A School History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

CHAPTER VIII

THE STRUGGLE FOR NEW FRANCE AND LOUISIANA

%71. Louisiana, or the Mississippi Basin.%—The landing of La Salle on the coast of Texas, and the building of Fort St. Louis of Texas, gave the French a claim to the coast as far southward as a point halfway between the fort and the nearest Spanish settlement, in Mexico. At that point was the Rio Grande, a good natural boundary. On the French maps, therefore, Louisiana extended from the Rocky Mountains and the Rio Grande on the west, to the Alleghany Mountains on the east, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south, to New France on the north. This confined the English colonies to a narrow strip between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. As the colonies were growing in population, and as the charters of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, and Carolina gave them great stretches of territory in the Mississippi valley, it was inevitable that, sooner or later, a bitter contest for possession of the country should take place between the French and the English in America.

The contest began in 1689, and ended in 1763, and may easily be divided into two periods: 1. That from 1689 to 1748, when the struggle was for Acadia and New France. 2. That from 1754 to 1763, when the struggle was not only for New France, but for Louisiana also.

%72. The Struggle for Acadia and New France; "King William's War."%—In 1688-89 there was a revolution in England, in the course of which James II. was driven from his throne, and William and Mary, his nephew and daughter, were seated on it. James took refuge in France, and when Louis XIV. attempted to restore him, a great European war followed, and of course the colonists of the two countries were very soon fighting each other. As the quarrel did not arise on this side of the ocean, the English colonists called it "King William's War"; but on our continent it was really the beginning of a long struggle to determine whether France or England should rule North America.

The French recognized this at once, and sent over a very able soldier—Count Frontenac—with orders to conquer New York; but the colony was saved by the Iroquois, who in the summer of 1689 began a war of their own against the French, laid siege to Montreal, and roasted French captives under its walls. Frontenac was compelled to put off his attack till 1690, when in the dead of winter a band of French and Indians burned Schenectady, N.Y. Salmon Falls in New Hampshire was next laid waste (1690), and Fort Loyal, where Portland, Me., is, was taken and destroyed. A little later Exeter, N.H., was attacked. The boldness and suddenness of these fearful massacres so alarmed the people exposed to them that in May, 1690, delegates from Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New York met at New York city to devise a plan of attack on the French. Now, at the opening of the war, there were three French strongholds in America. These were Montreal and Quebec in Canada, and Port Royal in Acadia. In 1690 a Massachusetts fleet led by Sir William Phips destroyed Port Royal. It was decided, therefore, to send another fleet under Phips to take Quebec, while troops from New York and Connecticut marched against Montreal. Both expeditions were failures, and for seven years the French and Indians ravaged the frontier. In 1692 York, in Maine, was visited and a third of the inhabitants killed. In 1694 Castine was taken and a hundred persons scalped and tomahawked. At Durham, in New Hampshire, prisoners were burned alive. Groton, in Massachusetts, was next visited; but the boldest of all was the massacre, in 1697, at Haverhill, a town not thirty-five miles from Boston. In 1696, Frontenac, at the head of a great array of Canadians, coureurs de bois, and Indians, invaded the country of the Onondagas, and leveled their fortified town to the earth.

[Illustration: MAP OF PART OF ACADIA]

%73. The Struggle for Acadia and New France; "Queen Anne's War."%—In 1697 the war ended with the treaty of Ryswick, and "King William's War" came to a close in America with nothing gained and much lost on each side. The peace, however, did not last long, for in 1701 England and France were again fighting. As William died in 1702, and was succeeded by his sister-in-law Anne, the struggle which followed in America was called "Queen Anne's War." Again Port Royal was captured (1710); again an expedition went against Quebec and failed (1711); and again, year after year, the French and Indians swept along the frontier of New England, burning towns and slaughtering and torturing the inhabitants. At last the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, ended the strife, and the first signs of English conquest in America were visible, for the French gave up Acadia and acknowledged the claims of the English to Newfoundland and the country around Hudson Bay. The name Acadia was changed by the conquerors to Nova Scotia. Port Royal, never again to be parted with, they called Annapolis, in honor of the Queen.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read Parkman's A Half-century of Conflict, Vol. I., pp. 1-149.]

