USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. II > Part 10
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Immediately after the sailing of the English fleet, Monsieur Levi had begun to make preparations to recover Quebec. He took possession of Point Levi, and prepared snow shoes and scaling ladders for the enterprise. But Murray, who commanded at the fort, as soon as the river was frozen over, sent a party across upon the ice and drove the enemy from this position. Levi finally determined to postpone the attempt until the next spring. The amount of labor performed by the garrison at Quebec during the winter was astonishing. They repaired more than five hundred houses, built eight redoubts, raised foot banks along the ramparts, opened em- brasures and mounted cannon .; They also protected the suburbs with a stockade, and removed into the highest parts of the city provisions enough to last eleven months. Under the keen vigilance of such a leader as Murray, they seemed able to achieve everything but impossibilities. But even Murray could not overcome the rigors of the climate. The winter proved to be unusually severe. The vegetables on which the troops depended in a good degree for subsistence were destroyed, and before the end of April one thousand of the soldiers had died from the excessive use of salt food.Į
As soon as the rigors of the season had sufficiently abated,
* Trumbull ; Rogers ; Graham. + Trumbull, ii. 417.
# Rider's History ; Gov. Murray to Secretary Pitt.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Monsieur Levi under convoy of six armed frigates, that gave him the entire command of the St. Lawrence, dropped down the river with his army. The British detachments stationed along the shores, abandoned their posts and fled towards Quebec at his approach. On the night of the 26th of April, he landed his main army at Point au Tremble. It consisted of five thousand regular troops, six thousand Canadians, and about five hundred Indians .* After this landing was effected, his army was augmented to fifteen thousand effective men. This was a formidable army for a little garrison of three thousand men to oppose, even with the advantages afforded by the walls of such a fortress as Quebec. But Murray was not a man to be daunted by dangers, nor was he satisfied with merely acting on the defensive. He had been one of that immortal council of officers who had conceived the plan of scaling the Heights of Abraham; he had himself acted a chief part in carrying out that daring scheme, and he now resolved, in the face of the lesson taught him by the defeat of Montcalm, to go forth upon the heights already consecra- ted by British valor, and give battle to this large army, by making an assault upon the position of Levi at Sillery. It was a bold, rash stroke that has never been justified by mili- tary men. Still, the attack was fierce, and sustained with a steadiness that seemed for some time likely to result in victory. When he saw that the enemy was in the act of taking pos- session of an eminence in his front, and that the main army was marching in single column, he began the battle before the French lines could be formed. He charged their van so furi- ously that it was compelled to give way and fall back upon the main army. The light infantry were now ordered to regain the enemy's flank, but, after a severe charge, they were obliged to retire, so sadly cut in pieces as to be entirely disabled.
Otway's regiment was now ordered up to sustain the right wing, which was done so effectually that the enemy tried in vain to pierce it. The left brigade of the English drove the
* Wright's History, ii. 256 ; Rider, xlvi. 168, 169.
111
DEFEAT OF MURRAY.
[1760.]
enemy from two redoubts, and with a resolution almost mirac- ulous, withstood the whole shock of the French right until relieved by the third battalion of royal Americans from the reserve, and Kennedy's from the centre. But it was vain for this handful of Englishmen and Americans to conquer such an army as now poured a steady and fatal fire into their centre, and were extending around their flanks in the form of a semi- circle. Retreat alone saved them. After an action of an hour and three-quarters, they had sustained a loss of one thousand men and gained nothing .* Murray regained the fortress with his remnant of two thousand men, and without being disheartened at the defeat, set himself about the defense of the place with all his energies. t
The next night the enemy opened the siege. Murray was just able by the superiority of his guns, to check the violence of their first assault, but still the success of the siege was, he plainly saw, a problem depending in part upon his own exer- tions, but no less upon the early or late arrival of ships to relieve the garrison. Long and anxiously did he look off upon the river in hope to spy the first approach of the fleet that could alone save him from the overwhelming numbers of the besiegers. The suspense was made still more fearful by the possibility that the French might first get possession of the river. At last, on the 9th of May, a single English sail was seen making up the stream. She anchored in the basin, and proved to be the Lowestoffe, and gave the joyful intelligence that Commodore Swanton, with a small reinforce- ment, and the English fleet under Lord Colville, were approaching.}
On the 15th, Commodore Swanton anchored above Point Levi. Murray immediately begged him to take early measures to remove the French squadron that was anchored above the town. Commodore Swanton therefore ordered two frigates early the next morning to slip their cables and attack the squad- ron. The French ships fled, at their approach, in confusion.
