volume 2 chapter 37 early phases of the french and indian war the treaty of a la chapelle left
unresolved the main force for war in european relations the insensate desire of the english
war party for imperial expansion and aggression the powerful war party was headed by the duke of
cumberland the favorite son of king george the second a military leader who had well earned the
The title butcher in suppressing the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland in 1745, Cumberland's
protege Henry Fox, the Duke of Bedford at the powerful post of Secretary of State for
the Southern Department, and, above all, William Pitt. The half-insane Pitt was the prototype
of a modern politician. Possessed of a charismatic personality, Pitt's oratory could sway the
of Masses for Evermore Grandiose War Programs.
Yet there was method in his madness.
Pitt was consistently the spokesman for the imperial clique
of London merchants and financiers.
Underneath the cloud of patrioteering verbiage
that could mobilize the masses, a hard core
of vested economic interest was being effectively pursued.
While King George's war was still underway,
Pitt was vainly urging upon the cautious Newcastle an expansion of the war to conquer French
Canada. In 1746, Pitt was agreeing with the leading New Hampshire fish merchant, William
Vaughan, on the goal of conquest. In the same year, he had his ally the Duke of Bedford
submit a memorandum to Newcastle, pressing for the seizure of Canada. Among the reasons
was the smashing of the French trade and sources of supply, but heading the list was the British seizure of the entire North American fur and fish trade, in which the French colonies were outcompeting the English.
The peace treaty ended these schemes temporarily, but the agitation of the War Party continued unabated.
The War Party was able to strengthen its command of the key cabinet post. Bedford had moved up from the Admiralty to the crucial post of Secretary of State for the South. His protege, the Earl of Sandwich, assumed his former post, while, as we have seen, his other protege, the Earl of Halifax, came in as President of the Board of Trade.
William Shirley was selected by Bedford to sabotage the boundary negotiations with France over Nova Scotia and other colonial areas, and thus to keep the war pot brewing.
Pelham managed to oust Bedford and Sandwich from office in 1751 and to horrify the war party by slashing army and naval appropriations and pursuing a pacific policy.
Halifax, however, at the Board of Trade, not only aggrandized his power over colonial affairs but also pressed his desire for aggression against New France.
Finally, the death of the Prime Minister, Henry Pelham, in early 1754, eliminated the great leader of the peace forces.
Although he succeeded his brother as Prime Minister, Newcastle, isolated and surrounded by the War Party, was pushed into another and far more grandiose war against France.
Caught in a war drive that he opposed, Newcastle decided that the Cumberland-Fox clique, which
wanted a limited war against France, concentrated on the continent of Europe, was far less dangerous
than the Pitt-Bedford warmongers for unlimited aggression against all the French colonies.
Newcastle therefore threw in with the former group, and Henry Fox was brought into the
All the previous inter-colonial wars had begun in Europe and were then reflected in the colonies.
But the French and Indian War between Britain and France began in the colonies and only
later was extended to Europe as the Seven Years' War.
While the war in Europe lasted from 1756 to 1763, the war in America broke out, albeit
unofficially, in late 1753 and was virtually over by 1760.
The French had heroically explored the Mississippian Ohio valleys and had settled them as efficient
fur traders with the Indians, with a population throughout their extensive territory of no
No more than 75,000, the French faced an aggressive and powerful set of English colonies containing
a million and a half persons, and despite this overwhelmingly superior population, ever
subject to hysteria over the supposed menace of New France.
Moreover, behind the colonies was a British government directing the royal colonial governors
and increasingly in the hands of an extremely aggressive war party, frankly dedicated to
the total conquest of New France and the reduction of France and French trading competition to
second class status.
The final conflict between British America and New France was precipitated not so much
by these general forces, as by an Anglo-Virginian attempt at a huge land grab. English sermons
had now reached the Appalachian mountains, beyond stretched New French territory, tempting
opportunity not only for ousting French fur traders, but also for land speculation. Virginia,
in particular began to press its wild and grandiose land claims based on its original
charter of 1609 and ignoring all the developments since.
