9. “Colonists may not be taxed”: Rhode Island petition, 29 Nov. 1764, quoted in Jensen, Founding, 87. Connecticut Assembly and Ingersoll: Gipson, Thunder-Clouds Gather, 236–7.
10. Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 9, The Triumphant Empire: New Responsibilities within the Enlarged Empire, 1763–1766 (New York, 1968), 114; Jensen, Founding, 27–8; “Remonstrance of the Pennsylvania frontiersmen,” 13 Feb. 1764, Am. Col. Docs., 614–17; Alden Vaughan, “Frontier Banditti and the Indians: The Paxton Boys’ Legacy, 1763–1775,” Pennsylvania History 51 (1984): 1–5.
11. Jensen, Founding, 88–90; Esmond Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 138–54.
12. Petition to the King, and Memorial to the House of Lords, both 18 Dec. 1764, in Morgan, Prologue, 14–15.
13. Remonstrance to the House of Commons, 18 Dec. 1764, ibid., 16–17.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR: Pontiac’s Progress
1. John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 125–34; see also John Richard Alden, General Gage in America(Baton Rouge, 1948), 65–88.
2. Shy, Toward Lexington, 135–6; Alden, Gage, 93–4; Gage to Egremont, 17 Nov. 1763, in Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, 1763–1775, vol. 1 (New Haven, Conn., 1931), 1–2; Gage to Halifax, 9 Dec. 1763, 2–4; Amherst to Gage, 17 Nov. 1763, The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Secretaries of State, 1763–1775, vol. 2 (New Haven, Conn., 1933), 209–14.
3. Alden, Gage, 94–5; id., John Stuart and the Southern Colonial Frontier (1944; reprint, New York, 1966), 196; William Smith, Historical Account of Henry Bouquet’s Expedition against the Ohio Indians, in 1764 (Cincinnati, 1868), 29–44; Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 9, The Triumphant Empire: New Responsibilities within the Enlarged Empire, 1763–1766 (New York, 1968), 123–4. Pennsylvania’s contribution was, as usual, delayed by the intractable dispute between the antiproprietary and proprietary factions in the assembly.
4. Gipson, New Responsibilities, 117–18; William G. Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit and Preferment in Colonial North America: John Bradstreet’s Quest (Waterloo, Ont., 1982), 192–5, 197–8.
5. “When the Indians”: Amherst to Gage, 17 Nov. 1763, Gage Corr., 2:212. “Fill their canoes”: James Thomas Flexner, Lord of the Mohawks: A Biography of Sir William Johnson (Boston, 1979), 268.
6. “The largest Number”: Johnson to Cadwallader Colden, 23 Aug. 1764, quoted in Gipson, New Responsibilities, 118–19. Johnson negotiated treaties with each group present, evidently all on similar lines; see E. B. O’Callaghan et al., eds., The Papers of Sir William Johnson, vol. 4 (Albany, 1924), 511–14. Conference expenses: “Journals of Capt. John Montresor,” ed. G. D. Scull, New-York Historical Society Collections, 14 (1881): 275.
The end of the alcohol ban has never been properly appreciated as a strategic move. On 1 Nov. 1763 Gladwin suggested to Amherst that “if your Excellency still intends to punish them [the Indians] further for their barbarities, it may be easily done without any expense to the Crown by permitting a free sale of rum, which will destroy them more effectually than fire and sword” (quoted in Howard H. Peckham, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising [Princeton, N.J., 1947], 238). Amherst ignored the suggestion, but Johnson embraced it. Like Gladwin, he knew that among the heaviest consumers of alcohol would be exactly those young men who, sober, had been such formidable opponents in 1763. With liquor to turn their aggressiveness against one another, disorder, murders, and suffering within Indian communities would doubtless increase, but with a few precautions (such as allowing the trade only at major posts and prohibiting consumption on the site) Britain’s reestablished garrisons would have little to fear, and much to gain, by reopening the traffic in alcohol. In October 1764 he argued to the Board of Trade that the Indian trade “will never be so extensive without” the sale of rum, for four reasons:
First, the extreme desire the Indians have for it, and the strong requests the several Nations made for the sale thereof, when lately at Niagara, which I was obliged to promise, should be complied with, and the same is approved by Genl Gage. Secondly, that as the Indians value it above any thing else, they will not stick at giving such price for it, as will make good addition to the fund for the purposes of the [Indian] Departm[en]t. Thirdly, that without it, the Indians can purchase their cloathing with half the quantity of Skins, which will make them indolent, and lessen the Fur Trade. And lastly, that from what I find, the Indians will be universally discontented without it (Johnson to the Lords of Trade, n.d. [8 Oct. 1764], in E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, vol. 7 [Albany, 1856], 665 [hereafter, DRCHSNY]).
