USA > New York > The Empire State: a compendious history of the commonwealth of New York > Part 17
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Wearied, worried, and disgusted, Governor Clinton resigned his office in the summer of 1753, and on September 7th he gave into the hands of his successor, Sir Danvers Osborne, the great seal of the province. Chief-Justice De Lancey had been appointed lieutenant-governor.
Osborne's administration was exceedingly short. He was received with demonstrations of joy by the people, and was magnificently enter- tained by the corporation of the city of New York. But he bore royal instructions more arbitrary and tyrannical than those which, attempted to be enforced, had made his predecessor odious to the people. He learned by conversation with those who feasted him that the course he was instructed to pursue would be highly displeasing to the people and render him odious in their estimation.
Having been greatly depressed in spirits by the recent death of his wife, Sir Danvers was made more melancholy by the gloomy prospects before him-continual disputes with the representatives of the people, the sport of factions, and a tarnished reputation. He said to De Lancey in a plaintive voice :
" What am I here for ? I shall soon leave you the government. I am unable to bear the burden."
Brooding over his situation, his disturbed reason became unseated, and five days after his arrival his lifeless body was found, early on the morn- ing of the 12th, suspended by a pocket-handkerchief around his neck to the fence of the garden of Mr. Murray, one of the Council, whose hospitality he was enjoying.
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De Lancey again became acting Governor of New York. He was now placed in a delicate situation, but he was equal to the occasion. He had recently been a leader of the opposition in the Assembly in his perse- cution of Clinton ; now he was compelled to wear the mask of Janus and rebuke the Assembly publicly for not obeying the royal instructions in granting supplies, while he secretly confederated in the promotion of measures directly opposed to the expressed will of the crown. The Assembly were equal dissemblers. They landed De Lancey, boasted of their loyalty, and declared that nothing should be wanting to promote the king's service. At the same time they firmly resisted taxation with- out their consent. With well-dissembled zeal De Lancey joined the other royal governors in urging the British Government to put in action a scheme of general taxation in America.
De Lancey remained the political head of the province two years, when Sir Charles Hardy, a captain in the British navy, ignorant of the country, the people, and the government he was to administer, arrived at New York (September, 1755) bearing the commission of governor .* De Lancey really continued to govern the province for about five years. Sir Charles was a plastic instrument in De Lancey's hands.
The treaty of Aix-la-chapelle was, practically, only a contract for a truce. The traditional enmity between France and England only slumbered. The Jesuits, bearing the Cross and the Lily, had discovered the magnificent country around the great lakes and in the Mississippi Valley, and revealed its riches to the French court. French missionary stations and trading-posts were established deep in the wilderness, but these did not attract the serious attention of the English until after the capture of Lonisburg, when the French began the building of strong vessels at Fort Frontenac at the foot of Lake Ontario, and the erection of more than sixty forts between Montreal and the site of New Orleans. In 1753 the Governor of Canada sent twelve hundred French soldiers to occupy the Ohio Valley to the exclusion of the English.
At the time we are considering the French in America were not over one hundred thousand in number, and were scattered in trading settle- ments for almost one thousand miles along the St. Lawrence River and our immense inland seas ; also at points on the Mississippi River and its
* Sir Charles was a grandson of Sir Thomas Hardy, a distinguished naval commander in the reign of Queen Anne. He was himself a naval commander. After leaving New York, he was appointed (1757) rear-admiral of the Blue, and commanded in the expedi- tion against Louisburg. He was promoted to vice-admiral, and in 1764 was a member of Parliament. He became admiral in 1770, and commanded a large squadron. Sir Charles died in England in 1780, aged about sixty-seven years.
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tributaries. The English numbered more than a million, and occupied a line of territory more than a thousand miles in extent along the Atlantic seaboard, in the form of agricultural communities. The French, through the influence of the Jesuit priests and kind treatment, had won the friendship of the barbarians around them.
