History of the United States Volume I Part 19

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Attack on Schenectady.]

The Indian hostilities which heralded King William's War began August 13, 1688. Frontenac prepared to capture Albany and even Manhattan. He did not accomplish so much; but on the night of February 8, 1689-90, his force of ninety Iroquois and over a hundred Frenchmen fell upon Schenectady, killed sixty, and captured eighty or ninety more. Only a corporal's guard escaped to Albany with the sad news. This attack had weighty influence, as occasioning the first American congress. Seven delegates from various colonies a.s.sembled at New York on May 1, 1690, to devise defence against the northern invaders.

The eastern Indians were hardly at rest from Philip's War when roused by the French to engage in this. An attack was made upon Haverhill, Ma.s.s., and Hannah Dustin, with a child only a few days old, another woman, and a boy, was led captive to an Indian camp up the Merrimac. The savages killed the infant, but thereby steeled the mother's heart for revenge.

One night the three prisoners slew their sleeping guards and, seizing a canoe, floated down to their home. Dover was attacked June 27, 1689, twenty-three persons killed, and twenty-nine sold to the French in Canada. Indescribable horrors occurred at Oyster River, at Salmon Falls, at Casco, at Exeter, and elsewhere.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hannah Dustin's Escape.]

[1702]

In 1702 Queen Anne's War began, and in this again New England was the chief sufferer. The barbarities which marked it were worse than those of Philip's War. De Rouville, with a party of French and savages, proceeded from Canada to Deerfield, Ma.s.s. Fearing an attack, the villagers meant to be vigilant, but early on a February morning, 1704, the wily enemy, skulking till the sentinels retired at daylight, managed to effect a surprise. Fifty were killed and one hundred hurried off to Canada. Among these were the minister, Mr. Williams, and his family. Twenty years later a white woman in Indian dress entered Deerfield. It was one of the Williams daughters. She had married an Indian in Canada, and now refused to desert him. Cases like this, of which there were many in the course of these frightful wars, seemed to the settlers harder to bear than death. Ma.s.sachusetts came so to dread the atrocious foe, that fifteen pounds were offered by public authority for an Indian man's scalp, eight for a child's or a woman's.

[1705]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plan of Port Royal, Nova Scotia.]

Governor Spotswood urged aggression on the French to the west; Governor Hunter of New York had equal zeal for a movement northward. New York raised 600 men and the same number of Iroquois, voting 10,000 pounds of paper money for their sustenance. Connecticut and New Jersey sent 1,600 men. A force of 4,000 in all mustered at Albany under Nicholson of New York. They were to co-operate against Montreal with the naval expedition of 1711, commanded by Sir Hoveden Walker. Walker failed ignominiously, and Nicholson, hearing of this betimes, saved himself by retreating.

Sir William Phips had captured Port Royal in 1690, and Acadia was annexed to Ma.s.sachusetts in 1692. In 1691 the French again took formal possession of Port Royal and the neighboring country. In 1692 an ineffectual attempt was made to recover it, but by the Treaty of Ryswick, 1697, it was explicitly given back to France.

[1710]

At the inception of Queen Anne's War, in 1702, there were several expeditions from New England to Nova Scotia; in 1704 and 1707 without result. That of 1710 was more successful. It consisted of four regiments and thirty-six vessels, besides troop and store s.h.i.+ps and some marines.

Port Royal capitulated, and its name was changed to Annapolis, in honor of Queen Anne. Acadia never again came under French control, and was regularly ceded to England by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.

Notwithstanding this, however, French America still remained substantially intact.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Queen Anne.]

[1714]

If the great struggle for the Ohio Valley now became a silent one, it was none the less earnest. Spotswood had opened a road across the Blue Ridge in 1716. In 1721 New Yorkers began settling on Oswego River, and they finished a fort there by 1726. Closer alliance was formed with the Five Nations. The French governor of Quebec in 1725 pleaded that Niagara must be fortified, and on his successor was urged the necessity of reducing the Oswego garrison. It was partly to flank Oswego that the French pushed up Lake Champlain to Crown Point and built Fort St.