%74. The French take Possession of the Mississippi Valley; the Chain of Forts.%—The peace made at Utrecht was unbroken for thirty years. But this long period was, on the part of the French in America, at least, a time of careful preparation for the coming struggle for possession of the valleys of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Lakes. In the Mississippi valley most elaborate preparations for defense were already under way. No sooner did the treaty of Ryswick end the first French war than a young naval officer named Iberville applied to the King for leave to take out an expedition and found a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, just as La Salle had attempted to do. Permission was readily given, and in 1698 Iberville sailed with two ships from France, and in February, 1699, entered Mobile Bay. Leaving his fleet at anchor, he set off with a party in small boats in search of the great river. He coasted along the shore, entered the Mississippi through one of its three mouths, and went up the river till he came to an Indian village, where the chief gave him a letter which Tonty, thirteen years before, when in search of La Salle, had written and left in the crotch of a tree.

Iberville now knew that he was on the Mississippi; but having seen no spot along its low banks suitable for the site of a city, he went back and led his colony to Biloxi Bay, and there settled it. Thus when the eighteenth century opened there were in all Louisiana but two French settlements—that founded on the Illinois River by La Salle, and that begun by Iberville at Biloxi. But the occupation of Louisiana was now the established policy of France, and hardly a year went by without one or more forts appearing somewhere in the valley. Before 1725 came, Mobile Bay was occupied, New Orleans was founded, and Forts Rosalie, Toulouse, Tombeckbee, Natchitoches, Assumption, and Chartres were erected. Along the Lakes, Detroit had been founded, Niagara was built in 1726, and in 1731 a band of Frenchmen, entering New York, put up Crown Point.[1]

[Footnote 1: Parkman's A Half-century of Conflict, Vol. I., pp. 288-314. For the French posts see map on pp. 74, 75.]

The meaning of this chain of forts stretching from New Orleans and Mobile to Lake Champlain and Montreal, was that the French were determined to shut the English out of the valley of the Mississippi, and to keep them away from the shores of the Great Lakes. But they were also determined at the first chance to reconquer Annapolis and Nova Scotia, which they had lost by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. As a very important step towards the accomplishment of this purpose, the French selected a harbor on the southeast coast of Cape Breton Island, and there built Louisburg, a fortress so strong that the French officers boasted that it could be defended by a garrison of women.

%75. The Struggle for New France; "King George's War."%—Such was the situation in America when (in March, 1744) France declared war on England and began what in Europe was called the "War of the Austrian Succession"; but in our country it was known as "King George's War," because George II. was then King of England. The French, with their usual promptness, rushed down and burned the little English post of Canso, in Nova Scotia, carried off the garrison, and attacked Annapolis, where they were driven off. That Nova Scotia could be saved, seemed hopeless. Nevertheless, Governor Shirley of Massachusetts determined to make the attempt, and that the King might know the exact situation he sent to London, with a dispatch, an officer named Captain Ryal, who had been taken prisoner at Canso and afterwards released on parole.[2]

[Footnote 2: The reception of that officer well illustrates the gross ignorance of America and American affairs which then existed in England. When the Duke of Newcastle, who was prime minister, read the dispatch, he exclaimed: "Oh, yes—yes—to be sure. Annapolis must be defended—troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray where is Annapolis? Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! Show it me on the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir [to Captain Ryal], you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King that Cape Breton is an island.">[

Although Shirley applied to the King for help with which to defend Nova Scotia, he knew full well that the burden of defense would fall on the colonies. And with that determination and persistence which always brings success he labored hard to persuade New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to join with Massachusetts in an effort to capture Louisburg. It would be delightful to tell how he overcame all difficulties; how the young men rallied on the call for troops; how at the end of March, 1745, 4000 of them in a hundred transports and accompanied by fourteen armed ships set sail, followed by the prayers of all New England, and after a siege of six weeks took the fortress on the 17th of June, 1745. But the story is too long.[1] It is enough to know that the victory was hailed with delight on both sides of the Atlantic, but that when peace came, in 1748, the British government was still so blind to the struggle for North America which had been going on for fifty years, that Louisburg was restored to the French.

[Footnote 1: Read Samuel Adams Drake's Taking of Louisburg; Parkman's A Half-century of Conflict, Vol. II., pp. 78-161.]

%76. The French on the Allegheny River; the Buried Plates.%—With Louisburg back in their possession and no territory lost, the French went on more vigorously than ever with their preparations to shut the British out of the Mississippi valley; and as but one highway to the valley, the Ohio River, was still unguarded, the governor of Canada, in 1749, dispatched Céloron de Bienville with a band of men in twenty-three birch-bark canoes to take formal possession of the valley. Paddling up the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario, they carried their canoes across to Lake Erie, and, skirting the southeastern shore, they landed and crossed to Chautauqua Lake, down which and its outlet they floated to the Allegheny River. Once on the Allegheny, the ceremony of taking possession began. The men were drawn up, and Louis XV. was proclaimed king of all the region drained by the Ohio. The arms of France stamped on a sheet of tin were nailed to a tree, at the foot of which a lead plate was buried in the ground. On the plate was an inscription claiming the Ohio, and all the streams that run into it, in the name of the King of France.

