacing the nations engaged in it in nearly the same situation as they held at first." The Earl of Chesterfield — the only man in the British Cabinet possessed of sufficient energy and capacity to have directed more successfully hostile measures, or to have procured more advantageous terms of peace — •

(15)

16 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

had been compelled to withdraw from power six months before : and to the ignorant or feeble hands which con- tinued to hold the reins of government, much of the future, as well as the then existing blunders in the policy of the Crown — at least, so far as America was concerned — may safely be attributed.^

Certainly, no one versed in the political secrets of the day could, by any possibility, have believed that this peace was to be a lasting one. It was deficient in every element of coherence. Nothing was settled by the treaty : con- quests all over the world were to be mutually restored ; some trifling shiftings of territorial proprietorship on the part of the Italian and other minor princes engaged in the war were agreed upon; a few other articles, relative to European aflairs, of little or no consequence in proportion to the cost at which they were effected, were inserted ; and the treaty of Utrecht, as well as all former treaties, con- firmed in existence. In short, matters were essentially placed in statu quo ante helium, at a cost to England of £110,000,000. But there were two circumstances, con- nected with the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, galling in the last degree to British pride and British interest: these were the surrender of Cape Breton to its former possessors, and the delivery of hostages until that was done. Accord- ingly, whilst the Earl of Sussex and Lord Cathcart

' II. Hist, of Eng from Peace of Utrecht, &c., 290. So keenly was their disgrace felt by the English, that Charles Edward himself, then residing at Paris, could not view it without indignation. '' If ever I ascend the throne of my ancestors," he exclaimed, "Europe shall see me use my utmost endeavors to force France, in her turn, to send hostages to England."

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 17

awaited, at Paris, in easy but dishonourable captivity, the tardy messengers whose return sliould announce that once more the UHes were planted upon the bastions of Louis- bourg, there glowed in the breast of every true Briton the burning embers of mortified vanity, the but half-smothered lust of fierce revenge. From the throng of Hanoverian favorites around their alienigenate king, down to the hardy New England fisherman who trimmed his light sail as he glided within sight of that apple of the American eye, curses both loud and deep were vented against the degrading terms they had submitted to. They had suffered not only disgrace and dishonor, but infinite loss ; and they anxiously awaited the hour of vengeance. That hour was not fated to be long delayed.

It has been observed, that the treaty of 1748 left England in a state of mind but too ready to seize, with avidity, upon the first pretext for bettering its condition, and restoring to itself those rights which it had unjustly perilled in that compact. Unfortunately for the peace of humanity, circumstances not so weak as to be considered mere pretexts, soon presented themselves, to provoke a renewal of the strife. It is, perhaps, not very expedient to go back to the ultimate causes of the war, and tracing their progress, event by event, finally, after the fashion of an inverted pyramid, taper this narrative down to the story of the single battle by which its epiphany was sig- nalized. But a few brief comments upon the immediate and most glaring inducements to a contest so important in its conduct, so momentous in its results, may not be out of place. 2

18 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

If ever there was a just cause of war, England had it in 1755. By the treaty of October, 1748, (Art. III.,) that of Utrecht (1713), and numerous others, were recognised and confirmed in all their parts ; save, of course, such as might be modified by the pact in question — and were formally constituted its basis. By the treaty of Utrecht (Art. XII.,) " all Nova Scotia or Acadia, with its ancient limits, and all its dependencies, was ceded to the crown of Great Britain;"^ and, furthermore, it was provided (Art. XV.,) that " the subjects of France, inhabitants of Canada and elsewhere, should not disturb or molest in any manner whatever the five Indian nations which are subject to Great Britain, nor its other American allies." These articles were certainly incorporated into the treaty of Aix- la-Chapelle ; but with neither stipulation were the French willing to comply. The last clause would evidently always

' " Dominus Rex Christianissimus eodum quse pacis praesentis Ratihabi- tationes commutabuntur die, Dominae Reginae Magnae Brittaniae literas, tabulasve solenne et autbenticas tradendas curabit, quarum vigore, insulam Sancti Christopbori, per subditos Britannicos sigillatim dehinc possidendam j Novam Scotiara quoque, sive Acadiam totam, limitibus suis antiquis com- prebensam, ut et portus Portus Regii urbem, nunc Annapolin regiam dictam, caeteraque omnia in istis regionibus quae ab iisdem terris et insulis pendent, unacum earundarum insularum, terrarum et locorum dominio, pro- prietate, possessione, et quocunque jure sive per pacta, sive alio niodo quje- sito, quod Rex Cbristianissimus, corona Galliae, aut ejusdem subditi quicunque ad dictas insulas, terras et loca, eorumque incolas, bactenus habuerunt, Reginae Magnje Britanniae, ejusdemque coronae in perpetuum cedi constabit et transferri, prout eadem omnia nunc cedit ac transfert Rex Christianissimus; idque tam amplis modo et forma ut Regis Christianissimi subditis in dictis maribus, sinubus, aliisque locis ad littora Novae Scotiae, ea nempe quae Eurum respiciunt, intra triginta leucas, incipiendo ab insula, vulgo Sdhle dicta, eaque inclusa et Africum versus pergendo omni picatura in posterium intcrdicatur." Vide also Mem. dcs Comm. cle S. M. T. C, &c.

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 19

open to Great Britain a casus belli ; for it was impossible for a year at a time to pass by without some troubles between the Iroquois and their Canadian neighbors ; and in such cases each party, on the showing of the other, is inevitably the aggressor. But the provision respecting Nova Scotia was widely different. The restoration of Louisbourg, as matters then stood, was a point of equal importance to the settlers in Canada and the colonists of New England. Under its ancient lords, this nursing-mother of privateers would be powerful alike to preserve the French, and to destroy the English trade and fisheries in that part of the world. The annoyance, therefore, of the New England people was extreme and well founded ; and at their earnest representations, the Home Government was finally instigated to adopt the only practical method left of peaceably dissipating the dangers with which they were threatened by the constantly increasing power and malignity of the French. The armed occupation and settlement of the province of Nova Scotia, till then un- noticed or disregarded by the Ministry, became now a subject of consideration. In the spring of 1748, and during that and the ensuing year, several thousand colo- nists were sent thither by the government, at an expense of £70,000, and the town of Halifiix was founded. But the French, who had hitherto evaded or disingenuously dallied with their obligations to yield up the peninsula — suppressing, wherever they could, the settlements of the English there, and constantly increasing their own strength by reinforcements — now openly resisted, under M. de la Corne, the progress of their rivals. Thus commenced that

20 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

scene of constant dissension and strife which ensued between the original settlers, scattered over the land, and the subjects of the crown to which it lawfully pertained ; whose melancholy termination was that enforced expatria- tion which posterity has consecrated to sorrow in the pages of Evangeline. That the Court of Versailles, through its subordinate officers, promoted and encouraged the sturdy denial of British sovereignty by these loyal-hearted Aca- dians, cannot at this day be doubted or denied; but the result of such a course was as fatal to the fair fame of the conquerors, as to the happiness of the conquered.

Nor did the French government confine itself to an unavowed but well-supported resistance to the progress of Anglo-American power in the north only. Thirty years before, its grand scheme for uniting its colonies, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Bay of Fundy, by a chain of posts along the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Lakes, had begun to be tangibly developed : ever bent upon the fulfilment of these cherished ideas, already its encroaching grasp was extended, with many ramifications, from Canada to the Lower Mississippi. Li 1731, Crown Point was unlawfully erected by the French within the Hmits of the Five Nations, and of New York : Niagara had been seized on in 1720. In truth, their policy seemed both rational and feasible. During a large portion of the year, the natural outlets of Canada were efiectually sealed by the angry elements : supplies of troops or provisions — in fact, almost every intercourse whatever with Europe — were utterly shut out from its ports. The facility of water communi- cation between Canada and New Orleans, by the lakes

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 21

and rivers of the West would, if made properly available, not only facilitate the secure transmission of supplies, but would inevitably throw the whole peltry trade of those regions into the hands of the French. It is no wonder, then, that they were desirous of procuring so manifest an advantage ; but, unhappily for themselves, they grasped at too much, and lost the whole. Like the dog in the fable, they sacrificed not only the hoped-for gain, but all their present good, in the endeavor.^

To have opened a communication between their widely- separated establishments, by the way of the western lakes and the Illinois, would have been a comparatively safe, and by far the wiser mode of procedure for the French, under the circumstances of their position. So far as its ostensible objects were concerned, it would have 23erfectly answered the purpose, and the trade it would secure would have been prodigious : nor could the English, everything considered, have made any very effectual opposition. But to adopt this route would have left too wide a margin for British enterprise. The warlike tribes seated between the Illinois and the Alleghanies — the broad lands watered by the Muskingum, the Scioto, and other kindred streams, by whose marge arose the bark lodges of the Shawanoes and the Delawares — the gloomy forests, where

Beneath the shade of melancholy boughs,

' That the designs of the French were perfectly comprehended in the English colonies, is abundantly proved by Gov. Shirley's letter to Gov. Hamilton, of March 4th, 1754, printed in the Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, Vol. VI., p. 16. And see also I. Entick, 105, and The Contest in America beitveen Great Britain and France. (Lond 1757.)

22 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

the Six Nations wandered on their distant hunting-parties — these would have still remained open to the visits — subjected to the influence of their hated rivals. The notion of occupying the head-waters of the Ohio, and of planting a line of forts from Lake Erie, by the Le Boeuf, to the Alleghany, and thence down the Ohio to the Missis- sippi, was a more dangerous but a more fascinating vision. Its execution would probably be fraught with much hazard, but its results, if successful, were too precious to suffer the powers that were to resist the temptation. Out of the nettle danger they hoped to pluck the flower safety ; and, at one time, it really seemed as though all their anticipa- tions were to have been crowned with success. But the wisdom of Almighty Providence had ordered the event otherwise.

In an evil hour, then, for themselves, the French decided to persevere in the latter plan. While the Appallachian chain, it was thought, would serve at the same time as a bulwark against the British colg>nies, and as a well-marked and palpable boundary between the two nations, the whole body of the Western Indians would be thrown completely under their control. Already game had begun to be scarce, or to disappear utterly, east of the mountains, and the best furs were to be found upon the further side. With forts and trading-houses once established in their midst, it would not be difficult to prevent the savages from supplying the English dealers, or receiving in turn their commodities. The peltry traffic, so profitable to European commerce, had already to be pursued on the frontiers ; and it was not probable that the Indians would go thither to

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 23

seek no better market than they could find at home. The certain consequences, too, of thus virtually monopolizing the right to buy and sell with the savages, would be to secure, beyond a peradventure, their services against the English, in any difficulty that might occur. There is nothing the American aborigine learns more quickly than to abandon his rude native weapons of the chase — the bow or the flint-headed spear — for the fusil and gunpowder of the whites ; and having become thus dependent on his neighbors for the means of subsistence, it has never been found difficult to point out other and less innocent employ- ment for his arms. By thus building up a mighty power behind the English settlements, they would not only be in a position to terribly annoy, if not to entirely overcome them, in the event of war, but also to clog and embarrass their prosperity during time of peace. A very great staple of that commerce which made America so valuable to Great Britain being utterly destroyed, its domestic increase, its foreign influence, would be materially affected. The agricultural productions of the colonies would likewise be touched; for, with the constant necessity, through an imminent danger, there must likewise be the constant presence of a portion of the population in arms ; and thus the tobacco plantations and the fields of maize would miss a master's hand, and yield a diminished crop. It is unne- cessary to consider here how many millions of money were yearly employed at this period in the trade between the mother country and her colonies — to how many thousands of souls it gave a supj^ort : nothing can be more evident than that such an attack u^^on the productiveness of the

24 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

one must at once affect their value to the other, and thus render them, day by day, less important, and less self- capable of preservation. In short, as was well said in the House of Commons, the French held the colonies within their range of posts as in the two ends of a net, which, if tightened by degrees, would get them all into the body of it, and then drown them in the sea.^

It will be recollected, that for a long period the unde- fined western limits of the two English colonies of Penn- sylvania and Virginia had occasioned much controversy, and had induced considerable ill-feeling between those provinces. Their claims were conflicting; and no autho- rized power had yet reconciled their demands, and assigned to each sovereignty final and determinate territorial bounds. So long, therefore, as the question remained open, and the precise confines of either province unestablished, it was impossible for settlers to know from which government they could procure a good title. For this reason, chiefly, the lands lying west of the Alleghanies, and upon the streams which unite to form the Ohio, had remained unvisited by any other Englishmen than the few traders who found their annual j^rofit in selling to the savages in the neighborhood of their homes. To perplex matters still more, the associates known as the Ohio Company obtained, in 1749, a vague grant from the crown, vesting in them vast but undefined tracts of land bordering on, if not actually embracing, the very territory in dispute between

' I. Entick, 126.

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 25

Virginia and Pennsylvania.' All these circumstances combined to render more easy of execution the manoeuvres of the French in regard to the occupation of the forks of the Ohio, and they were availed of without delay. The history of their first settlement in that vicinity; of the unsuccessful mission of Washington to procure their departure; of the consequent collision that ensued between the two parties ; and the English defeat at Fort Necessity ; are prominent passages in history. It is from these occurrences that we are to date the original concep- tion, the organization and execution, and the disastrous results, of the expedition commanded by Major-General Braddock.

It is very true, that at the period in question both colo- nies claimed that the lands comprehended within the forks of the Ohio were included in their patents : yet, neverthe- less, nothing can be more certain than that it rightfully appertained to neither Pennsylvania nor Virginia. The original patent, from James I. to the London and Plymouth Companies, which was relied upon by Virginia, had been legally overturned on a quo loarranto in 1623 ; and the tacit acquiescence of those companies in the grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore by Charles I., in 1632, was considered to have barred their right to open the case anew, after the in- terval of an hundred years. The charter from the crown to WilUam Penn, in 1681, would appear to cover the whole

' Perhaps the influence with the ministry of John Sargent, Thomas Walpole, and the other associates of the Ohio Company, whose prospects were entirely subverted by the presence of the French, may have contributed more powerfully than any other cause to the expedition against Fort Du Quesne.

26 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

territory in dispute; but, hitherto, the proprietaries, to whom alone belonged the power of purchasing the soil from the Indians, had not come to any terms with their dusky neighbors. The land, in fact, belonged absolutely to its savage inhabitants ; and the utmost the province of Penn- sylvania could claim was the exclusive right of purchasing it from them. Nor had the French any better title : perhaps, if the comity of Christian nations were to be taken into the account, none so good. Thus, whatever it might be alleged, neither crown had as yet any right to the country west of the Alleghanies. But that was of small consideration : a block-house once established, and a garri- son maintained thereon some specious pretext; a judicious distribution of red ochre, gewgaws, fire-arms, and rum; and it would be easy enough to get an absolute title from the Indians.^ This was the end of the French, who were not disposed to admit any English pretensions that con- flicted with their own interests. "When, therefore, in 1752, on the first alarm of the threatened invasion of these regions, the Penns instructed their Lieutenant-Governor to lend all aid in his power to Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, in the erection of a fortress that might thwart their designs, it was also provided that no rights of the proprietaries

' Horace Walpole sneeringly dwells on the methods by which England and France seated themselves in America. " They enslaved, or assisted the wretched nations to butcher one another," says he, " instructed them in the use of fire-arms, brandy, and the New Testament, and at last, by scat- tered extension of forts and colonies, they have met to quarrel for the boundaries of empires, of which they can neither use nor occupy a twentieth part of the included territory." (I. Mem. Geo. II., 343.) But ^^ ive do not massacre," he adds, '' we are such good Christians as only to cheat !" (III. Corresp. 136.)

INTRODUCTORT MEMOIR. 27

should be prejudiced thereby. Two years later, when there was actual likelihood of such a fortress being erected, and Dinwiddie had issued his proclamation, granting away two hundred thousand acres of the soil upon part of which Pittsburg now stands, a correspondence ensued between the two governments, in which that of Virginia, while denying the fact of the forks of the Ohio being within the jurisdic- tion of Pennsylvania, very honestly conceded that if on investigation this should prove to be the case, the rights of that colony should not be at all impaired.^

Previously, however, to the actual occupation of this region, the French had been gradually strengthening their hands, and drawing closer their lines in that quarter. Their scattered posts upon the Mississippi, though few in number and wide apart, gave them the command of that stream; and they had already a fortified establishment upon the Ohio, at the mouth of the Wabash river. In 1745, the Marquis de la Galissoniere was appointed Governor-General of Canada. Penetrated at once with the immense advantage that would result from an arrange- ment that should not' only open the communication of Canada with the mother country during those seasons when all its natural outlets were closed by ice and frost, but would likewise restrain and cripple the English colo- nies upon the continent, he spared no toil to mature and

' Minutes of Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, Vol. VI., pp. 4, 8. I. Olden Time, 436. I am happy in joining my testimony with that of Mr. Francis Parkraan (Conspiracy of Pontiac, 87.), as to the extreme value of Mr. Craig's labors in regard to the earlier settlements beyond the AUeghanies. So far, in particular, as relates to Western Pennsylvania, his collections are worthy of much praise.

28 INTRODUCTOEY MEMOIR.

put into shape the needful elements of its organization. It was he who, in 1748, despatched Bienville de Celoron^ with three hundred men, on a tour of inspection along the Alleghany and the Ohio, depositing in various quarters leaden plates on which were inscribed a memorial of his master's title to those countries, and warning the English traders whom he encountered, that henceforth they were prohibited from visiting the Indians there. ^ In 1750, by command of his successor, the Marquis de la Jonquiere, harsher measures were resorted to. A body of troops under Joncaire visited the Ohio country, seizing the pro- perty and persons of such English traders as they found there. The former they confiscated ; the latter they sent prisoners to France.^ These scenes were the commence- ment of a tedious and unresulting diplomatic correspond- ence between the Earl of Albemarle, His Britannic Majesty's Ambassador at the Court of Versailles, and the

> I. Olden Time, 238, 268, 270, 289. II. Histoire du Canada, par F. X. Garneau, 192. Craig's Hist, of Pittsburg, 20.

^ Vide Lord Albemarle's letter to Lord Holdernesse, respecting the case of John Patton, Luke Irwin, and Thomas Bourke. I. Entick, 45. The Marquis de la Jonquiere arrived in Canada in August, 1749 ; and acting under positive instructions from his court, faithfully pursued the policy of his predecessor in regard to shutting out the English from the Ohio. Descended of a Catalonian fjxmily, he was born in Languedoc, in 1696; and died at Quebec, May 17th, 1752. He was a man of superb presence and undaunted resolution ; but, withal, prone to avarice. His whole career gave abundant evidence of his courage and soldier-like bravery : but the world ridiculed the passion that induced him, on his dying bed, to begrudge the cost of wax candles while his coffers were overflowing with millions of money. He enjoyed little peace towards the conclusion of his life, by occasion of his efforts to suppress the order of Jesuits in his government; and, indeed, this dispute is supposed to have shortened his days. II. Gar- neau, liv. viii., 0. 3.

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR. 29

French authorities, which was prolonged without intermis- sion upon either side of St. George's channel, until the capture of the Alcide and the Lis, by Boscawen's fleet, compelled the Due de Mirepoix to demand his passport, and war was openly waged. ^

In 1752, arrived in Canada, (to which government he had been appointed by the King on the recommendation of M. de la Galissoniere), the Marquis de Duquesne de Menneville, a name destined to become indelibly impressed upon the history of that land whence the golden lilies of his nation, though watered by the best blood alike of friend and foe, were so soon to be extirpated. All of his ante- cedents that can be mentioned here are that he was a captain in the royal marine, and born of the blood of Abraham Duquesne, the famous admiral of Louis XIV.

