Colonial America

by Richard Middleton, Anne Lombard

  1 The War of Jenkins' Ear

  THE TREATY OF Utrecht in 1713 was followed by 26 years of peace, prosperity, and stability for Britain, France, Spain, and their colonies in North America. However, this era of peace was destined to be disrupted. By the late 1730s the British public had forgotten about the high costs of war and begun to clamor once again for an aggressive foreign policy that would expand British control of overseas commerce and territory. That policy, once enacted, would inevitably involve renewed conflict between the British, the French, and the Spanish in North America, and with their Native American allies.

  Several points of contention had emerged between the British and the French in North America since 1713. One was the boundary between New France and the British colonies. Although the British had obtained control over Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia (now called Nova Scotia), the 5,000 French settlers living in Acadia fiercely resented their new status and refused to swear loyalty to the British at Annapolis Royal. Meanwhile the French still controlled Ile Royale, the large island to the northeast of Nova Scotia (known today as Cape Breton). As the last remaining territory in New France that directly bordered on the Atlantic seaboard, Ile Royale was strategically vital to French control over the St. Lawrence Valley and the Atlantic fishery. To maximize its advantages there the French had begun to construct a massive new fort on Ile Royale at the town of Louisburg in 1719.

  To the west, Britain and France had each established rival trading posts at Niagara and Oswego, each hoping to gain access to the western nations and to restrict the commerce of the other. British presence in the West undercut France's previously undisputed control over the western fur trade and created a potential new source of contention between the two European competitors. Hopes of further eroding French control over the West prompted the Board of Trade in London in 1721 to propose a tripartite policy of building forts, regulating the Indian trade, and settling the backcountry beyond the mountains. However, such a policy would have been expensive and difficult, given the strength of French alliances. As a result the British government did little to claim additional western territory.

  Other conflicts involved Britain's relationship with Spain, which by the 1730s had once again become a close French ally. One irritant was the creation of the British colony of Georgia in 1733 on land previously claimed by Spain. A second source of contention was trade. Under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, Spain had created a trading agreement (asiento) allowing the British South Sea Company to supply Spain's American empire with slaves and one annual shipload of goods. Other than this agreement, Spain insisted upon sole control over trade with its American colonies. British traders, on the other hand, were ambitious to gain more of that trade for themselves. The South Sea Company shamefully abused the asiento, constantly restocking its vessel with fresh goods. Smuggling was also rife elsewhere, much of it carried out by colonial ships and abetted by the Spanish Creoles, who needed colonial imports to survive. Spanish officials, however, enforced Spain's mercantilist system through the guarda costa, or coast guard, and in the process a number of detainees were ill-treated. Among them was a Captain Jenkins, whose ear was allegedly cut off by a coast guard officer who had boarded his ship. The opposition in Parliament used the episode to embarrass the government of Sir Robert Walpole. Although Walpole himself was inclined towards peace, the furor over the treatment of Britain's commerce compelled him to declare war against Spain.

  British expeditions during the war suggest that the Crown still hoped to gain a base from which to attack Spanish American silver fleets. In the early months of 1739 a British expedition under Admiral Vernon managed to capture and briefly occupy the Spanish base of Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of Panama. In 1740 a squadron was sent to the Pacific under the command of Commodore George Anson to attack Spanish ships traveling from Mexico to the Philippines, finally capturing the Manila galleon in 1743. Additional attempts were made to take over Cartagena, the departure point for Spain's treasure fleets in New Granada, as well as Guantánamo, Cuba, and several ports along the Venezuelan coast. The North American colonists were enthusiastic enough about these efforts to raise four battalions from 11 colonies for the Cartagena expedition in 1741. However, the expedition itself was poorly executed and failed, having become a disaster for the colonial volunteers, many of whom died of disease or malnutrition. The colonists also found regular discipline distasteful, since most had enlisted for adventure and profit. They got neither, and their dissatisfaction greatly increased when many were detained for service with the Royal Navy. This insult was not forgotten; when the fleet called at Boston in 1747 for provisions and the recovery of deserters, the result was a serious riot.