[Illustration: [1]Half of one of the lead plates]

[Footnote 1: Now owned by the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Mass.]

* * * * *

TRANSLATION OF THE ENTIRE INSCRIPTION

In the year 1749, during the reign of Louis XV., King of France, we, Céleron, commander of a detachment sent by the Marquis de la Gallissonière, commander in chief of New France, to restore tranquillity in some savage villages of these districts, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Ohio and … this … near the river Ohio, alias Beautiful River, as a monument of our having retaken possession of the said river Ohio and of those that fall into the same, and of all the lands on both sides as far as the sources of the said rivers, as well as of those of which preceding kings have enjoyed possession, partly by the force of arms, partly by treaties, especially by those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle.

* * * * *

A second plate was buried below the mouth of French Creek; a third near the mouth of Wheeling Creek; and a fourth at the mouth of the Muskingum, where half a century later it was found protruding from the river bank by a party of boys while bathing. Yet another was unearthed at the mouth of the Great Kanawha by a freshet, and was likewise found by a boy while playing at the water's edge. The last plate was hidden where the Great Miami joins the Ohio; and this done, Céloron crossed Ohio to Lake Erie and went back to Montreal.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read T. J. Chapman's The French in the Allegheny Valley, pp. 9-23, 187-197; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I., pp. 36-62; Winsor's The Mississippi Basin, pp. 252-255.]

%77. The French build Forts on the Allegheny.%—This formal taking possession of the valleys of the Allegheny and the Ohio was all well enough in its way; but the French knew that if they really intended to keep out the British they must depend on forts and troops, and not on lead plates. To convince the French King of this, required time; so that it was not till 1752 that orders were given to fortify the route taken by Céloron in 1749. The party charged with this duty repaired to the little peninsula where is now the city of Erie, and there built a log fort which they called Presque Isle. Having done this, they cut a road twenty miles long, to the site of Waterford, Pa., and built Fort Le Boeuf, and later one at Venango, the present site of the town of Franklin.

%78. Washington's First Public Service.%—The arrival of the French in western Pennsylvania alarmed and excited no one so much as Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia. He had two good reasons for his excitement. In the first place, Virginia, because of the interpretation she placed on her charter of 1609, claimed to own the Allegheny valley (see p. 33). In the second place, the governor and a number of Virginia planters were deeply interested in a great land company called the Ohio Company, to which the King of England had given 500,000 acres lying along the Ohio River between the Monongahela and the Kanawha rivers, a region which the French claimed, and toward which they were moving.

As soon, therefore, as Dinwiddie heard that the French were really building forts in the upper Allegheny valley, he determined to make a formal demand for their withdrawal, and chose as his messenger George Washington, then a young man of twenty-one, and adjutant general of the Virginia militia.

Washington's instructions bade him go to Logstown, on the Ohio, find out all he could as to the whereabouts of the French, and then proceed to the commanding officer, deliver the letter of Dinwiddie, and demand an answer. He was especially charged to ascertain how many French forts had been erected, how many soldiers there were in each, how far apart the posts were, and if they were to be supported from Quebec.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read T.J. Chapman's The, French in the Allegheny Valley, pp. 23-47; Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I., pp. 128-161; Lodge's George Washington, pp. 62-69.]

With that promptness which distinguished him during his whole life, Washington set out on his perilous journey the very day he received his instructions, and made his way first to Logstown, and then to Fort Le Boeuf, where he delivered Governor Dinwiddie's letter to the French commandant. The reply of Saint-Pierre—for that was the name of the French commandant—was that he would send the letter of Dinwiddie to the governor of Canada, the Marquis Duquesne (doo-kan'), and that, in the meantime, he would hold the fort.

[Illustration: The French and the English Forts]

%79. Fort Duquesne.%—When Dinwiddie read the answer of Saint-Pierre, he saw clearly that the time had come to act. The French were in force on the upper Allegheny. Unless something was done to drive them out, they would soon be at the forks of the Ohio, and once they were there, the splendid tract of the Ohio Company would be lost forever. Without a moment's delay he decided to take possession of the forks of the Ohio, and raised two companies of militia of 100 men each. A trader named William Trent was in command of one of the companies, and that no time should be lost, he, with forty men, hurried forward, and, February 17, 1754, drove the first stake of a stockade that was to surround a fort on the site of the city of Pittsburg. While the English were still at work on their fort, April 17, 1754, a body of French and Indians came down from Le Boeuf, and bade them leave the valley. Trent was away, and the working party was in command of an ensign named Ward, who, as resistance was useless, surrendered, and was allowed to march off with his men. The French then finished the fort Trent had begun, and called it Fort Duquesne, after the governor of Canada.

