Montcalm and Wolfe: The Riveting Story of the Heroes of the French & Indian War (33 page)

1
Proclamation of Governor Shirley,
1755.

2
Second Letter to a Friend on the Battle of Lake George
.

3
Papers of Colonel Israel Williams
.

4
Massachusetts Archives
.

5
Jonathan Caswell to John Caswell,
6
July,
1755.

1
Minutes of Council of War,
22
Aug
. 1755.
Ephraim Williams to Benjamin Dwight,
22
Aug
. 1755.

1
Vaudreuil au Ministre,
25
Sept
. 1755.

2
Livre d’Ordres, Août, Sept
. 1755.

1
Dieskau à Vaudreuil,
1
Sept
. 1755.

2
I passed this way three weeks ago. There are some points where the scene is not much changed since Dieskau saw it.

3
Mémoire sur l’Affaire du
8
Septembre
.

1
Wraxall to Lieutenant-Governor Delancey,
10
Sept
. 1755. Wraxall was Johnson’s aide-de-camp and secretary. The
Second Letter to a Friend
says twenty-one hundred whites and two hundred or three hundred Indians. Blodget, who was also on the spot, sets the whites at two thousand.

2
Letter to the Governors of the several Colonies,
9
Sept
. 1755.

1
Seth Pomeroy to his Wife,
10
Sept
. 1755.

2
Dr. Perez Marsh to William Williams,
25
Sept
. 1755.

1
Dialogue entre le Maréchal de Saxe et le Baron de Dieskau aux Champs Élysées
. This paper is in the Archives de la Guerre, and was evidently written or inspired by Dieskau himself. In spite of its fanciful form, it is a sober statement of the events of the campaign. There is a translation of it in
N.Y. Col. Docs
., X. 340.

2
See the story as told by Dieskau to the celebrated Diderot, at Paris, in 1760.
Mémoires de Diderot,
I. 402 (1830). Compare
N.Y. Col. Docs
., X. 343.

1
Dr. Perez Marsh to William Williams,
25
Sept
. 1755.

2
Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing at the Battle of Lake George
.

1
Doreil au Ministre,
20
Oct.
1755. Surgeon Williams gives the English loss as two hundred and sixteen killed, and ninety-six wounded. Pomeroy thinks that the French lost four or five hundred. Johnson places their loss at four hundred.

2
Shirley to Johnson,
19
Sept
. 1755.
Ibid
., 24
Sept
. 1755.
Johnson to Shirley,
22
Sept
. 1755.
Johnson to Phipps,
10
Oct.
1755 (Massachusetts Archives).

1
Reports of Council of War,
11-21
Oct
. 1755.

2
Review of Military Operations in North America, in a Letter to a Nobleman
(ascribed to William Livingston).
On the Battle of Lake George a mass of papers will be found in the
N.Y. Col. Docs
., Vols. VI. and X. Those in Vol. VI., taken chiefly from the archives of New York, consist of official and private letters, reports, etc., on the English side. Those in Vol. X. are drawn chiefly from the archives of the French War Department, and include the correspondence of Dieskau and his adjutant Montreuil. I have examined most of them in the original. Besides these I have obtained from the Archives de la Marine and other sources a number of important additional papers, which have never been printed, including Vaudreuil’s reports to the Minister of War, and his strictures on Dieskau, whom he accuses of disobeying orders by dividing his force; also the translation of an English journal of the campaign found in the pocket of a captured officer, and a long account of the battle sent by Bigot to the Minister of Marine, 4 Oct. 1755.
I owe to the kindness of Theodore Pomeroy, Esq., a copy of the Journal of Lieutenant-Colonel Seth Pomeroy, whose letters also are full of interest; as are those of Surgeon Williams, from the collection of William L. Stone, Esq. The papers of Colonel Israel Williams, in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, contain many other curious letters relating to the campaign, extracts from some of which are given in the text. One of the most curious records of the battle is
A Prospective-Plan of the Battle near Lake George, with an Explanation thereof, containing a full, though short, History of that important Affair, by Samuel Blodget, occasionally at the Camp when the Battle was fought
. It is an engraving, printed at Boston soon after the fight, of which it gives a clear idea. Four years after, Blodget opened a shop in Boston, where, as appears by his advertisements in the newspapers, he sold “English Goods, also English Hatts, etc.” The engraving is reproduced in the
Documentary History of New York,
IV., and elsewhere. The
Explanation thereof
is only to be found complete in the original. This, as well as the anonymous
Second Letter to a Friend,
also printed at Boston in 1755, is excellent for the information it gives as to the condition of the ground where the conflict took place, and the position of the combatants. The unpublished Archives of Massachusetts; the correspondence of Sir William Johnson; the
Review of Military Operations in North America
; Dwight,
Travels in New England and New York,
III.; and Hoyt,
Antiquarian Researches on Indian Wars,
—should also be mentioned. Dwight and Hoyt drew their information from aged survivors of the battle. I have repeatedly examined the localities.
In the odd effusion of the colonial muse called
Tilden’s Poems, chiefly to Animate and Rouse the Soldiers, printed
1756, is a piece styled
The Christian Hero, or New England’s Triumph,
beginning with the invocation,—

