Crucible of War

by Fred Anderson

  5. Esmond Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 84–97; Pownall to My Lord [Halifax], 23 July 1754, in McAnear, “Personal Accounts,” 744.

  6. Hutchinson: Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), esp. 1–34. During King George’s War, Shirley had backed Gov. Clinton of New York, a fellow Newcastle client and thus an enemy of De Lancey’s; Shirley thought De Lancey’s faction “a factious, vain, upstart Crew” (Shirley to Clinton, 26 June 1749, quoted in Katz, Newcastle’s New York, 206).

  7. Reception of the Plan: Newbold, Albany Congress, 135–171. (Franklin to Peter Collinson, 29 Dec. 1754, expresses his views on compulsory union; summarized at 171.) See also Gipson, Great Lakes Frontier, 123–40.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: General Braddock Takes Command

  1. Braddock’s appointment: Lee McCardell, Ill-Starred General: Braddock of the Coldstream Guards (Pittsburgh, 1958), 124–8; Paul E. Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela (Pittsburgh, 1977), 7–8, 277 n. 10; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 6, The Great War for the Empire: The Years of Defeat, 1754–1757 (New York, 1968), 57–8. Braddock’s rebukes: Alan Rogers, Empire and Liberty: American Resistance to British Authority, 1755–1763 (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 76. Quotation: Braddock to Robert Hunter Morris, 28 Feb. 1755, in Gipson, Years of Defeat, 69. Governors’ conference: ibid., 64–70.

  2. John Schutz, William Shirley: King’s Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 189–98; Douglas Edward Leach, Arms for Empire: A Military History of the British Colonies in North America, 1607–1763 (New York, 1973), 355–6; Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 146–8; Gipson, Years of Defeat, 70–5.

  3. Schutz, Shirley, 197.

  4. Impossibility of establishing a fund: “Minutes of a Council Held at Alexandria,” 14 Apr. 1755, quoted in Gipson, Years of Defeat, 71. Braddock bound by instructions: Leach, Arms for Empire, 355. Route: “Sketch for the Operations in North America,” 16 Nov. 1754, in Stanley Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (1936; reprint, New York, 1969), 45.

  5. Schutz, Shirley, 198–9.

  6. Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 153, 162 ff.; Gipson, Years of Defeat, 143 ff., 163; Milton W. Hamilton, Sir William Johnson, Colonial American, 1715–1763 (Port Washington, N.Y., 1976), 125–39.

  7. “Fine Cuntry”: “The Journal of Captain Robert Cholmley’s Batman,” 21 Apr. 1755, in Charles Hamilton, ed., Braddock’s Defeat (Norman, Okla., 1959), 11. Washington and Braddock: Robert Orme to Washington, 2 Mar. 1755, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 1, 1748–August 1755 (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 241–2; Washington to Orme, 15 Mar. and 2 Apr. 1755, ibid., 242–8; Washington to William Fairfax, 5 May 1755, ibid., 262–4; Washington to Augustine Washington, 14 May 1755, ibid., 271–3. Washington had two motives in serving as a volunteer: to obtain a regular commission, which could come from serving with Braddock, and to avoid demotion. Virginia had restructured its provincial forces for 1755, abolishing the regiment in favor of independent companies commanded by captains, who would take orders from regular field officers. Had he accepted a demotion to captain, Washington would have lost more status and honor than a proud Virginia gentleman could afford, and he could never have attracted Braddock’s attention.

  8. Franklin makes himself useful: Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. L. Jesse Lemisch (New York, 1961), 145–51 (quotations at 146 and 149); Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 149–51; Gipson, Years of Defeat, 75–6. Braddock’s improved opinion of Pennsylvania: id. to Robert Napier, 8 June 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 85.

  CHAPTER NINE: Disaster on the Monongahela

  1. “The Journal of Captain Robert Cholmley’s Batman,” 20 and 23 May 1755, in Charles Hamilton, ed., Braddock’s Defeat (Norman, Okla., 1959), 15–16.

  2. Braddock’s Indian diplomacy: Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 151–5 (quotation from Franklin’s Autobiography is at 152; quotations from Shingas’s account of the conference at 154–5); also Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio and Its Peoples, 1724–1774 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1992), 119–21; and Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 85–9. Numbers of Indians accompanying Braddock: “A Return of His Majesty’s Troops,” 8 June 1755, in Stanley M. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (1936; reprint, New York, 1969), 86–91.