According to this questionable thesis, the Virginia government was the rightful sovereign
of everything not only west but northwest of the Appalachians to the Pacific, a claim which
which directly interfered of course with Pennsylvania's own notion of its proper territorial area.
The first attempted Virginia grab of French land in the Ohio Valley came in 1743 when
Colonel James Patton and his partners asked Virginia for a grant of 200,000 acres on the
New River. At that time, before King George's War had begun, the Virginia government refused
The Advand of War ended Virginia's scruples, however, helped by an Indian conference at Lancaster in mid-1744, at which the Iroquois signed away the right to the Ohio lands.
The fact that the Iroquois' only connection with this land was their highly dubious assertion
of overlordship made no difference. A flimsy legitimacy provided by pliant Iroquois over
land they had nothing to do with was now cast over the British claims. In 1745, the Virginia
The Virginia government gave the first of its munificent grants of French territory.
On the same day, it gave away three huge land grants.
One was of 100,000 acres on the Greenbrier River across the Alleghenies to the Greenbrier
Company.
The company was headed by the leading Virginia oligarch, John Robinson, president of the
The Virginia Council and included John Robinson, Jr., Speaker of the House of Burgesses and
William Beverly. A second gift granted 100,000 acres to the old patent group, this time on
the Ohio and New Rivers. A third grant of 50,000 acres on the Greenbrier River was made
to Henry Downs and Associates. All this was ominous enough to the French, but at least
These moves were made in the heat of conflict. The truly ominous and critical land grab attempt
was launched immediately after the war with the grant of a vast amount of Ohio land to the newly
formed Ohio Company. The Ohio Company had its roots in the monstrous sized land grant of over
Five million acres given to Lord Culpepper in the northern neck and later inherited by Lord Fairfax.
An early manager of the Fairfax Fife was Robert King Carter, who was able to use his position to
amass a very large amount of land and to gain a dominant position in the Virginia planter oligarchy.
Early in the 18th century, Fairfax replaced Carter by young Thomas Lee, who in turn used
his position to amass a landed fortune.
He was also aided in this task by marrying a Ludwell heiress and thus adding the prominent
Ludwell estates.
Losing his post in 1747, Lee, a member of the Virginia Council, decided to organize
Lee recognized the Ohio Company as a speculative group for land settlement and proceeded to
pressure the government for the subsidy of a huge land grant at the forks of the Ohio
River. To form the Ohio Company, Lee gathered around him a significant group. Many of them
were residents and neighbors of the Fairfax Fife, including George Fairfax and the Washington
and Family, especially Lawrence and Augustine Washington. Marylanders among the organizers
included the frontier trader Thomas Creasip. Lee and eleven others formed the Ohio Company
in 1747 and quickly petitioned the governor and council for a grant of 200,000 acres of
land near the forks of the Ohio River. But Governor Gooch was not enthusiastic about
Without the aggressiveness of the land grants, and the powerful speaker John Robinson, himself
a rival land speculator and a determined opponent of the company, was able to secure rejection
of the Ohio Company request. Undaunted, Lee and the others went over the Virginia Governor's
head to appeal the decision to the Crown. To petition and put pressure on London, Lee
Lee secured the services of a prominent Quaker merchant, John Hanbury.
In the spring of 1749, not long after Lee had assumed the post of President of the Council,
the Crown directed Virginia to grant the 200,000 acres.
In the summer, the Governor and Council made the grant, conditioned on a hundred families
settling there within seven years, and on the company's building a fort near the forks.
As soon as the conditions were met, the company would take up an adjoining 300,000 acres on
the same terms.
Quid rent payments to the crown were waived for ten years, and after that would only have
to be made for land actually under cultivation.
The conditions of the Ohio Company grant had two fateful consequences.
