Part 18 (1/2)
The capture of Niagara was to finish the work of the summer. This alone would have gained for England the control of the valley of the Ohio, and made Braddock's expedition superfluous. One marvels at the short-sightedness, the dissensions, the apathy which had left this key of the interior so long in the hands of France without an effort to wrest it from her. To master Niagara would be to cut the communications of Canada with the whole system of French forts and settlements in the West, and leave them to perish like limbs of a girdled tree.
Major-General s.h.i.+rley, in the flush of his new martial honors, was to try his prentice hand at the work. The lawyer-soldier could plan a campaign boldly and well. It remained to see how he would do his part towards executing it. In July he arrived at Albany, the starting-point of his own expedition as well as that of Johnson. This little Dutch city was an outpost of civilization. The Hudson, descending from the northern wilderness, connected it with the lakes and streams that formed the thoroughfare to Canada; while the Mohawk, flowing from the west, was a liquid pathway to the forest homes of the Five Nations. Before the war was over, a little girl, Anne MacVicar, daughter of a Highland officer, was left at Albany by her father, and spent several years there in the house of Mrs. Schuyler, aunt of General Schuyler of the Revolution. Long after, married and middle-aged, she wrote down her recollections of the place,--the fort on the hill behind; the great street, gra.s.sy and broad, that descended thence to the river, with market, guardhouse, town hall, and two churches in the middle, and rows of quaint Dutch-built houses on both sides, each detached from its neighbors, each with its well, garden, and green, and its great overshadowing tree. Before every house was a capacious porch, with seats where the people gathered in the summer twilight; old men at one door, matrons at another, young men and girls mingling at a third; while the cows with their tinkling bells came from the common at the end of the town, each stopping to be milked at the door of its owner; and children, porringer in hand, sat on the steps, watching the process and waiting their evening meal.
Such was the quiet picture painted on the memory of Anne MacVicar, and reproduced by the pen of Mrs. Ann Grant.[320] The patriarchal, semi-rural town had other aspects, not so pleasing. The men were mainly engaged in the fur-trade, sometimes legally with the Five Nations, and sometimes illegally with the Indians of Canada,--an occupation which by no means tends to soften the character. The Albany Dutch traders were a rude, hard race, loving money, and not always scrupulous as to the means of getting it. Coming events, too, were soon to have their effect on this secluded community. Regiments, red and blue, trumpets, drums, banners, artillery trains, and all the din of war transformed its peaceful streets, and brought some attaint to domestic morals. .h.i.therto commendable; for during the next five years Albany was to be the princ.i.p.al base of military operations on the continent.
[Footnote 320: _Memoirs of an American Lady_ (Mrs. Schuyler), Chap. VI.
A genuine picture of colonial life, and a charming book, though far from being historically trustworthy. Compare the account of Albany in Kalm, II. 102.]
s.h.i.+rley had left the place, and was now on his way up the Mohawk. His force, much smaller than at first intended, consisted of the New Jersey regiment, which mustered five hundred men, known as the Jersey Blues, and of the fiftieth and fifty-first regiments, called respectively s.h.i.+rley's and Pepperell's. These, though paid by the King and counted as regulars, were in fact raw provincials, just raised in the colonies, and wearing their gay uniforms with an awkward, unaccustomed air. How they gloried in them may be gathered from a letter of Sergeant James Gray, of Pepperell's, to his brother John: ”I have two Holland s.h.i.+rts, found me by the King, and two pair of shoes and two pair of worsted stockings; a good silver-laced hat (the lace I could sell for four dollars); and my clothes is as fine scarlet broadcloth as ever you did see. A sergeant here in the King's regiment is counted as good as an ensign with you; and one day in every week we must have our hair or wigs powdered.”[321]
Most of these gorgeous warriors were already on their way to Oswego, their first destination.
[Footnote 321: _James Gray to John Gray, 11 July, 1755_.]