In short, Johnson argued that since the demand for rum was virtually unlimited, it might as well be taxed to support his department. This cynical view made enough sense to the Board of Trade that it sanctioned a resumption in the rum trade. In 1764, responding to what was presumably pent-up demand, Johnson’s northern department sold approximately 50,000 gallons of rum to the Indians. This was high, but not too far from the amount ordinarily supplied in later years. By 1767, traders at Fort Pitt brought in an estimated 13,000 gallons of rum; in that same year at Detroit the quantity was approximately 24,000 gallons. Annual consumption among western Indians as a whole during the 1760s, exclusive of amounts obtained from Canadian traders, seems to have run between 80,000 and 170,000 gallons (Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America [Ithaca, N.Y., 1995], 53–4, 163). Another work, published too late to inform the narrative here, generally supports this conclusion and suggests that with the Canadian trade reckoned in, the quantity may have been substantially larger—as much as 240,000 gallons annually, or a per capita consumption rate for adult males of 12 gallons annually. See Walter S. Dunn Jr., FrontierProfit and Loss: The British Army and the Fur Traders, 1760–1764 (Westport, Conn., 1998), 178–9.
7. Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit, 193–5. Bradstreet’s health never fully recovered after this episode, which may have marked the onset of the cirrhosis that would finally kill him, a decade later (ibid., 262–3).
8. Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit, 196–205; Gipson, New Responsibilities, 118–21; Peckham, Pontiac, 255–60; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York, 1991), 291–6.
9. “Congress With The Western Nations,” 7–10 Sept. 1764, quoted in Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit, 205.
10. “His Majesty”: “A Short Abstract of the Proceedings at a Congress held at Detroit the 7th Septr. 1764 . . . ,” quoted ibid., 206. Subsequent quotations: Bradstreet to Charles Gould, 4 Dec. 1764, and “Colonel Bradstreets opinion of Indians and their affairs,” 4 Dec. 1764, ibid., 234–5. “Colonel Bradstreet’s thoughts on Indian Affairs,” 4 Dec. 1764, DRCHSNY, 7:690–4, makes clear the links between Indian culture, trade, military force, geography, and strategy central to his thinking:
To insure a lasting peace, gain their affections, and wean them from the French, strict justice, moderation, fair Trade, with keeping them from frequent intercourse with each other, and a respectable force at Detroit, is the way to obtain it, unless their whole dependence for the necessaries of life depended upon the English, which will never be the case, as long as the French can come up the Mississippi in safety, land, and extend their Trade on our side with impunity. . . .
It is absolutely necessary to make choice for the establishing posts, for . . . the Savages of each Lake to carry on their Trade with ease to themselves; . . . without this indulgence, they will never be contented, nor conspiracies warded off.
Thus a vigorous trade would have to be sustained at Detroit, along with enough force (two battalions) that the commandant would “have it in his power to detach from his Garrison Three Hundred good Men, besides Militia, to chastize any Nation or Band of Savages, the instant they deserve it
; for, by taking immediate satisfaction, they will respect, and fear us, and thereby prevent a General War.” Finally, Bradstreet stressed that establishing an emporium at Detroit was the only way to eliminate the Six Nations’ malign influence over the interior Indian peoples. (That this would coincidentally cripple Sir William Johnson may also have crossed his mind.)
11. Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit, 228–9; Sir William Johnson, “Remarks on the Conduct of Colonel Bradstreet,” 24 Nov. 1764, Johnson Papers, 4:601; “Journals of Montresor,” 287 (entry of 31 Aug. 1764). “Roughly equivalent”: White, Middle Ground, 297.
12. Gage to Bradstreet, 16 Aug. 1764, in Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit, 211.
13. Morris to Bradstreet, 18 Sept. 1764, ibid., 212. Also see “The Journal of Captain Thomas Morris of His Majesty’s XVII Regiment of Infantry,” in Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 1 (Cleveland, 1904), 301–28; and Peckham, Pontiac, 256–60. The failure of the chiefs to return with prisoners was probably not evidence that Bradstreet had been deceived, as his enemies argued, but an indication that the delegation had come to Presque Isle only on behalf of peace factions in their villages, hoping that news of British willingness to make peace would sway local majorities upon their return. Their nonappearance, in that case, would prove only that they had not convinced their communities that peace was at hand (something that news of Bradstreet’s behavior at Detroit would surely have argued against).