The French, on the English plea of discovery and priority of occupation, claimed jurisdiction over the region of the Ohio River and its tributaries. The King of England, on the same plea, claimed that region, and granted to a company of London merchants and Virginia speculators a tract of six hundred thousand acres of land there. This company began the establishment of trading-posts on this domain. The French regarded them as intruders. The Indians properly said :
" The English claim all the land on one side of the river, and the French claim all the land on the other side of the river. Where is the Indian's land ?" Echo answered, " Where ?"' etc. The rightful claim of the first occupants of the soil was not considered by the voracious European robbers.
Apprehending the loss of their trade and their dominion, the French built a fort on the southern shore of Lake Erie ; also others near the domain of the English company. The Governor of Virginia sent a remonstrance to the French commander in that region (St. Pierre). The bearer of the despatch was young George Washington, then less than twenty-two years of age. He made the perilous journey with two or three attendants. The Indians were hostile to the English, and the French were their traditional enemies ; but the dangerons journey was performed in safety, and the mission was executed with skill and judg- ment. Washington returned in January, 1754, with an unsatisfactory response to the message he had delivered, but with much valuable infor- mation. When wine was in and wit was out of the heads of the French officers at their commander's table, they had revealed many important secrets to their sober young visitor.
Satisfied that the French in Canada were contemplating aggressive war upon the English colonies, the latter prepared to meet the blow. In the summer of 1754 twenty-five delegates, representing seven English- American colonies-New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- nectient, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland-met in convention at Albany to renew treaties with the Six Nations and to consider the important subject of the formation of a colonial confederacy. Lieu- tenant-Governor De Lancey presided over the convention. The treaty was renewed, and in July Dr. Franklin, a delegate from Pennsylvania, presented to the convention a plan of union having many of the features
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of our national Constitution. It was adopted, and copies were sent to the several colonial Assemblies and to the imperial Board of Trade for ratification.
The history of this plan is singular. The Assemblies refused their assent because it seemed too aristocratic-giving the governor to be appointed by the king too much power. The Board of Trade rejected it because it was too democratic-gave too much power to the people .*
Meanwhile war had actually been begun near the upper waters of the Ohio River. The English Land Company had begun the erection of a fort on the site of (present) Pittsburg. The workmen were driven away by French soldiers, who finished the work and named it Fort Duquesne in honor of the Governor of Canada. The Governor of Virginia (Din- widdie) sent six hundred troops under Colonel Joshua Fry, with Washing- ton, commissioned a major, as his lieutenant, to expel the French. The advanced corps under Major Washington, when about fifty miles from Fort Duquesne, was compelled to halt and construct a stockade (which was called Fort Necessity) and prepare for resisting a detachment of French troops which had been sent to intercept them. Before the fort was completed a party was sent ont to attack the approaching foe. This was done at the dead of night. The commander of the French (Jumonville) was slain, and only fifteen of his fifty men escaped. A larger French force soon invested Fort Necessity, and notwithstanding it had been re-enforced by troops from New York, Washington was com- pelled to surrender on the morning of July 4th and return to Virginia. So the French and Indian War was begun in the colonies about two years before the War of the Anstrian Succession, of which it was a part, was proclaimed by France and Great Britain.
The British Government, though it perceived that a conflict in America was impending more serious than any which had yet occurred, gave a very small amount of aid to the English-American colonies. It contributed only $50,000 and a commission for Governor Sharpe, of
* It proposed a general government to be administered by one chief magistrate appointed by the crown and a council of forty-eight members chosen by the several legislatures. This council, answering to our Senate, was to have power to declare war, levy troops, raise money, regulate trade, conclude peace, and do many other things necessary for the general good. The Board of Trade had proposed a plan which contained all the elements of a system for the utter enslavement and dependence of the Americans. They proposed a general government composed of the governors of the several colonies and certain select members of the general councils. These were to have power to draw on the British Treasury for money to carry on the impending war, the sum to be reim- bursed by taxes imposed by Parliament on the colonists. The latter preferred to do their own fighting and levy their own taxes independent of Great Britain.
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MILITARY EXPEDITIONS PLANNED.
Maryland, as commander-in-chief of the colonial forces. Sharpe did not serve. Shirley put forth energetic efforts in Massachusetts ; New York voted 825,000 for military purposes, and Maryland voted $30,000 for the same purpose.