“O Heaven, indulge my feeble Muse,
Teach her what numbers for to choose!”

and containing the following stanza:—

“Their Dieskau we from them detain,
While Canada aloud complains
And counts the numbers of their slain
And makes a dire complaint;
The Indians to their demon gods;
And with the French there’s little odds,
While images receive their nods,
Invoking rotten saints.”

X

1755, 1756

S
HIRLEY.
B
ORDER
W
AR

The Niagara Campaign · Albany · March to Oswego · Difficulties · The Expedition abandoned · Shirley and Johnson · Results of the Campaign · The Scourge of the Border · Trials of Washington · Misery of the Settlers · Horror of their Situation · Philadelphia and the Quakers · Disputes with the Penns · Democracy and Feudalism · Pennsylvanian Population · Appeals from the Frontier · Quarrel of Governor and Assembly · Help refused · Desperation of the Borderers · Fire and Slaughter · The Assembly alarmed · They pass a mock Militia Law · They are forced to yield

The capture of Niagara was to finish the work of the summer. This alone would have gained for England the control of the valley of the Ohio, and made Braddock’s expedition superfluous. One marvels at the short-sightedness, the dissensions, the apathy which had left this key of the interior so long in the hands of France without an effort to wrest it from her. To master Niagara would be to cut the communications of Canada with the whole system of French forts and settlements in the West, and leave them to perish like limbs of a girdled tree.

Major-General Shirley, in the flush of his new martial honors, was to try his prentice hand at the work. The lawyer-soldier could plan a campaign boldly and well. It remained to see how he would do his part towards executing it. In July he arrived at Albany, the starting-point of his own expedition as well as that of Johnson. This little Dutch city was an outpost of civilization. The Hudson, descending from the northern wilderness, connected it with the lakes and streams that formed the thoroughfare to Canada; while the Mohawk, flowing from the west, was a liquid pathway to the forest homes of the Five Nations. Before the war was over, a little girl, Anne MacVicar, daughter of a Highland officer, was left at Albany by her father, and spent several years there in the house of Mrs. Schuyler, aunt of General Schuyler of the Revolution. Long after, married and middle-aged, she wrote down her recollections of the place,—the fort on the hill behind; the great street, grassy and broad, that descended thence to the river, with market, guard-house, town-hall, and two churches in the middle, and rows of quaint Dutch-built houses on both sides, each detached from its neighbors, each with its well, garden, and green, and its great overshadowing tree. Before every house was a capacious porch, with seats where the people gathered in the summer twilight; old men at one door, matrons at another, young men and girls mingling at a third; while the cows with their tinkling bells came from the common at the end of the town, each stopping to be milked at the door of its owner; and children, porringer in hand, sat on the steps, watching the process and waiting their evening meal.

Such was the quiet picture painted on the memory of Anne MacVicar, and reproduced by the pen of Mrs. Anne Grant.
¹
The patriarchal, semi-rural town had other aspects, not so pleasing. The men were mainly engaged in the fur-trade, sometimes legally with the Five Nations, and sometimes illegally with the Indians of Canada,—an occupation which by no means tends to soften the character. The Albany Dutch traders were a rude, hard race, loving money, and not always scrupulous as to the means of getting it. Coming events, too, were soon to have their effect on this secluded community. Regiments, red and blue, trumpets, drums, banners, artillery trains, and all the din of war transformed its peaceful streets, and brought some attaint to domestic morals hitherto commendable; for during the next five years Albany was to be the principal base of military operations on the continent.