14. Godfrey, Pursuit of Profit, 218–21; Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1992), 206. Capt. Montrésor described the journey from Sandusky to Niagara (three hundred miles) in harrowing detail: “Journals of Montresor,” 311–18.
15. Smith, ed., Bouquet’s Expedition, 51.
16. Quotations: ibid., 60. Expedition: Gipson, New Responsibilities, 124–6.
17. Gage to Halifax, 13 Dec. 1764, Gage Corr., 1:46.
18. Manpower and financial restraints: “Colonel Bradstreet’s thoughts on Indian Affairs,” DRCHSNY, 7:693; cf. Bouquet to Gage, 30 Nov. 1764, cited in Nicholas B. Wainwright, George Croghan, Wilderness Diplomat (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 213. Gage’s annual expenses were running between £335,000 and £411,000 as opposed to the £225,000 contemplated in 1763; see Peter D. G. Thomas, “The Cost of the British Army in North America, 1763–1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 45 (1988): 514. (The Treasury restricted Gage’s spending to funds appropriated by Parliament, allowing him to borrow only in emergencies, under stringent restraints. [Treasury Minutes, 28 Nov. 1764, Gage Corr., 2:269.]) Diplomatic initiatives: White, Middle Ground, 304. Ross and Crawford: Gipson, New Responsibilities, 419–20; Gage to Halifax, 1 June and 10 Aug. 1765, Gage Corr., 1:58–65; John Richard Alden, Stuart, 197, 204.
19. Wainwright, Croghan, 211–17; Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986), 148–9; Gage to Halifax, 23 Jan. and 27 Apr. 1765, Gage Corr., 1:47–9, 55–8.
20. Wainwright, Croghan, 218–19; McConnell, A Country Between, 204–5; Peckham, Pontiac,270.
21. Peckham, Pontiac, 270–7; White, Middle Ground, 301–3.
22. Alden, Stuart, 202–4; quotation is from Capt. James Campbell to Maj. Robert Farmar, 26 Mar. 1765, quoted at 203 n. 53.
23. Wainwright, Croghan, 220–1; Peckham, Pontiac, 280–1; White, Middle Ground, 302–5; quotation is from Croghan to William Murray, 12 July 1765, in C. W. Alvord and C. E. Carter, “The New Regime, 1765–1767,” Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library 11 (1916): 58.
24. Peckham, Pontiac, 281–5; Gage to Henry Seymour Conway, 23 Sept. 1765, Gage Corr., 1:66; White, Middle Ground, 303–5.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE: The Lessons of Pontiac’s War
1. Howard H. Peckham, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising (Princeton, N.J., 1947), 306–16; Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (New York, 1991), 312–13.
2. Ibid., 313–14. Walter S. Dunn Jr., Frontier Profit and Loss: The British Army and the Fur Traders, 1760–1764 (Westport, Conn., 1988), 182–3, also treats the Indian rebellion as a success for the insurgents.
3. Barrington to Gage, 10 Oct. 1765, in John Shy, ed., “Confronting Rebellion: Private Correspondence of Lord Barrington with General Gage, 1765–1775,” Sources of American Independence: Selected Manuscripts from the Collections of the William L. Clements Library, ed. Howard H. Peckham, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1978), 9–10.
4. All quotations are from Gage to Barrington, 18 Dec. 1765, ibid., 13–16.
5. Gage to Barrington, 8 Jan. 1766, ibid., 18–19.
6. John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 229.
PART IX: CRISIS COMPOUNDED, 1765-1766 CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX: Stamp Act and Quartering Act
1. Stanley Ayling, The Elder Pitt, Earl of Chatham (New York, 1976), 322–4.
2. Quotations: Rose Fuller and Charles Townshend, in the diary of Nathaniel Ryder, in R. C. Simmons and Peter D. G. Thomas, eds., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America, 1754–1783, vol. 2, 1765–1768 (Millwood, N.Y., 1983), 13 (punctuation altered to bring out sense of Townshend’s speech).
3. “Disgust”: Barré, in Ryder’s diary, ibid (punctuation altered to bring out sense of passage). “They planted” to “a word”: Jared Ingersoll’s summary, id. to Thomas Fitch, 11 Feb. 1765, ibid., 16–17. (Barré’s vehemence doubtless reflected his reverence for Wolfe’s memory and his distaste for Townshend’s older brother, Robert—the brigadier most bitterly antagonistic to Wolfe at Québec.)