' Roland-Michel Barrin, Marquis de la Galissoniere, and a Lieutenant- General in the French service, was one of the ablest men of his time. As a scholar, a soldier, a statesman, his merit was deservedly esteemed. Born at Rochefort, Nov. 11, 1693, he entered the navy in 1710, in which he served with distinction until he was appointed to Canada. In flfaat colony, his conduct was eminently conducive to the best interests of both the King and his people. The Swedish traveller, Du Kalm, bears abundant testimony to his scientific acquirements; while even his meagre appearance and deformed person added to his influence over the savages. " He must have a mighty soul," they said; "since, with such a base body, our Great Father has sent him such a distance to command us." De la Galissoniere did not remain in America long enough to carry out the course he had begun : he returned to France in 1749, where he was placed at the head of the department of nautical charts. He is best known in English history by his afi"air with the unfortunate Byng, in 1756, which resulted in the judicial murder of that excellent officer, in order thereby to screen the criminal derelictions of his superiors. He died at Nemours, Oct. 26, 1756, full of glory and honour, and loudly regretted by Louis XV., who was so sensible of his worth, that he had reserved for him the baton of a Marshal of France. Biog. Univ. (ed. 1816), Vol. XVI., p. 367.

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His abilities were good ; and during his brief career he acquitted himself thoroughly of the duties of his position ; but the haughtiness of his character, and the lack of affa- bility in his manners, prevented his ever attaining any great degree of popularity with the Canadians. Neverthe- less, he seems to have been possessed of some singularly generous dispositions. In October, 1754, an English woman, nineteen years of age, arrived in Philadelphia from Quebec, Twelve years before, while yet almost an infant, she had been captured by the savages, and by them sold as a slave in Canada. In new scenes and the lapse of time, the names of her parents, the very place of her birth, had entirely passed from her memory ; but she still clung to the sounds of the tongue of her native land, and dreamed of the day when she should be reunited to her unknown kindred. By some chance, her pitiful story reached the Governor's ears ; and, full of compassion, he at once purchased her freedom and furnished her with the means of returning to the British colonies. There she wandered from city to city, vainly publishing her narra- tion, and seeking to discover those joys of kindred and of home that she had never known. An act of this kind should, at any season, reflect credit upon the performer ; but considering its particular occasion, when war was plainly looming in the horizon, to liberate and restore in this manner a person abundantly qualified to reveal so much of the local secrets of Quebec, must clothe the character of M. de Duquesne with the attribute of magna- nimity, as well as of generosity.^ In the latter part of

' Penn. Gaz., No. 1349.

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1754, however, he demanded his recall by the government, in order to return to the naval service, and to encounter the enemy upon a more familiar element. It will be sufficient in this place to add, that his instructions while in Canada, in regard to the Ohio, were of a piece with those of La Jonquiere and Galissoniere, and that he faith- fully obeyed them/ In January, 1753, four traders on

' II. Garneau, liv. viii., c. 3. I have been not a little indebted to this valuable work (2nd ed. Quebec, 1852 : three vols. 8vo.), which, indeed, is the best history extant of Canada from the earliest period to the present time. In particular, I have occasionally found notices of the history of individuals that I know not where else to look for. It is to be hoped that the new edition of the BiograpMe Universelle, now being published at Paris by Didot, will, in respect to the lives of French worthies, at least, be more particular than that which it is designed to supplant. It is unjust to the past age, that the names of such men as Duquesne, Dumas and Contrecceur, should be consigned to oblivion. Thus we are left in ignorance of the period of Duquesne 's death, and of all save a single circumstance in his later career. In 1758, M. Duquesne, being in France, was appointed to the command of all the forces, sea and land, in North America. In March he sailed from Toulon, in command of a small squadron, which, however, was utterly discomfited by the English. His own ship, the Foudroyant, of 8-1 guns and one thousand men, was engaged, after a long chase in which their comrades had been almost lost sight of, by the Monmouth, Captain Gardiner, of 64 guns and 470 men. Captain Gardiner had served under the murdered Byng in the Mediterranean, and the combat was a compulsory one with him. On the eve of sailing on this cruise, whence he was never to return, he mentioned to his friends that there was something which

weighed heavily on his soul; that Lord A had recently said to him,

that he was one of the men who had brought disgrace upon the nation ; and he was convinced that in this very voyage he should have an opportu- nity of testifying to his lordship the rate at which he estimated the national honor. As his ship was going into action, he made a brief address to his crew : " That ship must be taken : she looks to be above our match, but Englishmen are not to mind that ; nor will I quit her while this ship can swim, or I have a soul left alive !'' Accordingly, he closed with the Fou- droyant, and lay on her quarter within pistol-shot for several hours, till her flag came down. Shot through the head, and death inevitable, he still

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the Kantiicqui river, near the Ohio, were captured by a party of Caughnawagas, or French Indians from Canada, who divided their goods, to the value of several hundred pounds, among themselves. This was undoubtedly done in pursuance of instructions from Quebec. The captives were carried as slaves to Canada, where they remained until the summer of the succeeding year ; their new lords refusing to suffer them to be ransomed under the price of a negro slave for each. The province of Pennsylvania at last, however, succeeded in purchasing their freedom for the sum of seventy-five pounds sterling; a rate which gave such umbrage to Ononraguiete, the chief sachem of the tribe, that he wrote a furious letter to the Indian Commissioner, declaring that for the future he should cause all prisoners to be murdered, since no higher ransom was to be paid for them.^

It was under the administration of Duquesne that the first steps were taken towards an armed occupation of the Ohio. It must not be forgotten, in referring to these pro- ceedings, that so far as involved his duty to the King his master, and his interpretation of that sovereign's rights, his conduct was perfectly justifiable throughout. Though neither power possessed the least claim in justice to that territory, France as well as England had not hesitated

retained comprehension enough to say to his first-lieutenant, that " the last favor he could ask of him was, never to give up the ship I" That gentle- man pledged himself that he never would ; and nailing the flag to the staJT, he stood by it during the contest with a brace of pistols, resolved to slay the first man, friend or foe, who approached to pull it down. A more gallant or hardly-contested sea-fight than that of the Monmouth and Fou- droyant was never fought.

• Penn. Gazette, No. 1338. VI. Col. Rec, 129.

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during many years to refer to it as their absolute inherit- ance, and virtually to utterly ignore any title in its original occupants to the sovereignty of the soil. No treaty with the Indians inhabiting it had ever been made, by which, even for the poor pittance of a few strings of beads or barrels of whiskey, they had ceded it to the stranger. It is true that the French assured them that their only object was to found trading-posts; that they had no idea of cut- ting down the woods, and tilling the fields, after the fashion of the English.^ The savage was not to be thus gulled ; and he viewed their first encroachments with as great repugnance as he did the more flagrant advances of the British, who boldly penetrated into the most secret recesses of his hunting-grounds, laying out the lines of a future settlement without the least form of a purchase from its outraged inhabitants.^ Nevertheless, regardless of the Indian title, the King of France had, so early as 1712, granted the district watered by the river Wabash in his

' Shortly before quitting his government, Duquesne held a secret con- ference with the deputies of the Six Nations, at Montreal, in which he reproached them with their willingness to surrender the control of the Ohio to the English rather than to the French. "Are jou ignorant," said he, " of the difference between the King of France and the English ? Look at the forts which the King has built ; you will find that under the very shadow of their walls, the beasts oi the forest are hunted and slain; that they are, in fact, fixed in the places most frequented by you merely to gratify more conveniently your necessities. The English, on the contrary, no sooner occupy a post, than the woods fall before their hand — the earth is subjected to cultivation ■ — the game disappears — and your people are speedily reduced to combat with starvation." In this speech, as M. Gar- neau well observes, the Marquis has accurately stated the progress of the two civilizations.

^ II. Sparks's Washington, 434. II. Garocau, 201.

3

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letters patent creating the colony of Louisiana; and following the explorations of La Salle in 1679, had fur- thermore added all the streams flowing into the Mississippi that were known to this discoverer. This liberality was well matched by some of the English patents, which were bounded by the Atlantic ocean on the east, and on the west by the Pacific. It costs little to a monarch to be generous in this style ; and no pope or king in Europe was backward in thus gratifying the importunities of his subjects. But when a nation undertakes to enforce such grants of a foreign soil, it behooves it to sagely consider whether, in so doing, the interests of its neighbor may not be threatened. This was precisely the case here: the English, whose claim was, where both were bad, no better than that of the French, saw, or thought they saw, in its fulfilment, the ruin of all that they then lawfully and actually held, and with wisdom resolved to oppose such a consummation.^

' Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, whose opinion on such points must have weighed greatly with the people, frankly declared, in his letter to Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania (March 4th, 1754), that the language of King James the First, in the patents of the London and Plymouth Companies, was " the only rule for the English Governors to judge of the limits of the colonies under their respective governments, in all disputes •with the French Governors concerning the extent of his Majestie's terri- tories upon this Continent, except in cases where the original limits declared in these Letters Patent may be altered by treaty or other agreement between the two Crowns; and those Patents extend the English territories within the 32d and 48th degrees of northerly latitude, quite across this Continent, viz. : from the Atlantic Ocean to the South Sea; and I can't find that these eastern or western limits have been abridged by any treaty." Vide Penn. Col. Rec, Vol. VI., p. 16. Mr. Shirley had lately been actin^ at Paris as one of the British Commission to define the bound- aries of Acadia and New England.

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Strong in all the resources of civil and military centrali- zation, the government of Canada moved with a resolution and celerity that, for the time, set at defiance the efforts of their slow-footed and divided adversaries. By the end of 1753, a connected line of forts existed, extending from Montreal to what is now called French creek, in Pennsyl- vania, but which was named by the French the Riviere aux Boeufs, on account of the numbers of buffalo that were found in its vicinity.' The nationality of its first European settlers soon caused it to receive another title. It was to this fort that in December, 1753, Major Washington repaired on a fruitless mission from the Governor of Vir- ginia, to warn the trespassers to retire ; and here it was that he observed the extensive preparations they had made for still further encroachments in the ensuing spring.^ Fifty birchen canoes, and one hundred and seventy of pine, were, at that early stage of the winter, drawn up on the shore, ready for the opening of the streams; and numerous others were in progress of completion. In these the troops were to be floated down Le Boeuf and the Alleghany, on their way to the Ohio. For though but some six or seven hundred, of the expedition of two thou- sand men who had been sent in the preceding autumn to erect these posts, remained in garrison there during the winter, it was already settled that a large body was to arrive in the spring for the further operations alluded to.

The private scandal of the place and period attributed the building of these establishments and their dark train of consequent calamities to the same cause as had since

' II. Sparks's Wasliington, 436. "■ Ibid, 442.

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long before the day of Helen of Troy, according to Flaccus, brought about the waste of human life and the overthrow of mighty empires. M. Pouchot, an officer of rank in Canada, does not scruple to insinuate that the new gover- nor, shortly after his arrival in Quebec, became involved in an intrigue with a beautiful woman, the wife of a resident of that place. M. Bigot, who had recently passed from the Intendancy of Louisbourg to that of Canada, had in like manner contracted a liaison with a Madame Pean, the wife of the aide-major, of the city. Bigot being thus at the head of the commissary department of the colony, it was an easy affair for the Governor and himself to arrange a plan by which the willing husbands of the ladies in ques- tion should be detached from an inconvenient vicinity to their partners. Accordingly, it was decided to give them lucrative employments in an expedition which, it was gravely whispered, was concocted for the express purpose of placing these gentlemen at a considerable distance from home; and to Pean was assigned the command of the forces which were marched in 1753. The forts then built were furnished with numerous and expensive magazines of merchandise and provisions; a precaution necessary enough under the circumstances of their position, but which, in the manner in which the business was managed, must have afforded endless opportunities for the acquire- ment of ill-gotten gains. Together with the proper provisions and stores, all sorts of goods, always expensive, but here utterly useless, were purchased in the name of Louis XV., and sent, for his service, into the wilderness. Stuffs of silk and velvet, ladies' slippers and damask shoes,

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silk stockings, and the costly wines of Spain, figure largely in the categor}-, and enable us to conceive how it came about that the French colonies cost the nation so much and returned it so little.' In fact, it would seem that the colonial stewards of the king were not unfrequently but too wont to look upon their office in no other light than as a source of revenue to themselves ; and when, like Uriah the Hittitd, the lords and masters of these new Bath-shebas were sent down to the host, they doubtless felt no com- punction in making their absence as remunerative to themselves as possible. From Pouchot's position and character, it is not unjust to admit the truth of the facts upon which he bases his conclusions : but ignorant as, from the very nature of his subordinate rank, he must have been of the state arrangements and politic designs of the former governors and the Court of Versailles, it is easy to perceive how erroneous were his inferences. It may be true enough that the husband of each fair Evadne was

' lo 1753, the exports of Canada amounted to but £68,000; its imports were £208,000, of which a great portion was on the government account, and did not enter into the ordinary channels of trade. The exports of the English provinces during the same year were £1,486,000 ; their imports, £983,000. In 1755, the Canadian imports were 5,203,272 livres; its exports but 1,515,730. And while the population of British America was 1,200,000 souls, that of all Canada, Cape Breton, and Louisiana, could not have exceeded 80,000. The policy of sustaining such a colony at such a cost was thus doubted by the most brilliant if not the profoundest writer of the day. " Le Canada coutait beaucoup et rapportait tr^s peu. Si la dixifeme partie de I'argent englouti dans cette colonic avait ete employ^ k defricher nos terres incultes en France, on aurait fait un gain considerable ; mais on avait voulu soutenir le Canada, et on a perdu cent annees de peines avec tout I'argent prodigues sans retour. Pour comble de malheur on accusait des plus horrible brigandages presque tons ceux qui etaient em- ployes au nom du Hoi dans cette malheureuse colonic." — Voltaire.

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named to a high command in the new expedition, but nothing can be more absurd than to imagine that to procure their absence was the primary motive to its undertaking.^

It must not be supposed that the detachment ordered to Lake Erie and the new forts by Duquesne consisted entirel}'' of regular troops. There were, at that time, probably not more than one thousand regular soldiers in all Canada. But an exceedingly well-organised militia, and the hardy, active, semi-Indian class, half-trappers, half-traders, who dwelt on the outskirts of French civilization, furnished material for any enterprise involving war or adventure. "Woodsmen by education, full of courage and vivacity by birth, they formed an admirable band for such ends as they were now engaged in. To this day, the coureurs des hois are of the primest favorites of the Indians, with whom they intermarry and assimilate, and at whom they "never laugh:" they were, therefore, just the men

' M^moires sur la Derm^re Guerre de V Am^rique Septentrionale, par M. Pouchot. (^YverJon, 1781), Vol. I., p. 8. These two volumes contain much curious and authentic information respecting the subject to which they relate. The author was born at Grenoble, in 1712, and at the age of twenty-two was an officer in the regiment of Beam. His talents as an engineer, cultivated under such masters as Vauban and Cohorn, early pointed him out to favourable notice, and in season he acquired a captaincy in that regiment, and was created a knight of St. Louis. He came to America on the breaking out of the war of 1755, and gained much honor by the part he took therein, particularly in the defence of Forts Niagara and Levis, where he was in command. He was slain in Corsica, 8th May, 1769, during the warfare between the French and the natives of the island His memoirs, prepared by himself for publication, did not see the light for several years after his death. They are accompanied with explanatory notes, apparently by a well-informed hand. My opinion of their value ia confirmed by that of M. Garneau.

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required for a business that must depend for success mainly on the good-will of the savages/

Returning to Williamsburgh from his bootless errand on the 16th of January, 1754, "Washington made his report to the Governor of Virginia ; when it was instantly resolved, in compliance with the King's directions, to fit out an exjDedition which should proceed wdth all haste to the confluence of the Alleghany and the Monongahela, where the Ohio Company had already commenced to build a fortified trading-house, and there to erect such works as might, for the season, prevent any further enterprise on the part of the French. For this object, the Assembly of Virginia voted the sum of £10,000, and the party was put under the control of Colonel Joshua Frey, who, dying on the 31st of May, was succeeded in office by Washington, the second in command. His instructions were to capture, kill, or destroy all persons who should endeavor to impede his operations. Aid was also requested from the neighbor- ing provinces; but none seems to have reached Virginia in time ; and she is thus entitled to the honor of having single- handed first entered the lists against France, to struggle for the mastery of the continent.^ '

• Schoolcraft : Red Races of America, 134.

^ Mr. Wheeler, in his recent History of North Carolina (Vol. I., p. 46), states that in compliance with Gov. Dinwiddie's request, the president of that province '' issued his proclamation for the legislature to assemble at Wilmington on the 19th February, 1754 ; who met and appropriated £1000 to the raising and paying such troops as might be raised to send to the aid of Virginia. Col. James Innes of New Hanover marched at the head of a detachment, and joined the troops raised by Virginia and Maryland. But there being no provision made by Virginia for supplies or conveniences, the expedition was countermanded, and Col. Innes returned with his men to

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The little army with which the beginning of all this was to be accomplished, was to consist of but four hundred men. In January, 1754, William Trent was commissioned to enlist one hundred ; he succeeded in raising but seventy, with whom he instantly marched for the Ohio : the remaining three hundred were not raised so soon. They were furnished with ten cannon and eighty barrels of powder, and would, it was hoped, have succeeded in throw- ing up a coujile of forts before the arrival of the French. If that were found impossible. Governor Dinwiddie looked to their attacking and destroying the enemy by a coup de main}

In the meanwhile, however, the French had not been idle. Nearly a year before, in the spring of 1753, they had built, at Presqu'-Isle on Lake Erie, a strong fort of chestnut logs, fifteen feet high, and one hundred and twenty feet square, with a block-house on each side.

North Carolina." Besides these North Carolina troops, three of the King's Independent Companies, two from New York and one from Carolina, had been ordered to Virginia. As they were paid by the King, but retained in the colonies for local protection, it was usual for the provinces to contribute to their victualling expenses on any extraordinary service in which they might be employed ; which Virginia, on this occasion, refused to do. II. Penn. Archives, 169.

' The cannon sent towards the Ohio were four-pounders, selected from thirty pieces presented by the King to his colony of Virginia. They went from Alexandria to Will's Creek, and thence in wagons. Small arms and accoutrements were also provided by Dinwiddie ; with thirty tents and six months' provision of flour, pork, and beef. The uniform was a red coat and breeches ; and a half-pint of rum ^jer diem was allowed each man. The pay was as follows : To a colonel, 15s. per diem — to a lieutenant-colonel, 12s. 6d; a major, 10s.; a captain, 8s.; a lieutenant, 4s.; an ensign, Ss. The privates received 8d. joer diem and a pistole bounty. Vide Dinwiddle's letter, in VI. Penn. Col. Rec, 6.

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Leaving a strong garrison here, they marched to the Riviere aux Boeufs, where they erected another fort, cutting a wagon-road twenty-one feet in Mddth between it and that at Presqu'-Isle. Here garrisons were maintained during the winter of 1753-4, and here strong reinforce- ments from Canada were directed to rendezvous in the spring of 1754, fully prepared to march to and occupy the head of the Ohio.' For this purpose, a corps of some 800 Canadians, under M. Marin, had been carefully raised and accoutred. Every man was amply provided with the needful equipments, while to each of the ofl&cers, naively observes an old chronicler in his enumeration of the good cheer provided for the detachment, was allotted a bottle of wine every day, two gallons of brandy a month, and food in proportion.^ Being thus prepared, M. de Contre- cceur (who succeeded in the command at French creek to

' VI. Col. Rec, 10. It is possible that the French had some sort of an establishment at Presqu'-Isle so early as 1749 ; the ruins of the fort of 1753 are still perceptible within the limits of the town of Erie. It was provided with bastions, a well and a ditch ; and was the head-quarters of communication between Canada and the Ohio. Thirteen miles distant was the fort de la Rlvilre aux Boivfs, on the spot where now stands the village of Waterford (Erie county, Penn.). A small lake, and a stream rising from it to fall into French Creek, still preserve the memory of the long- vanished buffalo, which once fed on its fertile meadows. The last post on the route to the Ohio was on the Alleghany at the mouth of French Creek (where now is the village of Franklin), and was called Venango, being a corruption of In-nun-gah, the name by which the Senecas knew the latter stream. Its ruins are still to be seen. It was 400 feet square, with em- bankments which are yet eight feet in height, and furnished with four bas- tions, a large block-house, a stockade, and a ditch seven feet deep, and fifteen wide, fed through a subterraneous channel of fifty yards by a neigh- boring rivulet. See Day's Hist. Col. Penn., 812, 642.