* See Holmes, ii. 99. + Trumbull, ii. 419, 420, 421.
# Holmes ; Trumbull.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
One of their frigates was driven upon the rocks above Cape Diamond; another ran aground at Point au Tremble, and was burned. Without making any show of defense, the whole French fleet was either destroyed or taken .*
This was a terrible blow to the besieging army. Panic- stricken at the sight of their burning ships and at the tidings that a large English fleet was approaching, they broke up the siege in the night and fled in precipitation, leaving their tents standing in their camp, and their artillery and magazines to fall into the hands of the English. On the 19th of May, Lord Colville arrived with his fleet and again placed Quebec in a condition to defy the armies of France. Thus early did the campaign of 1760 open with the auguries of success.
As in former years, Connecticut responded to the call of the ministry. On the 13th of March, the General Assembly convened at New Haven. Mr. Pitt's letter, asking for fresh troops and holding out promises of completing the conquest of Canada, in such glowing colors, as clothed all the images of his sublime imagination, was received with a warm wel- come. With one consent the legislature voted to raise four regiments, each consisting of twelve companies, making an aggregate of five thousand effective men. They were to be levied at the expense of the colony with all haste, and were to be clothed and paid from the treasury of the colony.t
The plan of this campaign was a fit sequel to that of the preceding year. General Amherst took the field with a fine army very early in the season. He designed to advance upon Montreal from three different points, and, after a union had been formed, to give the enemy battle and decide the fate of Canada at a blow. With one branch of the army, General Haviland was ordered to proceed by the way of
Trumbull.
+ Colony Records, MS. Phineas Lyman, Esq., was appointed major general, and colonel of the first regiment ; the other officers were-colonels-Nathan Whiting, David Wooster, and Eleazer Fitch ; lieut. colonels-Nathan Payson, Joseph Spencer, James Smedley, and Israel Putnam ; majors-John Slapp, David Baldwin, David Waterbury, and John Durkee. Thomas Knowlton, was an ensign in the first regiment.
113
PUTNAM'S ENTERPRISE.
[1760.]
Lake George, and Lake Champlain. Murray was directed to go up the St. Lawrence with as many men as could be spared from Quebec, while the commander-in-chief passed into Canada, by the way of Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence .*
In June, General Amherst began his march from Schenec- tady to Oswego with the main army, consisting of ten thou- sand regular and provincial troops, and one thousand Indians.t In about three weeks he reached the lake shore in safety. This was a march of great fatigue, and when we consider the roughness of the roads, the distance traveled, the amount of stores, munitions, and camp equipage thus transported, we cannot but form a favorable opinion of the skill of the com- mander and the discipline of his troops. But the labors and dangers of his march had but just commenced. Lake Ontario was a wide expanse yet to be traversed, and its short, sharp waves were more perilous than the long deep swell of the Atlantic ocean. To make this voyage he had only open boats and rude galleys, such as a hasty emergency had been adequate to supply. Should he reach the outlet of the lake he must afterwards expose his army to the tossings of the rapids that convulse the navigation of the St. Lawrence. He succeeded in passing the lake without any misfortune.
General Amherst determined to pass down the river imme- diately, and attack Oswegatchie and Isle Royal. Two armed vessels obstructed the passage, and prevented the attempt upon Oswegatchie. As the channel was narrow, and the English army in the open boats was sadly exposed to these ships, Putnam with one thousand men in fifty batteaux, under- took the dangerous task of boarding them. General Amherst fell in with the proposition. Putnam proceeded with charac- teristic determination to carry out the plan. He commanded all the men on board his little fleet to strip themselves to their waistcoats, and advance, when he should give the signal. " I will join you," said he, "if I live, and show you the way
* Holmes, ii. 99, 100.