Shirley had left the place, and was now on his way up the Mohawk. His force, much smaller than at first intended, consisted of the New Jersey regiment, which mustered five hundred men, known as the Jersey Blues, and of the fiftieth and fifty-first regiments, called respectively Shirley’s and Pepperell’s. These, though paid by the King and counted as regulars, were in fact raw provincials, just raised in the colonies, and wearing their gay uniforms with an awkward, unaccustomed air. How they gloried in them may be gathered from a letter of Sergeant James Gray, of Pepperell’s, to his brother John: “I have two Holland shirts, found me by the King, and two pair of shoes and two pair of worsted stockings; a good silver-laced hat (the lace I could sell for four dollars); and my clothes is as fine scarlet broadcloth as ever you did see. A sergeant here in the King’s regiment is counted as good as an ensign with you; and one day in every week we must have our hair or wigs powdered.”
²
Most of these gorgeous warriors were already on their way to Oswego, their first destination.

Shirley followed, embarking at the Dutch village of Schenectady, and ascending the Mohawk with about two hundred of the so-called regulars in bateaux. They passed Fort Johnson, the two villages of the Mohawks, and the Palatine settlement of German Flats; left behind the last trace of civilized man, rowed sixty miles through a wilderness, and reached the Great Carrying Place, which divided the waters that flow to the Hudson from those that flow to Lake Ontario. Here now stands the city which the classic zeal of its founders has adorned with the name of Rome. Then all was swamp and forest, traversed by a track that led to Wood Creek,—which is not to be confounded with the Wood Creek of Lake Champlain. Thither the bateaux were dragged on sledges and launched on the dark and tortuous stream, which, fed by a decoction of forest leaves that oozed from the marshy shores, crept in shadow through depths of foliage, with only a belt of illumined sky gleaming between the jagged tree-tops. Tall and lean with straining towards the light, their rough, gaunt stems trickling with perpetual damps, stood on either hand the silent hosts of the forest. The skeletons of their dead, barkless, blanched, and shattered, strewed the mudbanks and shallows; others lay submerged, like bones of drowned mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by age or storms athwart the current,—a bristling barricade of matted boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over its sunny breast, reached the outlet, and drifted down the shallow eddies of the Onondaga, between walls of verdure, silent as death, yet haunted everywhere with ambushed danger. It was twenty days after leaving Schenectady when they neared the mouth of the river; and Lake Ontario greeted them, stretched like a sea to the pale brink of the northern sky, while on the bare hill at their left stood the miserable little fort of Oswego.

Shirley’s whole force soon arrived; but not the needful provisions and stores. The machinery of transportation and the commissariat was in the bewildered state inevitable among a peaceful people at the beginning of a war; while the news of Braddock’s defeat produced such an effect on the boatmen and the draymen at the carrying-places, that the greater part deserted. Along with these disheartening tidings, Shirley learned the death of his eldest son, killed at the side of Braddock. He had with him a second son, Captain John Shirley, a vivacious young man, whom his father and his father’s friends in their familiar correspondence always called “Jack.” John Shirley’s letters give a lively view of the situation.

“I have sat down to write to you,”—thus he addresses Governor Morris, of Pennsylvania, who seems to have had a great liking for him,—“because there is an opportunity of sending you a few lines; and if you will promise to excuse blots, interlineations, and grease (for this is written in the open air, upon the head of a pork-barrel, and twenty people about me), I will begin another half-sheet. We are not more than about fifteen hundred men fit for duty; but that, I am pretty sure, if we can go in time in our sloop, schooner, row-galleys, and whale-boats, will be sufficient to take Frontenac; after which we may venture to go upon the attack of Niagara, but not before. I have not the least doubt with myself of knocking down both these places yet this fall, if we can get away in a week. If we take or destroy their two vessels at Frontenac, and ruin their harbor there, and destroy the two forts of that and Niagara, I shall think we have done great things. Nobody holds it out better than my father and myself. We shall all of us relish a good house over our heads, being all encamped, except the General and some few field-officers, who have what are called at Oswego houses; but they would in other countries be called only sheds, except the fort, where my father is. Adieu, dear sir; I hope my next will be directed from Frontenac. Yours most affectionately, John Shirley.”
¹