2 I. Pouchot, 10.

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Legardeur de St. Pierre, the one-eyed old warrior who had received Washington), set out betimes in the spring of 1754. On the 17th of April, at the head of from five hundred to a thousand men, with eighteen pieces of artil- lery, he appeared before the incomplete and defenceless works which occupied the spot where now stands the great city of Pittsburgh. Ensign Ward, with his forty-one men, was in no condition to resist such a force. Without a struggle he was compelled to reluctantly abandon his post to the enemy, and was suffered to retire unmolested to his own country. The French set at once about the strength- ening and perfection of their conquest. Under the direc- tions of Mercier,' a captain in the artillery, new works were added and the former made more complete : till, by the middle of May, 1754, it was placed in a position to defy any force that could then be brought against it. Its breast-works were probably calculated to resist such small field-pieces as those which Washington had with him, as

' Oa the fall of Fort Necessity, M. le Chevalier de Mercier went back to Canada, whence he was presently sent to France with an account of the campaign on the Ohio. Here his advice was much regarded at Versailles; and in 1755, he returned with Vaudreuil and Dieskau to America. His counsels were received by the latter with implicit faith, and eventually influenced Dieskau to measures which ended in his utter defeat at Lake George, 8th Sept., 1755. In August, 1756, he directed with great skill the works with which M. de Montcalm besieged Oswego, and on the surrender of that place, according to Pouchot, secreted to his own use a large share of the public property. In March, 1757, he was sent by M. de Vaudreuil to demand the surrender of Fort William-Henry, but received a peremptory denial from Major Eyres, its governor. (Vide Pouchot and Mante.) Thi-s first architect of Fort Du Quesne seems to have been an accomplished officer, but a leech on the public purse. He was probably one of that large tribe of locusts who went to Canada determined to make a fortune quocunque modo.

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they were made in part, at least, of earth, and were two fathoms in thickness at the base.' A force of some eight hundred or a thousand men garrisoned the post, oCQcered by such men as Laforce, Drouilion, de VilHers, Jumonville, Chauvignerie, de Longueil, and many others, whose names were war-cries along the border; and from Contrecoeur, who commanded the whole, it now for the first time received its title of Fort Du Quesne.'

Washington was at Will's Creek when the tidings reached him of Ward's discomfiture ; and acting promptly, on the same principle which had governed his mind m orio-inally urging the very measure that was thus defeated, he was resolved to proceed to the mouth of the Red-stone Creek, and there to erect a fortification under whose shelter he should await such things as time might bring forth. With his scanty force, it was impossible to think of the re-investment of Fort Du Quesne and its new garrison until the arrival of the reinforcements which were constantly expected ; but he wished to be as near to the French as he possibly could get, and this spot offered too many advantages to be passed over. By tedious marches, and suffering under the greatest deprivations of food, rai- ment, and stores, he had arrived at the Great Meadow, when, on the 28th May, he encountered a detachment of thirty-five men under M. de Jumonville, sent out from Fort Du Quesne as ambassadors, as was alleged by M. de Contrecoeur, to warn him to withdraw. Considering all that we can learn of the characters of the two French

' II. Sparks's Washington, 19.

* De Contrecoeur's summons to Ensign Ward is given at lar^e in YT. Penn. Col. Rec., p. 29.

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officers, and the circumstances of their position, it is to be regretted that there seems some cause to believe the truth of this story. Contrecoeur's treatment of Ward had not been in anywise treacherous or unmanly : his demeanor on other occasions seems to have been creditable and fair ; and it is difficult to believe that he would have wilfully put his hand to a deliberate falsehood, to be echoed not only by all his brother officers, but throughout France and Europe. But, granting the doubtful story that Jumonville was entrusted with such a commission, he bore about him no reason to inspire Washington with the prescience of the fact. An ambassador with thirty-five armed men at his heels in an enemy's country, with the army of his friends behind, his foe in front, and the shouts and clamor of victory still ringing through the air, was an anomalous character on that stage ; and we humbly conceive that it was perfectly fair and just in Washington to defeat and destroy his party in any manner of lawful war. Certainly, no sane Englishman could have doubted Jumonville's object was other than to gain scalps or intelligence : probably it partook as much or more of the nature of both as of that of a formal embassy. The strength of his party, and the impressions entertained of its designs by the Indians who were cognizant of its departure and brought the intelligence to the Americans — impressions, the justice of which was confirmed by the recorded testimony of officers of his own nation — these facts abundantly warranted Washington in treating him as an enemy in arms.^ Washington could not

' I. Pouchot, 14. Since both the French and the English have published their own stories, it is but fair to give the Indian version of this affair.

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but remember that Contrecceur had but a few weeks before, by dint of superior power, ejected Ward from Fort Du Quesne (the first scene, by the way, of overt hostihty in the long and bloody drama that was about to be enacted) ; and even at this day there is little reason to believe that he would have hesitated for one moment in the commission of any act which he supposed came within the line of his duty and the service of the King. Be this as it may, however, Washington, on the 24th of May, received notice from a friendly Indian that a secret expedition had started from Fort Du Quesne two days before, with intent to strike the first English they might see. Thus forewarned, he engaged them on the 28th, when Jumonville was slain in a manner too often detailed to need repetition here.^ In

At a council held at Philadelphia, in December, 1754, Scarroyaddy their leader pointedly dwelt on the efforts Jumonville had previously made to seduce him from the English (whom he was on the way to join), and how he rewarded these insidious overtures by at once informing Washington of their whereabouts, and aiding in the combat by way, as he told Washington, of "a little bloodying the edge of the hatchet." John Davison, the inter- preter, who was also in the battle, added that " there were but eight Indians, who did most of the execution that was done. Coll. Washington and the Half-King differed much in judgment, and on the Colonel's refusing to take his advice, the English and Indians se|)arated. Afterwards the Indians discovered the French in an hollow, and hid themselves, lying on their bellies behind a hill ; afterwards they discovered Coll. Washington on the opposite side of the hollow in the gray of the morning, and when the Eng- lish fired, which they did in great confusion, the Indians came out of their cover and closed with the French, and killed them with their tomahawks, on which the French surrendered." VI. Col. Rec, 195.

' Adam Stephen of Virginia, who served with distinction under Braddock and in the war of the Revolution, gives a contemporaneous and interesting notice of this skirmish, which seems to have escaped the notice of the his- torian. On May 10th, Capt. Stephen was detached with a reconnoitring party towards Fort Du Quesne, whence, his vicinity being discovered,

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detailing this event to his Court, M. de Duquesne gave his own version of the affair, the correctness of which was ever denied by the English, and questioned by officers of even his own army. Insomuch as he was taken by sur- prise, the French insisted that Jumonville's death was not only a base act, but a cowardly assassination ; and for years, even down to our own times, their authors have continued to misrepresent the occurrence, and to do an injustice to him who was incapable of acting unjustly to another. Chief among them was M. Thomas, an accom- plished litterateur 0^ ihQ day, and a member of the Academy, who, in 1759, published his Jumonville, a lengthy poem in four cantos, in which he not only painted the death of that soldier in the most tragic colors, but traces all the subse- quent misfortunes of the English to that unpardonable act. His unseen shade is made to stand beside Washington on the ramparts of Fort Necessity, freezing his blood with supernatural fear, and calling into life poetic serpents to hiss and gnaw within his breast ; or gliding through the

Jumonville was despatched against him. Stephen fell back before his superior foe till he rejoined Washington, who, at 11 o'clock at night, through a heavily-pouring rain, went forth with forty men to the attack. The French were lodged in bark cabins about five miles from Washington's position ; but so dark was the night, and so bewildering the storm, that it was not until four the ne.xt morning that they drew near the enemy. Here it was found not only that seven men were lost on the journey, but that their pieces and ammunition were so wet as to be in a measure useless. They therefore charged the French with fixed bayonets, receiving their fire as they advanced, and not returning it till they were at close quarters. Stephen adds, that three Indian men and two boys came up with the English during the battle ; and that he himself made the first prisoner, capturing the Ensign M. Drouillon, "a pert fellow." Penn. Gaz., No. 1343.

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lines of his brethren, points at his bleeding wounds yet unrevenged,

"and cries aloud — to battle!"

Pursued thus by the inevitable sword of an avenging Nemesis, the woes of the British during the next five years the heavy visitation of what the poet is pleased to con- sider retributive justice, is finely given: " 0 malheureux Aiigltiisr he exclaims; "Oh, wretched people!"

Je vols, dans ses projets, votre audace trompee, Des Acts de votre sang I'Amerique trempee. Bradhoc, de vos complots sinistre executeur, Des traites et des lois sacrilege infracteur, Qui devait, en guidant vos troupes conjurees, Au char de 1' Angle terre encliainer nos contrees, Sur des monceaux de morts, perce de mille coups, Exhale ses fureurs et son ame en courroux.

0 triste Virginie! 0 malheureux rivages !

Je vois vos champs en proie a des monstres sauvagesj

Je vois, dans leur berceau^, vos enfans massacres,

De vos vieillards sanglants les membres dechires,

Vos remparts et vos toits devores par les flammes,

La massue ecraser vos fiUes et vos femmes,

Et, dans leur flancs ouverts, leur fruit infortunes,

Condamnes ^ p^rir avant que d'etre nes.

Votre sang n'eteint pas I'ardeur que les devore :

Sur vos corps dechires et palpitants encore,

Je les vois etendus, de carnage souilles,

Arracher vos chevaux de vos fronts depouilles;

Et fiers de ce fardeau, dans leur mains triomphantes,

Montrer h. leurs enfants ces depouilles fumantes.

Quels que soient les forfaits que nous aient outrages,

Anglais, peut-etre, helas, sommes-nous trop venges ! '

' Oeuvres Comp. de Thomas (par M. Saint-Surin), torn. V., p. 47. Mr. Sparks (11. Writings of Washington, p. 447), has gone at length into the question of the death of Juraonville and has thoroughly cleared up the

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A terrified soldier, escaping the fate of liis fellows, returned to the fort with the sad tidings of Jumonville's discomfiture ; and a council of war, to deliberate on what

clouds that in some minds had obscured the morning brightness of Wash- ington's fame. He does not notice, however, M. Pouohot's version of the affair, which is too significant to be passed over here. This writer says that Jumonville was sent with a letter summoning the English commander to retire. Being taken by surprise, and finding the enemy's strength so much superior to his own, he endeavored to show them the despatch of which he was the bearer ; but they, unwilling to compromise themselves by a parley, poured in a volley, slaying Jumonville and some others. The remainder were made prisoners. (Pouchot, Vol. I., p. 14.) His editor, it is true, adds a note of dissent to the insinuation that Jumonville had any hostile intentions ; but the evidence of a brother oflScer, whose ideas were derived from personal communications with those who were present at the fort at the time, must be received with some deference. It is a little curious, that while the French made so much capital out of this occurrence, their version of its nature was very little considered in England. M. Thomas, for in- stance, opens his preface with the declaration that his theme is " I'assassinat de M. de Jumonville en Amerique, et la vengeance de ce meurtre." During fourteen years after the event, its mere mention had not reached the ears of one of the greatest political gossips of the period in London. In July, 1768, Horace Walpole had never heard of it, and was only then in posses- sion of the news, through the intervention of Voltaire, who had made it a subject of national reproach in his letters. (V. Walpole's Correspondence, p. 212 ed. Lond. 1840.) It is due to a French historian, however, to add that there is an impartial account of the affair from the pen of M. Garneau. After considering the statements of either side, he says — " II est probable qu'il y a du vrai dans les deux versions ; mais que I'attaque fut si precipitee qu'on ne put rien demeler. Washington n'avangait qu'en tremblant tant il avait peur d'etre surpris, et il voulait tout prevenir meme en courant le risque de combattre des fant6mes. Ce n'est que de cette maniere qu'on peut expliquer pourquoi Washington avec des forces si superieures montra une si grande ardeur pour surprendre Jumonville au point du jour comme si c'eut ete un ennemi fort ti craindre ? Au reste la mort de Jumonville n'amena pas la guerre, car dejh, elle etait resolue, mais elle la precipita." (II. Hist, du Can., 202.) The historical statements of M. Thomas's work are ridiculously false : the only fact it contains is that Jumonville was really dead.

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next should be done, was instantly assembled by Contre- coeur. Here the opinions of all were given in writing. The fiery Coulon-Villiers (known for his prowess as Le Grand Villiers), burning to avenge after the fashion of the savages his brother's death, was for violent and vindictive measures : the more safe and moderate advice of M. de Mercier prevailed.* The desire professed on this occasion, to avoid everything which might be construed into an indefensible violation of the letter of the Treaty of Utrecht, when its spirit and meaning were already infringed by his very presence on the ground, shows how clearly the Frenchman anticipated the approaching war; and his anxiety to preserve, if not peace, at least appear- ances with the world. Villiers, with some six hundred men, was despatched to meet Washington, and Mercier accompanied him as second in command.^ On the 29th of June, Washington, who was then at Gist's plantation, received intelligence of their advance ; and his council of war resolved to await the attack at that spot. Entrench- ments were at once undertaken; two detached parties under CajDtains Lewis and Poison were recalled ; and an express sent to the Great Meadows to summon Captain Mackay, with the Independent Company from South Caro- lina. Mackay marched mto camp that night, and the next morning Lewis and Poison came in. Apprised now of the enemy's overwhelming force, a second council on the 30th

■ I. Pouchot, 15.

^ The accounts of their number vary from three to nine hundred men, besides Indians. Among the latter were many Delawares and others who had hitherto lived on terms of personal friendship with the English. Vide Min. Penn. Col. Council, Vol. VI., p. 51. d

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of June resolved, with one voice, to retreat to their former position at the Great Meadows. Two miserable teams and a few pack-horses being all their means of transporting their ammunition, the officers at once added their own steeds to the train ; and, leaving half his baggage behind, Washington, for four pistoles, hired some of the soldiers to carry the remainder. For twelve weary miles over the Alleghanies did the Virginians drag with their own hands the seven swivels that formed their park ; the Indepen- dents obstinately refusing to bear any share of the burthen, whether of drawing guns, carrying ammunition, or clearing the road. On the 1st of July, the party arrived at the Great Meadows in such a state of fatigue that, unless their stores were abandoned, it was absolutely necessary for them to pause there for a few days. They had a plenty of milch-cows for beef, but no salt to cure their meat, so it was not possible to lay in a stock of salt provisions ; and as for bread, though they had been eight days without it, the convoy from the settlements brought but a few bags of flour, not more than enough for five days. But learning that the two Independent Companies of New York were arrived at Annapolis on the 20th of June, they concluded to make a stand here, in hope of receiving a speedy rein- forcement. The spot selected for the works was well chosen ; and to these rude defences was given the sugges- tive title of Fort Necessity. To Robert Stobo, a captain in the Virginia Regiment, the merit of being their contriver is attributable. The fort was a log breast-work 100 feet square, surrounded in part by a shallow ditch ; and was commenced immediately on Washington's arrival. As day

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broke on the morning of the 3d of July, the near approaches of the enemy were proclaimed by some of their scouts shooting down an English sentry ; and at 11 A.M., the whole force came in sight and invested the petty fortress. Expecting to be stormed, the Indepen- dents were posted in the ditch, the Virginians being drawn up within their lines, intending to retain their fire till it was certain to take effect. The enemy not adopting this course, however, but sheltering themselves among the trees that crowned a neighboring hill, the men were with- drawn to the cover of their works, and a dropping, desultory fire was kept up on either side during all the day. When night fell, and their ammunition (which only amounted to a handful of ball each, and powder in proportion), was nearly exhausted, the French repeatedly called a parley, which at last was listened to by the incredulous English; and a capitulation was speedily arranged.^ To the besieged terms were proffered, not to be hghtly rejected by men in their position : for two bags of flour and a little bacon now constituted all the provisions of 300 men ; their guns were wet and foul, and there were but two screws in the party with which to clean them ; and, to crown all, one-half the garrison was drunk. Yet even in this strait the capitulation produced by Captain Van Braam, who, being the only officer (save one who was wounded), that could speak French, was selected as his plenipotentiary, was considerably modified by Washington. The French stipulated for the surrender of the artillery and ammunition ; the English insisted on

' MS. Gov. Sharpe's Corresp. in Md. Hist. Soc.

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retaining the one and destroying the other ; and even this was acquiesced in.^ The cattle, etc., had already fallen into the enemy's hands. The articles of surrender, how- ever, while they conceded all honors of war to the garrison, contained one awkward provision to which Washington unwittingly put his hand, in terms admitting that Jumon- ville's death was an assassination. This expression, by "the too great condescension of Van Braam," had been suffered to stand on the paper ; and as liis leader was com- pelled to take his oral version of their nature (for it was now nearly midnight, and the falling rain prevented a candle's burning more than a moment at a time), which substituted the word "death" for this odious phrase; it was not until afterwards that its real language was dis- covered.^ In the meanwhile the negotiator. Captain Jacob Van Braam, together with Captain Stobo, both Virginian officers, were given up to the enemy as pledges of the faithful performance of the articles of surrender.^

' These guns, which were probably merely spiked and abandoned, were in later years bored out or otherwise restored to their former condition. For a long time they lay on the Great Meadows, useless and disregarded. After the Revolution, however, when bands of settlers commenced to travel towards the West, it was a favorite amusement to discharge these cannon : the Meadow being a usual halting-place. They were finally transported to Kentucky by some enterprising pioneers, and their subsequent fate is unknown.

^ II. Sparks's Washington, 51, 456. Stobo's Memoirs, 17. Capt. Stephen's letter in Penn. Gaz., No. 1339. Col. Lines to Gov. Hamilton, VI. Col. Rec, 51 : where also a correct copy of the capitulation will be found. II. Olden Time, 213.

'^ Robert Stobo was born at Glasgow, 1727, of respectable parentage, and was settled in Virginia as a merchant when the French troubles began in 1754. Dinwiddle giving him a company in Prey's regiment, he took an active part in Washington's campaign. It is not impossible he was one

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On the following morning, the fourth of Jul}^, 1754, with drums beating and colors flying, the little garrison evacuated its feeble entrenchments, and sadly turned their faces homewards. Probably the memory of this day whose return, twenty-one years after, was destined to open to him the gates of immortal fame, was for a season

of " those raw, surly, and tyrannical Scots, several of them mere boys from behind the counters of the factors here," with whom, according to Maury (Huguenot Family, 404), the governor filled the corps. As the stipulations for which he remained a hostage were not complied with, he was, with his bro- ther captain. Van Braam, sent from Du Quesne to Canada, but not before he had contrived to transmit a plan of its works to the English. His letters and drawings being found in Braddock's cabinet, excited no little odium against him. At last he escaped from captivity (whether with or without Van Braam is not certainly known to the writer), and after a series of romantic adventures, reached England. His Memoirs were there published, a reprint of which has lately been given at Pittsburg, by Mr. Neville Craig, to whose notes the preceding remarks are due. The only remaining feature in his story that has been discovered is the fact that on June 5th, 1760, he was made a captain in the 15th Foot (Amherst's Regiment), then serving, in America; which position he held as late as 1765. He was an eccentric creature; an acquaintance of David Hume and a friend of Smollett, to whom he is said to have sate for the character of the immor- tal Lismahago. As for Van Braam, his career is still more obscure. Denounced as a traitor for his agency in the capitulation of Fort Necessity, it must not be forgotten that three weeks before the surrender, Washing- ton (to whom he had served as interpreter on the mission of 1753), pro- nounced him " an experienced, good oiScer, and very worthy of the com- mand he has enjoyed :" that he consented to going as a hostage to the French, with the certainty of his fraud being soon discovered by his own party, had he committed one; that he was detained rather as a prisoner than a hostage ; and that he risked his life to return to the English. These facts do not exculpate him from the charge of imbecility, but they are inconsistent with the assumption of his deliberate treason. In 1770, too, it would appear that he claimed and obtained his share of the Virginia bounty lands, with Washington as Commissioner; and on 14th June, 1777, was made Major of the Third Battalion of the 60th Foot, or Royal Ameri- cans, then stationed in the West Indies.