  3. John Rutherford to Richard Peters, recd. 13 Aug. 1755, quoted in Wainwright, Croghan, 90.

  4. “An hundred and ten Miles”: quoted ibid., 85. Artillery: Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 6, The Great War for the Empire: The Years of Defeat, 1754–1757 (New York, 1968), 79; Pargellis, Military Affairs, 91. (The siege train included four twelve-pound naval guns dismounted from H.M.S. Norwich and placed on wheeled carriages, six six-pound fieldpieces, four eight-inch howitzers, and fifteen Coehorn mortars. The twelve-pounders weighed more than a ton each.) Division of the column: “The Journal of a British Officer,” 16 June 1755, in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 42; also Cholmley’s batman’s diary, 29 May–19 June 1755, ibid., 17–22.

  5. Order of march: Paul E. Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela (Pittsburgh, 1977), 31–49. There were only seven Mingo scouts because Scarouady’s son had been shot dead, three days earlier, by a soldier who mistook him for a hostile Indian—a great blow to Scarouady, who “was hardly able to support his loss” (“Journal of a British Officer,” 6 July 1755, in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 48). Washington’s malady: “Memorandum,” 8–9 July 1755, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 1, 1748–August 1755 (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 331. Use of flanking parties to provide security: Peter E. Russell, “Redcoats in the Wilderness: British Officers and Irregular Warfare in Europe and America, 1740 to 1760,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 35 (1978): 629–52.

  6. Papers of Washington, 1:332 n. 3; Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 19–30; Gipson, Years of Defeat, 90–2.

  7. The Indians deployed in a half-moon attack formation; see Leroy V. Eid, “ ‘A Kind of Running Fight’: Indian Battlefield Tactics in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 71 (1988): 147–71.

  8. Openness of woods: Sir John St. Clair to Robert Napier, 13 June and 22 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 94, 103. On Indian burning practices, see William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York, 1983), 49–52.

  9. Disintegration of order: Robert Orme’s account, in Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela,214. (The eighteenth-century platoon was a firing echelon of a company, made up in theory of twenty-five to thirty-five men; given the company strengths in Braddock’s force, these platoons probably had no more than twelve to fifteen men each.) Regular reactions, rear guard, and flight of teamsters: ibid., 79; Patrick Mackellar, “A Sketch of the Field of Battle . . . , No. 2,” in Pargellis, Military Affairs, facing 115; quotation from Mackellar, “Explanation,” ibid., 115; Don Higginbotham, Daniel Morgan, Revolutionary Rifleman (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 4–6; John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer(New York, 1992), 36–8. Fate of women: Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 31, 47, 137; Contrecoeur to Vaudreuil, 14 July 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 132 (twenty women made captive).

  10. Quotation: “Relation sur l’action . . . par Mr. de Godefroy,” in Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 259.

  11. “Old Standers”: “Journal of a British Officer,” 16 June 1755, in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat,

  42. Quotations on difficulty of seeing Indians: extract of a letter from Fort C
umberland [Rev. Philip Hughes?], 23 July 1755, in Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 203; Cholmley’s batman’s diary, 9 July 1755, in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 29. War cries: Duncan Cameron’s account, in Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 178. Stories of Indian barbarity: account of “British A,” ibid., 164. Memory of war cries: letter of Matthew Leslie, 30 July 1755, ibid., 204.

  12. Firing by platoons: “Journal of a British Officer,” in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 50. Deaths by friendly fire: account of “British B,” in Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 170. Washington believed that two-thirds of British casualties resulted from friendly fire; see id. to Dinwiddie, 18 July 1755, Papers of Washington, 1:340. Medical evidence supports his estimate: “that the men fired irregularly one behind another,” Dr. Alexander Hamilton reported, “appeared afterwards by the Bullets which the surgeons Extracted from the wounded, They being distinguishable from those of the French & Indians by their Size, As they were considerably larger, For the bore of the Enemys Muskets . . . was very small. Among the wounded men there were two for one of these larger bullets extracted by the Surgeons, and the wounds were chiefly on the back parts of the Body, so we may reasonably conclude it must have also been among the killed” (to Gavin Hamilton, Aug. 1755, ibid., 341 n. 7).