Frederick.

The Treaty of Utrecht had left Cape Breton Island to France. The French at once strongly fortified Louisburg and invited thither the French inhabitants of Acadia and Newfoundland, which had also been ceded to Great Britain. Many went, though the British governors did much to hinder removal. This irritated the French authorities, and the Indian atrocities of 1723-24 at Dover and in Maine are known to have been stimulated from Montreal. Father Rasle, an astute and benevolent French Jesuit who had settled among the Indians at Norridgewock, became an agent of this hostile influence. In an English attack, August 12, 1724, Rasle's settlement was broken up and himself killed. The Indians next year made a treaty, and peace prevailed till King George's War.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Governor s.h.i.+rley.]

[1745]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir William Pepperrell.]

This opened in 1744, England against France once more, and in 1745 came the capture of Louisburg, then the Gibraltar of America. This was brought about through the energy of Governor s.h.i.+rley, of Ma.s.sachusetts, the most efficient English commander this side the Atlantic. That commonwealth voted to send 3,250 men, Connecticut 500, New Hamps.h.i.+re and Rhode Island each 300. Sir William Pepperrell, of Kittery, Me., commanded, Richard Gridley, of Bunker Hill fame, being his chief of artillery. The expedition consisted of thirteen armed vessels, commanded by Captain Edward Tyng, with over 200 guns, and about ninety transports.

The Ma.s.sachusetts troops sailed from Nantasket March 24th, and reached Canso, April 4th. "Rhode Island," says Hutchinson, "waited until a better judgment could be made of the event, their three hundred not arriving until after the place had surrendered." The expedition was very costly to the colonies partic.i.p.ating, and four years later England reimbursed them in the sum of 200,000 pounds. Yet at the disgraceful peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, she surrendered Louisburg and all Cape Breton to France again.

[1746-1748]

In 1746 French and Indians from Crown Point destroyed the fort and twenty houses at Saratoga, killing thirty persons, and capturing sixty.

Orders came this year from England to advance on Crown Point and Montreal, upon s.h.i.+rley's plan, all the colonies as far south as Virginia being commanded to aid. Quite an army mustered at Albany. Sir William Johnson succeeded in rousing the Iroquois, whom the French had been courting with unprecedented a.s.siduity. But D'Anville's fleet threatened.

The colonies wanted their troops at home. Inactivity discouraged the soldiers, alienated the Indians. At last news came that the Canada project was abandoned, and in 1748 the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was declared.

This very year France began new efforts to fill the Ohio Valley with emigrants. Virginia did the same. To antic.i.p.ate the English, the French sent Bienville to bury engraved leaden plates at the mouths of streams.

They also fortified the present sites of Ogdensburg and Toronto. Even now, therefore, France's power this side the Atlantic was not visibly shaken. The continental problem remained unsolved.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

[1748]

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle had been made only because the contestants were tired of fighting. In America, at least, each at once began taking breath and preparing to renew the struggle. Not a year pa.s.sed that did not witness border quarrels more or less b.l.o.o.d.y. The French authorities filled the Ohio and Mississippi valleys with military posts; English settlers pressed persistently into the same to find homes. In this movement Virginia led, having in 1748 formed, especially to aid western settlement, the Ohio Company, which received from the king a grant of five hundred thousand acres beyond the Alleghanies. A road was laid out between the upper Potomac and the present Pittsburgh, settlements were begun along it, and efforts made to conciliate the savages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map showing Position of French and English Forts and Settlements.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Ambuscade.]

[1754]

One of the frontier villages was at what is now Franklin, Penn., and the location involved Virginia with the colony of Pennsylvania. As commissioner to settle the dispute George Was.h.i.+ngton was sent out.

The future Father of his Country was of humble origin. Born in Westmoreland County, Va., "about ten in ye morning of ye 11th day of February, 1731-32," as recorded in his mother's Bible, he had been an orphan from his earliest youth. His education was of the slenderest. At sixteen he became a land surveyor, leading a life of the roughest sort, beasts, savages, and hardy frontiersmen his constant companions, sleeping under the sky and cooking his own coa.r.s.e food. No better man could have been chosen to thread now the Alleghany trail.