The war that ensued forms an important part of the history of our Republic, but the plan and scope of this work precludes the possibility of giving an account of even important events, civil and military, which have occurred outside of the province and State of New York, excepting such connected with its history as may be necessary to elucidate our subject.
General Edward Braddock was sent to America early in 1755 as com- mander-in-chief of all the provincial forces. In April he met in confer- ence, at Alexandria, Va., six colonial governors-namely, Shirley, of Massachusetts ; Dinwiddie, of Virginia ; De Lancey, of New York ; Sharpe, of Maryland ; Morris, of Pennsylvania ; and Dobbs, of North Carolina. They planned three expeditions-one against Fort Duquesne, to be commanded by Braddock ; a second against Forts Niagara and Frontenac (Kingston, U. C.), to be commanded by Governor Shirley ; and a third against Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, to be led by William Johnson, the Indian commissioner. A fourth expedition had already been arranged by Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, and Gov- ernor Lawrence, of Nova Scotia, for the purpose of driving the French Neutrals, or Acadians, out of the peninsula. It was led by General Winslow, of Boston.
The expedition against the Acadians was successful, but the cruel circumstances and the result of their expulsion justly places it among the great crimes of history. The expedition against Fort Duquesne was a disastrous failure. Braddock was defeated and mortally wounded in the battle of the Monongahela in July. Colonel Washington was the only officer of his staff who remained unhurt, and he saved the remnant of the army from annihilation by conducting a masterly retreat. The expeditions of Shirley and Johnson within the State of New York will be noticed presently.
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CHAPTER XII.
WHILE politicians of the baser sort, in and out of the New York Assembly, were playing disreputable games in which the best interests of the commonwealthi were more or less involved, the people at large, alarmed by the evidences that a war was a-kindling at their very doors, became clamorous for the adoption of measures of defence against their implacable foe. Heeding these clamors, De Lancey convened the Assembly early in February (1755), and in his message to them he desired that body to make proper provisions for putting the province in a state of suitable defence, to secure Albany against the French and Indians, and to authorize the building of a strong fortification farther up the Hudson River.
The Assembly took prompt action. Utterly disregarding the royal instructions which prohibited the further issue of paper money by the colony unless authorized to do so by the crown, they ordered the emis- sion of over $100,000 in bills of credit. They authorized the levy of eight hundred men and the impressment of artificers, prohibited the exportation of provisions to the French colonies, and provided funds for arming the troops and for making presents to the Indians to secure their co-operation.
It was at this juncture that active preparations for the expeditions against Forts Niagara and Frontenac, under Shirley, and Crown Point, under William Johnson, were begun. The call for volunteers and levies was cheerfully responded to. The troops destined for these expeditions were ordered to assemble at Albany, and were gathered there at the close of June. Those who were to follow Shirley consisted of certain regiments of regulars from New England, New York, and New Jersey, and a band of Indian auxiliaries. Those who were to follow Johnson were chiefly New England and New York militia, nearly six thousand in number. Ship-carpenters were sent to Oswego to prepare vessels to cope with the French on Lake Ontario. The first armed schooner, carrying a dozen swivel-guns, was launched there at the close of June.
Johnson's second in command was Colonel Lyman, of Connecticut, * who
* Phineas Lyman was born at Durham, Conn., about 1716 ; died in West Florida in 1775. He was a graduate of Yale College, and was a tutor there. He was first a mer- chant and then a lawyer in Suffield, where he was a magistrate several years. He was
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MILITARY OPERATIONS IN NORTHERN NEW YORK.
bore the commission of major-general when he arrived at Albany at the middle of June. He was much superior in military ability to his chief, and should have held his place. He arranged the expedition for Johnson with skill and energy, and then, with the main body of the little army, he pressed forward during the hot days of midsummer to the " great carrying-place" between the Hudson and Lake Champlain, fifty miles from Albany. He was accompanied by three hundred Mohawk warriors under the famous Mohawk chief King Hendrick .* While waiting for the tardy Johnson to arrive with artillery and stores, Lyman caused his men to construct a strong fortification of timber and earth, which was named Fort Lyman ; but Johnson afterward ungenerously changed the name to Fort Edward, that he might pay successful court to a young scion of royalty.
