22. Hostile reception at Kuskuski: “Second Journal of Post,” 253, 254, quoted from entries of 19 and 20 Nov. 1758. “The Indians concern themselves”: 23 Nov. 1758, ibid., 258.
23. 29 Nov. 1758, “Second Journal of Post,” 278. “Ketiushund” was Keekyuscung, Pisquetomen’s companion in the Delawares’ diplomatic mission of early July; when he spoke to Post, therefore, his words carried more than casual weight.
24. 3–4 Dec. 1758, “Second Journal of Post,” 281–3; Charles Morse Stotz, Outposts of the War for Empire (Pittsburgh, 1985), 121–5.
25. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, s.v. “Le Marchand de Lignery, François-Marie.” Reductions in Fort Duquesne’s garrison: Vaudreuil to the minister of marine, 20 Jan. 1759, in Sylvester K. Stevens and Donald H. Kent, eds., Wilderness Chronicles of Western Pennsylvania (Harrisburg, Pa., 1941), 126–31.
26. Account of raid and mistaken identity: Forbes to Abercromby, 17 Nov. 1758, Writings of Forbes, quotations at 255–6; also Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the AmericanRevolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 282. Washington did not describe the episode in his contemporary correspondence but later recalled that he tried to stop the firing by “knocking up with his sword the presented pieces” (David Humphrey’s notes toward a biography of Washington, quoted in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 6 [Charlottesville, Va., 1988], 122 n. 1). Another contemporary account, however, suggests that “Colonel Washington did not discover his usual activity and presence of mind upon this occasion,” and that Capt. Thomas Bullitt stopped the firing by running “between the two parties, waving his hat and calling to them.” “This censure . . . gave rise to a resentment in the mind of General Washington which never subsided” (Quoted from William Marshall Bullitt, My Life at Oxmoor, 3–4, in Papers of Washington, 6:123 n. 1).
27. General Orders and Brigade Orders, 14–15 Nov. 1758, Papers of Washington 6:125–9; Gipson, Victorious Years, 283.
28. 20 Nov. 1758, “Second Journal of Post,” 255–6.
29. Vaudreuil to the minister of marine, 20 Jan. 1759, in Kent and Stevens, Wilderness Chronicles,128–9.
30. Forbes to Abercromby and Amherst, 26–30 Nov. 1758, Writings of Forbes, 263.
31. Quotations from Forbes to Amherst, 26 Jan. and 7 Feb. 1759, Writings of Forbes, 283, 289. See also Forbes to Amherst, 18 Jan. 1759, 282–3.
32. James Grant to Bouquet, 20 Feb. 1759, ibid., 300. Per tot discrimina: Through so many dangers; Ohio Britannica Consilio manuque: By force and resolve, Britain [seized] the Ohio. (My thanks to Professor Steven Epstein for translating this inscription.)
33. Forbes’s obituary, Pennsylvania Gazette, 15 Mar. 1759.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Educations in Arms
1. I have argued the following points at greater length in A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), esp. 65–164 and 196–223. In the following paragraphs specific citations will be made only to direct quotations.
2. Rowena Buell, ed., The Memoirs of Rufus Putnam (Boston, 1903), 25 (entry of 9 July 1758).
3. Fabius Maximus Ray, ed., The Journal of Dr. Caleb Rea, Written during the Expedition against Ticonderoga in 1758 (Salem, Mass., 1881), 36–7 (entry of 25 July 1758). Punishments other than flogging were commonplace and often applied at the company level without benefit of court-martial proceedings. In roughly escalating order of severity, the most common company punishments were the wheel, the mare, the gauntlet, the picket, and laying neck and heels. A man bound to the wheel would be spread-eagled across a wagon wheel for a day or longer: thirst, hunger, loss of sleep, and the humiliation of fouling himself publicly were the intended results. To ride the mare, or the wooden horse, was to be made to straddle the spine formed by boards nailed together in an inverted V. Muskets might be tied to the subject’s ankles to increase his discomfort; the punishment might last from several minutes to more than an hour. A man subjected to the gauntlet would be forced to walk shirtless between parallel lines of men (usually the members of his company) armed with musket ramrods; each would give him a blow on the back as he passed. The victim’s pace would be controlled by another man walking backward ahead of him and carrying a musket with bayonet fixed and pointed at his chest. To be picketed, a man would first have his shoes removed, then have his left wrist bound to his right ankle, and then be hoisted on a gallows by a rope tied around his right wrist. A sharpened stake, or picket, would be set beneath him. If the punishment was prolonged, the only way the victim could prevent his arm from being dislocated was to stand on the point of the picket with his bare foot. The most severe of the informal punishments was to be laid (or tied) neck and heels: a man with hands tied would have a noose slipped around his neck, the other end of which would be tied about his ankles and tightened to arch his back, drawing neck and heels toward one another. A man might be left in this position of semistrangulation for an hour or more. Although laying neck and heels remained in the range of customary punishments through the whole of the eighteenth century, it was seldom practiced during the Seven Years’ War because it too often resulted in the death of expensive, hard-to-replace soldiers.