  Equally unrewarding for the North American colonists was General Oglethorpe's scheme to attack St. Augustine, Florida. Like Vernon, Oglethorpe sought local recruits and succeeded in raising over 1,000 volunteers, many from neighboring South Carolina, similarly lured by the prospect of booty. Alas, here too the colonial hopes were blighted, for after besieging St. Augustine for a month, Oglethorpe decided that his forces were too weak to continue and retreated with little to show for his effort. He was more successful in his defense of Georgia. When the Spanish counterattacked there in 1742, they were decisively repulsed near the settlement of Frederica in the Battle of the Bloody Swamp.

  By 1744 the war had become part of the War of the Austrian Succession, and France at last declared war against Britain, thereby shifting the focus of most of the fighting back to Europe and away from the colonies. The British government supplied little assistance in the colonial theater aside from some naval attacks on French ships engaged in trade in the West Indies. Yet even without substantial help from London, British colonists along the northern colonial frontier remained enthusiastic about attacking the French. The call to arms was especially popular in New England, since it continued the old struggle against Catholic New France and revived the settlers' hopes of driving away the Indians. The dangers posed by Louisburg were emphasized in 1744 when its garrison destroyed the British fishing village of Canso at the northern end of Nova Scotia and then besieged Annapolis Royal, which Massachusetts was helping to garrison.

  Accordingly in 1745 Governor Shirley persuaded the general court to launch an attack on Louisburg itself. Massachusetts had a proud tradition of organizing its own campaigns, notably the attack on Québec in 1690. Some 3,000 men were quickly voted for the enterprise; contingents also came from Connecticut and New Hampshire. The operation was greatly assisted by a squadron of Royal Navy frigates under Sir Peter Warren, which ensured that the expedition not only reached its objective but was able to isolate the garrison inside. Morale in Louisburg was low, and the French surrendered on June 16.

  Map 24 French-claimed, British-claimed, and disputed territory in North America, 1755.

  The capture of Louisburg inspired wild public enthusiasm (especially in the New England colonies) and stimulated the government in London to look for further success in North America. Orders were sent to New England to have supplies ready for an attack up the St. Lawrence in 1746 and another force in New York prepared to invade Canada via Crown Point. Yet just as in 1709, the colonists' expectations were dashed when the British fleet and army failed to arrive, having been diverted to attack the French coast at the last moment.

  New Englanders were even more disappointed when the peace was finally signed at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Having begun the war with high hopes of conquering Spanish and French territory to add to the British empire, Britain was left at the end of the war with no gains in America at all. Especially galling to the colonists was the fact that British negotiators returned Louisburg to the French in exchange for territorial concessions in India and Flanders. Yet the British public continued to demand a more aggressive foreign policy; perhaps it was inevitable that another war with France would soon follow. This time, the provocation for that conflict would be in the West.

  2 The Struggle for the Ohio

  By the mid eig
hteenth century, the vast Ohio River Valley was home to a diverse array of Indian peoples, all of whom by now had a long history of relationships with Europeans. In the western half of the Ohio Valley, an area the French called the Illinois Country, lived remnant bands of Miami, Fox, Wyandot, Ottawa, and Kickapoo peoples, along with diverse other Native American groups. Ever since the 1660s they had been bound together in a loose coalition with the French that served to counter Iroquois power in the West. In the northeastern portion of the Ohio Valley, the Shawnees had been driven out by the Iroquois during the seventeenth century, but by this time they were back, along with Delawares from the Susquehanna Valley in Pennsylvania. Mingoes (western Senecas) were ostensibly here to maintain Iroquois sovereignty over the Shawnees and the Delawares in the Ohio, though in fact the Iroquois now had little real authority this far west and south of their tribal homelands. A few Mahicans and Nanticokes had settled here too, while Ojibwa and Miami bands came here to hunt. Most of the newcomers had longstanding relationships with the British, though many hoped that the Ohio Valley was a place where they might once again become independent of binding entanglements.