When Johnson arrived at Fort Edward he took command of the army. News of Braddock's defeat dispirited him, and he would have abandoned the expedition had not Lyman urged him to go forward. It was deter- mined to proceed against Crown Point by way of Lake St. Sacrament,
commander-in-chief of the Connecticut forces at the breaking out of the French and Indian War, and performed admirable service at Lake George and its vicinity, as men- tioned in the text. He was with Lord Howe when he was killed in 1758 ; was at the capture of Crown Point and Montreal, and in 1762 he led troops against Havana, Cuba. In 1763 General Lyman went to England to secure prize-money for himself and soldiers, and a grant of land near Natchez, on the Mississippi. The region was called West Florida, and there he died soon after reaching it.
* Hendrick was a famous Mohawk sachem as well as a warrior, and was sometimes called " King Hendrick." When Johnson encamped at Lake George and proposed to send out a small party to meet an approaching French force, Hendrick, who was wise and sagacious, said, " If they are to fight, they are too few ; if they are to be killed, they are too many." Johnson deferred to Hendrick's judgment, and sent out twelve hundred men. Hendrick was one of the most sagacious Indian statesmen of his time, but Johnson outwitted him once. Being at Jolinson Hall, Hendrick saw and coveted a richly em- broidered scarlet coat. He tarried all night at the Hall. The next morning Hendrick said to Johnson, " Brother, me dream last night." " Indeed," answered Johnson. "What did my red brother dream ?" " Me dream that coat be mine." " It is yours," said the shrewd Indian agent. Not long afterward Johnson visited Hendrick, and said, " Brother, I dreamed last night." "What did you dream ?" asked Hendrick. "I dreamed that this tract of land was mine," describing a boundary which included nearly one hundred thousand acres of land. Hendrick was astounded, but would not be out- done in generosity. Pondering a few moments, he said, " Brother, the land is yours ; but you must not dream again." The title was conferred by the British Government, and the tract was called " The Royal Grant." The portrait on page 166 is copied from a colored print made in London while Hendrick was on a visit there, about 1750. He appears in a full court dress presented to him by the king. His signature and totem may be seen among totemic signatures on page 6. Hendrick was born about 1680, and was killed in battle near Lake George in 1755.
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which Johnson now named Lake George in honor of his king. At the head of that lake the commander established an open camp, utterly neglecting to intrench it. Suddenly scouts bronght the alarming intelli- gence that the forest between Fort Edward and the head of Lake Champlain was swarming with French regulars, Canadian militia, and Indians. Johnson immediately sent out Colonel Ephraim Williams (September 8th, 1755) with a thousand provincials and two hun- dred Mohawks under Hendrick to the relief of Fort Edward. The foe had changed their destination, and were approaching Johnson's camp. The detachment fell into an ambuscade. Williams and Hendrick and many of their fol- KING HENDRICK. lowers were slain. The remainder fled back to the camp hotly pur- sued by the victors, two thousand strong, led by General the Baron Dieskan.
Johnson was apprised of this disaster before the arrival of the fugitives, and hastily threw up a breastwork of trees, upon which he planted two cannons received the day before from Fort Edward. As the motley foe rushed upon the camp, discharges from these great guns terrified the Indians, and they fled to the woods. At that moment Lyman, who had hastened from Fort Edward to Johnson's relief, appeared, when the Canadian militia also fled.
Johnson had been wounded by a musket-ball in the fleshy part of the thigh at the beginning of the action, and Lyman took the command. The French regulars continued the fight for abont four hours, when, their commander being fatally wounded, they also fled and hastened back to Crown Point. General Lyman had won the victory and saved the army.
Learning that the French were strengthening Crown Point, Johnson, contrary to the opinions and wishes of his officers and troops, abandoned the enterprise and lingered long in his camp-long enough to build a fort at the head of the lake, which he named William Henry. Having garrisoned it and Fort Edward, he returned to Albany with the remainder of his forces in October. He was rewarded for his services in the cam-
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paign with the honors of knighthood and $25,000 to support the dignity. This honor and emolument properly belonged to General Phineas Lyman .*
The expedition of Governor Shirley against Forts Niagara and Frontenac was unsuccessful. It was late in August before the main body of his troops were gathered at Oswego, twenty-five hundred in number. Storms on the lake, sickness in his camp, and the desertion of his Indian allies (warriors of the Six Nations) compelled Shirley to abandon the expedition. Leaving a sufficient garrison at Oswego under Colonel Mercer, the remainder of the troops were marched back to Albany and disbanded. So ended the campaign of 1755.