Was.h.i.+ngton reported the French strongly posted in western Pennsylvania on lands claimed by the Ohio Company. Virginia fitted out an expedition to dislodge them. Of this Was.h.i.+ngton commanded the advance. Meeting at Great Meadows the French under Contrecoeur, commander of Fort Du Quesne (Pittsburgh); he was at first victorious, but the French were re-enforced before he was, and Was.h.i.+ngton, after a gallant struggle, had to capitulate. This was on July 3, 1754. The French and Indian War had begun.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Baddock's Route.]

[1755]

The English Government bade the colonies defend their frontier, and in this interest twenty-five delegates from the seven northern colonies met at Albany on June 19, 1754. Benjamin Franklin represented Pennsylvania, and it was at this conference that he presented his well-considered plan, to be described in our chapter on Independence, for a general government over English America. The Albany Convention amounted to little, but did somewhat to renew alliance with the Six Nations.

[footnote: Increased from five to six by the accession of the Tuscaroras.]

In this decisive war England had in view four great objects of conquest in America: 1. Fort Du Quesne; 2. The Ontario basin with Oswego and Fort Niagara; 3. The Champlain Valley; 4. Louisburg. The British ministry seemed in earnest. It sent Sir Edward Braddock to this side with six thousand splendidly equipped veterans, and offered large sums for fitting out regiments of provincials. Braddock arrived in February, 1755, but moved very languidly. This was not altogether his fault, for he had difficulties with the governors and they with their legislatures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Braddock's Field.]

At last off for Fort Du Quesne, he took a needlessly long route, through Virginia instead of Pennsylvania. He scorned advice, marching and fighting stiffly according to the rules of the Old World military art, heeding none of Franklin's and Was.h.i.+ngton's sage hints touching savage modes of warfare. The consequence was this brave Briton's defeat and death. As he drew near to Fort Du Quesne, he fell into a carefully prepared ambuscade. Four horses were shot under him. Mounting a fifth he spurred to the front to inspire his men, forbidding them seek the slightest cover, as Was.h.i.+ngton urged and as the provincials successfully did. The regulars, obeying, were half of them killed in their tracks, the remainder retreating, in panic at first, to Philadelphia. Braddock died, and was buried at Great Meadows, where his grave is still to be seen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Death of Braddock.]

Was.h.i.+ngton was the only mounted officer in this action who was not killed or fatally wounded, a fact at the time regarded specially providential. On his return, aged twenty-three, the Rev. Samuel Davies, afterward President of the College of New Jersey, referred to him in his sermon as "that heroic youth, Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton, whom I cannot but hope Providence has preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country."

[1757]

The early part of this war witnessed the tragic occurrence immortalized by Longfellow's "Evangeline," the expulsion of the French from Acadia.

The poem is too favorable to these people. They had never become reconciled to English rule, and were believed on strong evidence to be active in promoting French schemes against the English. It was resolved to scatter them among the Atlantic settlements. The act was savage, and became doubly so through the unmeant cruelties attending its execution.

The poor wretches were huddled on the sh.o.r.e weeks too soon for their transports. Families were broken up, children forcibly separated from parents. The largest company was carried to Ma.s.sachusetts, many to Pennsylvania, some to the extreme South. Not a few, crushed in spirit, became paupers. A number found their way to France, a number to Louisiana, a handful back to Nova Scotia.

Braddock was succeeded by the fussy and incompetent Earl of Loudon, 1756-57, whom Franklin likened to Saint George on the sign-posts, "always galloping but never advancing." He gathered twelve thousand men for the recapture of Louisburg, but exaggerated reports of the French strength frightened him from the attempt. Similar inaction lost him Fort William Henry on Lake George. The end of the year 1757 saw the English cause on this side at low ebb, Montcalm, the tried and brilliant French commander, having outwitted or frightened the English officers at every point.