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marked in Washington's calendar as the blackest, the most melancholy epoch of his life. His visions of future fame in the service of his native land seemed to have received a dangerous, perhaps a fatal, downfall: nor could the reflections that its immediate memory must have adduced have been of a very cheering character. In spite of the stipulation of the French commander, the Indians hung on the skirts of his diminished band, plundering the baggage, and committing a hundred annoyances and mischiefs. The medical stores they entirely destroyed ; thus cruelly aggra- vating the unhappy condition of the wretches, who, sick and wounded, and without a horse to assist them, were to traverse fifty miles of inhospitable forests, ere they could reach the nearest halting-place on "Will's Creek. The number of savages, hitherto regarded as friendly to the colonies, whom he recognised enlisted under the standard of the enemy, was another source of regret. And so long as the French preserved their local sujjeriority, he very well knew how little hope there was of these fickle people returning to their ancient friendships : nor was he blind to the unconcealed disgust at the result of the campaign of even those whose lot was immutably cast with the English.'

' The celebrated Seneca cliief Thanacrishon (better known as the Half- King), complained bitterly to Conrad Weiser of Washington's conduct. '' The Colonel," he said, " was a good-natured man, but had no experience; lie took upon him to command the Indians as his slaves, and would have them every day upon the scout, and to attack the enemy by themselves, but would by no means take advice from the Indians. He lay in one place from one full moon to the other, without making any fortifications, except that little thing on the Meadow; whereas, had he taken advice, and built such fortifications as he (the Half-King) advised him, he might easily have beat off the French. But the French in the engagement acted like cowards,

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And above all other annoyances, the discovery of the un- enviable and unmerited position in which Van Braam's " evil intentions or negligence " had placed his character, must have stung him to the quick. With reason, then, on the morning of Washington's departure from Fort Neces- sity, dark visions swam before his eyes. He saw before but the frowning forests ; behind, the scene of his own and his country's defeat. " At that moment," observes Mr. Ban- croft, " in the whole valley of the Mississippi to its head- springs in the Alleghanies, no standard floated but that of France." Destroying, as he says, not only the cannon surrendered by the English, but also the smaller piece reserved by the garrison as a point of military etiquette, but which it was incompetent to drag away^ and knock- ing in the heads of the liquor-casks, to prevent a savage debauch, " the Great Villiers" departed on the same day as his adversaries, but in an opposite direction.^ Gracing his triumph with the Virginia standard, which in the confusion had been left at the fort, he turned his steps toward Du

and the English like fools." — Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians, &c. (Lend. 1759) p. 80. This volume, whose rarity is greater than even its value and importance, was the work of Charles Thomson, subsequently Secretary of the Congress ; but in 1756, when he prepared his material, an usher in the Quaker grammar- school at Philadelphia. He writes in honest but bitter opposition to the Penns, on which account some allowances must be made in perusing his book. This Half-King, who was so free of his censure, was a pretty shrewd fellow. It was he who advised Ensign Ward, when summoned by M. de ContreccEur to surrender his post, to reply that his rank did not invest him with sufficient power so to do, and to desire a delay until his chief commander might arrive ; a suggestion which, though ineffectual in practice, argues considerable astuteness on the part of its proposer. See II. Sparks's Washington, p. 7.

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Quesne, where he arrived on the 7th of July ; having de- stroyed all the English settlements on the way, and detach- ing also M. de la Chauvignerie for the same purpose. This circumstance in itself shows that the country had not utterly escaped the notice of colonists from the eastward, although it is more than probable that many of the houses so burned were trading-stations, or shelters recently erected for the convenience of some of Trent's or Washington's troops. On his journey, too, he encountered the place where his brother had fallen ; and where mangled corpses, their skulls bare and bloody from the knife, still strewed the ground with shocking memorials of that scene of slaughter. A decent, if not a Christian burial, in earth best consecrated by the life-blood of a soldier, was bestowed upon their remains ; and the grave of Jumonville is still shown to the curious traveller, who pauses, "by lonely contemplation led," to muse upon the spot where, like Philip's son, the future statesman and sage loosened the tangled web of policy with his sword ; and invoking the ultima ratio regiim to decide whether to a Guelf or a Bourbon North America should owe allegiance, the hands

' In 1756, M. de Villiers took an active part in the capture of Oswego. (I. Garneau, 246 : I. Pouchot, 71.) Till 1759, he would seem to have still been employed in that region, where he was one of the defenders and probably of the captives of Niagara : after which he is lost sight of There were six brothers of the Villiers family killed in Canada during this war, fighting for France ; each of whom was distinguished by some local surname. \ The seventh and last, also in the service, appears alone to have escaped. I. Forster's Bossu, 185. From the language of M. Thomas (Jumonv., ch. I.) we are at liberty to conjecture that they were natives of Old France.

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of the Father of his Country were for the first time steeped in human blood.^

In the meantime, since their arrival in the spring the garrison under M. de Contrecoeur had experienced much privation and suffering. An expensive and abundant supply of provisions and stores had at an early day been despatched to this post from Canada, under a strong escort; but the difficulties incident on the portage at Niagara pro- duced an unwelcome and unlooked-for delay. The want of horses and suitable equipages to transport them from the fort at Presqu'-Isle to the Ohio was also a great embar- rassment. Four hundred of the party expired on the route, either from scurvy or from the fatigues of bearing all this burthen upon their shoulders. The provisions of the escort were soon expended, and the magazines intended for their comrades were put into requisition. Then their contents became known, and every one took freely from them such wares as pleased his fancy. The officers were clad in rich velvets, and drank to their fill of the rare wines with which, by the knavish connivance of the au- thorities with some unknown parties in interest, the detachment was charged. A scene of general waste and confusion ensued ; and while the troops at Fort Du Quesne profited slightly enough by the costly engagements that had been criminally made for their benefit, the convoy which was to return to Canada arrived there brilliantly

' Journal of M. de Villiers : II. Olden Time, 213. Sharp's MS. Corresp. The whole French and Indian loss at Fort Necessity is stated here to have been but one cadet and two privates killed and seventeen dangerously wounded.

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equipped, and with a report amply covering all their delinquencies.^

If the reception of the tidings of the compulsory evacua- tion of the Ohio territories by the English gave any satis- faction in France, the feeling was far otherwise in London. Unwelcome enough was this news to a country whose commercial prosperity was so largely identified with the success of its colonial system ; nor were the witticisms of the young Comte d'Estaing (himself destined in time to direct heavy and successful blows against British dominion in America), sufficient to restore the good-humor of the people. "Pardieu, Messieurs," said he to the English courtiers, " ce seroit bien ridicule, de faire casser la tete a dix milles hommes pour quelques douzaines de chapeaux." ^ It was all very well to balance thus satirically the life of a man against the skin of a beaver; but the fur-trade on the Ohio, now lost to the English, was worth, though but in its infancy, no less than £40,000 a-year.^ The privation of such a profit, not less than the manner in which it was lost, was eminently calculated to excite indignation ; and ample details of the whole, forwarded to London by Governor Dinwiddle and others, speedily brought about the inception of those vigorous measures which it is the pro- vince of these pages in part to chronicle. In the month of August, 1754, the surrender of Fort Necessity and the conduct of its commander were freely commented on in the highest political circles. " The French have tied up the hands of an excellent fanfaron, a Major Washington,"

' I. Pouchot, 12. ^ IV. Mahon's Letters of Chesterfield, 146.

"" Penn. Gaz., No. 1344.

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wrote Walpole, "whom they took, and engaged not to serve for a year."^ In several places, the same writer repeats the anecdote of Washington's despatch on this occasion : " 'I have heard the bullets whistle ; and believe me there is something charming in the sound.' On hear- ing of this letter, the King said sensibly, ' He would not say so, if he had been used to hear many.'"^ And the Duke of Cumberland avowed that " rather than lose one foot of ground in America, he would oppose the enemies of his country in that part of the world himself." ^ But the vacillating organization of the Ministry prevented, for a season, any fruit ripening from these warlike blossoms. The recent death of Henry Pelham, the only brother of the Duke of Newcastle, and an excellent cabinet minister, had occasioned a remodelling of that body ; and for some months, so considerable and uncertain were their various alterations, there was nothing but change and inconsis- tency displayed in the conduct of the official and salaried advisers of the Crown. Newcastle, however, with his great fortune and enormous borough-interest, remained always at the head of affairs. Ambitious, but incapable, his combined ignorance and vanity cause him too often to appear in the memoirs of the period rather in the charac- ter of a ridiculous buffoon than that of a politic statesman ; yet even to his understanding the necessity of a prompt movement was evident. Such was his natural imbecility,

' V. Walp. Corresp., 72.

^ I. Walpoie's Memoirs of George II., 346. Walpole to Sir H. Mann, V. Corresp., 71. And consult II. Sparks's Wash., 40. 3 Penn: Gaz., No. 1342.

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however, and his mean jealousy of all men in whom by any chance his imagination could foresee future rivals to himself, that a long and dangerous delay elapsed before anything like form and coherence was given to the pro- posed measures. Previously to considering these proceed- ings, nevertheless, and having now shown, in their natural course, the circumstances which had induced this crisis, it may not be amiss to dwell for a moment upon the position of affairs in those colonies for whose immediate protection so much treasure was to be lavished, so many lives spent. The provinces most directly affected by the presence of the French upon the Ohio were those of Virginia and Pennsylvania. In the former, everything was ripe for war. Though its laws, forbidding the employment of the militia beyond their own confines, had prevented that body being called upon for the occupation of a region whose situation was well believed by many to be without its jurisdiction, this infant state had gallantly volunteered four hundred men for the undertaking, whose ill-success was crowned by the surrender of Fort Necessity. A martial spirit pervaded the land ; and the Governor was a man sagacious in his views and devoted to the interests of his nation.' With

■ Very few colonial governors have obtained the popular verdict in their praise, and certainly Robert Dinwiddie was not one of that scanty number. His disputes with his Assembly in regard to his exaction of fees warranted by law but obsolete in practice, and his difl&culties with Washington, have left an unpleasant impression of his character on the American mind. Yet he was an officer not unworthy of commendation. Remarkable integrity and vigilance in other employments, had procured him the government of Virginia; and the records of the day show very clearly how untiring were his efforts to secure the colony from a foreign foe. A Scot by birth, he perhaps retained too many of the prejudices of that people ; but he was

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the exception of the constant quarrels (incident almost to the very existence of a colony), on the subject of money between him and his Assembly, the people and their rulers were generally united and strong in their views of foreign policy, and, what was of even greater importance, were firmly bound together by the common ties of domestic associations.

The case was not similar in Pennsylvania. Its popula- tion at this period exceeded three hundred thousand souls ; its products, almost exclusively agricultural, were sufficient to employ five hundred vessels, mostly owned in its capital, that annually bore away to other lands provisions sufficient to subsist one hundred thousand men.^ The character of this population was, however, as various as its numbers. In the vicinity of Philadelphia, it is true, the descendants of the original Quaker settlers, with all their purity of morals and all the civilization that could have reasonably been expected to arise from their pacific tenets, still pre- vailed. But farther from the wealthier and more ancient settlements were to be found large establishments of Scotch-Irish and Germans, each strongly preserving the

not without their virtues : and as though in accordance with his armorial device — uhi Ubertas, ihi patria — he liberally aided in the protection and encouragement of knowledge and education, without which liberty so soon degenerates into license. The library of William and Mary College still preserves the evidences of his generosity; and Dinwiddle County, in the State of Virginia, perpetuates the memory of his name.

' I am aware that Mr. James S. Pringle, in a valuable paper read before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in May, 1854, states the population of the province, in 1753, to have been but 250,000. Governor Moms, in March, 1755, computes it at the number above mentioned; though proba- bly even bis calculation was but conjectural. VI. Col. Rec, 336.

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peculiar idiosyncrasies of their national origin. The Germans, in particular, clinging tenaciously together, are even to this day far from being undistinguishably absorbed in the mass of their fellow-citizens ; but then, dwelling as it were aloof from other settlements, they formed a clearly- defined and distinct population. A description of the manner in which one of these settlements was formed may not be devoid of interest.

On Christmas-day, 1709, ten ships set sail from London for New York, freighted with some 4000 Protestant and expatriated Germans, who had been supported in London by the bounty of Queen Anne, and were now sent by that benevolent sovereign to seek new homes in a new world. On their arrival, they were soon dispersed over the whole province, many seating themselves at Schoharie upon lands which belonged to others. Discountenanced in their conduct by Governor Burnet, and embarrassed by the op- position of the lawful owners of the soil, they were finally induced, in 1723, to set forth once more on their wanderings. Like the Israelites of old, their spies had gone down before them and searched out the fatness of the land, and had brought back glowing accounts of the regions on the Swatara creek in Pennsylvania, and the parts adjacent. Cutting wagon- roads then from the Schoharie to the Susquehannah, they transported their effects through the unbroken forest, and in their rude canoes floated down the river to the mouth of Swatara creek ; their herds following along the shore. Thus were founded the Swatara and Tulpehocking settle- ments. This was in the spring of 1723 : it was not until 1732 that Thomas Penn purchased the country compre-

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bending portions of Berks and Lebanon counties from the Indians ; and, in the meanwhile, the settlements had con- tinued to increase, not only against the will of the Pro- prietary, but to the annoyance and indignation of the savages, who beheld their hunting-grounds thus forcibly possessed by strangers.^

Intermingled with the rest at this time were numbers of English churchmen and Irish Catholics, all contributing to swell the mass of conflicting tongues and creeds that al- ready was in itself sufficient to account for a certain degree of absence of mutual sympathy which so long seems to have prevailed among the peoj^le of Pennsylvania. In no manner did the exceeding difference of condition and feelings develope itself more plainly than in their inter- course with the Indians. By all the ties of their faith, as well as through their comparative freedom from the troubles incident on a near neighborhood with the red men, the influential Quakers were, as a general thing, persuaded of the propriety of treating them in the same honorable manner prescribed by the founder of the pro- vince and their own great apostle. With the frontier settlers, the case was otherwise. A hardy race, often of a temper too prone to inflict an injury, and always prompt to resent one, they were constantly, either in individual instances, or as a people, embroiled with their neighbors. Of the most important Indian tribes who were to be found about this period within the limits of Pennsylvania, and whose conduct and views would most materially influence the scattered remnants of other nations that still existed

> Register of Conrad Weiser : Penn. Hist. Soc. Coll., Vol. I., p. 5.

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there, were the Delawares and the Shawanoes. The former had once been a powerful and a warhke tribe ; but before the arrival of William Penn they were subdued by the Six Nations of the north, whose hunting-parties roamed at will, as feudal suzerains of old, through the whole region as far as the Ohio and the Chesapeake bay. They were compelled by their conquerors to put on petticoats, and acknowledge themselves women ; terms so degrading that nothing but the extreme awe inspired by the prowess of the confederates of the lakes could have induced submis- sion to — and they were not permitted in any way to exercise the privileges of an independent people. When, therefore, Penn, after purchasing from the Iroquois the land upon which he proposed establishing the seat of his budding empire, made furthermore a point of buying the same lands from their occupants and ancient masters, he acted towards the Delawares with a politic propriety not less just in the abstract than soothing and grateful to their pride. Henceforth the Delawares and the Quakers were as brothers ; and the Shawanoes, an alien tribe supposed to have found their way thitherward from the everglades of Florida, participated in these sentiments. No land was to be occupied by the whites until it had been granted by the Proprietary; and the hitter's title must rest upon a previous concession from the Indians.

But these halcyon days were not long to endure. As time wore on, and new settlers, impelled by adverse fortune or allured by the fertihty of its soil, migrated to Pennsyl- vania from other shores, the rights of the Indian became more and more disregarded. His lands would be occupied

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by a stranger, destitute of the shadow of a title, the rever- berations of whose gun or the baying of whose hounds would frighten off the game (the ilocks and herds of the savage), into still deeper recesses of the forest ; and his pride would receive a constant shock from the imperious bearing and, oftentimes, the brutal behaviour of the unlicensed and unwelcome guest. The proprietary government, it is true, sometimes endeavored to restrain its subjects within due bounds ; but too frequently it was itself guilty of miscon- duct not less flagrant. It would too often connive at white settlements upon lands belonging to the aborigines; or worse still, engage in some disgraceful, dishonest swindle, by which the savage would be cheated out of his inherit- ance. By these means, it is not wonderful that his dispo- sitions were gradually becoming hostile to the Europeans, and that his ancient confidence in their friendly professions was impaired. When, in 1741, that devoted New England philanthropist, John Sergeant, bore to the Shawanoes on the Susquehannah the tidings of salvation, they rejected with disdain his pious overtures. They had learned to hate the religion whose votaries corrupted their health, cheated them of their substance, and debauched their women.' And when the wiser and more foreseeino^ amons them complained of the outrages they were subjected to by the traders, they met with hut scanty redress. In 1727, the deputies of the Six Nations, who represented as well their own tribes as the subject Delawares, complained to Governor Gordon, at Philadelphia, of the traders who

• Hopkins's Mem. of Housatannuk Inds., p. 90. Thomson's Alienation, &c., p. 56.

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came amoDg them, getting all their skins at trifling prices. " They get so little for them, that they cannot live ; and can scarce procure powder and shot to bring more. That the traders bring very little of these, but instead bring rum, which they sell very dear." They further urged that no more settlements should be made on the Susquehannah above Paxton ; and that no more rum should be sold there to the Indians ; and that none of the traders to the Ohio should be suffered to carry rum. To all which the Gover- nor replied, that in regard to new settlements, as his people increased they must necessarily spread; and as to the traders — " they know it is the custom of all to buy as cheap and to sell as dear as they can, and that every man must be on his guard and make the best bargain he can : the English cheat the Indians, and the Indians cheat the English ; and that they were at perfect liberty to destroy without compensation all the rum that was brought among them, as the provincial laws forbade it being carried thither." ^ Perhaps the governors could not do any more than they did to restrain the excesses of the traders ; but all that they did do was ineffectual ; the abuse continued to operate, undiminished by time.^

' Thomson, p. 13.

^ See the Governor's message in 1744 : " I cannot but be apprehensive that the Indian trade, as it is now carried on, will involve us in some fatal quarrel with the Indians. Our traders, in defiance of the law, carry- spirituous liquors among them, and take the advantage of their inordinate appetite for it to cheat them of their skins and their wampum, which is their money, and often to debauch their wives into the bargain. la it to be wondered at then if, when they recover from their drunken fit, they should take some severe revenges?" — Votes of Penn. Assemhly, Vol. III., p. 555. These traders generally consisted, according to the report of the same legislature, in 1754, of the vilest of their own inhabitants, or of transported convicts from Great Britain and Ireland.