The home government now took up the quarrel. Great Britain declared war against France in May, 1756, and France reciprocated it by a similar declaration in June. The plan of the campaign for that year submitted by Shirley, the successor of Braddock-a splendid theorist, but with little practical knowledge of military matters-had already been adopted at a convention of colonial governors held at Albany in December, 1755. It was arranged that ten thousand men should pro- ceed against Crown Point ; six thousand against Niagara ; three thou- sand against Fort Duquesne, and two thousand to cross the wilderness between the Kennebec and Chaudière rivers and menace Quebec by attacking the French settlers in that region of Canada.
Lord Loudoun, t a very lazy and most inefficient man, was appointed Shirley's successor as commander-in-chief of the British forces in America. He sent his lieutenant, General Abercrombie (by no means a brilliant man), to America in the spring of 1756. He arrived at New
* After the victory at Lake George Lyman vehemently urged Johnson to push for- ward immediately and take possession of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, which he might easily have done while the French were panic-stricken by their defeat. But Johnson had none of the qualities of a good general, not even sufficient moral courage, and did know how to profit by success. Shirley and others, and a council of war of his own officers, urged him to advance, but he spent weeks in his camp instead in building Fort William Henry. Jealous of General Lyman, whose superiority he felt, and with meanness only equalled by his incapacity, he did not even mention Lyman's name in his report of the battle to the Lords of Trade ; and immediately after the battle he changed the name of Fort Lyman to Fort Edward, as we have observed. The influence of friends at court secured to Johnson the honors and emoluments mentioned in the text. They were un- worthily bestowed upon an avaricious and immoral man and an unskilful general, while a noble, pure, and brave officer was suffered to go unnoticed either by his commander or the king whom he faithfully served. The pen of history will not neglect him.
+ John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun, was born in Scotland in 1705. He was appointed Governor of Virginia in 1756, but leaving the province in charge of his lieuten- ant, Dinwiddie, he engaged in military affairs, in which his indolence and inefficiency worked much mischief. He was recalled from the colonies in 1757, and was made lieu- tenant-general the next year. He was created general in 1770, and died in 1782.
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York in June with some regular soldiers, and after loitering awhile near the sea he ascended the Hudson to Albany, where he found General Winslow at the head of seven thousand provincial troops. Winslow had been commissioned by Shirley to command the expedition against Crown Point. These troops were anxious to press forward, for the whole frontier of New York was menaced by the French and Indians. The enthusiasm and patriotism of the soldiers were repressed by Abercrombie, who cast a firebrand among them and the people by insisting upon the right of regular officers to command provincial officers of the same rank, and also the propriety of quartering the regular officers on the inhab- itants. These assumptions, haughtily presented, caused serious disputes and mutual dislikes. Van Schaick, Mayor of Albany, disgusted with the superciliousness of the regular officers, said to them : " Go back again ; go back, for we can defend our frontiers ourselves."
But Abercrombie would not allow the troops to move either way. He kept at least ten thousand men, regulars and provincials, at Albany until near the close of summer waiting for Loudoun, when the French had gained advantages that disconcerted the whole plan of the campaign.
An energetic provincial officer-Colonel John Bradstreet-had per- formed a signal service in the interior with a handful of men, and rebuked his superiors by his activity. It was necessary to send pro- visions to the garrison at Oswego. Bradstreet was appointed to under- take the perilous task-perilous because it was known that the French and Indians were hovering around Oswego. With only two hundred provincials Bradstreet traversed the wilderness by way of the Mohawk River, Wood Creek, and Oneida Lake, and passing down the Oswego River, put into the forts at Oswego provisions for five thousand men for six months. He returned in safety after suffering incredible hardships.
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