One, the fact of official British sanction alerted the French to the likelihood of dangerous
encroachment on their territory.
And two, a direct aggressive challenge was thereby laid down to the French.
It was clearly high time for the French to act.
By the time the grant to the Ohio Company was made, Lee had converted the Company all
the more into a personal fief. George Fairfax and others had dropped out, while friends
and relatives such as Richard Lee, Philip Ludwell Lee, and George Mason were added,
as was the powerful Duke of Bedford in reward for his services in securing the grant. The
The outgoing Governor Gooch, for his part, tried to offset the exclusive privilege of
the grant by handing out huge chunks of Ohio territory on the same day to several other
groups of land speculators.
John Taylor secured a renewal of the 100,000-acre patent grant.
Bernard Moore and others received 100,000 acres on the New River.
Payton Randolph and others 400,000 acres on the new, William Winston Jr. 50,000 acres
east of the Ohio River, and the Loyal Company received the staggering total of 800,000 acres
along the southern Virginia frontier. All in all, nearly 1,500,000 acres were blithely
The Loyal Company and the other grantees were not required to colonize or to build forts.
The Loyal Company was a coalition of speculators headed by John Lewis of the Shenandoah Valley
The Loyal Company collaborated closely with the Greenbrier Company of John Robinsons.
In the meanwhile, Thomas Lee became acting governor of Virginia in 1749-50, succeeding
Gooch.
After Lee's death in late 1750, the newly appointed Governor of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie,
had become, not accidentally, a member of the Ohio Company. Dinwiddie, incidentally,
had gotten his start in the British bureaucracy as a virulent hatchet man for Lord Carteret,
engaged in prosecuting and ousting firm adherents of Walpole from the Royal bureaucracy. Dinwiddie
The company was now a protege of the formidable Duke of Bedford. Soon the company was expanded
to include the Mercers, Robert Carter, George Washington, and Governor Arthur Dobbs of North
Carolina. From the time of the Kranz in 1749, much of Virginia politics may be explained
by the emergence of two powerful factions of speculators in Ohio land. The Ohio Company
and the Loyal Greenbrier Company, coalition of the Robinsons, Pendeltons, Jeffersons and others.
As we have indicated, the Ohio Company, with its British success, its grip on the governorship and its duty to build a fort on the forks of the Ohio, was the more alarming speculative group.
To the fur traders and politicians of Pennsylvania, to the Indians of the Ohio Valley, and, not
least of all, to the French.
The French, for their part, reacted to the threat of Anglo-Virginian aggression in the
Ohio Valley with efficiency and dispatch.
The French effectively warned the Native Indians that the Ohio Company meant to clear and settle,
and therefore to oust the Indians rather than to trade with them.
The French launched a campaign to oust the English traders from the Ohio Valley, where
they had been permitted to operate freely.
A string of forts was built by the French throughout the region during 1753.
Marquis Duquesne, Governor General of New France, urged over a thousand men to build
A series of defensive forts in the Ohio Valley, including forts Presque Isle on Lake Erie
and Le Bouff and Venango on French Creek.
Governor Dinwiddie, in his turn, reacted to French defensive measures by desperate appeals
to fellow governors, and especially to the Crown, to take appropriate offensive action
to outweigh the French moves.
Finally, in August 1753, the crown under pressure also of the war party at home took
the fateful decision that was to lead to an all-out conflict with France.
The English government threw down the gauntlet of aggression.
It instructed all the American governors to repel a French invasion of what was arrogantly
Witty proclaimed the King's domain in the Ohio Valley, specifically referring to any
interference with the construction of forts. Governor Din Witty was flatly ordered to consider
any French forts as ipso facto acts of aggression upon supposed Virginia territory. And the
The Ohio Company's plan to build a fort on the Ohio was officially encouraged.
Dinwiddie was authorized, if necessary, to drive French forces from his territory by
force of arms.
The die was cast.