+ Holmes. These Indians were under the command of Sir William Johnson.
40
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
up the sides of the ships." He now placed himself with a chosen crew of his old comrades into the van, and began to advance. A beetle and some wedges lying in the bottom of the boat, were the unheard of weapons that he designed first to employ in wedging the rudders of the French ships so that they would be but lifeless hulks upon the water and un- able to turn their broadsides upon his batteaux as they drew near. Silently and swiftly the other batteaux followed. Putnam's shot over the water, impelled by the sinewy strength of such men as dared venture themselves in the same bottom with him, upon an errand that no British officer in the whole army would have dared to attempt. Dazzled and amazed at this sudden and novel mode of attack, and seeing the calm celerity with which these brave provincials advanced in their half naked state, the French in dismay ran one of their vessels aground. The other struck her colors without firing a gun ; and the victory was now complete .*
But the fortress, firmly planted upon an island in the river, was still safe, and presented a formidable obstacle to the progress of the English army. Aside from the natural strength of the place and the ordinary embankments and trenches of a fort, the enemy had surrounded the entire island with an abattis of black ash tree-tops with sharp points stretching outwards, that projected over the water's edge on every side and seemed to defy all approach. Gen. Amherst was again at a loss how to proceed, and all the operations of the army were brought to a stand. Again Putnam suggested a way of overcoming this difficult obstruc- tion, and offered his own personal services to conduct the enterprise. He proposed to surround a sufficient number of boats with fascines so closely fitted as to be musket-proof, and of course, a perfect screen for the men, to be employed in scaling the abattis. A wide plank, twenty feet in length was then to be provided for each boat and fastened by ropes on both sides of the bow, so that it might be raised and lowered with ease. This plank was to be held erect while
* Humphreys.
115
PUTNAM S DRAW-BRIDGE.
[1761.]
the oar's-men should bring the bow of the boats violently against the abattis, and then suddenly dropped upon the sharpened points of the tree-tops, was to serve as a kind of draw-bridge over which the escalading party was to pass. This singular contrivance met with the warm approbation of the general. Putnam lost no time in getting the boats ready to commence the attack, and advanced upon the enemy with such admirable address that they did not dare to withstand the shock, and capitulated without firing a gun .*
Thus through the wisdom and daring of a provincial offi- cer, was a bloodless entrance forced into Canada.
Early in September, General Amherst arrived at Montreal. A union was soon effected between the three divisions of his army, and two days afterwards, that town with all the other posts in the hands of the French, and the whole country claimed by them, were surrendered to the British crown .;
At the close of this campaign, days of public thanksgiving were appointed and celebrated throughout the New England colonies. At their October session, the General Assembly of Connecticut, resolved to present to his majesty their written congratulations on the triumph of the British forces in vari- ous parts of the world, and especially in North America, in the entire conquest of Canada, and in the submission of that vast country to his majesty's government.į
Notwithstanding the conquest of Canada, the war still raged between the two nations with unabated vigor. In the spring of 1761, another requisition was made upon the colo- nies for troops. Mr. Pitt asked for two-thirds the number of men from Connecticut that she had furnished during the pre- vious campaign. On the 26th of March, the Assembly was convened, and it was resolved that two thousand three hun- dred men should be immediately raised for the service.
* Humphreys.
+ Holmes, ii. 100; Marshall, i. c. 13; Universal History, xl. 244, 246. After the capitulation, Gen. Gage was appointed governor of Montreal, with a garrison of two thousand men ; and Gen. Murray returned to Quebec, where his garrison was augmented to four thousand.
# Colony Records, MS.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Provision was also made to clothe and supply them with all the necessary food and equipments .*
The object of the campaign was to repair and place in a state of perfect defense, all the forts, and military posts that had fallen into the hands of the English, or had been con- structed by them at so much cost and labor; to build new ones wherever it should be thought necessary to guard the avenues to the English settlements should Canada, by some unhappy turn of fortune, again fall into the hands of its old masters ; to repair old roads and construct new ones from fort to fort, and from settlement to settlement, leading through desolate swamps and vast forests; to erect houses and bar- racks for the garrisons at the several stations along the northern frontier lines ; and to bring out of the chaos of war a state of order and completeness that would promise security for the future against the troubles that had so long dis- turbed the continent. The labor performed by the Connec- ticut troops during that year, affords as a good commentary upon the courage and endurance of our people as any thing that they had done in the wars of the preceding campaign.