s.h.i.+rley followed, embarking at the Dutch village of Schenectady, and ascending the Mohawk with about two hundred of the so-called regulars in bateaux. They pa.s.sed Fort Johnson, the two villages of the Mohawks, and the Palatine settlement of German Flats; left behind the last trace of civilized man, rowed sixty miles through wilderness, and reached the Great Carrying Place, which divided the waters that flow to the Hudson from those that flow to Lake Ontario. Here now stands the city which the cla.s.sic zeal of its founders has adorned with the name of Rome. Then all was swamp and forest, traversed by a track that led to Wood Creek,--which is not to be confounded with the Wood Creek of Lake Champlain. Thither the bateaux were dragged on sledges and launched on the dark and tortuous stream, which, fed by a decoction of forest leaves that oozed from the marshy sh.o.r.es, crept in shadow through depths of foliage, with only a belt of illumined sky gleaming between the jagged tree-tops. Tall and lean with straining towards the light, their rough, gaunt stems trickling with perpetual damps, stood on either hand the silent hosts of the forest. The skeletons of their dead, barkless, blanched, and shattered, strewed the mudbanks and shallows; others lay submerged, like bones of drowned mammoths, thrusting lank, white limbs above the sullen water; and great trees, entire as yet, were flung by age or storms athwart the current,--a bristling barricade of matted boughs. There was work for the axe as well as for the oar; till at length Lake Oneida opened before them, and they rowed all day over its sunny breast, reached the outlet, and drifted down the shallow eddies of the Onondaga, between walls of verdure, silent as death, yet haunted everywhere with ambushed danger. It was twenty days after leaving Schenectady when they neared the mouth of the river; and Lake Ontario greeted them, stretched like a sea to the pale brink of the northern sky, while on the bare hill at their left stood the miserable little fort of Oswego.
s.h.i.+rley's whole force soon arrived; but not the needful provisions and stores. The machinery of transportation and the commissariat was in the bewildered state inevitable among a peaceful people at the beginning of a war; while the news of Braddock's defeat produced such an effect on the boatmen and the draymen at the carrying-places, that the greater part deserted. Along with these disheartening tidings, s.h.i.+rley learned the death of his eldest son, killed at the side of Braddock. He had with him a second son, Captain John s.h.i.+rley, a vivacious young man, whom his father and his father's friends in their familiar correspondence always called ”Jack.” John s.h.i.+rley's letters give a lively view of the situation.
”I have sat down to write to you,”--thus he addresses Governor Morris, of Pennsylvania, who seems to have had a great liking for him,--”because there is an opportunity of sending you a few lines; and if you will promise to excuse blots, interlineations, and grease (for this is written in the open air, upon the head of a pork-barrel, and twenty people about me), I will begin another half-sheet. We are not more than about fifteen hundred men fit for duty; but that I am pretty sure, if we can go in time in our sloop, schooner, row-galleys, and whaleboats, will be sufficient to take Frontenac; after which we may venture to go upon the attack of Niagara, but not before. I have not the least doubt with myself of knocking down both these places yet this fall, if we can get away in a week. If we take or destroy their two vessels at Frontenac, and ruin their harbor there, and destroy the two forts of that and Niagara, I shall think we have done great things. n.o.body holds it out better than my father and myself. We shall all of us relish a good house over our heads, being all encamped, except the General and some few field-officers, who have what are called at Oswego houses; but they would in other countries be called only sheds, except the fort, where my father is. Adieu, dear sir; I hope my next will be directed from Frontenac. Yours most affectionately, John s.h.i.+rley.”[322]
[Footnote 322: The young author of this letter was, like his brother, a victim of the war.
”Permit me, good sir, to offer you my hearty condolence upon the death of my friend Jack, whose worth I admired, and feel for him more than I can express.... Few men of his age had so many friends.” _Governor Morris to s.h.i.+rley, 27 Nov. 1755_.
”My heart bleeds for Mr. s.h.i.+rley. He must be overwhelmed with Grief when he hears of Capt. John s.h.i.+rley's Death, of which I have an Account by the last Post from New York, where he died of a Flux and Fever that he had contracted at Oswego. The loss of Two Sons in one Campaign scarcely admits of Consolation. I feel the Anguish of the unhappy Father, and mix my Tears very heartily with his. I have had an intimate Acquaintance with Both of Them for many Years, and know well their inestimable Value.” _Morris to Dinwiddie, 29 Nov. 1755_.]
Fort Frontenac lay to the northward, fifty miles or more across the lake. Niagara lay to the westward, at the distance of four or five days by boat or canoe along the south sh.o.r.e. At Frontenac there was a French force of fourteen hundred regulars and Canadians.[323] They had vessels and canoes to cross the lake and fall upon Oswego as soon as s.h.i.+rley should leave it to attack Niagara; for Braddock's captured papers had revealed to them the English plan. If they should take it, s.h.i.+rley would be cut off from his supplies and placed in desperate jeopardy, with the enemy in his rear. Hence it is that John s.h.i.+rley insists on taking Frontenac before attempting Niagara. But the task was not easy; for the French force at the former place was about equal in effective strength to that of the English at Oswego. At Niagara, too, the French had, at the end of August, nearly twelve hundred Canadians and Indians from Fort Duquesne and the upper lakes.[324] s.h.i.+rley was but imperfectly informed by his scouts of the unexpected strength of the opposition that awaited him; but he knew enough to see that his position was a difficult one.