%80. "Join or Die."%—Meantime the legislature of Virginia voted £10,000 for the defense of the Ohio valley, and promised a land bounty to every man who would volunteer to fight the French and Indians. Joshua Frye was made colonel, and Washington lieutenant colonel of the troops thus to be raised. As some time must elapse before the ranks could be filled, Washington took seventy-five men and (in March, 1754) set off to help Trent; but he had not gone far on his way when Ensign Ward met him (where Cumberland, Md., now is) and told him all about the surrender. Accounts of the affair were at once sent to the governors of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

[Illustration: JOIN, or DIE.]

In publishing one of these in the Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin inserted the above picture at the top of the account.[1]

[Footnote 1: There is an old superstition, then very generally believed, that if one cuts a snake in pieces and allows the pieces to touch, the snake will not die, but will live and become whole again. By this picture Franklin meant that unless the colonies joined for defense against the French they would die; that is, be conquered.]

%81. Albany Plan of Union.%—The picture was apt for the following reason. The Lords of Trade in London had ordered the colonies to send delegates to Albany to make a treaty with the Iroquois Indians, and to this congress Franklin purposed to submit a plan for union against the French. The plan drawn up by the congress was not approved by the colonies, so the scheme of union came to naught.

%82. Washington's Expedition.%—Meanwhile great events were happening in the west. When Washington met Ensign Ward at Cumberland and heard the story of the surrender, he was at a loss just what to do; but knowing that he was expected to do something, he decided to go to a storehouse which the Ohio Company had built at the mouth of a stream called Redstone Creek in southwestern Pennsylvania. Pushing along, cutting as he went the first road that ever led down to the valley of the Mississippi from the Atlantic slope, he reached a narrow glade called the Great Meadows and there began to put up a breastwork which he named Fort Necessity. While so engaged news came that the French were near. Washington thereupon took a few men, and, coming suddenly on the French, killed or captured them all save one. Among the dead was Jumonville, the leader of the party. Well satisfied with this exploit, Washington pushed on with his entire force towards the Ohio. But, hearing that the French were advancing, he fell back to Fort Necessity, and there awaited them. He did not wait long; for the French and Indians came down in great force, and on July 4, 1754, forced him, after a brave resistance, to surrender. He was allowed to march out with drums beating and flags flying.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lodge's George Washington, pp. 69-74; Winsor's The
Mississippi Basin, pp. 294-315.]

%83. The French and Indian War.%—Thus was begun what the colonists called the French and Indian War, but what was really a struggle between the French and the British for the possession of America. Knowing it to be such, both sides made great preparations for the contest. The French stood on the defensive. The British made the attack, and early in 1755 sent over one of their ablest officers, Major General Edward Braddock, to be commander in chief in America. He summoned the colonial governors to meet him at Alexandria, Va., where a plan for a campaign was agreed on.

%84. Plan for the War.%—Vast stretches of dense and almost impenetrable forest then separated the colonies of the two nations, but through this forest were three natural highways of communication: 1. Lake George, Lake Champlain, and the St. Lawrence River. 2. The Hudson, the Mohawk, Lake Ontario, and the Niagara River. 3. The Potomac to Fort Cumberland, and through the forest to Fort Duquesne.

It was decided, therefore, to have four expeditions.

1. One was to go north from New York to Lake Champlain, take the French fort at Crown Point, and move against Quebec.

2. Another was to sail from New England and make such a demonstration against the French towns to the northeast, as would prevent the French in that quarter going off to defend Quebec and Crown Point.

3. The third was to start from Albany, go up the Mohawk, and down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario, and along its shores to the Niagara River.

4. The fourth was to go from Fort Cumberland across Pennsylvania to Fort Duquesne.

%85. Braddock's Defeat, July 9, 1755.%—Braddock took command of this last expedition and made Washington one of his aids. For a while he found it impossible to move his army, for in Virginia horses and wagons were very scarce, and without them he could not carry his baggage or drag his cannon. At last Benjamin Franklin, then deputy postmaster-general of the colonies, persuaded the farmers of Pennsylvania, who had plenty, to rent the wagons and horses to the general.