4. “Extracts from Gibson Clough’s Journal,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 3 (1861): 104 (entry for 30 Sept. 1759).
5. “Obstinate and Ungovernable”: Lieut. Alexander Johnson to Loudoun, 20 Dec. 1756, quoted in Douglas Edward Leach, Roots of Conflict: British Armed Forces and Colonial Americans, 1677–1763 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 130–1. “Dirtiest most contemptible”: James Wolfe to Lord George Sackville, 30 July 1758, in Beckles Willson, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (New York, 1909), 392.
6. Anderson, A People’s Army, 58–62; Harold Selesky, War and Society in Colonial Connecticut (New Haven, Conn., 1990), 166–70. Selesky, in the most complete study to date of a colonial military system, estimates that 60 percent of the eligible men served in the Connecticut forces during the war; my own earlier estimate that 40 percent of the eligible men in Massachusetts served was based on scrappier evidence and was intended to be as conservative as possible. In fact, participation in Massachusetts probably equaled that of Connecticut.
7. Washington to Francis Fauquier, 9 Dec. 1758, and Christopher Hardwick to Washington, 12 Dec. 1758, in W. W. Abbot et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, vol. 6, September 1758–December 1760 (Charlottesville, Va., 1988), 165–7.
8. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, vol. 2, Young Washington (New York, 1948), 301–2, 316–21.
9. Don Higginbotham, George Washington and the American Military Tradition (Athens, Ga., 1985), 15; Freeman, Young Washington, 368–99.
10. Washington to Bouquet, 6 Nov. 1758, Papers of Washington, 6:116.
PART V: ANNUS MIRABILIS, 1759 CHAPTER THIRTY: Success, Anxiety, and Power: The Ascent of William Pitt
1. John C. Webster, ed., Journal of William Amherst in America, 1758–1760 (London, 1927), 33–4.
2. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George II (London, 1846), 3:134.
3. Quotation: Walpole to George Montagu, 21 Oct. 1759, in Paget Toynbee, ed., The Letters of Horace Walpole, Fourth Earl of Orford, vol. 4 (Oxford, 1903), 314. News of Ticonderoga: Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 233–4; Peter Douglas Brown, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: The Great Commoner (London, 1978), 179. News of Forts Frontenac and Duquesne: see Pitt to Amherst, 23 Jan. 1759, in Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, ed., Correspondenceof William Pitt when Secretary of State with Colonial Governors and Military and Naval Commissioners in America (1906; reprint, New York, 1969), 2:12. (Pitt learned of Duquesne’s fall on 19 Jan.)
4. Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757–1762 (Cambridge, U.K., 1986), 62–3; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Grea
t War for the Empire: The Victori ous Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 129–30; Russell Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (Bloomington, Ind., 1991), 180–8; Dennis Showalter, The Wars of Frederick the Great (London, 1996), 207–8.
5. Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, vol. 2 (London, 1918), 233–53; Showalter, Wars of Frederick, 208.
6. Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, vol. 1 (London, 1918), 271–281, 286.
7. Reginald Savory, His Britannic Majesty’s Army in Germany during the Seven Years’ War (Oxford, 1966), 86, 460–1.
8. Annual expenses: Middleton, Bells, 92. Strategic situation at the end of 1758: Savory, Army, 112–15.
9. Weigley, Age of Battles, 188–90; Showalter, Wars of Frederick, 212–30.
10. Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:286–304; Middleton, Bells, 81–2.
11. Newcastle’s financial anxieties: Middleton, Bells, 88–90; Reed Browning, “The Duke of Newcastle and the Financing of the Seven Years’ War,” Journal of Economic History 31 (1971): 344–77. Newcastle’s loyalty, and Pitt’s growing regard: id., The Duke of Newcastle (New Haven, Conn., 1975), 261–2, 268.