Dinwiddie now had official sanction for the aims of his Ohio Company.
Dinwiddie's first step was to send young Major George Washington, a partner in the Ohio
The Ohio Company to Fort Le Boeuf with an ultimatum to the French troops to quit the
Ohio Valley. When Washington returned with what should have been the expected refusal,
Dinwiddie prepared eagerly for war. William Trent, agent of the Ohio Company, was made
a captain by Dinwiddie and sent with a troop of armed men to build a fort at the forks
of the Ohio, and to repel the French. Washington, promoted to lieutenant colonel, was ordered
to raise a hundred men and to join him. The governor also sent messages to all the other
colonies urging them to join the fight and to the Indian tribes, inviting them to make
war upon the French. Dinwiddie tried to call up the militia, but the sturdy citizens of
of Virginia proved highly resistant to the draft. They generally refused to leave their
families and homes for remote imperial aims. The Council noted that the draft was to be
used only for fighting within Virginia, and that the Ohio Valley was only dubiously within
the Old Dominion. Calling a special session in February 1754,
Dean Witte managed to convince the House of Burgesses to appropriate £10,000 for the
invasion, but he was forced to accept a committee of Burgesses to supervise the expenditure
of the money.
Dean Witte, however, had to abandon calling up the drafted militia and desperately tried
to encourage enlistments by proclaiming the reservation of 200,000 acres of Ohio land
for free gifts, free of quit rent, for fifteen years to volunteers for the war.
The Virginians, incidentally, not only refused to be conscripted for the war, they also strongly
resisted conscription of their goods and supplies by the military, as Colonel Washington soon
found to his dismay.
If the Virginians themselves balked at squandering lives and properties for the invasive war for
the Ohio, the citizens of the other colonies proved even more recalcitrant, despite the
urging of their royal governors. The New York Assembly tardily questioned the assumption
that the Ohio Valley was British territory, and the Quaker-run Assembly of Pennsylvania
did much the same. Both refused to call up their militia. The Maryland Assembly also
saw no invasion of British colonial territory in the French occupation of the Ohio. The
New Jersey Assembly refused aid as well. Isaac Norris, the Pennsylvania Quaker leader, summed
up much of colonial opinion when he noted, The Ohio Company are endeavoring to engage
All the Colonies under the Sanction of the King's Command to Defend Their Lands Upon
That River. Only North Carolina voted substantial funds and planned to enlist a military troop.
The grandiose plans of Dinwiddie and the Ohio Company were rudely shattered when on April
171754, Trent's little band, at work on constructing the fort at the forks of the Ohio, surrendered
to a formidable French force of 1,000 men under Claude Pierre Picardy de Contrecourt.
The French commander magnanimously allowed Trent's men to return to Virginia with all
all their possessions, and then rapidly proceeded to build the formidable Fort Duquesne at the
same site. Colonel Washington marched rashly into the valley, and, after wandering around
in some confusion, was, on July 3, quickly smashed at his Fort Necessity by a French
The French forced more than double his own. Once again, the French allowed Washington and his troops to leave the valley and return to Virginia.
The English aggressors had been totally routed and English troops ousted from the entire Ohio Valley.
The British government had sent several companies of regulars to aid in the war. One company
from South Carolina had been in the fray with Washington, but had deeply angered the Virginians
by refusing to obey their orders or to cooperate in the necessary labors of the expedition,
thereby causing friction between Virginia and the British. The other aid arrived later
and only added to the burdens of Virginia.
Two companies of regulars from New York arrived without supplies.
A regimen of colonials came from North Carolina only to find that no one had money to pay
them or had the necessary supplies.