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The result of the infamous Walking Treaty — as shame- less a fraud as ever was perpetrated — had occasioned a great and natural discontent on the part of the unfortu- nates so unjustly and, as all will now concede, so illegally ousted from their homes. The story of this transaction is briefly as follows :

In 1686, as was alleged by the proprietaries and admitted by most of the Indians, Penn had purchased from the Delawares a tract of land comprehended within certain boundaries. The line was to begin at a certain spruce-tree on the river Delaware, above the mouth of Neshamony Creek : thence by a course west-north-west to the Nesha- mony : thence back into the woods as far as a man could walk in a day and a half; thence to the Delaware again, and so down to the place of beginning. No steps were taken to lay out this land until some sixty years afterward, when, upon mature consideration of the subject, it was decided by the proprietary to take formal possession of it. Accordingly, every preparation was made to secure as good a bargain as possible. A road was surveyed for the walk; expeditious means of crossing the intersecting streams were provided ; and the swiftest pedestrians in the province were engaged to accomplish as great a distance as might be com- passed within the time limited. This having been attained, the next point was to run the line to the Delaware ; and here, whatever may be thought of the mode in which the first part of the business had been transacted, a glaring wrong was perpetrated by the government. In the original deed, a blank had been left for the direction which the pro- posed line should take : and as the topography of this

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country could not, in 1686, have been accurately known, this seems not unnatural. But now, by a foul advantage of this omission, it was resolved to run the line, not by the nearest course to the river, which would have been east- south-east, or parallel to that by which they set out, but by a north-east course for a hundred miles and more, till it struck the Delaware near the mouth of Lackawaxen Creek, far above Easton. A fortunate westerly bend in the chan- nel enabled them to effect this, and to cover by their deed at least a million of acres, when, by a fairer computation, three hundred and fifty thousand should have confined their claim. ^

Their best lands, and even their accustomed villages being invaded by this enormous fraud, the Indians on the Delaware evinced a decided inclination not to submit to it. To provide against any evil consequences on this head, a number of deputies from the Six Nations were, in 1742, invited to visit Philadelphia, nominally to transact public business of a mutual importance, but really to persuade them to overawe the Delawares into acquiescence in the chicanery that had been practised upon them. Accord- ingly, after having been conciliated with a few hundred pounds' worth of presents, they were requested to prevail on their cousins the Delawares to remove from the lands in the forks of the river, which, it was pretended, their fathers had sold and been paid for long before. The chiefs of this tribe being assembled in the council-chamber, were then earnestly addressed by the speaker of the Six Nations.

' Thomson, pp. 34 et seq. 70.

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In homely but forcible phrase he reproached them with their misconduct. " They deserved," said he, " to be taken by the hair of their heads and shaken severely, till they recovered their senses and became sober. But how came you," he continued, " to take upon you to sell lands at all ? We conquered you ; we made women of you ; you know you are women, and can no more sell land than women ; nor is it fit you should have the power of selling lands, since you would abuse it. This land that you claim is gone through your guts : you have been furnished with clothes, meat, and drink by the goods paid you for it, and now you want it again, like children as you are ! But what makes you sell lands in the dark ? Did you ever tell us that you had sold this land ? Did toe ever receive any part, even the value of a pipe-shank, from you for it ? * * For all these reasons, we charge you to remove instantly : we don't give you the liberty to think about it. You are women. Take the advice of a wise man, and remove im- mediately. You may return to the other side of Delaware, where you came from ; but we do not know whether, con- sidering how you have demeaned yourselves, you will be permitted to live there, or whether you have not swallowed that land down your throats as well as the land on this side. We therefore assign you two places to go, either to Wyomen or Shamokin. You may go to either of these places, and then we shall have you more under our eye, and shall see how you behave. Don't deliberate, but remove at once, and take this belt of wampum." Having thus satisfactorily closed all debate, the speaker summarily

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ejected "his cousins the Delawares" from the apart- ment/

It was impossible for the Indians to disobey so potent a decree, and they removed as they were bidden. But the acquirement of their fields, so inexpensive at the begin- ning, in the end cost very dear. From that moment, they were ready to listen to the overtures of the French, and to contemplate with no great displeasure the discomfiture of both the Iroquois and the English. For it was not within the bounds of human endurance unmoved to see their wives and little ones starving by their side, and to feel themselves the sharp pangs of poverty and famine, while the whites were feasting on the fatness of their ancient inheritance. It is use- less to tell a rudely-reasoning and famishing barbarian, or, for the matter of that, a sage philosopher in the same condi- tion, as did the deputies of the Six Nations at Philadelphia, that he or his ancestors had long ago sold the millions of acres along the Delaware, which they once occupied ; and had enjoyed the full benefit of the ^ two guns, six stroud-water coats, six blankets, six dufiel watch-coats, and four kettles,' that were said to have been paid to them by William Penn.^ An undisciplined feeling of natural equity, stimulated perhaps by hunger, advised them that such a price, if the story of its ever having been paid at all were true, was a poor compensation for the abandonment of a region abounding at the time in game and yielding ready crops of maize and pumpkins, for their new and dreary homes. Conrad Weiser, that strange compound, to whom Indian

» Thomson, p. 45. ' Ibid, p. 19.

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life and the Indian tongue were perhaps more famihar than EngUsh, gives a piteous account of their condition in the winter of 1737, when he passed from Tulpehocking in Pennsylvania on his way to New York. Scattered through the forests, they would fix their camps near a grove of sugar-maple trees, the juice of which constituted the only magazine of food upon which they could with any certainty rely. Here the children searched along the lowlands and the banks of streams for nuts and esculent roots,' or crowded weeping with their mothers around the traveller, in whose exhausted pouch yet remained a few crumbs of corn-meal. A handful of maize steeped in a pot of ash- lye to make a kind of soup, 'constituted to them a most luxu- rious but unwonted dish. In the meantime, the husbands and fathers of the party, disdaining to rob their families of the miserable pittance which preserved them from death though not from starving, would range for weeks at a time through all the region between the Shamokin and the upper waters of the Susquehannah in fruitless search of game. By day he scouted through the dense spruce- forests, beneath those evergreen boughs which the sun's rays rarely pierced ; every sense painfully on the alert lest the tread of a deer or the distant flight of a mountain grouse should escape his observation ; or lest, by a misstep, he should be cast headlong down some precipitous chasm, or slipping between treacherous logs, be chilled in the icy

' " The turkej-pea has a single stalk, grows to a height of eight or tea inches, and bears a small pod. It is fouod in rich, loose soils; appears among the first plants in the spring, and produces on the root small tubers of the size of a hazel-nut, on which the turkeys feed. The Indians are fond of, and collect them in considerable quantities." — Hunter, 425.

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torrent of the dark, deep-flowing streams. Cold and hungry, he would lie down at nightfall crouched beneath a pile of boughs, the snow drifting the while in fierce wreaths about his sleeping form; and in the morning awake, stiff and cold, to find his fire still burning in the hole, two or three feet deep, that it had melted during the night in the snow. With returning light, the labors of the chase are resumed. In vain he threads the Dia-dachlu or Wandering River (as he named Lycoming Creek) ; its fords at this season waist deep, its current swift and powerful and icy cold ; or the fierce Oscohu, mountain-born, flowing between fringing maples. Carefully avoiding the weird ravine which superstition invested with mysterious horrors as the home of the Otkon, an evil spirit who delighted in blood and was only to be appeased by magical sacrifices, he would shudderingly gaze from the brow of a distant hill at the skulls which, bleaching in the winter's storms, de- clared at once the extent of the demon's power and the place of his abode. Then turning to the north, he pene- trates to the summit of the hill where, according to tradi- tion, pumpkins, corn, and tobacco first grew for the benefit of humanity; but only to find that they grew there no longer. Exhausted and weary, the poor wretch turns his face homewards, and with languid gait — sperans meliora — seeks his camp by the water-side ; diverging perchance on the way to visit the beaver-dam at the confluence of the Towanda and Lycoming Creeks, where once within his own memory many pijDCS of tobacco had been smoked before " his grand-fathers the beavers." Now not a sign of their presence remained. To supply the insatia-

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ble maw of traffic, not only the males of the colony, but even the females, generally so sacred in the eyes of an Indian, had long since yielded up their skins ; and the pool was silent and unbroken. With a sinking heart he invokes the Great Spirit to come to his relief lest he perish, or to give him a reason why he and his people should thus suffer ; and in a vision of the night, " when deep sleep falleth on men, fear comes upon him and trembling which makes all his bones to shake." A spirit passes before his face, and he hears the words of the Manitou, pronouncing the doom of his race. Humbled in soul, but callous through long endurance, he returns empty-handed to his camp, happy if he finds there some benevolent stranger, differing from his color in being a Christian not only in name but in deed, who, as he divides his few remaining ounces of corn-bread with weeping, starving women and children, murmurs within himself blessings on His name "who hath made in His wisdom thistles to grow instead of barley in this land, and the owners thereof to lose their life." ^

' There is not the least exaggeration in this sketch ; every statement in it is literally true. Vide Weiser's Narrative of a journey in 1737, pub- lished in I. Coll. Penn. Hist. Soc., 17. In the revelation referred to, God declared to the Indians : You inquire after the cause ivliy game has become scarce. I will tell you. You kill it for the sake of the skins, which you give for strong liquor, and drown your senses and kill one another, and carry on a dreadful debauchery. Therefore have I driven the wild animals out of the country, for they are mine. If you loill do good and cease from your sins, I will bring them back. If not, I will destroy you from off the earth. Weiser asked if they put faith in this vision. " They answered, yes ; some believed it would happen so : others also believed it, but gave themselves no concern about it. Time will show, said they, what is to happen to us. Rum will kill us, and leave the land clear for the Europeans without strife or purchase."

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IIow changed was the Indian's condition since fifty years before ! Then, save his own domestic broils, he had no enemies to contend with. Game was not slaughtered for the skin only, and food was therefore comparatively abundant. The twanging bow-string then answered all his purposes of destruction; the detonations of musketry had not yet broken the silence of his hunting-grounds and frightened ofi* both bird and beast, and they were therefore easily accessible. Above all, rum, that scourge of the red race, was not familiar to his taste, and he was therefore independent. Cruel he was, and revengeful; and his social condition was marked with all those blemishes w^hich almost prevent our regretting the means hy which he has been destroyed in the reflection of the utter worthlessness of his existence to the rest of the world : but we must not forget that, so far as he was concerned, his lot was only injured by the approach of civilization. Now, he is van- ished ; passed away, with all his atrocious faults and noble virtues, from the memory of the land, like a hideous dream : then, he was its owner, its master, and was happy. The Indian has no original wants that civilization can gratify ; no aspirations that barbarism cannot fulfil. His fields are tilled by the woman with whom he vouchsafes to share his couch ; his lodge is raised upon poles hewed from the nearest forest, and covered with the spoils of the chase ; his most glorious furniture is the scalps that dry in the smoke of his wigwam. His ornaments are arms, his pastime is war ; his highest luxury consists in repletion. What to him are the rich marts of commerce, the narrow streets, the busy hum of crowded cities !

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Coarse are his meals — the fortune of the chase; Amidst the running stream he slakes his thirst; Toils all the day, and at th' approach of night, On the first friendly bank he throws him down, Or rests his head upon a rock till morn : Then rises fresh, pursues his wonted game ; And if, the following day, he chance to find A new repast, or an untasted spring, Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.

A glance, now, at the character and condition of the white settlers of those days, will not be out of place ; and so different were they from the people of this generation, that the sketch may not be uninteresting. The diversity of national origin of the early population of Pennsylvania has already been noticed : there was a still greater differ- ence in their intellectual and moral developments. Set- ting aside the shoals of convicts turned loose upon its borders from the English gaols, there were hundreds of other colonists arriving every year, whose presence, though necessary, perhaps, to the ultimate prosperity of the grow- ing State, could not have been calculated to promote the immediate refinement and elevation of its character. In every colony there must be a class of settlers who shall there serve the same purpose as Linnaeus beautifully attri- butes to the lichens and mosses of the physical world, when he aptly describes them as the bond-slaves of nature : they must form, upon the yet wild and unseated rock, the earliest soil from which, in time, the choicest of Nature's creations shall spring. Individuals must fall, and die, and be forgotten, as the leaves m the forest, their remains commingling with the mother earth, through long and tedious time, ere the solitude and doom of the wil-

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derness shall give place to the temples of luxury and civi- lization. Thus it is ever in this world ; each man, each plant, each insect, living or dying, has a part to play, a place to fill. Change, eternal change, the imperish- able secret of Nature, is the only immutable measure of all her laws.

It is not designed in this place to dwell upon the parti- cular establishments that were from time to time made by English, Scotch-Irish, or Germans, in the various parts of the province ; but a few words respecting their distinctive characters will be of service as tending to show the causes of the conduct and sentiment of the people under peculiar circumstances. In each of these classes were to be found men of education, intelligence, and virtue. The English naturally preponderated in characters of this stamp. The amiable, honest, benevolent followers of Penn, who flocked to the shores of the Delaware as to a haven of refuge, comprehended within their ranks a degree of mental and moral cultivation which would have reflected credit upon any people in the world ; the wealth, too, of the province, and the control of the Assembly, were chiefly in their hands. Other Enghsh, of various denominations, were to be found, not inferior in station or capacity to the disciples of Fox ; and although, at one time or another, the Presbyterians thought themselves neglected, or the churchmen took umbrage at the Quaker rule, yet, on the whole, we may safely conclude that there has rarely been an instance of religious power having been used with so much mildness. Certainly, had the societies of either the Church of Eng- land or the Westminster Assembly been in the position of

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the Quakers, there is no reason to believe they would have acted with a like tolerance to their fellow-citizens, while the poor Indian would have suffered terribly in the ex- change.

The Scotch-Irish, as they were called, were emigrants from the northern part of the sister-kingdom, descendants of the Scottish colonies planted there by Cromwell. They were a hardy, brave, hoi>headed race ; excitable in temper, unrestrainable in passion, invincible in prejudice. Their hand opened as impetuously to a friend as it clenched against an enemy. They loathed the Pope as sincerely as they venerated Calvin or Knox ; and they did not parti- cularly respect the Quakers. If often rude and lawless, it was partly the fault of their position. They hated the Indian, while they despised him ; and it does not seem, in their dealings with this race, as though there were any sentiments of honor or magnanimity in their bosoms that could hold way against the furious tide of passionate, blind resentment. Impatient of restraint, rebellious against any- thing that in their eyes bore the semblance of injustice, we find these men readiest among the ready on the battle- fields of the revolution. If they had faults, a lack of patriotism or of courage was not among the number.

We have already alluded to a lawless settlement of the Germans upon the Susquehannah ; and indeed the pro- vince soon became a chosen harbor for these people, who appear to have migrated from Germany in very much the same sort as they do at this day. The wanderers were generally of the lower orders — peasants, mechanics, or sometimes small farmers or tradesmen. Selling their use-

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less possessions at home, they would embark together in droves for the j^i'omised laud. Many were so poor (and not of the Germans alone, but of all nations emigrating to America), that it was a very customary thing for a pas- senger to sell his or her labor for a term of years to the captain of the vessel as a payment for the passage. These the captain, upon his arrival, would in turn dispose of to inhabitants t)f the province. Thus as slaves, or servants for a fixed period, the unfortunate emigrants wore on their life of toil.

More fortunate were many who had not found a neces- sity of resort to this shift ; but brought with them to the New World, if little pecuniary wealth, at least free limbs. These, adhering together in a foreign land, preserved their language and national characteristics for a surprisingly long period. Phlegmatic, parsimonious, industrious, and honest, their constant care was to accumulate wealth and to avoid disturbance. Being chiefly of the inferior classes at home, the first German settlers were not remarkable for any very elevated notions either in religion or politics ; nor, indeed, is it a matter for surprise, that among all the frontier settlers (to whom, as a class, the remarks which are now being made are generally applicable), a higher value should be set on physical than on mental endow- ments ; on skill in hunting, or the practical arts of daily life, and bravery in war, than on any polite accomplish- ments or taste in the fine arts.

Thus, many of the vulgar superstitions which had at one time held a place in the minds of the highest classes of the Old World, and which were still nourished among

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its peasantry, were transplanted to the wildernesses of America. Here, in the gloomy, silent shadows of a virgin forest, whose solitude was as yet uncheered by the mur- murs of the honey-bee or the pleasant warbling of singing- birds — those invariable attendants upon the axe of the woodsman — the nightly howling of the dog, who bayed at the moon; the shrill, startling whooj) of the owl, from some stridulous bough overhanging his camp-fire and bend- ing to the evening breeze ; the sinister croak of the raven, perched on the hollow oak, were notes of prophetic woe that filled the bosom of the pioneer with dismal fore- bodings/ In dreams, he foresaw the good or ill success of his undertakings; and after the fashion of the ancients, prosperity or misfortune would appear to him in the sem- blance of a female form. Over the low door of the Ger- man's cottasfe one would be sure to find nailed the horse- shoe, fatal to witches; and love-spells and barbarous charms against the dangers of the field were familiar to their lips. Absurd incantations were held in supreme repute as infallible remedies for hemorrhage, toothache, or the fatal battle-stroke ; nor was a belief in witches and ghosts yet banished from the popular faith. The silver bullet, however, was rarely found necessary for the over- throw of a witch. The German who suspected his fire- place of being a resort for such characters, readily expelled them by burning alive a young dog or two therein. Nor did the black cat, that old companion of sorcery, escape

' Ante sinistra cava monuisset ab ilice comix. — Virgil. The reader will call to mind Tully's veneration for the same omen. Non temere est quod corvus cantat mihi nunc ab laeva nianu. — Cic. de Divin. 1.

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unscathed ; but, earless and tailless, wandered through the neighborhood, a monument of the use to which its blood had been put in the treatment of St. Anthony's fire.'

But recently escaped from the galling oppression of their ancestral homes, the German settlers were as little disposed as able to yield a perfect obedience to the minor require- ments of laws of which they neither understood the lan- guage nor comprehended the objects ; and from their own lips we learn how, as of old, when in Israel there was no king, every man did in those days what seemed good in his own eyes.^ And if any reliance is to be placed upon the testimony of competent and intelhgent witnesses, the earliest German colonists evinced, in the hour of necessity, a conduct which shows very clearly how vague was their comprehension of the new duties they had assumed. In 1753, Franklin, writing to Peter Collinson, declared that the Germans in Pennsylvania, being generally the most ignorant of their own countrymen, were perfectly intoxi- cated with the unwonted possession of a political power ; which they exercised, even upon their own preachers, with equal bigotry and tyranny. Keeping apart from the Eng- lish, they preserved with tenacity the usages of their native land. Their conversation was carried on in Ger- man; their children were educated in ignorance of any

' I cite almost the very words of the intelligent and pious Joseph Dod- dridge, D.D. ; a backwoodsman by birth, who lived and died among the people he taught. His Notes of the Settlement, &c., of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania (Wellsburgh, Va., 1824), is one of the most interesting works we have upon the subject, and will be often referred to in this volume.

2 Conrad Weiser, Coll. Penn. Hist. Soc, Vol. I., p. 3. Doddridge, pp. 23, 152, 166, &c.

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other tongue ; their books, their newspapers, their deeds and legal instruments even, were in German.

" The French," continues he, " who watch all advan- tages, are now themselves making a German settlement back of us in the Illinois country, and bj means of these Germans they may in time come to a good understanding with ours ; and, indeed, in the last war the Germans showed a general disposition that seemed to bode us no good. For, when the English, who were not Quakers, alarmed by the danger arising from the defenceless state of our country, entered unanimously into an association, and within this government and the lower counties raised, armed, and disciplined near ten thousand men, the Germans, except a very few in proportion to their number, refused to engage in it ; giving out, one amongst another, and even in print, that if they were quiet the French, should they take the country, would not molest them ; at the same time abusing the Philadelphians for fitting out privateers against the enemy ; and representing the trouble, hazard, and expense of defending the province as a greater inconvenience than any that might be expected from a change of govern- ment." ^

' Sparks's Franklin, Vol. VII., p. 71. In 1755, Franklin energetically addressed the British public in favor of excluding any more Germans from the colonies. " Since detachments of English from Britain sent to America," said he, "will have their places at home so soon supplied, and increase so largely here, why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manners, to the exclusion of ours?" XXV. Gent. Mag., 485. That the intelligent and educated portion of the German population did not clearly comprehend and honestly conform to the requirements of their novel condition, is not insinuated : yet, even in 1754, when Henry Muhlea-

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It is not with any desire to cast unmerited reproach upon the character of any people that these remarks are offered : the investigation has been made purely in a spirit of seeking after historical truth, where the student can never be considered at liberty to disregard the evidences that stare him in the face. But, after all, nothing that has been said is in conflict with the usual course of human nature. Many of the earliest settlers were doubtless in some respects better men than their descendants ; but they were still far from being perfect. They were not less governed by circumstances than human beings usually are: their judgment was as likely to err, or be warped by passion. If the Quakers were sincere, pious, and benevo- lent, it does not follow that they should be willing to consent to what they conceived to be an unfair system of taxation : if the Germans were frugal and industrious, it does not necessarily involve the fact that they should wipe out in a moment from their minds the memory of the distant homes they had just left; or that they should enter, heart and soul, into the merits of a controversy in which they had no previous interest. It was natural enough, then, that they should be indisposed to peril their new-born independence and scanty fortunes in a quarrel between George and Louis; being utterly indifferent whether either succeeded, so long as they themselves might enjoy repose. But when they conceived it neces-

berg and a number of the most influential and respected Germans in the province (men of pure hearts, unblemished lives, and pious souls), addressed themselves to Gov. Morris, loyally pledging their fidelity to the King, they admit that there were " a few ignorant, unmannerly people lately come amongst us," who entertained contrary sentiments. II. Penn. Arch., 201.