12. Walpole, Memoirs of George II, 3:185.
13. Ayling, Elder Pitt, 232; on the king’s blindness and loss of hearing, see Charles Chenevix Trench, George II (London, 1973), 292.
14. George, prince of Wales, to the earl of Bute, c. 8 Dec. 1758, in Romney Sedgwick, ed., Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–1766 (London, 1939), 18.
15. On the character of British military institutions, see Sylvia Frey, “British Armed Forces and the American Victory,” in John Ferling, ed., The World Turned Upside Down: The AmericanVictory in the War of Independence (New York, 1988), esp. 167–70.
16. On Barrington, see Lewis M. Wiggin, The Faction of Cousins: A Political Account of the Grenvilles, 1733–1763 (New Haven, Conn., 1958), 299–300; and John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 223–4, 231–50, 365–70. Pitt disliked Barrington for his connections to Halifax and thus to the Bedford Whigs; dealing directly with Anson and Ligonier offered a way to avoid dealing with him.
17. Savory (Army, 88–9) suggests that Ferdinand decided to go on the defensive between 14 and 24 July when it was clear that his opponents far outnumbered him and that his own strength was largely spent.
18. On Cumming and the expedition, see James L. A. Webb Jr., “The Mid-Eighteenth Century Gum Arabic Trade and the British Conquest of Saint-Louis du Sénégal, 1758,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25 (1997): 37–58, the most complete account; also Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 8, The Great War for the Empire: The Culmination, 1760–1763 (New York, 1970), 174–7; and Ayling, Elder Pitt, 193–4, 224, 238. On the economic impact of the venture, see John J. McCusker, Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen ContinentalColonies (New York, 1989), 2:1144–6 (table E-45); and id. and Russell Menard, The Economy of Colonial British America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985), 158, fig. 7.1.
19. Beckford to Pitt, 11 Sept. 1758, quoted in Gipson, Culmination, 84.
20. On Martinique’s exports, see McCusker, Rum and Revolution, 1:143–4, 329 (tables 4-2 and 5-2). On Martinique’s significance as a privateering base, see J. K. Eyre, “The Naval History of Martinique,” U.S. Naval Institute, Proceedings 68 (1942): 1115–24. Most of the fourteen hundred Anglo-American ships taken in the West Indies during the war were lost to privateers operating out of Martinique.
21. On the strength and organization of the expedition, see Marshall Smelser, The Campaign for the Sugar Islands: A Study in Amphibious Warfare (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1955), 16–27. On Anson’s fears, see Middleton, Bells, 87. Financial burdens: Ayling, Elder Pitt, 242; Gipson, Victorious Years, 289; Middleton, Bells, 113; John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1989), 117 (fig. 4.7). Quotation: Walpole to Horace Mann, 25 Dec. and 27 Nov. 1758, in W. S. Lewis, ed., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Cor respondence,vol. 21, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with Sir Horace Mann (New Haven, Conn., 1958), 261, 257.
22. Diplomatic and naval initiatives: Middleton, Bells, 96, 108–11. Army and militia: J. R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue, 1660–1802 (London, 1965), 135–61; also see Eliga Gould, Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., forthcoming), chap. 3, for the riskiness of the decision to rely on the militia, which had provoked resistance and even riots in 1757 among men unwilling to be pressed into militia service.
23. Pitt to the governors of Mass. Bay, N.H., Conn., R.I., N.Y., N.J., 9 Dec. 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:414–16; id. to the governors of Pa., Md., Va., N.C., S.C., 9 Dec. 1758, 417–20.
24. “A Memorandum of Orders Sent to General Amherst,” 9 Dec. 1758–23 Jan. 1759, ibid., 426–7; quotation, Pitt to Amherst, 29 Dec. 1758, ibid., 433.
25. Daniel John Beattie, “General Jeffery Amherst and the Conquest of Canada, 1758–1760” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1976), 135.
26. “No objection”: Wolfe to Pitt, 22 Nov. 1758, in Beckles Willson, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (New York, 1909), 400. The suggestion that Pitt found in Wolfe a kindred spirit is a virtual commonplace, although nowhere documented directly: see, e.g., J. H. Plumb, Chatham (New York, 1965), 75; Simon Schama, Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) (New York, 1991), 15.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Ministerial Uncertainties
1. Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757–1762 (Cambridge, U.K., 1985), 115–16; J. R. Western, The English Militia in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Political Issue, 1660–1802 (London, 1965), 154.