The harassed North Carolinians mutinied and mass desertions followed during July and August,
Governor Dinwiddie would be properly chastened by these defeats and forget about the whole
Ohio adventure. But not Dinwiddie. Like all hardliners everywhere, he was resolved to
fight to the last life and bit of property of everyone else. In a frenzy, Dinwiddie sought
at every hand to push war to the uttermost. The British government he urged to send more
for troops and supplies, and boldly recommended a parliamentary poll tax upon the entire American
continent to finance the campaign. This would have involved the dangerous and highly provocative
scrapping of the crucial principle that no colony could be taxed without the consent
of its Elected Assembly. At home, Dinwiddie actually ordered Colonel Washington to re-invade
Ohio less than a month after his route, but fortunately a delay in raising funds by the
House of Burgesses led him to cancel this scheme. In the fall, the lower house agreed
to appropriate 20,000 pounds for the war and to levy an onerous poll tax to raise the money.
The House refused to draft militia for fighting outside Virginia, but did agree to conscript
all vagrants and to force them to fight for Virginian glory.
Dinwiddie had still not given up the idea of a winter campaign to recapture Fort Duquesne,
but the lack of interest by the other colonies finally forced him to abandon the plan.
Meanwhile, in late 1753, the New York government decided to call a joint conference of the
northern colonies, with the Iroquois and other Indian tribes, for the following June at Albany.
As one of many conferences with the Iroquois and their followers, the idea was to try to
mobilize the Indians for a general assault on French possessions in the Ohio Valley.
It was the ineffable imperialist and warmonger, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, who seized
the occasion to try to unite the colonies into a league or confederation.
Only when united under one central government could the full resources of the American colonies
be mobilized by the Crown for an all-out assault on New France.
The old imperialist dream of the Dominion of New England was now to be revived and extended
to all the British colonies. The delegates to the Albany Congress were in the main appointed
by the governors and largely taken from the councillors of their respective colonies.
The Indian Conference was supposed to be the only problem on the agenda. But under cover
Under these proceedings, the delegates were persuaded by Benjamin Franklin, a delegate
from Pennsylvania, to seize the occasion to propose a central government to rule over
all the colonies and thus prosecute a far broader and more intensified war against the
French. Franklin did this even though unauthorized to do so by Pennsylvania. This plan of union,
The British Parliament, as approved by the delegates in July, urged the British Parliament
to impose over all the colonies a central super-government, whose executive would be
appointed by the Crown and whose legislature would consist of a Grand Council chosen by
the respective colonial assemblies. Executive salaries were to be provided by the Crown,
Thus, bypassing the salary troubles that the royal governors had all had with the colonial
assemblies, and thus freeing the executive power from the checks and limits imposed on
it by the representatives of the American public.
Of particular significance was the taxing power, to be given to the president and the
council, and to be appropriated for the functions of the general government.
The Albany Plan, however, was a total dud. The independent and liberty-loving colonists
had had enough trouble with royal prerogative embodied in the executive and judicial powers
of the individual colonies. They had no desire for another super-government to add still
another and greater engine of oppression. Rhode Island and Connecticut, now happily
The Connecticut delegates refused to sign the plan, and the Connecticut assembly attacked it bitterly, denouncing it as against the rights and privileges of Englishmen.
The Rhode Island legislature could not forgive its delegate, Stephen Hopkins, for signing the proposal.
A large majority of the Boston town meeting voted against the plan, Dr. William Clarke
perceptively denouncing it to Franklin himself as a scheme for destroying the liberties and
privileges of every British subject upon the continent.
In general, the respective colonies took no notice of the plan.
Even Governor Shirley opposed it bitterly, not of course because the central government
would be too powerful, but because for Shirley it would be far too weak. In particular the
provision for an elected legislature was to Shirley viciously democratic and destructive
of the royal prerogative. Shirley urged that parliament tax the colonies and that the central
legislature be all appointed by the Crown. Governor Morris of Pennsylvania also scented
a Dangerous Republicanism in the Plan, as well as the destruction of Crown Authority.
He also insisted that a union of colonies must permit absolute dictation over the army
by the supergovernment. Discussion in England of the Plan and of the whole problem of imperial
relations with the colonies was cast aside by the immediate crisis of the route of Washington
at Fort Necessity.