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sary to fight, the Germans acted with ample spirit, as was abundantly testified in the war of the Revolution.

But while the masses of the people sought homes in regions yet unsettled, they generally kept the frontier lines considerably before them. Along the borders, however, was to be found a population consisting indifierently of the children of every nation, but uniting here in habits and customs peculiarly their own. Wherever a fertile bottom was spread along the banks of the stream, or a warm, sheltered champaign stretched beneath the covert of a range of hills, the steady, monotonous fall of the woods- man's axe would soon be heard through the long morning hours. Presently a dull crash would echo through the forest, as some monarch of the grove fell prostrate, to rise no more. Ere long, the circle of the sky would begin to expand above the spot, and the sunlight, for the first time during untold ages, bathe the earth beneath in a continuous flood of warmth and brightness. A deadening once made, a few acres of rustling corn would raise their heads and reveal their golden treasures to the autumnal wind ; while all around, mute mourners at the scene, tall, ghostly trees, the springs of whose life had been destroyed by the girdling axe, exalted their phantom forms and stretched sadly forth their skeleton arms.^ Vainly they yearned for the nymph,

' A deadening, in the rustic patois of Pennsylvania, signifies the effect produced on the trees by girdling, or cutting a ring about their trunks. The bark being thus completely severed, the sap ceases to communicate, and the tree loses all its foliage and soon dies. A clearing, according to the same authority, denotes a spot where the forest is cut down, and nothing but the stumps remain. The ghastly aspect of the former process would doubtless render it objectionable to the eyes of a landscape gardener ; but

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the tutelary divinity of their shade. Still deeper in the forest gloom, by some distant spring or lonely mountain tarn, the homeless Dryad bewailed the leafy shrine which she should see no more.

During the dull, dark days of early winter or approach- ing spring, the smoke of the consuming dead trees mounted slowly on the air and lost itself in the cold grey above. But when summer returned, the settler would find perhaps a score of like clearings going on around him ; and as many evening fire-sides welcomed the return of autumn. It did not take long to build a house in those days. Logs were felled and hewed of the proper length, and arranged with friendly aid into the frame-work of a one-roomed log-cabin. A roof of puncheons, rudely shaped with the broad-axe, was placed upon it, and an outside chimney of stone and sticks, filled in with clay, adorned one end of the edifice. The interstices between the logs were then plastered up with mud and moss : a door, and an aperture for a window added, and, if the building were a luxurious one, a pun- cheon floor : and the house was done. A block or two served for stools ; a broad slab of timber for a table ; a rude frame-work for a couch. Here in one chamber would sleep all the family — men, women, and children, married or single, young or old : here was their kitchen ; here did they eat. In some more elegant establishments, a double-cabin, or even a loft, was to be found. A few wooden bowls and

none such were probably to be found in the backwoods ; and the facility with which a tract could thus be prepared for agricultural purposes, was no small inducement to the settler. A good woodsman will soon deaden a number of acres, which by the next seed-time will be ready for cultivation.

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trenchers, some S2)oons carved from a horn, a calabash and an iron pot, with two or three forks and knives, completed the simple furniture. China, or even ordinary delf-ware, was unknown in those times ; a few pack-horses in their annual journey were the only means of communication with the sea-board. For food, the chief reliance was upon the product of the chase, the corn, pumpkins, and potatoes which were cultivated upon the little farm, and the invar riable dish of pork. No settler was without his drove of swine ; and " hog and hommony " is still a proverbial ex- pression for western fare. Their cows yielded them milk ; and corn-meal, either ground by hand or pounded in a wooden mortar, furnished their only bread. In times of scarcity, such as were of too frequent occurrence, when the granary was exhausted, the children were comforted with lean venison under the name of bread, till a new harvest should come around.

Nor was their costume less primitive than their diet. Petticoats and dresses of linsey-woolsey (a cloth, home- woven, of wool and flax) filled the wardrobe of the country maiden, innocent, save on state occasions, of super- fluous shoes and stockings ; while the men were clad in a coarse linsey or buckskin hunting-shirt, with breeches, leg- gins, and moccasins. Their cattle were of too much value living, to be slaughtered either for their flesh or their skins, and the hide of the wild deer, tanned by their own hands, was compelled to supply the place of leather. Hardy as they were, however, the first settlers suffered greatly from the inclemencies of the weather; against which neither their clothing nor their dwellings afforded a

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sufficient protection. The seasons were then far more severe than, even in the same country, they are at present. The summers were shorter, and more damp and cold ; the win- ters earlier, and more stern. Rheumatic affections, and the usual train of disorders consequent upon exposure, were common afflictions ; and doubtless owing to the ex- treme ignorance which prevailed in matters of medical sci- ence, there were very many lives needlessly sacrificed from a want of proper treatment.

But, after their own fashion, they were a happy race, these backwoodsmen. Reckless of future danger, uncon- scious of prospective woe, they lived very much in the present. Full of animal spirits, the blood coursing through their veins under spur of the excitement of a constant peril, that at bed or at board, at seed-time and in the harvest-field, was ever by their side, they embarked eagerly in every homely sport or rustic revelry. The most unar- tificial frolic was partaken of with a zest that would astonish the tranquil tastes of one bred among more civi- lized scenes. Athletic games — wrestling, running, or shoot- ing at a mark — were the friendly arenas wherein each strove to bear away an honorable fame. The boys were taught to throw the tomahawk with unerring aim ; to imi- tate the cries of the creatures of the forest with a fidehty that would deceive the most practised ear, or to properly wield a rifle. Other education they rarely had; for no school-house, for many long years to come, was destined to raise its low roof among them ; no church, no clergyman taught them to think of higher aims. Sunday came, indeed, a day of rest for the weary, but a day of mirth and

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amusement to the young and gay ; nor was it, with all, distinguished in even this extent from the other days of the week. Yet it must not be supposed that it found the people plunged in dishonorable vice or excessive immo- rality. On the contrary, they were perhaps less so than the inhabitants of many Christian cities. Profane they undoubtedly were; in their most ordinary conversation, " they clothed themselves with curses as with a garment," and, in the gust of passion, were careless of the destruction of limb or life. But lying and cheating were abhorred among them, and a coward was the scorn of the commu- nity. Their sons were brave and their daughters were virtuous. The loss of female chastity was a calamity that involved dishonor ; and instances of its violation or seduc- tion were of rare occurrence, and usually swiftly and bloodily revenged. Seldom was it for other cause than a family feud that a youthful couple found any impedi- ment in the path to matrimony; and such dissensions were not likely to endure in a neighborhood bound toge- ther in a common danger. Indeed, the gaiety it produced was frequently a sufficient inducement for a young man, able to support her, to take unto himself a wife. Then the whole country-side would assemble at the bride's dwelling, and, with copious libations of whiskey, in which the happy pair set them the example, exhaust the night in merriment and sport. To the scraping of an old violin, four-handed reels or Virginia jigs would endure till morn- ing dawned or the performer's strength failed him. As evening wore on, the blushing fair, with her lover by her side, would clamber up the ladder which led from the

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lower chamber, filled with a boisterous crowd, to the loft above, where the nuptial couch was spread; and at a later hour, a substantial meal of pork, cabbage, and whiskey would be served up to them in their privacy. Preposterous as all this appears at this day, it was then the custom of the country, and as such, honored in the observance.

The most important feature of a new settlement, was, however, its Fort. This was simply a place of resort for the people when the Indians were expected, and consisted of a range of contiguous log cabins, protected by a stockade and perhaps a blockhouse or two. It was chiefly in the summer and fall that the approach of the savage was to be dreaded ; and at this season families in exposed positions were compelled to leave their farms and remove with their furniture to the fort. Parties of armed men would sally out by day, and in turn cultivate each plantation, with scouts at a distance to warn them of the presence of the foe. Every precaution that the swarthy warrior himself could adopt was resorted to by his no less wily antagonist. The earth beneath, the bushes around, the skies above, were carefully interrogated ; and a broken twig, the impress of a moccasined foot upon the dewy sod, or a distant column of smoke faintly ascending to the heavens, were infallible " Indian signs " to the uneasy husband or father. Then women and children would be quickly brought within shelter ; cattle and furniture placed in safety, and a few of the most adventurous spirits thrown out to observe or interrupt the progress of the suspected danger. But let the panic once spread, and the alarm of a general Indian onslaught along the frontiers get headway, and in

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a moment plantations and settlements were abandoned. The popular terror, like wildfire, communicating to every quarter, would crowd the inland towns with anxious, care- worn faces, and leave to the torch of the invader the scenes of their late prosperity. But occasions such as these, were, fortunately, not frequent; and when the snows of winter had begun to fall, and the improvident savage could no longer find sustenance in the fields tilled by his wife's hoe, he was conceived to have occupation enough in the quest of game and in endeavoring to avoid starvation ; and all fear of an attack faded away. Then the settler, ensconced once more in his own cottage, would linger over the fire during the long winter evenings, framing articulate sounds in the wild wailings of the northern blast, that piled up the deep snow-drift against his wooden walls, or striving to decypher the phantasmagoria which played among the lingering embers. Perchance the fierce bowl- ings of a distant wolf would call his thoughts to his own fold ; and floundering through the snow, he would sally forth into the darkness to assure himself that his treasured herds were in safety. Shaking the white masses from his burly form, he would soon resume his station by the ample hearth, and

In social scenes of gay delight Beguile the dreary winter night.

Some simple story of the chase, or a yet more thrilling tale of personal adventure, would arise. With open ears and busy hands the little family would gather around or within the roaring chimney ; one boy mending the lock of

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a gun, another adjusting the barb of an arrow or the spring of a trap, and sighing for the day when he too might bear a riflg and be acknowledged a man —

When young and old in circle

Around the firebrands close; When the girls are weaving baskets And the lads are shaping bows :

the sire would, for the hundredth time perhaps, narrate to unwearied ears some ancient fable of far beyond sea : of knights and giants, and beauteous ladies ravished from their bowers ; or, with innumerable variations of incident, recite his valiant deeds who conquered Cormoran. Then, from some half-lit corner, where the flickering flame from the hearth (their only light), shaped monstrous, grotesque shadows on the irregular log-walls, the sound of female voices would rise ; and to the monotonous accompaniment of the unceasing shuttle, would be sung in low, subdued tones a ballad of " bold Robin Hood that merrye outlawe j" whose deeds furnished to these people the staple of their poetry. Little skill or art was necessary to please a willing ear :

They chant their artless notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim :

and the cruelties of Barbara Allen, or the plaintive strains of ' Willow, willow, willow,' were enough to excite every emotion that these rough breasts could feel. Such ballads were naively enough, but not unaptly, styled ' love-songs about murder.' *

' Doddridge, from whom the above sketch is faithfully drawn, gives a singular description of the garb which the young men sometimes assumed

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Such as has been described is a fair picture of the domestic scenery of the various portions of the land in the middle of the last century. On the one hand were the Anglo-Americans, eagerly pushing forward their borders, careless of the lowering brows or half-uttered threats of the Indians; on the other were savage tribes who had little love for the French, it is true, but whose dispositions were ripe for trouble with the English. So deeply rooted, indeed, was the lurking disaffection towards their ancient allies, that so early as 1744, the Iroquois had warned the Governor of Pennsylvania that in the event of another French war the Delawares and Shawanoes would inevita- bly be found in the ranks of the enemy. The latter had in fact for many years previously spared no pains to bring the Shawanoes into their interest.^

Nevertheless, the presence of the French upon the Ohio was exceedingly unwelcome to all the Indian nations. The Iroquois, as well as the Delawares and Shawanoes, made some overtures, in 1753, of removing by force of arms the party under M. de Contrecoeur, after two separate messages had been vainly sent to persuade him to withdraw : and a

in times of Indian excitement. It consisted simply of a pair of moccasins, leggins that reached to the thigh, and a breech-cloth twisted through a belt so as to suifer a skirt some eight or nine inches broad to fall down before and behind. The body, embarrassed by perhaps as scanty clothing as has been worn since the days of Adam, wa^ thus perfectly free for action. " The young warrior," continues the worthy divine, " instead of being abashed by this nudity, was proud of his Indian-like dress. In some few instances, I have seen them go into places of public worship in this dress. Their appearance, however, did not add much to the devotion of the young ladies."

' Votes of Penn. Assembly, Vol. III., p. 555. Thomson, pp. 55, 25.

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deputation was despatched to Virginia and Pennsylvania to desire the countenance of those provinces in the antici- pated troubles and to put matters on a right footing between all parties. At Carlisle they met the provincial commis- sioners, whom they urgently pressed to call back the whites already settled on the western side of the Alleghanies, where as yet the Indians had sold not a foot of land.^ And though nothing came of this temper, which, if properly managed, might have been used to immense advantage by the English, yet it serves to show how powerfully old pre- dilections and national traditions conspired to make these people still disposed to friendship with the English and hatred to the French. But, as has been well observed, the Indian is to a certain extent a venal character. The nature of his existence had by this time compelled him to look to the whites for powder and ball ; for rum and tobacco; for blankets and vermilion. The simple weapons of other days were no longer sufficient to enable him to pur- sue successfully his prey. Unless he would starve, he must resort to the store-houses of the trader; and once there, soft words and flattering gifts would be very apt to bring his will into the control of the donor. The lustre of the benefaction last received seldom fails to obscure all that preceded it ; and like a child with a new toy, he loses all appreciation of former favors in the contemplation of his present enjoyment. In this manner the French worked upon the savages who visited them at Fort Du Quesne. The needy warrior, who went empty-handed, would return

' Thomson, p. 73.

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to his companions gratified with a new blanket, gun and ammunition, and flaunting in the unwonted attire of a laced coat and hat and a shirt streaming with ribbons. Then he would contrast the generosity of the French with the niggardliness of the English ; and the event would be that his fellows would all hasten to participate in the pre- cious harvest that awaited them.^ The Canadian govern- ment certainly dealt with an open hand ; in this respect possessing an immense advantage over its rivals, whose bounty, diluted through a dozen provinces, could never be brought to bear on a given point with the same efficacy that attended the operations of one centralized power.

What finally tended perhaps more than anything else to alienate the Indians of Western Pennsylvania from the people of that province was the injudicious conduct of the proprietary commissioners at the Congress of Albany, where, on the 19th of June, 1754, all the English colonies were

' The two Ohio journals of Post exhibit very strongly this feature of Indian character. In the one, just such a scene as is above described was enacted; poor Post himself being compelled to bear the odium of his em- ployer's meanness. But by and bj' the tide changed ; the stock at the fort perhaps ran low, and the bribes of the English told powerfully on the savages; and Post made a second journey to endeavor to detach them from the service of the enemy. Then he found the tables turned; nor could even the presence of the French captain restrain the expressions of con- tempt with which the chieftains spoke of him. " He has boasted much of his fighting," said they ; " now let us see his fighting. We have often ventured our lives for him, and had scarcely a loaf of bread when we came to him, and now he thinks we should jump to serve him." It must not be forgotten that it was to the presents and kind words of the Quakers, who first set on foot these negotiations, that the merit of prevailing upon the Indians to leave unopposed General Forbes's route to Fort Du Quesne, and the consequent fall of that important post, are justly due.

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actually or constructively represented/ and where the Six Nations were present to join in the deliberations concerning their common interests. In their warrant for convening this Congress, it is gratifying to observe how clearly some of the causes of Indian discontent were comprehended by the Lords of Trade; and how alive they were to the critical condition of the English interest. Smooth words and liberal gifts are recommended as a cure for past sor- rows; and it was most imperatively urged that the allegations of fraudulent occupation of their land should be promptly and satisfactorily investigated. Liberal gifts, too, were sent from the Crown to buy the good-will of its dangerous allies.^ On this occasion the Six Nations (claiming, it will be recollected, to be the absolute proprietors of the country in question, as well as protectors of their weaker nephews, the Delawares), made a forcible reply to the reproach by the Commissioners that the French had been permitted to build forts on the Ohio. Old Hendrick, that doughty Mohawk warrior (who the next year sealed with his life his devotion to the English by the pleasant waters of Horicon), answered that the conduct of the French had received no favor at their hands : " The Governor of Virginia and the Governor of Canada," said he, " are both

' Commissioners from all the New England colonies, from New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and Maryland, were in attendance ; and Vir- ginia and Carolina desired to be considered as present. II. Doc. Hist. N. Y., 330.

^ VI. Col. Rec, 14. And see the proceedings of this conference, as preserved in the Johnson MSS., and published under the care of Dr. O'Callaghan in the second volume of the Documentary History of New York, p. 325.

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quarrelling about lands which belong to us : and such a quarrel as this may end in our destruction. They fight who shall have the land. The Governors of Virginia and Pennsylvania have made paths through our country to trade and build houses, without acquainting us with it. They should first have asked our consent to build there, as was done when Oswego was built." ^

This statement of the old Mohawk, like many other Indian speeches, was true but in part ; and the commis- sioners, in turn, while they confessed that they ever had, and still acknowledged, the Ohio country to belong to the red men, reminded them that for thirty years traders from Pennsylvania had, without interruption, been in the custom of visiting the tribes dwelling there. All that was now intended, it was said, was to protect them in the free en- joyment of their own property, and to drive away the intruding Frenchman. By these speeches, and a judicious distribution of gifts, their savage ire was so far subdued, that ere the council closed some of the Six Nations were actually prevailed upon to sell to the proprietaries of Penn- sylvania all the land in controversy ! This fatal purchase, comprehending about 7,000,000 acres, was bounded on the north by a line to be drawn north-west by west from Sha- mokin, on the Susquehannah, to Lake Erie ; on the east, by the Susquehannah ; on the south and west, by the fur- thest limits of the province. It included not only the hunting-grounds of the Delawares, the Nanticokes, the Tuteloes, and other lesser tribes, but the very villages of the Shawanoes and Delawares, of the Ohio ; who could not yet ' II. Doc. Hist. N. Y., p. 338.

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have forgotten that, by precisely similar means, they had been driven hither from their former homes -, and they now were to anticipate nothing less than the same fate. It is possible that there might have existed, in some age or country, a race base enough to submit to these degrading conditions ; but no sane man could have anticipated such a tame surrender from the American savage. The tribes actually dwelling there were not consulted in the business. They had no deputies at the council to join in the sale ; and the whole transaction was smuggled through in an unjust, underhanded manner. The chiefs of the Iro- quois who conducted it were not authorized to act for their people in the premises ; and, when it came to light, the negotiation was solemnly repudiated hj the Grand Council of Onondaga.^ All their discontents thus fanned into a flame, the Ohio Indians honorably determined to fight to the last in defence of their liberties; and in revenging this last and crowning outrage, to wipe away the well-remembered wrongs, real and fancied, which had rankled in their bosoms for years. For their own protec- tion, the tribes on the Susquehannah formed a league, which was strengthened by daily accessions of straggling families, scattered, as chance or fancy dictated, along the brook-sides or under the edge of some forest-glade of that umbrose, scaturiginous land. At the head of this federacy was placed Tadeuskund, a Delaware chieftain, well known in border history ; who, after dallying a space with either party, finally yielded to the pressure of the times, and

' Thomson, 77.