2. On Martinique, see Marshall Smelser, The Campaign for the Sugar Islands: A Study in Amphibious Warfare (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1955), 39–65; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 8, The Great War for the Empire: The Culmination, 1760–1763 (New York, 1970), 88–94; and Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, vol. 1 (London, 1918), 378–80.
3. Hopson’s frailty: Gipson, Culmination, 86–7; Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, s.v. “Hopson, Peregrine Thomas.” Expedition stalls at Basse-Terre: Smelser, Campaign, 75–102; Gipson, Culmination, 98–101; Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:380–1. Hopson was evidently about seventy-five years old at the time of his appointment, which came at the direction of the king.
4. Smelser, Campaign, 113–20; Gipson, Culmination, 101–2; Corbett, Seven Years’ War, 1:382–5.
5. Middleton, Bells, 115–20; Western, Militia, 154–6; Rex Whitworth, Field Marshal Lord Ligonier: A Story of the British Army, 1702–1770 (Oxford, 1958), 297; Reginald Savory, His Britannic Majesty’s Army in Germany during the Seven Years’ War (Oxford, 1966), 118–50.
6. The earl of Holdernesse, 17 May 1759, cited in Western, Militia, 156.
7. Middleton, Bells, 120; Smelser, Campaign, 127–43; Gipson, Culmination, 102–3; Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739–1763 (Oxford, 1936), 186–95.
8. Smelser, Campaign, 113–15, 143–7.
9. Gipson, Culmination, 94–5; John J. McCusker, Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies (New York, 1989), 2:707 (table B-99).
10. Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 239; McCusker, Rum and Revolution, 2:924 (table D-20). On slave imports, see ibid., 673 (table B-70). Exports to the mainland: Pares, War and Trade, 488 n.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Surfeit of Enthusiasm, Shortage of Resources
1. Pitt to Barrington, 7 July 1759, in Gertrude Selwyn Kimball, ed., Correspondence of William Pitt when S
ecretary of State with Colonial Governors and Military and Naval Commissioners in America (1906; reprint, New York, 1969), 2:137.
2. Chests of coin arrive at Boston: Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 7, The Great War for the Empire: The Victorious Years, 1758–1760 (New York, 1967), 312, 317–8. Default narrowly averted: Thomas Pownall to Pitt, 30 Sept.–2 Oct. 1758, Pitt Corr., 1:358–64. Gipson, Victorious Years, 317–8. Military participation and a feared shortage of laborers: Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1758, vol. 34 (Boston, 1963), 340, 364, 372, 376 (hereafter cited as JHRM). Between a fourth and a third of all men in the prime military age range served in the Massachusetts provincial forces in 1758; a sufficiently concerning fact that on 14 Mar. 1758 a special legislative committee had been formed to determine what the likely impact of such participation would be. The committee felt strongly enough about the issue to set its conclusion in italics. “[T]he great Scarcity of Labourers, which will be the natural Consequence of so large a Body of Forces as are rais’d and to be rais’d for his Majesty’s Service within this Government the present Year,” the committee found, “makes it necessary that such as are left be not called off from their Labour”; they therefore recommended that all men not serving as provincials be excused from militia training during planting and harvest to ensure an adequate labor supply. The House passed the resolution, in an apparently unanimous voice vote, on 23 Mar. 1758.
3. Report on governor’s speech, 10 Mar. 1759, JHRM 1759, vol. 35 (Boston, 1964), 273; also Pownall to Pitt, 16 Mar. 1759, Pitt Corr., 2:70–3.
4. Address to the governor, 17 Apr. 1759, JHRM 1759, 35:336–8.
5. Bounty: ibid., 335. With interest due, the net earnings for a Massachusetts private approximated thirty pounds in province currency, or twenty-two pounds ten shillings sterling—at least double an agricultural laborer’s wages for the same period. On contemporary awareness of the consequences of such exceptional wages, see Thomas Hutchinson to Col. Israel Williams, 24 Apr. 1759: “I hope we shall not have occasion hereafter to go into the disagreeable measure of impressing men. The Bounty is extravagant & more than I would vote for on the Committee & will be a bad precedent, at least it appears to me who, I assure you, often think of the deplorable State we must be in if we have no reimbursement” (quoted in Gipson, Victorious Years, 321 n. 128). To ensure that the province’s subsidy would not be held up, Hutchinson—now the lieutenant governor—personally screened all claims and prepared the paperwork for Parliament.
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