  French traders had been present in the eastern Ohio Valley for many decades, although not in large numbers since they could obtain better furs from their allies further west and north. By 1749, though, they had some competition. French shipments of trade goods to North America were disrupted by King George's War from 1744 to 1748, thereby weakening the position of the French as the pre-eminent traders west of the Appalachian Mountains. Deprived of their muskets and ammunition, some of the Indians in the region rebelled against the French and even attacked Fort Miami. Thereafter a number of them turned for their supply of trade goods to British traders from Pennsylvania, particularly a Delaware- and Shawnee-speaking Irishman named George Croghan with exceptional negotiating skills and a knack for finding ways to make a profit. Pennsylvania had already secured Iroquois permission for a route through the Ohio Country under the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster. In 1748 Croghan helped complete negotiations at Logstown for the opening of such a trail. By 1749 Croghan's mule trains had successfully crossed the mountains and opened a series of trading posts, the most notable being the village of Pickawillany on the Miami River. With access to the best commercial trading system in the world, Croghan and other British traders could offer the Indians trade goods at very desirable prices. The Indians' loyalty to French traders visibly waned.

  French control over the valley was threatened not only by British traders, but also by British land speculators. The British colonial settler population had continued to grow with extraordinary speed since 1700, thanks to the settlers' high birth rate and the continued flow of new immigrants. Land in the long-settled areas near the Atlantic coast was by now unavailable, but the settlers' adult children and the new immigrants still hoped to acquire farms of their own. A number of forward-thinking investors in the British colonies had formed joint-stock companies in order to claim land in the Ohio country and sell it to settlers, dispossessing the Indians who lived there. The first was the Ohio Company of Virginia, organized in 1747 by Thomas Lee, a large tobacco planter and a member of the Virginia council. Its aims were the promotion of both trade and settlement. Lee initially sought a charter from the Virginia assembly but later decided to apply to the Privy Council instead, perhaps to attract London investors. The grant was for 500,000 acres, on the condition that the company build a fort and settle 100 families within two years on the forks of the Ohio. Although the company planned to sell the land to farmers as soon as it could, for the time being it would make money by competing with the Pennsylvania traders. In 1750 the company dispatched the surveyor Christopher Gist to explore the area and set up a trading post.

  The activities of the Ohio Company prompted the establishment of a rival group, the Loyal Land Company, by another set of well-connected Virginia landowners which included John Robinson, the speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses. These men resented the Ohio Company's direct approach to the Privy Council, preferring that such matters be determined by the local authorities. The Loyal Land Company received a grant of 800,000 acres from the House of Burgesses on what was later to be the borders of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. It also employed a surveyor, Dr Thomas Walker, who set out on his exploratory mission in the same year as Gist.

  To France, these various incursions by British traders and surveyors were alarming. One reason was the threat they posed to French alliances with the Indians, alliances that enabled them to control the corridor that linked New France, the Great Lakes region, and Louisiana via the Mississippi River. Another reason, as Paul Mapp has recently argued, was that British actions seemed to the French to be part of a larger scheme to assert British dominance over the entire continent. The evidence of British designs seemed clear. Between 1739 and 1741 the British had attacked a number of major Spanish American ports, evidently hoping to take over a portion of the Spanish North American empire. Then during the 1740s, British explorers had launched several exploratory expeditions beyond the western shores of Hudson Bay in search of a route to the Pacific. Now the British were moving settlers into the Ohio Valley. To the French government it seemed obvious that the British planned to take over the trans-Mississippi West and use it to gain control over Mexico and access to the Pacific.1