At the close of the campaign of 1761, upon this continent, a large part of the regulars with a body of provincial troops embarked for the West Indies, where they were joined by an armament from Great Britain. The reduction of Martinique, was the object of the expedition. On the 14th of February, 1762, that island capitulated, and one after the other, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincents, followed in its train, until the French force was broken in the Carribean sea, and the beautiful chain of islands that stretches from the eastern point of Hispaniola, almost to the continent of South America, was in possession of the English.t
* These troops were divided into two regiments, and were placed under the command of Phineas Lyman and Nathan Whiting, Esqrs.
+ Universal History, xli. 195, 200, 231 ; Smollet, iv. 364, 370. The entire re- duction of Martinique was effected with the loss of but seven British officers, and about one hundred privates killed ; about one hundred and fifty only were wounded. The French lost above one thousand of their best men, killed, wounded, and taken
117
A NEW PARTY TO THE WAR.
[1762.]
Meanwhile, a new party was added to the scene of the conflict that was occupying the whole world for an arena. This party was Spain, and as the English army was already victorious over the French in the West Indies, it was resolved to strike a capital blow at the Spanish posses- sions in that quarter. The land army under Lord Albemarle, was one of the finest that had ever been sent from England ; and the fleet was commanded by Admiral Pocock, who had just returned from a brilliant career of success in the East Indies. On arriving at Cape Nichols he was joined by Sir James Douglass, with a fine squadron. The whole fleet now numbered thirty-seven ships of war, with about one hundred and fifty transports ; and the land army under Albemarle, were to be joined by a body of provincials made up of five hundred men from New Jersey, eight hundred from New York, and one thousand from Connecticut-all under com- mand of Major-General Lyman. The immediate command of General Lyman's regiment devolved on Lieutenant-Colonel Putnam.
Havana was the first and principal object of attack. The fleet that carried the provincials sailed from New York and arrived safely off the coast of Cuba. A terrible storm now arose, and the transport that bore Lieutenant- Colonel Putnam, with five hundred men, making one half of the Connecticut regiment, was driven on a rift of craggy rocks and wrecked. Thus separated from the rest of the fleet, so that he could hope for no aid from any external source, the serf rolling mountain high and dashing against the sides of the ship with such force that she threatened to part her timbers at every stroke of the sea, this brave offi- cer, looking calmly in the face of death, maintained above the noise of the waves, a discipline that enabled him to issue all his orders without interruption, and secured an obedience to them as perfect as if the bold-hearted men whom he com- manded had stood upon the ridges of their own corn-fields.
prisoners. There were on the island, at the time of its reduction, ten thousand white men capable of bearing arms ; and above forty thousand negroes.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
In this appalling situation, every man who could wield a saw or a hammer was employed in making rafts from spars, planks, and the scanty and scattered materials that came to hand. In this way a part of the men were landed at the great risk of being drifted far out into the sea. After a few of the men had been safely disembarked, ropes were lashed to the rafts and those who had thus gained the shore aided in pulling their companions to the beach. Such was the address and caution exercised by Putnam in this most criti- cal of all conditions that not a man was lost. Colonel Put- nam now pitched his camp and remained several days within twenty-four miles of the enemy at Carthagena. At last the storm abated, and the convoy soon after took them aboard and carried them to Havana .*
The climate proved fatal to a large proportion of our soldiers who went upon this expedition. Of the thousand brave men who sailed for Havana, and who aided in reduc- ing it, with all its shipping and military stores, to the domin- ion of the British crown, but a mere handful ever returned to lay their bones in their native soil.t A few officers, and here and there a straggling soldier, wasted to a skeleton, were the sole survivors of that fatal campaign, in which victory and death went hand in hand. The peace of 1763 followed soon after, and gave the people of Connecticut time to breathe and prepare for another struggle.