Franklin's desperate gamble on the Albany Plan stemmed from his fear that Virginia,
with its vague and grandiose charter claims, would be able to conquer and keep control
of the Ohio Valley land.
Pennsylvania's Quaker Assembly would prevent that colony from contesting the spoils, but
But a central super-government over the colonies would suffer from no such limits or scruples.
Hence Franklin's provision in the Albany Plan that the super-government have the power
to abrogate existing colonial claims to the Western lands and to create their new governments
and land grants.
After it was obvious that the Albany Plan would fail, Franklin unsuccessfully tried
This time to forestall Virginia by creating two new colonies in the Upper Ohio Valley.
In this plan, Franklin was joined by two of his associates at the Albany Congress, Sir
William Johnson and Thomas Pownall, Secretary to the Governor of New York and brother of
the influential John Pownall, Secretary of the Board of Trade.
With Henry Fox now War Secretary and Henry Pelham dead, the English War Party had been
considerably strengthened and Cumberland, Fox, Halifax and Pitt managed partly to push
and partly to circumvent Newcastle and to induce Britain to agree to send two regiments
of regulars to America under General Edward Braddock as Commander-in-Chief of the English
of the French Forces on the Continent. Britain was now committed even more heavily to aggressive
war against New France. Braddock's instructions were to capture the critical French forts
south of the St. Lawrence, and Henry Fox trumpeted these aims in the press in order to provoke
the French into a general war. In that way, Fox and Cumberland expected to use a conquest
of the Ohio Valley and limited aggression against Canada as the back door to war against
France on the continent of Europe. But France, instead, proposed an armistice, which war
intoxicated England indignantly refused. In English plans, everything was neatly blocked
out. General Braddock would launch the main effort from Virginia and recapture Fort Duquesne.
At the same time, Gov. Shirley and Sir William Johnson would capture the key French forts
of Niagara and St. Frederick, Crown Point, at the southern tip of Lake Champlain. Also
at the same time, Admiral Boscollin was to patrol the Atlantic coast and intercept any
French reinforcements for America. At a conference on April 14, 1755, Braddock and the leading
between royal governors hammered out their joint plan of campaign.
The tidy plans blew up very quickly.
First, the French fleet, bearing reinforcements, was able to slip by the British ambush.
But the biggest blow was the fate of Braddock's expedition.
Armed with 2,500 men, mainly British and the rest largely Virginians, Braddock set out
in early June for Fort Duquesne. From the beginning, the Braddock Expedition seemed
ill-omened. As usual, such colonial assemblies as Pennsylvania and Maryland balked at voting
for any substantial aid funds. Indeed, Dinwiddie incensed at the colonist indifference and
their persistence in mutually satisfactory trading with the enemy, called on Britain
to tax the colonies and to ban all exports from America.
The first error of the expedition itself was the decision to march from Virginia, a far
more difficult and rugged path to decaying than from Pennsylvania. But Virginia was favored
not only as a reliable royal colony not plagued by Quakers or a proprietary, but also as a
Next, the lack of enthusiasm for the war by the American public was revealed in their
indifference to supplying the troops.
Braddock was moved to denounce the frontier populace of Virginia and Maryland in no uncertain
terms.
Only Benjamin Franklin, eager to serve the aggressive British war effort, was able to
to gall and wheedle the German farmers into providing supplies to the Braddock forces.