4. Quotation: Ryder diary summary, ibid., 12. Defeat of adjournment motion and subsequent passage: Peter D. G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution, 1763–1767 (Oxford, 1975), 93–8.
5. John Bullion, A Great and Necessary Measure: George Grenville and the Genesis of the Stamp Act (Columbia, Mo., 1982), 147–9, 181–91.
6. Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Prologue to Revolution: Sources and Documents on the Stamp Act Crisis, 1764–1766 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1959), 35–43. The stamps were not, like modern postage stamps, gummed paper, but rather inch-tall impressions made on paper by a die, like a modern notary’s seal. Newspapers and most legal documents would be printed on prestamped paper, which could be legally purchased only from stamp distributors or their designated agents. Because parchment (scraped animal skin) would not hold a stamped impression, legal documents customarily inscribed on parchment (diplomas and the like) would have a small piece of stamped paper affixed by glue and a staplelike metal fastener. Stamped paper would similarly be glued as seals on packs of playing cards or boxes of dice. For a description of the stamps and examples of the impressions, see C. A. Weslager, The Stamp Act Congress (Newark, Del., 1976), 35–9.
7. Lawrence Henry Gipson, American Loyalist: Jared Ingersoll (New Haven, Conn., 1971), 145–7; Edmund Morgan and Helen Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (New York, 1963), 301–11; Bullion, Great and Necessary Measure, 169–70, 173.
8. Philip Lawson, George Grenville: A Political Life (Oxford, 1984), 211–14; Thomas, British Politics, 115–16.
9. Gage and previous quartering difficulties: John R. Alden, General Gage in America: Being Principally a History of His Role in the American Revolution (Baton Rouge, 1948), 32, 34–5; Stanley Pargellis, Lord Loudoun in North America (1933, reprint, New York, 1968), 195–6; Alan Rogers, Empire and Liberty: American Resistance to British Authority, 1755–1763 (Berkeley, Calif., 1974), 82–4. Postwar circumstances and quartering: John Shy, Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 169–71, 174–5.
10. Legal complexity of quartering: ibid., 163–76. Gage acts: Gage to Welbore Ellis, 22 Jan. 1765, with enclosures, in Clarence Edwin Carter, ed., The Correspondence of General Thomas Gage with the Sec
retaries of State, 1763–1775, vol. 2 (New Haven, Conn., 1931), 262–6.
11. Thomas, British Politics, 102–3; for an assessment of Ellis as a “genuinely incompetent” secretary at war, see Shy, Toward Lexington, 182.
12. “In such manner”: draft bill, in Thomas, British Politics, 103. Opposition, and withdrawal of bill: Simmons and Thomas, Proceedings and Debates, 2:42.
13. Shy, Toward Lexington, 187; Thomas, British Politics, 108. The bill was approved as a separate act rather than an amendment to the Mutiny Act because the Mutiny Act of 1765 had expired and been reenacted before the Quartering Act debates concluded; thus the Quartering Act had to be reenacted annually as a kind of supplement directed specifically at America.
14. Quotation: Loudoun to the duke of Cumberland, 29 Aug. 1756, in Rogers, Empire and Liberty, 82.
15. John Watts to Gov. Robert Monckton, 1 June 1765, quoted in Shy, Toward Lexington, 188. Watts was no radical, Shy notes, but “an army contractor and future Tory.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN: Grenville’s End
1. On the American Trade Act, which eased restrictions on small-scale coasting vessels, permitted colonial iron and lumber to be exported once more to Ireland, established bounties on colonial iron and lumber exported to Britain, relaxed restrictions on American trade to the Azores and southern Europe, and limited the fees customs collectors could charge, see Peter D. G. Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The First Phase of the American Revolution,1763–1767 (Oxford, 1975), 108–12; and Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, vol. 10, The Triumphant Empire: Thunder-Clouds Gather in the West, 1763–1766 (New York, 1967), 280–1. On the king’s illness, see John Brooke, King George III (New York, 1972), 109–10, 318–43; and esp. Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter, George III and the Mad-Business (London, 1969).
2. Thomas, British Politics, 116–18; Philip Lawson, George Grenville: A Political Life (Oxford, 1984), 214–16; Brooke, King George III, 110–13; Stanley Ayling, George the Third (New York, 1972), 125–7.
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