Thus ended the memorable French war, ranging over a period of eight years of suffering and privation for our peo- ple that no pen can ever record. During these toilsome years the sons of the colony had found their graves in every part of the continent, and had been laid to rest beneath the waters of the West Indian seas. No colony in proportion to her population had furnished an equal number of men. Again and again she had sent into the field a duplicate sup- ply of troops beyond those demanded of her, to make up for the deficiency that she had but too good reason to think would exist in some of those provinces less imbued with the
* Humphreys. t Trumbull, ii. 449.
119
CONNECTICUT OFFICERS.
[1764.]
spirit of liberty and less devoted to the cause of humanity. She had also paid out of her own treasury, after deducting the pittance that she had received from parliament, more than four hundred thousand pounds-far surpassing, accord- ing to her wealth, the amount paid by any other of the colo- nies; and the exploits of her gallant officers-her Lymans, her Whitings, her Parsons, her Dyers, her Spencers, her Hinmans, her Coits, her Fitches, her Durkees, her Woosters, her Putnams, and her Wolcotts,-were as glorious as their fame will be immortal.
CHAPTER V.
THE STAMP ACT.
FOR nearly three-quarters of a century England had been almost constantly engaged in war. I have minutely delineated some of the conflicts that had so long occupied her attention, as they were as much a part of the History of Connecticut as of England. These wars, waged with some of the most pow- erful nations of the globe, in the Orient, in Europe, among the islands of the western seas, and upon the continent of North America, had proved a constant drain upon the re- sources of the empire. An old national debt, by gradual accre- tions, had grown at last to the appalling sum of seven hun- dred millions of dollars. Even at the beginning of the last French war, the alarm of the government had been excited and the Board of Trade had proposed a plan of taxing the American colonies. But in the whirl of those exciting cam- paigns that followed one another like a succession of autumn gales upon an exposed ocean-shore, the scheme had been allowed to slumber for about eight years.
No sooner had the peace of 1763 given the nation an opportunity to look at its internal condition, than the British ministry again turned its eye toward the American colonies, as the proper field for financial experiment. The precedents existing in relation to the inter-colonial trade, the regulation of postage, laws of naturalization, the administration of oaths, the restrictions upon trade and manufactures, and some other encroachments, gradually made, at first bitterly complained of, and then submitted to without violence-had encouraged the British government to further acts of injustice. Already custom-houses had been erected in the colonies along the coast, and already the enlarged jurisdiction of courts of admiralty had in part supplanted the right of trial by jury.
121
NEW MINISTRY.
[1763.]
But the avowed object of these acts of parliament was to regulate trade and navigation, and as the revenue arising out of these several acts was incidental and comparatively trifling, the colonies had not ventured openly to resist them.
A new administration had now succeeded that of Pitt. It was headed by Lord Bute, the most obstinate of Scotchmen, who had called to his aid Lord Grenville, a cold, self- reliant man, ignorant of the character of the Ameri- can people and solicitous to acquire, as chancellor of the exchequer, a high reputation for financial ability. Grenville now proposed a stamp tax for revenue. On the 22d of September, 1763, he held an interview with two other lords of the treasury, in a dingy chamber in Downing-street, to consult in relation to this most delicate and critical scheme. What doubts may have interposed themselves to darken the visions of ambition and political intrigue ; what stings of con- science premonitory of those of remorse and disappointment of a later day, haunted these grim men as they sketched the outline of the plot that was to rob the British empire of half its glory, and deluge a continent in blood ; or whether, indeed, they allowed their thoughts to range beyond the circle of their own party aggrandizement, cannot now be known to the world. We only learn the result of the meeting from this brief record of his instructions to Jenkinson.
" Write to the commissioners of the stamp duties to pre- pare the draft of a bill to be presented to the parliament, for extending the stamp duties in the colonies." The mandate was executed ; not with the hot haste that follows the con- ceptions of giddy youth, inflamed with passion and bubbling with wine, but deliberately, with a steady force and a leisurely cool resolution, that seemed to say to the English people and to the colonies, bring forth your strong reasons, kindle the fires of faction at home, petition the king, remonstrate with the hereditary aristocracy, appeal to the sympathies and sense of justice of the Commons, we are not to be shaken from our purposes by supplication, by argument or by threat. We give you timely notice to do your worst.
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