  13. Adam Stephen to John Hunter, 18 July 1755, in Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 226–7; also Harry M. Ward, Major General Adam Stephen and the Cause of American Liberty (Charlottesville, Va., 1989), 17–20.

  14. Rum: Duncan Cameron, in Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 87, 179. Cameron hides in tree: ibid., 177–9 (quotation at 178). On Indian cultural values and their effects on warfare, see Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (New York, 1990), 10–18; and Daniel K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 40 (1983): 528–59.

  15. Washington quotation: Biographical Memorandum, c. 1786, Papers of Washington 1: 332–3 n. 4.

  16. Cholmley’s batman’s diary, 12–17 July 1755, in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 32–3.

  17. Of 1,373 Anglo-American enlisted men “in the Field,” 430 were killed or left for dead on the battlefield, while 484 were wounded; of the 96 officers, 26 were killed and 36 wounded. These figures, reported weeks after the battle, included only soldiers; no figures survive for the total of civilians (women, teamsters, and other camp followers) killed or wounded. Contrecoeur’s report of the battle, however, mentioned “around 600 men killed, with many officers, and the wounded in proportion” but only “20 men or women made prisoner by the savages.” This suggests an additional 150 killed from the camp followers. See the “Explanation” of Mackellar’s map 1 and “Extrait de La Lettre part Mr De Contrecoeur . . . a Monsieur Le marquis De Vaudreuil ... 14e Juillet 1755,” in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 114, 131, 132, my translation.

  18. Maggots: Cholmley’s batman’s diary, 13 July 1755, in Hamilton, Braddock’s Defeat, 32. (These may actually have had a beneficial effect in eating away putrescent tissue, and certainly they did less damage than the surgeons’ attempts to clean and dress the wounds.) Dunbar requests winter quarters: Gipson, Years of Defeat, 128.

  19. On contemporary opinions of Braddock’s responsibility, see esp. Russell, “Redcoats in the Wilderness,” 629–30.

  20. “Dastardly behaviour”: Washington to Dinwiddie, 18 July 1755, Papers of Washington, 1:339. “How little does the World”: Washington to Warner Lewis, 14 Aug. 1755, ibid., 361. Later recollections (1783): Kopperman, Braddock at the Monongahela, 247–8. None of Washington’s letters at the time of the battle criticized Braddock; see Papers of Washington, 1:331–54. Scarouady’s address, 22 Aug. 1755: Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 152.

  CHAPTER TEN: After Braddock: William Shirley and the Northern Campaigns

  1. Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crowns, Colonies, and Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988), 165–8; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 6, The Great War for the Empire: The Years of Defeat, 1754–1757 (New York, 1968), 54; James Titus, The Old Dominion at War: Society, Politics, and Warfare in Late Colonial Virginia (Columbia, S.C., 1991) 102–3; Thomas Lewis, For King and Country: The Maturing of George Washington, 1748–1760 (New York, 1993), 201–2.

  2. Virginia casualties: Washington to Mary Ball Washington, 18 July 1755, and Washington to Robert Dinwiddie, 18 July 1755, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 1, 1748–August 1755 (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 336, 339, 342 n. 10. Refugees and losses in autumn: Titus, Old Dominion, 71, 74. Quotation: Washington to Dinwiddie, 11 Oct. 1755, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 2, August 1755-April 1756 (Charlottesville, Va., 1983), 105.

  3. Hayes Baker-Crothers, Virginia in the French and Indian War (Chicago, 1928), 82–5; Titus, Old Dominion, 73–7, 108–11. The ten-pound scalp bounty only served to encourage the murder of neutral, Christianized, and friendly Indians and was repealed as having not “answer[ed] the purposes . . . intended,” in 1758 (W. Stitt Robinson, The Southern Colonial Frontier, 1607–1763 [Albuquerque, N.M., 1979], 214). The Burgesses canceled the act only when parliamentary reimbursements enabled Virginia to offer cash enlistment bounties for the Virginia Regiment.