All this took time, so that it was June before the army left Fort Cumberland and literally began to cut its way through the woods to Fort Duquesne. The march was slow, but all went well till the troops had crossed the Monongahela River and were but eight miles from the fort, when suddenly the advance guard came face to face with an army of Indians and French. The Indians and French instantly hid in the bushes and behind trees, and poured an incessant fire into the ranks of the British. They, too, would gladly have fought in Indian fashion. But Braddock thought this cowardly and would not allow them to get behind trees, so they stood huddled in groups, a fine mark for the Indians, till so many were killed that a retreat had to be ordered. Then they fled, and had it not been for Washington and his Virginians, who covered their flight, they would probably have been killed to a man.[1]

[Footnote 1: Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I., Chap. 7, pp. 162-187; T.J. Chapman's The French in the Allegheny Valley, pp. 60-72; Sargeant's History of Braddock's Expedition.]

Braddock was wounded just as the retreat began, and died a few days later.

%86. The Other Expeditions.%—The expedition against Niagara was a failure. The officer in command did not take his army further than Oswego on Lake Ontario.

The expedition against Crown Point was partially successful, and a stubborn battle was fought and a victory won over the French on the shores of that beautiful sheet of water which the English ever after called Lake George in honor of the King.

%87. War declared.%—Up to this time all the fighting had been done along the frontier in America. But in May, 1756, Great Britain formally declared war against France. The French at once sent over Montcalm,[1] the very ablest Frenchman that ever commanded on this continent, and there followed two years of warfare disastrous to the British. Montcalm took and burned Oswego, won over the Indians to the cause of France, and was about to send a strong fleet to attack New England, when, toward the end of 1757, William Pitt was made virtually (though not in name) Prime Minister of England.

[Footnote 1: Read Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I., pp. 318-380.]

William Pitt was one of the greatest Englishmen that ever lived. He could see exactly what to do, and he could pick out exactly the right man to do it. No wonder, then, that as soon as he came into power the British began to gain victories.

%88. The Victories of 1758.%—Once more the French were attacked at their three vulnerable points, and this time with success. In 1758 Louisburg surrendered to Amherst and Boscawen. In that same year Washington captured Fort Duquesne, which, in honor of the great Prime Minister, was called Fort Pitt. A provincial officer named Bradstreet destroyed Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario. This was a heavy blow to the French; for with Fort Frontenac gone and Fort Duquesne in English hands, the Ohio was cut off from Quebec.

An attack on Ticonderoga, however, was repulsed by Montcalm with dreadful loss to the English.

%89. The Victories of 1759; Wolfe.%—But the defeat was only temporary. At the siege of Louisburg a young officer named James Wolfe had greatly distinguished himself, and in return for this was selected by Pitt to command an expedition to Quebec. The previous attempts to reach that city had been by way of Lake George. The expedition of Wolfe sailed up the St. Lawrence, and landed below the city.

Quebec stands on the summit of a high hill with precipitous sides, and was then the most strongly fortified city in America. To take it seemed almost impossible. But the resolution of Wolfe overcame every obstacle: on the night of September 12, 1759, he led his troops to the foot of the cliff, climbed the heights, and early in the morning had his army drawn up in battle array on the Plains of Abraham, as the plateau behind the city was called. There a great battle was fought between the French, led by Montcalm, and the British, led by Wolfe. The British triumphed, and Quebec fell; but Wolfe and Montcalm were among the dead.[1]

[Footnote 1: Parkman's Montcalm and Wolfe, Chaps. 25-27; A. Wright's Life of Wolfe; Sloan's French War and the Revolution, Chaps. 6-9.]

[Illustration: European Possessions 1763]

Ticonderoga and Crown Point had been captured a few weeks before. Montreal was taken in 1760, and the long struggle between the French and the English in America ended in the defeat of the French. The war dragged on in Europe till 1763, when peace was made at Paris.

%90. France driven out of America.%—With all the details of the treaty we are not concerned. It is enough for us to know that France divided her possessions on this continent between Great Britain and Spain. To Great Britain she gave Canada and Cape Breton, and all the islands save two in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Entering what is now the United States, she drew a line down the middle of the Mississippi River from its source to a point just north of New Orleans. To Great Britain she surrendered all her territory east of this line. To Spain she gave all her possessions to the west of this line, together with the city of New Orleans. But Great Britain, during the war, had taken Havana from Spain. To get this back, Spain now gave up Florida in exchange.

At the end of the war with France, Great Britain thus found herself in possession of Canada and all that part of the United States which lies between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, the little strip at the mouth of the river alone excepted.