The War of Independence

by John Fiske

The French and the Iroquois.

The Iroquois pressed the French with so much vigour that in 1689 they even laid siege to Montreal. But by 1696 the French, assisted by all the Algonquin tribes within reach, and led by their warlike viceroy, Count Frontenac, one of the most picturesque figures in American history, at length succeeded in getting the upperhand and dealing the Long House a terrible blow, from the effects of which it never recovered. The league remained formidable, however, until the time of the revolutionary war. In 1715 its fighting strength was partially repaired by the adoption of the kindred Iroquois tribe of Tuscaroras, who had just been expelled from North Carolina by the English settlers, and migrated to New York. After this accession the league, henceforth known as the Six Nations, formed a power by no means to be despised, though much less bold and aggressive than in the previous century.

After administering a check to the Iroquois, the French and Algonquins kept up for more than sixty years a desultory warfare against the English colonies. Whenever war broke out between England and France, it meant war in America as well as in Europe. Indeed, one of the chief objects of war, on the part of each of these two nations, was to extend its colonial dominions at the expense of the other. France and England were at war from 1689 to 1697; from 1702 to 1713; and from 1743 to 1748. The men in New York or Boston in 1750, who could remember the past sixty years, could thus look back over at least four-and-twenty years of open war; and even in the intervals of professed peace there was a good deal of disturbance on the frontiers. A most frightful sort of warfare it was, ghastly with torture of prisoners and the ruthless murder of women and children. The expense of raising and arming troops for defence was great enough to subject several of the colonies to a heavy burden of debt. In 1750 Massachusetts was just throwing off the load of debt under which she had staggered since 1693; and most of this debt was incurred for expeditions against the French and Algonquins.

Difficulty of getting the English colonies to act in concert.

Under these circumstances it was natural that the colonial governments should find it hard to raise enough money for war expenses, and that the governors should think the legislatures too slow in acting. They were slow; for, as is apt to be the case when money is to be borrowed without the best security, there were a good many things to be considered. All this was made worse by the fact that there were so many separate governments, so that each one was inclined to hold back and wait for the others. On the other hand, the French viceroy in Canada had despotic power; the colony which he governed never pretended to be self-supporting; and so, if he could not squeeze money enough out of the people in Canada, he just sent to France for it and got it; for the government of Louis XV. regarded Canada as one of the brightest jewels in its crown, and was always ready to spend money for damaging the English. Accordingly the Frenchman could plan his campaign, call his red men together, and set the whole frontier in a blaze, while the legislatures in Boston or New York were talking about what had better be done in case of invasion. No wonder the royal governors fretted and fumed, and sent home to England dismal accounts of the perverseness of these Americans! Many people in England thought that the colonies were allowed to govern themselves altogether too much, and that for their own good the British government ought to tax them. Once while Sir Robert Walpole was prime minister (1721-1742) some one is said to have advised him to lay a direct tax upon the Americans; but that wise old statesman shook his head. It was bad enough, he said, to be scolded and abused by half the people in the old country; he did not wish to make enemies of every man, woman, and child in the new.

Need of a union between the English colonies.

But if the power to raise American armies for the common defence, and to collect money in America for this purpose, was not to be assumed by the British government, was there any way in which unity and promptness of action in time of war could be secured? There was another way, if people could be persuaded to adopt it. The thirteen colonies might be joined together in a federal union; and the federal government, without interfering in the local affairs of any single colony, might be clothed with the power of levying taxes all over the country for purposes of common defence. The royal governors were inclined to favour a union of the colonies, no matter how it might be brought about. They thought it necessary that some decisive step should be taken quickly, for it was evident that the peace of 1748 was only an armed truce. Evidently a great and decisive struggle was at hand. In 1750 the Ohio Company, formed for the purpose of colonizing the valley drained by that river, had surveyed the country as far as the present site of Louisville. In 1753 the French, taking the alarm, crossed Lake Erie, and began to fortify themselves at Presque Isle, and at Venango on the Alleghany river. They seized persons trading within the limits of the Ohio Company, which lay within the territory of Virginia; and accordingly Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, selected George Washington—a venturous and hardy young land-surveyor, only twenty-one years old, but gifted with a sagacity beyond his years—and sent him to Venango to warn off the trespassers. It was an exceedingly delicate and dangerous mission, and Washington showed rare skill and courage in this first act of his public career, but the French commander made polite excuses and remained. Next spring the French and English tried each to forestall the other in fortifying the all-important place where the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers unite to form the Ohio, the place long afterward commonly known as the "Gateway of the West," the place where the city of Pittsburgh now stands. In the course of these preliminary manœuvres Washington was besieged in Fort Necessity by overwhelming numbers, and on July 4, 1754, was obliged to surrender the whole of his force, but obtained leave to march away. So the French got possession of the much-coveted situation, and erected there Fort Duquesne as a menace to all future English intruders. As yet war had not been declared between France and England, but these skirmishings indicated that war in earnest was not far off.

The Congress at Albany, 1754.

In view of the approaching war a meeting was arranged at Albany between the principal chiefs of the Six Nations and commissioners from several of the colonies, that the alliance between English and Iroquois might be freshly cemented; and some of the royal governors improved the occasion to call for a Congress of all the colonies, in order to prepare some plan of confederation such as all the colonies might be willing to adopt. At the time of Washington's surrender such a Congress was in session at Albany, but Maryland was the most southerly colony represented in it. The people nowhere showed any interest in it. No public meetings were held in its favour. The only newspaper which warmly approved it was the "Pennsylvania Gazette," which appeared with a union device, a snake divided into thirteen segments, with the motto "Unite or Die!"

Franklin's plan for a Federal Union.