  4. Acceptance of French alliance: Michael N. McConnell, “Peoples ‘In Between’: The Iroquois and the Ohio Indians, 1720–1768,” in Daniel K. Richter and James Merrell, eds., Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1987), 106. Scarouady’s address to Morris and the council, 22 Aug. 1755, quoted in Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 165. Iroquois embassy to Vaudreuil: Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Adventure in the Wilderness: The American Journals of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, 1756–1760, ed. Edward Hamilton (Norman, Okla., 1964), 30. Captain Jacobs: Shingas’s narrative, quoted in Jennings, Empire of Fortune, 166.

  5. Cannon: Shirley to Robert Hunter Morris, n.d., quoted in John Schutz, William Shirley: King’s Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 201. Dispute with Johnson: memorandum, “Summary of Disputes Between Governor William Shirley and General William Johnson, 1755,” in Stanley M. Pargellis, ed., Military Affairs in North America, 1748–1765: Documents from the Cumberland Papers in Windsor Castle (1936; reprint, New York, 1969), 153–4. Shirley’s grief: Thomas Hutchinson, History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo, vol. 3 (1936; reprint, New York, 1970), 24.

  6. Schutz, Shirley, 209; Gipson, Years of Defeat, 106–15, 132–3.

  7. Schutz, Shirley, 212–16.

  8. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 5, Zones of International Friction: The Great Lakes Frontier, Canada, the West Indies, India, 1748–1754 (New York, 1967), 186–90, 193–206; Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 4, s.v. “Le Loutre, Jean-Louis.”

  9. Enthusiasm for expedition: Hutchinson, Massachusetts-Bay, 3:20–1. Parallel progress of Braddock’s and Nova Scotia expeditions: “The Journal of Captain Robert Cholmley’s Batman,” 2 June 1755, in Charles Hamilton, ed., Braddock’s Defeat (Norman, Okla., 1959), 18; J. T. B., ed., “Diary of John Thomas,” entries of 2–3 June 1755, Nova Scotia Historical Society, Collections 1 (1878): 122; John Frost diary, entries of 16 and 19 June 1755, ibid., 125, 126.

  10. Carl Brasseaux, The Founding of New Acadia: The Beginnings of Acadian Life in Louisiana, 1765–1803 (Baton Rouge, 1987), 22–34; Gipson, Years of Defeat, 212–344.

  11. Brasseaux, New Acadia, 23; Schutz, Shirley, 204, finds the evidence of Shirley’s involvement only compelling enough to merit a footnote. Gipson, Years of Defeat, 261, notes that Shirley planned to neutralize the Acadian “threat” as early as 1747 but stops short of suggesting that he planned the expedition as a final solution to the Acadian problem. George A. Rawlyk, Nova Scotia’s Massachusetts: A Study of Massachusetts–Nova Scotia Relations, 1630 to 1784 (Montréal, 1973), 1
45–64, does not assign Shirley a decisive role in the deportations. On the New England occupation, see ibid., 217–21.

  12. Ian K. Steele, Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the “Massacre” (New York, 1990), 36.

  13. Gipson, Years of Defeat, 139–40; Johnson to Pownall, 3 Sept. 1755, quoted ibid., 186.

  14. Ibid., 165–8.

  15. Steele, Betrayals, 43; unless otherwise noted, my account of French preparations follows his excellent second chapter, “To Battle for Lake George,” 28–56.

  16. Peter E. Russell, “Redcoats in the Wilderness: British Officers and Irregular Warfare in Europe and America, 1740 to 1760,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 35 (1978): 633; Steele, Betrayals, 44–6; Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, s.v. “Dieskau, Jean-Armand ( Johan Herman?), Baron de Dieskau.”

  17. Steele, Betrayals, 47–8; Seth Pomeroy to Israel Williams, 9 Sept. 1755, in Louis Effingham DeForest, ed., The Journals and Papers of Seth Pomeroy, Sometime General in the Colonial Service (New Haven, Conn., 1926), 137. On the Mohawks’ formation, see Leroy V. Eid, “ ‘National’ War among Indians of Northeastern North America,” Canadian Review of American Studies 16 (1985): 129.

  18. Steele, Betrayals, 48–9; Seth Pomeroy to Israel Williams, 9 Sept. 1755, in DeForest, Journalsand Papers of Pomeroy, 137; Peter Wraxall to Henry Fox, 27 Sept. 1755, in Pargellis, Military Affairs, 139; Milton W. Hamilton, Sir William Johnson, Colonial American, 1715–1763 (Port Washington, N.Y., 1976), 157–60.