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joined with his race in the warfare against the English.^ What share the Iroquois had in bringing about this con- juncture, can never, it is probable, be with certainty known. Zeisberger, in Ettwein's narrative, it is true, openly charges the Six Nations with having secretly placed the hatchet in the hands of the Delawares, bidding them to strike ; and afterwards turning treacherously against them for this very conduct.^ But perhaps a just version of the affair would be to suppose that individual warriors of the Six Nations, acting on their own impulses (which in many instances were abundantly hostile to the English), egged on the Ohio Indians and the rest to a step which was never recommended by the confederates in their national capa- city. Subsequently, the Iroquois reluctantly, but vigor- ously, entered into the measures of Sir William Johnson, and were of great service in the ensuing contest.

As ill-blood in the human system first discovers itself in

' Thomson, 84. Heckewelder's Hist. Account of Indian Nations, 301. The latter author would lead us to suppose that the Wyoming chief never actually took up arms ; but Thomson, who knew him well, is explicit on this point; and in the political tract called the Plaindealer, No. III. (Phil., 1764), p. 14, is an undeniable instance of his prowess against the settlers of Northampton County. A memoir of Tadeuskund, the last sagamore of the Lenape, who remained east of the Alleghanies, whose consequence was so great as to win him the title of the " King of the Delawares," is given in Heckewelder, ut sup. He was burned in his lodge, in the spring of 1763. In the language of Uncas, that grandest of Cooper's portraitures, " he lingered to die by the rivers of his nation, whose streams fell into the sea. His eyes were on the rising, not on the setting sun."

^ I. Bull. Hist. Soc. Penn., No. 3. The Rev. John Ettwein was a Mo- ravian missionary for many years among the savages. He died a bishop of that church, at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1802, in the 73d year of his age. Rev. David Zeisberger was a devout brother of the same order, who went hand and soul with Heckewelder in his heroic labors.

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eruptions and disorders, the malignity and unfriendly dis- positions of the border tribes soon began to be manifested in preparations for war, in casual rencontres, and other sporadic acts of violence. Then, indeed, the proprietary government, having unavailingly sought, with insufficient means, to appease the ire of the foes whom hitherto it had looked on almost as subjects, vainly having tempted them to

Unthread the rude eye of rebellion,

And welcome home again discarded Faith,

undertook, as to a court of last resort, to bring the delin- quents before the tribunal of their lords, the Six Nations. These, entering warmly into the merits of the case, peremp- torily charged the Delawares to forthwith repent, while yet there was time ; to lay aside their arms, and make their peace for past offences : " Get sober," said they, in the metaphorical manner of Indian speech ; " your actions have been those of a drunken man." But the palmy days of yore were gone, when the trembling Delaware stood cowering, like a whipped hound, before the frown of an Iroquois, and quaked to his inmost soul at the awful voice of the undying fire. A blind, unhesitating submission to the imperious, unreasonable mandates of the tribes that had so long oppressed and insulted his nation, was no longer written on his heart. He had resolved to throw off the petticoat, and to again assume the proud rank of a warrior of the once dreaded Lenni Lenape — ' a son of the Great Unamis' — among the children of the forest;' and

' The true title of the gallant tribe whom we call the Delawares was Lenni Lenape — "original people" — for they claimed to be of the pure,

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to the words of the Iroquois, he returned scoff for scoff and scorn for scorn. '• We are men," said the tribes on the Susquehannah to the deputies who had borne them the injurious behests of the Six Nations ; " we are men and warriors. We will acknowledge no superiors upon earth. We are men, and are determined to be no longer ruled over by you as women. We are warriors, and are deter- mined to cut off all the English save those that make their escape from us in ships. So say no more to us on that head, lest we make women of you as you have done of us." ' Their day of serfdom had gone by ; and from that time forth, the Delawares were once more an independent nation. Nothing could now be done with them by threats ; but it was soon discovered that long habits of association still preserved their effect ; and the friendly influence of the Six Nations being led to bear on them by Sir William Johnson, the best beloved of all the white men, they were eventually brought into measures of peace. To follow this theme further, would be to transcend the proper limits of our narrative. Suffice it to observe here, that many of the Iroquois themselves joined heart and hand in the ori- ginal designs of the Delawares, and would never consent to come into the national views of their own people.

unmixed race, with which the earth was first populated, and would proudJy boast, " We are the grandfathers of nations." The river whose banks was their chosen seat they named the Lenapewihittiick, or, " the rapid stream of the Lenape." And when the English renominated it in honor of Lord De la Warre, the people, with whose name its own was previously wedded, were still continued in the same connection. Heckewelder gives a most interesting account of the history of the Lenape. ' Thomson, 87.

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Even while the Six Nations were openly at war with the French, many of their warriors were in arms at Fort Du Quesne against the English, and using all their influence to bring other Indians into the same views. When the Delawares began to waver in the hasty course they had adopted, we find these men using every argument to hold them firm; and it is curious to observe with what con- temptuous indifierence the lately subservient, " petticoated" Delaware had already begun to treat "their uncles the Iroquois." When Post brought overtures to Logstown, near Fort Du Quesne, the Delawares received him kindly ; but one of the Iroquois who were there, an old Onondaga warrior, bitterly resented his presence. " I don't know this Swannock (or Englishman)," said he; "it may be that you know him. I, and the Shawanoes, and our fathers the French do not know him. I stand here," (stamping his foot), " as a man on his own ground. Therefore I, and the Shawanoes, and our fathers, don't like that a Swan- nock come on our ground." This allusion to the ancient claim of soverereignty by the Six Nations was too much for Delaware patience to endure, and one of them instantly rose and replied : " That man speaks not as a man : he endeavors to frighten us by saying that this is hi^ ground. He dreams. He and his father have certainly drank too much liquor : they are drunk. Pray let them go to sleep till they are sober. You don't know what your own nation (the Iroquois), do at home; how much they have to say to the Swannochs. You are quite rotten : you stink, {i. e. Your sentiments are offensive.) You do nothing but

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smoke your pipe here. Go to sleep with your father, and when you are sober we will speak to you." ^

Nevertheless, if they slew the English, it was not for love of the French. Equally jealous of both parties, all the savage desired Avas to see his old hunting-grounds unpolluted by the armies of the stranger, untrodden save by its native denizens; and so that this object was attained, the defeat of either or both would not seriously discompose him: to him, the success of either was a matter of as Httle imjwrtance — que le chien mange le loup ou que le loup mange le chien. With accurate perception, he gloomily dwelt on the idea that the permanent occupa- tion of his lands was the real object of their controversy, and he bitterly vowed this should never be.^

But alas for the poor savage ! Driven before the ever- onward surge of civilization, that may recede for a moment, but only to return with a mightier force, his shattered tribes — prostrated by the inherent defects in their own character and debilitated by Christian vices, their naturally ferocious tempers sharpened by the use of rum, the presence of poverty, and the memory of better days — have continued and shall continue to retire more and more westwardly, till already the scanty remnants of the people whose fathers are buried by the broad waters

' Thomson, p. 142. ^ ~

^ " D — n you," said Shamokin Daniel, a Delaware warrior on the Ohio, to the English, "why don't you and the French fight on the sea? You come here only to cheat the poor Indians and take their lands from them !" There was more of truth than of elegance in this pithy address, but it was echoed by his fellows : " The French say they are come only to defend us and our lands from the English, and the English say the same thing about the French; but the land is ours and not theirs." Thomson, 152.

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of the Delaware, who daily gazed upon the Atlantic waves freshening in the light of the morning ; now linger out a precarious life on the distant prairie whose face is wasted, as with fire, by the caravan of the emigrant ; and pitch their lodges on declivities whose waters flow down into another ocean. Already with prophetic ear they hearken to the chafings of those billows which are the limit of an existence that has held a continent in its span : already they foresee the day when the wild cry of the sea-fowl, circling over the faint, murmuring waves of the ultimate Pacific, shall drown the parting sigh of the last of the Lenni Lenape !

Such then was the condition and disposition of Indian sentiment in Pennsylvania previous to and during the earlier stages of the war. We have seen how readily, in the summer of 1754, Major Washington had obtained the services of a large body of savages against the French : and we may judge from this fact alone how practicable it would have been to have enlisted them on the same side during the whole contest. It was impossible for a fight to come off at their very doors without their taking a share in it, on one side or another; and £10,000 well and libe- rally expended in presents at Fort Cumberland, with a fair-dealing or at least a plausible exposition of the designs of the English concerning their lands, would have' bound all the Pennsylvania Indians in a common interest. Had such a consummation been effected, the scalp of every Frenchman on the Ohio would have been smoke-dried in the wigwams of Shamokin, or festooning the hoop-poles of Shenango, years before the British ensign was fated to be

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displayed upon the ramparts of Fort Du Quesne. But a different policy was unfortunately pursued, as will pre- sently have to be noticed ; and the bloody trophies which by hundreds graced the horrid triumph of the savage, were torn from the bodies of the English. In the meantime, let us resume the thread of our story.

When, in August, 1754, the tidings of the fall of Fort Necessity reached London, the exigencies of the case com- pelled the ministry to an energetic action. The affairs of the American colonies were at that time committed to the care of the Secretary of State for the Southern Province, assisted by the Board of Trade.^ Since the days of Sir Robert Walpole, this Board had lingered out a supine, sinecure existence. The Secretary during all this period was the Duke of Newcastle, who, like the Old Man of the Sea in the Arabian tale, clinging about the neck of power with a tenacity that effectually prevented any policy but such as his own jealousy of merit or time-serving selfishness dictated, had hitherto carefully suppressed any indication of a desire on the part of his colleagues or subordinates to deserve the public approbation by the exercise of a capa- city to promote the public good. The records of the Board of Trade were crowded with packages of remonstrances from the colonies, its tables were covered with bundles of unread representations and unnoticed memorials. It seems indeed to have existed for no other object than, in the language of Mr. Pitt, to register the edicts of one too powerful subject. Of the nature of American affairs, of the requirements and circumstances of the provinces he

' I. Walpole's Memoirs of George II., 343.

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misruled with absolute sway, of their very geography he was ludicrously ignorant.' In the language of the great critic and satirist of the day, he was the strangest pheno- menon that ever appeared in the political world. "A statesman without capacity, or the smallest tincture of human learning; a secretary who could not write; a financier who did not understand the multiplication-table ; and the treasurer of a vast empire who never could balance accounts with his own butler." It is not surprising, then, that such a character should neglect or blunder through his duties, careless of the result so. long as his own im- portance at court was not diminished. But fortunately for

' When General Ligonier hinted some defence to him for Annapolis, he replied with his evasive, lisping hum — " Annapolis, Annapolis ! Oh ! yes, Annapolis must be defended; to be sure, Annapolis should be defended— where is Annapolis?" (I. Walpole's Geo. II., 344). ''He was generally laughed at," says Smollett, " as an ape in politics, whose ofl5ce and influence served only to render his folly the more notorious." At the beginning of the war, he was once thrown into a vast fright by a story that 30,000 French had marched from Acadia to Cape Breton, " Where did they find transports ?" was asked. " Transports I" cried he ; "I tell you they marched by land." "By land to the island of Cape Breton !" " What, is Cape Breton an island ? Are you sure of that ?" And away he posted, with an " Egad ! I will go directly, and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island !" The weaknesses of this man afi"orded an endless theme to the sarcasm of Smollett's muse. In another place, his manner of farewell to a general departing for America is exquisitely satired ; " Pray, when does your Excellency sail ? For God's sake have a care of your health, and eat stewed prunes on the passage — next to your own pre- cious health, pray, your Excellency, take care of the Five Nations — our good friends, the Five Nations — the Toryrories, the Maccolmacks, the Out- of-the-ways, the Crickets, and the Kickshaws. Let 'em have plenty of blankets, and stinkibus, and wampum ; and your Excellency won't fail to scour the kettle, and boil the chain, and bury the tree, and plant the hat- chet; ha !" In Bubb Dodington's Diary (181-4), will be found other instances of the Duke's silliness.

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Britain as well as America, the presidency of the B :ai'd of Trade was filled at this juncture by the Earl of Halifax, a man of parts and ambition, who was neither dis230sed to slumber on his post, nor to omit any opportunity of strength- ening his own official power by enlarging the scope of his duties. We may fairly attribute to his energy the adoption in the cabinet of a resolution no longer tamely to submit to encroachments that, unless speedily checked, would inevit- ably turn all the channel of Indian trade from our borders, and immuring the colonies between the sea-board and the mountains, leave them to wither and perish, as a pool turned aside from its parent stream and enclosed with embankments, dries up beneath the rays of the sun.

Nevertheless, in the first steps taken by the ministry on this matter, Halifax was not consulted. The King had already held two councils upon American afiairs, and instructions had been sent out to the provincial governors to repel any French encroachments force by force.^ This policy had been decided uj^on ; it was known how inglo- riously its first practical workings under Washington had failed. Fired with the consciousness that vigorous mea- sures to regain the ground thus lost must immediately ensue, Newcastle resolved to arrogate the entire merit and patronage of the plan to himself. Like the Athenian

' "It is His Majesty's command, that in case the subjects of any foreign prince should presume to make any encroachments in the limits of His Majesty's dominions, or to erect forts on his Majesty's lands, or to commit any other act of hostility ; and should, upon a requisition made to them to desist from such proceedings, persist in them, they should draw forth the armed force of their provinces, and use their best endeavors to repel force by force." I. Entick, 111.

■^. ^'.li^lWl

106

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weaver, he would fain retain for his own glorification every part in which there was the least opportunity of gaining distinction, however incompetent he might be to fulfil it. Summoning to his secret counsels the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke and the Earl of Holdernesse, he endeavored in vain to fructify a conception which might subserve at once the public good and his private gain.

But natural incapacity, joined with talents which, though great, were transplanted for the occasion to an alien soil, could effect nothing. To organize military measures, military men must be consulted ; to act with advantage in the colonies, some little knowledge of colonial affairs was required ; and the Duke of Cumberland, the head of the army, and the Earl of Halifax, the best authority on plan- tation questions, were both studiously excluded from the deliberations of the triumvirate. Independent of any other reason of jealousy, it was evident that, in such an undertaking, the properest persons to direct its appoint- ments were Cumberland and Halifax ; and this was enough to alarm the Duke of Newcastle. His policy was to cook up, from the information of obscurer men, some scheme in which himself should shine the magnus Apollo, the dis- penser of favor, and the sole original of reward. He first, therefore, summoned to his aid a Mr. Horatio Gates, a young English officer, who had recently served with repu- tation in America; and desired his advice.' Gates modestly

' Horatio Gates, afterwards so distinguished in American history, is said to have been the son of a respectable victualler in Kensington, and the godson of Horace Walpole. This latter circumstance may account for Walpole's knowledge of the details of the interview with Newcastle, which he certaieiydid not arrive at through the minister. Gates was born in

arc- sec:

:tM,.

ii-i.

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107

■ . '.. an

:ie tiist,

avowed his youth and inexperience ; pleaded that he had seen nothing of America save the parts of Nova Scotia in which his regiment had been quartered, and his consequent incompetence to devise such an important operation. He professed his willingness to answer any questions that might be put to him ; but he was too astute to be led into the enunciation of any grand system, the burthen of which he well knew would, in case of failure, break down his own shoulders, while all the praise of success would accrue to his superiors. In short, he utterly declined acting as he was desired. The trio next fell upon a Quaker gentle- man, a Mr. Hanbury, whose connections were such that he happened to know a little about America, though no- thing, probably, of warfare; and at his suggestion, Virginia was selected as the basis of operations, and it was deter- mined to entrust the whole conduct of the business to Horatio Sharpe, Lord Baltimore's Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland. Though Sharpe was a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Army,^ he had never been engaged. But when the

1728. Soon after his return to England from Nova Scotia, he must have gone back to America ; since we find him in command of the King's New- York Independent Company under Braddock. It is believed these com- panies were formed of the regiments disbanded in 1748-9. Those sta- tioned in Carolina were the remains of Oglethorpe's old regiment (Penn. Gaz., No. 1338); and it may be noticed here that while a part of his for- mer command was thus posted in his vicinity, others followed Oglethorpe to his new colony, and became founders of the State of Georgia. The Independents do not seem to have had any field-oflBcers ; consequently, promotion must soon have lifted Gates from this sphere, since we find him, in 1759, acting as aide, with the rank of major, to Hopson, or his succes- sor, Barrington, at the reduction of Martinico. In July, 1760, he was brigade-major, under Monckton, at Fort Pitt. (III. Shippen MSS., 392.) • This grade (which, however, was local, and confined to the West Indies) Sharpe received July 5th, 1751. He held it so late as 177S.

I

106 INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

weaver, he would fain retain for his own glorification every part in which there was the least opportunity of gaining distinction, however incompetent he might be to fulfil it. Summoning to his secret counsels the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke and the Earl of Holdernesse, he endeavored in vain to fructify a conception which might subserve at once the public good and his private gain.

But natural incapacity, joined with talents which, though great, were transplanted for the occasion to an alien soil, could effect nothing. To organize military measures, military men must be consulted ; to act with advantage in the colonies, some little knowledge of colonial affairs was required ; and the Duke of Cumberland, the head of the army, and the Earl of Halifax, the best authority on plan- tation questions, were both studiously excluded from the deliberations of the triumvirate. Independent of any other reason of jealousy, it was evident that, in such an undertaking, the properest persons to direct its appoint- ments were Cumberland and Halifax ; and this was enough to alarm the Duke of Newcastle. His policy was to cook up, from the information of obscurer men, some scheme in which himself should shine the magnus Apollo, the dis- penser of favor, and the sole original of reward. He first, therefore, summoned to his aid a Mr. Horatio Gates, a young English officer, who had recently served with repu- tation in America; and desired his advice.' Gates modestly

' Horatio Gates, afterwards so distinguished in American history, is said to have been the son of a respectable victualler in Kensington, and the godson of Horace Walpole. This latter circumstance may account for Walpole's knowledge of the details of the interview with Newcastle, which he certai»iy"did not arrive at through the minister. Gates was born in

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avowed his youth and inexperience ; pleaded that he had seen nothing of America save the parts of Nova Scotia in which his regiment had been quartered, and his consequent incompetence to devise such an important operation. He professed his willingness to answer any questions that might be put to him ; but he was too astute to be led into the enunciation of any grand system, the burthen of which he well knew would, in case of failure, break down his own shoulders, while all the praise of success would accrue to his superiors. In short, he utterly declined acting as he was desired. The trio next fell upon a Quaker gentle- man, a Mr. Hanbury, whose connections were such that he happened to know a little about America, though no- thing, probably, of warfare ; and at his suggestion, Virginia was selected as the basis of operations, and it was deter- mined to entrust the whole conduct of the business to Horatio Sharpe, Lord Baltimore's Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland. Though Sharpe was a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Army,^ he had never been engaged. But when the

1728. Soon after his return to England from Nova Scotia, he must have gone back to America ; since we find him in command of the King's New York Independent Company under Braddock. It is believed these com- panies were formed of the regiments disbanded in 1748-9. Those sta- tioned in Carolina were the remains of Oglethorpe's old regiment (Penn. Gaz., No. 1338) ; and it may be noticed here that while a part of his for- mer command was thus posted in his vicinity, others followed Oglethorpe to his new colony, and became founders of the State of Georgia. The Independents do not seem to have had any field-oflBcers ; consequently, promotion must soon have lifted Gates from this sphere, since we find him, in 1759, acting as aide, with the rank of major, to Hopson, or his succes- sor, Barrington, at the reduction of Martinico. In July, 1760, he was brigade-major, under Monckton, at Fort Pitt. (III. Shippen MSS., 392.) ' This grade (which, however, was local, and confined to the West Indies) Sharpe received July 5th, 1754. He held it so late as 177S.