  The government of New France, believing its own strategic interests in the West were being challenged, initiated a series of moves to regain control over the Ohio Valley. The first was the dispatch of a military force led by Captain Pierre-Joseph Céloron de Blainville in 1749 to assert French title to the region by burying a series of lead plates at points along the upper Ohio. As Céloron traveled through the valley he met with various groups of Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, and Mingoes, who accepted his gifts but listened skeptically to his lectures about the need to spurn the British and trade only with the French. Then in 1752 the French destroyed the village of Pickawillany, thereby eliminating the presence of the British traders. Next they extended their chain of forts between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. They strengthened Niagara and built a new post on the shores of Lake Erie at Presque Isle, followed by two more at Venango and Fort Le Boeuf. By 1753 only the Ohio River required fortification to complete the chain.

  The French attempt to exclude the British from westward expansion alarmed the government in London, which saw it as a threat to vital British interests. This perception arose in part because of a fundamental shift in Britain's trade. Since the middle of the seventeenth century the sugar islands of the West Indies had been Britain's most prized colonial possessions. By 1750, however, trade with the mainland colonies had begun to surpass that with the West Indies, not least because the export of manufactured goods to colonial consumers in North America was now as important as the importation of enumerated commodities. The British government was beginning to envision a future when the market for its exports might include settlements extending west to the Mississippi. Yet such settlements would never be created if the French continued to control the West. In the words of the duke of Newcastle, King George II's leading minister, “The French claim almost all North America except a line to the sea, to which they would confine all our colonies, and from whence they may drive us whenever they please.” And he vehemently affirmed. “That is what we must not, We will not suffer.”

  Even as the French were working to strengthen their Indian alliances in order to halt British expansion into the West, the British government had reason to be anxious that its own Indian alliances were dissolving. The Iroquois had for years maintained the fiction of the Covenant Chain, namely that they would offer their assistance to the British in case of war. But in fact tribal leaders had long been dissatisfied with their British allies. At a meeting in June 1753, the Mohawk chief Hendrick (or Theyanoguin) had declared the Covenant Chain with the British to be broken. Unhappy with their Albany trading partners and angry about an attempt by land speculators to rob them of their land, many Mohawk warriors had be
come disgusted with the British. For British officials, the potential loss of their ties to the Iroquois was of grave concern.

  The British government accordingly instituted a number of measures. The Board of Trade, under the energetic Lord Halifax, sent a circular letter to the northern colonies urging them to negotiate with the native peoples and, most important, to persuade the Iroquois to resume their traditional alliance. The Board began to expend large sums for the establishment of a new town and harbor in Nova Scotia, to be called Halifax, which had been started in 1749 to secure vulnerable northeastern approaches from the Atlantic. At the same time further pressure was put on the French settlers in Acadia to take an oath of allegiance. And finally the Board ordered the Ohio Company to abide by its charter and establish a fort on the banks of the Ohio River. Everywhere the colonial governments were instructed to meet force with force if they found the French trespassing on the king's territory. To achieve these and other objectives the colonies were to consider establishing a common war chest.

  The result was the Albany Congress of June 1754, attended by delegates from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, along with a delegation from the Six Nations of the Iroquois League. The Congress was a landmark in colonial cooperation. Never before had there been such wide participation between colonial governments. True, the New England provinces had long cooperated with one another, while the southern colonies had occasionally given cross-border assistance, as in the Tuscarora and Yamasee wars. Otherwise, previous efforts at cooperation had been confined to meetings of royal officials, like Bellomont's conference of governors in 1700.

  Yet, in terms of actual achievements, the Congress accomplished little. The British delegates were unable to regain the trust of the representatives of the Six Nations. A number of gifts were given, but the sachems affirmed that they were tired of fighting Britain's wars without adequate support. One can hardly wonder that they distrusted the British delegates. While the Congress was taking place, negotiators from Connecticut and Pennsylvania each managed to convince separate Iroquois spokesmen to sell them an enormous tract of land in western Pennsylvania, conveniently ignoring the fact that the deeds conflicted with one another.