Arriving near Fort Duquesne on July 9, the mighty Braddock army was set upon by a French
and Indian force of little more than 800, and was promptly cut to ribbons. General Braddock
was killed in the fray, and the demoralized British, under the command of Colonel Thomas
Press Dunbar fled back as fast as they could across the Alleghenies, destroying large amounts
of provisions in order to speed their way. Dunbar did not stop until he had taken the
army all the way to the snug safety of Philadelphia. Governor Dinwiddie, still indomitably eager
for others to fight to the last man, again urged another early attack on Fort Duquesne,
But Dunbar had had enough. Once again the British drive for conquest had been thoroughly
crushed by the French. Dinwiddie's war frenzy, however, was again redoubled. Bitterly denouncing
Dunbar's retreat to safety, Dinwiddie was tireless in his efforts to continue and escalate
the conflict. He had just succeeded in pressuring and cajoling the Virginia Assembly into appropriating
and ten thousand pounds for the war. Now he reconvened the assembly, which proved
eager to pour good money after bad and granted another forty thousand pounds to be raised
by an annual poll tax of one shilling. He also called up the Virginia militia, which
he placed at the frontier under Colonel Washington's command. But the liberty-loving people of
of Virginia showed no disposition whatever to give up their lives for the sacred cause
of grabbing the Ohio land from the French. Nonviolent resistance greatly slowed the rate
of conscription as well as the fighting elan of the troops. Washington complained long
and loud of the laziness and indifference of the militia officers, especially of the
and recruiting officers themselves who preferred carousal to enforcing conscription.
Of particular significance is Washington's report on the libertarian spirit of the militia
and their dyed-in-the-wool resistance to the draft.
If we talk of obliging men to serve their country, Washington lamented, we are sure
In Pennsylvania, as we have seen, the assembly was stampeded after Braddock's defeat into
to Passing a Militia Law. However, Quakers were exempted from the draft and the militia
was formed as a people's army with the officers democratically elected by the men of each
company. In this democratic arrangement, the regimental officers were in turn chosen by
the elected officers of the company. And finally, in a creatively libertarian provision, no
No officer or private in the Pennsylvania militia was to be subject to any articles of war unless
he personally declared his consent to them in the presence of a judge. Virginia continued
to confront the reluctance of the people to have their bodies or their goods confiscated
for purposes of war. Colonel Washington grumbled that Virginians should be so tenacious of
of Liberty, and threatened to resign his command if a tougher militia law were not passed.
Furthermore, the people persisted inordinately in harboring and aiding deserters from the
militia and in refusing to contribute supplies to the army. As Washington complained, In
all things I meet with the greatest opposition, no orders are obeyed but what a party of soldiers
or My Own Drawn Sword in Forces. Without this, a single horse for the most urgent occasion
cannot be had. To such a pitch has the insolence of the people arrived. In the fall of 1755,
a tighter militia act was passed in Virginia, punishing those who aided deserters and rewarding
informers who had helped round them up. Still, collection of the militia proceeded very slowly.
The death of Braddock left the veteran warmonger and imperialist William Shirley in charge of
the English forces in America. Governor Shirley was as impossible to discourage as Dinwiddie,
the only difference being Shirley's greater interest in the northern frontier with Canada
than in the Ohio Valley. Shirley managed to whip New England and New York into providing
William Johnson's expedition in the fall of 1755 bogged down because of a lack of supplies
and because of the increasing restiveness of the soldiers, who were able to keep the
usual tyranny of an army at a minimum by electing their own officers. The expedition, finally,
had to be abandoned. Shirley, in the meanwhile, was able to mobilize about 1,500 men for his
own campaign to seize Fort Niagara. But this, too, had to be abandoned. Indeed, the only
British victory during 1755 was the capture of Fort Beaujol in New Brunswick, then part
of Nova Scotia. And this victory led to problems with the American colonials. During King George
During the George's War, Britain had forced Massachusetts soldiers to remain in Louisburg beyond their terms of enlistment.
To forestall a repetition of this disaster, Massachusetts forced the British to issue certificates to the soldiers guaranteeing discharge at the end of their enlistment.
The British were hardly content to leave matters like that, however.
During the Nova Scotia campaign, they subjected the Americans to special harassment to induce them to enlist in British regiments.
This treatment infuriated both the American troops, who began to desert en masse, and the Massachusetts House, which demanded that the men be sent home.