Fort Frontenac lay to the northward, fifty miles or more across the lake. Niagara lay to the westward, at the distance of four or five days by boat or canoe along the south shore. At Frontenac there was a French force of fourteen hundred regulars and Canadians.
²
They had vessels and canoes to cross the lake and fall upon Oswego as soon as Shirley should leave it to attack Niagara; for Braddock’s captured papers had revealed to them the English plan. If they should take it, Shirley would be cut off from his supplies and placed in desperate jeopardy, with the enemy in his rear. Hence it is that John Shirley insists on taking Frontenac before attempting Niagara. But the task was not easy; for the French force at the former place was about equal in effective strength to that of the English at Oswego. At Niagara, too, the French had, at the end of August, nearly twelve hundred Canadians and Indians from Fort Duquesne and the upper lakes.
³
Shirley was but imperfectly informed by his scouts of the unexpected strength of the opposition that awaited him; but he knew enough to see that his position was a difficult one. His movement on Niagara was stopped, first by want of provisions, and secondly because he was checkmated by the troops at Frontenac. He did not despair. Want of courage was not among his failings, and he was but too ready to take risks. He called a council of officers, told them that the total number of men fit for duty was thirteen hundred and seventy-six, and that as soon as provisions enough should arrive he would embark for Niagara with six hundred soldiers and as many Indians as possible, leaving the rest to defend Oswego against the expected attack from Fort Frontenac.
⁴

“All I am uneasy about is our provisions,” writes John Shirley to his friend Morris; “our men have been upon half allowance of bread these three weeks past, and no rum given to ’em. My father yesterday called all the Indians together and made ’em a speech on the subject of General Johnson’s engagement, which he calculated to inspire them with a spirit of revenge.” After the speech he gave them a bullock for a feast, which they roasted and ate, pretending that they were eating the Governor of Canada! Some provisions arriving, orders were given to embark on the next day; but the officers murmured their dissent. The weather was persistently bad, their vessels would not hold half the party, and the bateaux, made only for river navigation, would infallibly founder on the treacherous and stormy lake. “All the field-officers,” says John Shirley, “think it too rash an attempt; and I have heard so much of it that I think it my duty to let my father know what I hear.” Another council was called; and the General, reluctantly convinced of the danger, put the question whether to go or not. The situation admitted but one reply. The council was of opinion that for the present the enterprise was impracticable; that Oswego should be strengthened, more vessels built, and preparation made to renew the attempt as soon as spring opened.
¹
All thoughts of active operations were now suspended, and during what was left of the season the troops exchanged the musket for the spade, saw, and axe. At the end of October, leaving seven hundred men at Oswego, Shirley returned to Albany, and narrowly escaped drowning on the way, while passing a rapid in a whale-boat, to try the fitness of that species of craft for river navigation.
²

Unfortunately for him, he had fallen out with Johnson, whom he had made what he was, but who now turned against him,—a seeming ingratitude not wholly unprovoked. Shirley had diverted the New Jersey regiment, destined originally for Crown Point, to his own expedition against Niagara. Naturally inclined to keep all the reins in his own hands, he had encroached on Johnson’s new office of Indian superintendent, held conferences with the Five Nations, and employed agents of his own to deal with them. These agents were persons obnoxious to Johnson, being allied with the clique of Dutch traders at Albany, who hated him because he had supplanted them in the direction of Indian affairs; and in a violent letter to the Lords of Trade, he inveighs against their “licentious and abandoned proceedings,” “villanous conduct,” “scurrilous falsehoods,” and “base and insolent behavior.”
³
“I am considerable enough,” he says, “to have enemies and to be envied”;
⁴
and he declares he has proof that Shirley told the Mohawks that he, Johnson, was an upstart of his creating, whom he had set up and could pull down. Again, he charges Shirley’s agents with trying to “debauch the Indians from joining him”; while Shirley, on his side, retorts the same complaint against his accuser.
⁵
When, by the death of Braddock, Shirley became commander-in-chief, Johnson grew so restive at being subject to his instructions that he declined to hold the management of Indian affairs unless it was made independent of his rival. The dispute became mingled with the teapot-tempest of New York provincial politics. The Lieutenant-Governor, Delancey, a politician of restless ambition and consummate dexterity, had taken umbrage at Shirley, of whose rising honors, not borne with remarkable humility, he appears to have been jealous. Delancey had hitherto favored the Dutch faction in the Assembly, hostile to Johnson; but he now changed attitude, and joined hands with him against the object of their common dislike. The one was strong in the prestige of a loudly-trumpeted victory, and the other had means of influence over the Ministry. Their coalition boded ill to Shirley, and he soon felt its effects.
¹