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contrivers of his promotion laid their plan before the king, it was accompanied with a declaration that he had served through the whole of the last war, and was well known to possess the good opinion of the Duke of Cumberland : " So good," replied the latter, "that if Sharpe had been con- sulted, I am sure he would have refused." In the mean while, however, his appointment was forwarded to him by the hands of Governor Arthur Dobbs, of North Carolina.^ His instructions would seem to have contemplated nothing beyond the capture of Fort Du Quesne by a provincial force, although there was an intimation of a considerable body of regulars being shortly sent over from Great Bri- tain. Proceeding at once to Williamsburg, he concerted with Dinwiddie and Dobbs his measures to effect the de- sired end. It was concluded to raise immediately 700 men, with whom, and the three Independent companies, the French fort should be attacked and reduced, ere rein- forcements could be brought thither from Canada or Louis- iana. This effected, that post and another which he thought it would be necessary to erect on a small island in the river, were to be held for the king. To garrison these and the fort at Will's Creek would require all his forces, and he concluded it would be useless for them to attempt anything further against the enemy on Le Boeuf and Lake Erie " without they be supported by such a body of troops from home as he dared not presume to hope for the direc- tion of." But his enlistments went on slowly; and at

' The governor, with bis son, Captain Dobbs, had arrived at Hampton Koads, Oct. 1, 1754, in the Garland, after a stormy trip, in which the ship lost her main and mizzen-masts. They brought with them, also, £10,000 in specie for Virginia.

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Will's Creek, where his men were to rendezvous, he learned that the French strength on the Ohio was much increased by the arrival of a number of Ottawa^, Adirondacks, and Caughnawaga Indians; and he therefore abandoned all hope of striking an immediate blow.

As had been intimated to Sharpe, more effectual means were on the tapis; but he was not destined to control them. The most that his su^Dporters could urge to the king in his favor was, that if not remarkably able, he was at least a very honest man. "A little less honesty," shrewdly replied the monarch, " and a little more ability, might, upon the present occasion, better serve our turn." It was decided to make, forthwith, a general movement ; and for once Newcastle was compelled to yield to the coun- sels of abler men. At all events, it is certain that Cum- berland's influence was eventually paramount in the forma- tion of the scheme finally adopted.' Kather with a view, we may believe, to conciliate by a show of confidence, than to obtain the benefit of his advice, Newcastle sought to com- municate the details of his plans to Mr. Pitt ; but the dis- appointed statesman gave him a curt interruption : " Your Grace, I suppose, knows," said he, " that I have no capa- city for these things ; and therefore I do not desire to be informed about them."

While all these intrigues were going on, the aml^assadors of the two powers— the Due de Mirepoix and the Earl of

' I. Walp. Geo. II., 347. MS. Sharpe's Corresp. VI. Col. Rec, 405, 177. Though Sharpe's views in regard to the campaign seem to have been very sagacious, yet it appears clearly, from this correspondence, that it was to his and Dinwiddle's suggestions that the royal order settling the com- parative rank of provincial and regular officers was attributable — a step fraught with dangerous consequences to the best interests of the crown

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Albemarle, two very fine gentlemen, but sadlj deficient in the qualifications necessary for the place and the moment — were frittering away their time in idle negotiations and empty professions of pacific intentions. Neither kingdom set the least practical store by these assurances, but busily went on arming for the steps, they respectively purposed taking. Strong reinforcements were prepared in France for its American possessions, with instructions to hold, a la mam forte, all they had hitherto acquired ; while, on the other hand, the English ministry ordered their governors to thrust out every intruder they found u^Don their back- lands, at whatever cost. Some anxiety was also mani- fested to enlist the services of the Indians; who had, as was well known in London, relaxed in their friendship. From Virginia, Dinwiddle had written, in August, 1754, to the other colonies for aid in men and money to defend their common cause; while to England he had applied for ordnance. This last demand was gratified by a present of two thousand stand of arms and accoutrements. In- deed, it was upon Virginia that the hopes of the crown chiefly reposed ; for Pennsylvania politics, as will presently be shown, were not such as to inspire much confidence in the military capacity of that wealthy province.

While the eloquent Whitfield, and other religious lec- turers at Philadelphia, availed themselves of the presence of the enemy on tlieir frontiers to lend an additional fervor to their exhortations/ the Cabinet of London were pre- paring more effective fulminations against the French. The Duke of Cumberland (who, whatever may have been his other demerits, was certainly possessed of a military capar ' Penn. Gaz., No. 1341.

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city) had been now called into the councils of the King ; and, under his moulding hand, the preparations for an expedition whose destination was, as yet, kept secret from the public, began to assume some form and coherency. It was soon known, however, that two regiments of the line were designed for Virginia — the colony to which public attention had chiefly been attracted. Nothing was, as yet, said of their ulterior movements ; and it was a perfectly reasonable thing for Great Britain to station so small a force in her plantations — a force which, according to Ho- race Walpole, was too insignificant to be of any service if the French intended to stand firm, but far too large to be exposed to the certain destruction of health and constitu- tion of an American climate.* For the charges of this expedition, Parliament, on the 28th of November, 1754, voted the following sums : ^

For two regiments of foot to be

raised for North America; . . £40,350 15s. For defraying the charges of the

officers appointed to go with the

forces commanded by General

Braddock; £7338 2s. M.

For defraying the charges of the

officers appointed to attend the

hospital for the expedition com- manded by General Braddock ; £1779 Is. &d.

£49,468 55.

• Letter to Sir H. Mann, Oct. 6, 1754. III. Walp. Corresp. (ed, Lond., 1840) 70. ^ Univ. Mag., 1755.

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Of the jjersonal history of the gentleman to whom the command in Virginia had thus been entrusted, little or nothing more than what is contained in the public records of the period has, with unwearied care and research, been discovered to reward the student's curiosity. Before his name had become immortal in the scanty annals of the defeat and disgrace of British arms, Braddock had not done anything to earn himself a place in the chronicles of the times. Even the writers of memoirs, those gleaners in the fields of history, had not stooped to bind up such a poppy blossom in their sheaves : no " snapper up of unconsidered trifles" had sketched his biography. And so great, so horrible was tjie inignoscible disaster that crowned his existence, that only in vouchsafing him a sol- dier's death does it fall short of tragic perfection. Then, when the minds of men were exasperate with the thrill of national dishonor, for the first and last time does Braddock's name appear staining with its shameful cha- racters the pages of history. Yet even the most bitter of those who sate in judgment on him, allow him certain merits. " Desperate in his fortune, brutal in his behavior, obstinate in his sentiments," says Walpole, " he was still intrepid and capable." Though a man of wit, his associa- tions had probably not been such as to give him any place in the memorials of the literary characters of the day previous to his campaign in America ; and perhaps for the very reason, that merely as an officer of the Guards and the eleve of the Duke of Cumberland, he was well known to a certain portion of the court and city, and totally unknown to the rest of the world, his conduct finds no place in the

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social history of the period. Though a professed man of pleasure, it is not likely that the aristocratic doors of Boodle's or White's were opened to an Irish adventurer ; yet even there he would hardly have come in contact with many of " the mob of gentlemen who write with ease." The few noble hterati of the time— the Walpoles, the Selwyns, and the Herveys — do not seem to have had much personal acquaintance with him. It was at some place of lower resort that he pursued Fortune and staked his little means at gleek, passage, or the E 0 table. Still, even such were not the accustomed haunts of the garreteers of Grub- street or the habitues of the King's Coffee-House.* Thus, whether

Obliged by hunger — or request of friends —

the chronicler took his pen in hand, he was not often apt to find food for his meditations in the behavior of Brad- dock. It is in a letter of Mr. Shirley, his military secre- tary, written in all the confidence of friendship to Governor Morris, that the strongest picture of his charac- ter is to be found. Shirley was evidently, like all of his race, a man of ability and of ambition, and it was upon the observations of several months that his remarks were grounded. "We have a General," he says, "most judi- ciously chosen for being disqualified for the service he is in, in almost every respect. He may be brave, for aught I know, and he is honest in pecuniary matters." Benjamin Franklin, that sagacious and keen observer of human nature, sums up in a few words his opinion of Braddock's

' A place in Covent Garden Market, well known to houseless bards. 8

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capacity. " This General was, I think, a brave man, and might probably have made a figure as a good officer in some European war. But he had too much self-confidence, too high an opinion of the validity of regtilar trooj)s, too mean a one of both Americans and Indians."^ Not dis- similar to this view is that of the English historian Entick, who, besides being a contemporary of Braddock, seems to have had access to very good sources of information in the preparation of his volumes. " It has also been hinted," says he, " that much of the disappointment in this expedi- tion was owing to the General himself, in point of conduct. The plan was laid, and his instructions settled in such a manner, as to put him always on his guard against ambus- cades, which were to be expected in a march through woods, deserts, and morasses. But this gentleman, placing all his success upon the single point of courage and disci- pline, behaved in that haughty, positive, and reserved way, that he soon disgusted the people over whom he was to command. His soldiers could not relish his severity in matters of discipline : and, not considering the nature of an American battle, he showed such contempt towards the Provincial forces, because they could not go through their exercise with the same dexterity and ability as a regiment of Guards in Hyde Park, that he drew upon himself their general resentment." ^

From the confused and imperfect data that are obtain- able at this day, it would seem that Braddock was an

'I. Sparks's Franklin, 160. VI. Col. Rec, 404. And Franklin's notion is followed by Lord Mahon. (IV. Hist. Eng., 69.) « I. Entick, 143.

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officer well versed in military science and tactics according to the system that then prevailed ; a rigid martinet, utterly unforgiving to a neglect of duty ; and a brave, unflinching soldier. It was never said during his life that he ever bade his men follow danger where he was not greedy to lead the way ; and it will be seen in the course of these pages that he was as prompt himself to face perils and to encounter hardships as to exact a like readiness from those under his control. In short, his military character was precisely calculated to meet the approbation of the raiser of such a creature as the brutal Hawley ; and, indeed, there were very many points of resemblance between these favorites : in the rebellion of 1745, the latter had even commanded the identical troops which Braddock now led. But Hawley proved himself in the field a braggart and a poltroon, and if his defeat at the rout of Falkirk was not as fatal in its consequences as that of the Monongahela, it was infinitely more ignominious to the general who with bloody rowels led a shameful flight. Braddock, whatever his defects, was too much of an Irishman ever to show the white feather. In private life, he was what would now be termed disso- lute ; he was prone to the debaucheries of his day and class, the bottle and the gaming-table ; he was imperious, arrogant, and self-opinionated. But if dimmed by the vices of his profession, his character was also brightened by many of its virtues.

When or where Edward Braddock was bom, there is no

means of ascertaining. Dr. Goldsmith, with a poet's

license, speaks of his family as one of the best in the

kingdom,' and it is said to have been of Irish extraction ;

' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, (ed. Prior, Lend. 1837), 294.

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but even this is doubtful.' The name is certainly of Saxon, rather than Celtic or Erse, origin; and so, indeed^ is it asserted, in a sort of monody, apparently by a friend, pub- lished immediately after his death, in which its derivation is said to be from two Saxon words, signifying Broad Oak.^ It is possible his father or grandfather may have been one of those English adherents of William of Orange, who found, in Irish confiscated estates, the reward of their Pro- testant zeal ; and this would, in a measure, account for the favor which some of the members of this family seem to have encountered at the hands of the House of Hanover. All that can now be discovered in this regard, however, is that, during the past century, with the exception of the father of the hero of this volume and his immediate pos- terity, there were none of the name who rose into public notice ; and before and after that period, it is un- known in British history.^ His father, who was also named Edward Braddock, must have been born about the middle of the seventeenth century, since we find him a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards at least as early as 1684. In 1690, he was their senior captain; on the 1st

' The name, certainly, does not seem to appear at all in the Rotuli Hi- berniae, published by the Record Commission.

^ Vide Appendix, No. V. The words Broad and Oak are of direct Saxon derivation.

^ There was a Sergeant Braddock in General Forbes's army in 1758, and the name occasionally occurs among the lists of London bankrupts and traders that adorn the columns of Sylvanus Urban. But at present the Post-Office Directory shows that there is not one of that name resident in the 'royal city.' A highly respectable family in New Jersey, however, still bear, as I am told, the name of Braddock ; and it likewise occurs in the Philadelphia and Pittsburg directories.

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of October, 1702, he got his majority; and on the 10th of January, 1704, was appointed their lieutenant-colonel. He was gazetted a brigadier on the 1st of January, 1707, and a major-general on the 1st of January, 1709. In Sep- tember, 1715, he retired from the service, and died at Bath, on the 15th of June, 1725.'

This "honest, brave old gentleman, who had experi- enced some undeserved hardships in life," is buried there, in the Abbey Church of St. Peter and St Paul.^ The old general must have been in at least comfortable circum- stances, since he left to his two daughters the sum of £6000 : to his only son, in all probability, a much larger amount descended. This son was the Edward Braddock with whom we have now to do. In the Appendix to this volume will be found the full particulars of the unhappy flite of one of the daughters, Fanny Braddock, who com- mitted suicide at Bath on the 8th of September, 1731. Her sister, also unmarried, had died some years before. Mistress Fanny Braddock — as the fashion of the day styled all unmarried women — was a lady singularly gifted with attractions of person and of mind, and was, by her sister's death, in 1728-9, in possession of a competent for- tune. But, yielding to an undisciplined impulse, she sacri- ficed the latter to relieve the necessities of the man whom she loved ; and the former speedily lost their lustre in the eyes of the gay throng whose esteem she coveted. With-

' Gent. Mag. 1707-10. 11. MacKinnon's Hist. cTldstreams; 453, 454, 464. III. Goldsmith's Misc. Works (Prior's ed., Lond. 1837), 291.

' I. Gent. Mag. (1731), 397. This seems to have been the fashionable place of sepulture for strangers : the reader will recollect Sir Lucius and his " I 'm told there is very snug lying in the Abbey."

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out a stain upon her honor, she at length sank into a con- dition of despair, and at the gaming-tables — then the fre- quent resort of ladies of fashion in England, as now on the continent — she soon dissipated away the scanty remains of her patrimony. Wearied of life, unable longer to endure the painful contrast of her position as governess in the family of a respectable tradesman with the brilliant place she lately occupied, she resolved on self-destruction. During the long night-watches in her lonely chamber, her mind reverted to his infamy who had broken her heart and squandered her fortune. To drive away these mournful reveries, she took down a book and essayed to read. The volume was the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto; and she opened it at that passage of the ninth canto where Olympia mourns the perfidy that had shut every avenue of hope from her soul :

per lui toltomi il regno,

Per lui quel pochi beni, che restati

M'eran del viver mio soli sostegno

Per trarlo di prigione ho dissipati;

Ne mi resta ora, in che piu far disegno,

Se non d'andarmi io stessa in mano a, porre

Di si crudel nimico, e lui disciorre.

The fatal similarity of fortune weighed upon her mind and confirmed her in her unhappy resolve. With a firm step and unwavering will, she passed through the portals of the house of life, and in a moment more, was beyond the reach of human sympathy or human censure.

Nothing could increase the feelings of disgust with which the conduct of Edward Braddock, on this sad occasion, must inspire the reader. That, through her levities or his

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own misconduct, his affections should have been long since alienated from his sister, seems natural enough ; but there must have been an inborn, consummate brutality, to guide the tongue which could frame no other expression of sor- row than "Poor Fanny! I always thought she would play till she would be forced to tuck herself up !" ^ No sensibihty could exist in his heart who could, for the sake of a scurvy pun, jest upon the manner of a sister's death, and say that she had adopted this plan * to tie herself up from cards /' ^ Surely on this occasion Walpole was justi- fied in terming Braddock " a very Iroquois in disposition !"

' III. Walp. Corresp., 142. Walpole tells us, that before making away with herself, she wrote, with her diamond, these lines (from Garth's Dis- pensary, Canto III.) upon her window-pane *.

To die is landing on some silent shore,

Where billows never break, nor tempests roar:

Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.

The wise, through thought, th' insults of Death defy;

The fools, through blest insensibility.

'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;

Sought by the wretch, and vanquished by the brave.

It eases lovers, sets the captive free;

And, though a tyrant, offers liberty.

The truth is, that, speaking twenty years after the event, the great letter- writer was led away by a similarity of sentiment and expression. The actual inscription was this :

0, death ! thou pleasing end to human woe ! Thou cure for life ! thou greatest good below ! Still mayst thou fly the coward and the slave, And thy soft slumbers only bless the brave.

See I. Hone's Every-Day Book, p. 1279.

' XXXII. Gent. Mag., 542. To tie one's self up from plai/, was a cant phrase for incurring some obligation which should act as a restraint upon

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There is another anecdote which does not any more tend to give one a very elevated conception of his character. It seems that his virtues, such as they were, had won the favor of a certain Mrs. Upton, on whose infamous wages he was not ashamed to live. By constant applications, he had kept this poor fool's exchequer so dry, that one day she frankly answered a demand for money by pulling out her purse with but twelve or fourteen shillings in it. With the keen eye of an experienced forager, Braddock saw cause to suspect this was not all its contents. " Let me see that !" he cried, and snatched it from her hand. In the other end he found five guineas. Coolly emptying all the money into his pocket, he tossed the empty purse into his mistress's lap. " Did you mean to cheat me ?" cried he ; and he turned his back upon the house to see her no more.' This shabby transaction was a subject of town- talk in the coffee-houses and lobbies of the day ; and was cleverly seized by Fielding and brought upon the Drury Lane boards in 1732, in a witty but licentious play, called the Covent-Garden Tragedy. Captain Bilkum (by whom, it is said, Braddock was meant) is made to thus deny the consolations of " the humming bowl :" ^

Oh ! 'tis not in the power of punch to ease My grief-stung soul, since Hecatissa's false j Since she could hide a poor half-guinea from me! Oh! had I searched her pockets ere I rose, I had not left a single shilling in them !

gambling. Thus, there was an instance of the Duke of Bolton receiving a hundred guineas from Beau Nash on a contract to repay £10,000 if he should ever lose as much at one sitting ; and the duke actually soon found occasion, at Newmarket, to comply with his bargain. (III. Goldsmith's - Misc. Works., 281.) . ' III. Walp. Corrcsp., 142. ' A. I. sc 6.

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If, indeed, the immortal satirist designed the wliole of his character of Bilkum as a paraphrase of Braddock's, he could have held him but in the light of one of those hired ruffians whose office it is to awe into silence the poor cully whom their partners have robbed. This is going infinitely too far : an occasional solitary instance, such as has been cited, may have stained his reputation, but it was not a specimen of his general character. There were many better things in him than that : and perhaps it is pressing closely the limits of moderation to say that he kept his flight so near the ground that he could have stooped to such a scene of self-degradation. His faults were evidently con- sidered by men of worth rather as foibles than vices : his intimacies were with persons of character and honor; and in many respects he was w^orthy of their confidence, though his excesses must often have lost it. It was thus that he became embroiled with Colonel Gumley, an old comrade and friend, whose sister was married to Pulteney, Earl of Bath ; and a duel was the result. As they met on the ground, Gumley, knowing very well the state of his oppo- nent's finances, coolly tossed him his purse. " Braddock," said he, " you are a poor dog ! Here, take my purse : if you kill me, you will have to run away; and then you will not have a shilling to support you." His infuriated adversary was galled to madness by this new provocation ; he lost all command of his temper, and quickly saw his sword fly from his hand ; but he was still too proud to ask his life at the victor's hand.^ Another duel between Brad- dock and Colonel Waller is recorded, fought wdth sword

' III. Walp. Corresp., 142.

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and pistol in Hyde Park, on the 26 th of May, 1718 : but of its cause or consequences nothing can be traced/

As may be judged from the date of his first commission, Edward Braddock must have been born towards the close of the seventeenth century. On the 11th of October, 1710, he entered the army with the rank of Ensign in the grena- dier company of the Coldstream Guards ; and on the 1st of August, 1716, was appointed a lieutenant.^ In the columns of the Gentleman's Magazine his steps may be traced as follows: — On the 30th