His movement on Niagara was stopped, first by want of provisions, and secondly because he was checkmated by the troops at Frontenac. He did not despair. Want of courage was not among his failings, and he was but too ready to take risks. He called a council of officers, told them that the total number of men fit for duty was thirteen hundred and seventy-six, and that as soon as provisions enough should arrive he would embark for Niagara with six hundred soldiers and as many Indians as possible, leaving the rest to defend Oswego against the expected attack from Fort Frontenac.[325]
[Footnote 323: _Bigot au Ministre, 27 Aout, 1755_.]
[Footnote 324: _Bigot au Ministre, 5 Sept. 1755_.]
[Footnote 325: _Minutes of a Council of War at Oswego, 18 Sept. 1755_.]
”All I am uneasy about is our provisions,” writes John s.h.i.+rley to his friend Morris; ”our men have been upon half allowance of bread these three weeks past, and no rum given to 'em. My father yesterday called all the Indians together and made 'em a speech on the subject of General Johnson's engagement, which he calculated to inspire them with a spirit of revenge.” After the speech he gave them a bullock for a feast, which they roasted and ate, pretending that they were eating the Governor of Canada! Some provisions arriving, orders were given to embark on the next day; but the officers murmured their dissent. The weather was persistently bad, their vessels would not hold half the party, and the bateaux, made only for river navigation, would infallibly founder on the treacherous and stormy lake. ”All the field-officers,” says John s.h.i.+rley, ”think it too rash an attempt; and I have heard so much of it that I think it my duty to let my father know what I hear.” Another council was called; and the General, reluctantly convinced of the danger, put the question whether to go or not. The situation admitted but one reply. The council was of opinion that for the present the enterprise was impracticable; that Oswego should be strengthened, more vessels built, and preparation made to renew the attempt as soon as spring opened.[326] All thoughts of active operations were now suspended, and during what was left of the season the troops exchanged the musket for the spade, saw, and axe. At the end of October, leaving seven hundred men at Oswego, s.h.i.+rley returned to Albany, and narrowly escaped drowning on the way, while pa.s.sing a rapid in a whale-boat, to try the fitness of that species of craft for river navigation.[327]
[Footnote 326: _Minutes of a Council of War at Oswego, 27 Sept._ 1755.]
[Footnote 327: On the Niagara expedition, _Braddock's Instructions to Major-General s.h.i.+rley. Correspondence of s.h.i.+rley_, 1755. _Conduct of Major-General s.h.i.+rley_ (London, 1758). Letters of John s.h.i.+rley in _Pennsylvania Archives_, II. _Bradstreet to s.h.i.+rley, 17 Aug._ 1755. MSS.
in Ma.s.sachusetts Archives, _Review of Military Operations in North America. Gentleman's Magazine_, 1757, p. 73. _London Magazine,_ 1759, p.
594. Trumbull, _Hist. Connecticut_, II. 370.]
Unfortunately for him, he had fallen out with Johnson, whom he had made what he was, but who now turned against him,--a seeming ingrat.i.tude not wholly unprovoked. s.h.i.+rley had diverted the New Jersey regiment, destined originally for Crown Point, to his own expedition against Niagara. Naturally inclined to keep all the reins in his own hands, he had encroached on Johnson's new office of Indian superintendent, held conferences with the Five Nations, and employed agents of his own to deal with them. These agents were persons obnoxious to Johnson, being allied with the clique of Dutch traders at Albany, who hated him because he had supplanted them in the direction of Indian affairs; and in a violent letter to the Lords of Trade, he inveighs against their ”licentious and abandoned proceedings,” ”villanous conduct,” ”scurrilous falsehoods,” and ”base and insolent behavior.”[328] ”I am considerable enough,” he says, ”to have enemies and to be envied;”[329] and he declares he has proof that s.h.i.+rley told the Mohawks that he, Johnson, was an upstart of his creating, whom he had set up and could pull down.
Again, he charges s.h.i.+rley's agents with trying to ”debauch the Indians from joining him;” while s.h.i.+rley, on his side, retorts the same complaint against his accuser.[330] When, by the death of Braddock, s.h.i.+rley became commander-in-chief, Johnson grew so restive at being subject to his instructions that he declined to hold the management of Indian affairs unless it was made independent of his rival. The dispute became mingled with the teapot-tempest of New York provincial politics.
The Lieutenant-Governor, Delancey, a politician of restless ambition and consummate dexterity, had taken umbrage at s.h.i.+rley, of whose rising honors, not borne with remarkable humility, he appears to have been jealous. Delancey had hitherto favored the Dutch faction in the a.s.sembly, hostile to Johnson; but he now changed att.i.tude, and joined hands with him against the object of their common dislike. The one was strong in the prestige of a loudly-trumpeted victory, and the other had means of influence over the Ministry. Their coalition boded ill to s.h.i.+rley, and he soon felt its effects.[331]
[Footnote 328: _Johnson to the Lords of Trade,_ 3 Sept. 1755.]