The Canadian French retaliated immediately for their loss, by attacking the English frontiers and taking several outposts, but no great damage was done. This success revived the favourite scheme of the conquest of Canada, and England, as well as the colonies, began active preparations for carrying it out. In Pennsylvania, where hitherto peace principles had been very carefully maintained, an active military spirit, excited by Benjamin Franklin, who now, after twenty years of industry, had acquired a handsome property, prevailed. “He was the originator,” says Logan, “of two lotteries, that raised above £6,000 to pay for the charge of the batteries on the river, and he found out a way to put the country on raising above 120 companies of militia, of which Philadelphia raised ten, or about 100 men each. The women, too, were so zealous that they furnished ten pair of silk colours, wrought with various mottoes.” Logan, himself a Quaker, though not a strict one, was highly satisfied, as he says, with “Benjamin Franklin for contriving the militia,” and he adds, that, “Franklin, when elected to the command of a regiment, declined the distinction, and carried a musket among the common soldiers.”
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, however, put an end to all these ambitious schemes of conquest, and the mutual restoration of all places taken during the war being one of its conditions, Cape Breton and Louisburg, to the grief and mortification of the northern colonies, were returned to France. The only thing which consoled Massachusetts for this loss was, that the British indemnified her for the expenses of this last enterprise, to the amount of £183,000, a very welcome boon, when her finances were suffering the most serious embarrassment, owing to her extensive issues of paper money and the depreciation of the currency. It was proposed by Thomas Hutchinson, grandson of the celebrated Anne Hutchinson, and now a wealthy merchant of Boston, and speaker of the House of Representatives, that the money thus granted should be imported in silver, and applied to redeem, at its current value, all the outstanding paper. This was done, and for a quarter of a century, says Hildreth, Massachusetts enjoyed the blessing of a sound currency.
It was just at this time when a great inroad was attempted on the rigidity of the Puritan manners, by the attempt of some young Englishmen at Boston to introduce theatrical entertainments. The play first announced was Otway’s Orphan, but it proceeded no further than announcement, such exhibitions being at once prohibited, “as tending to discourage industry and frugality, and greatly to the increase of impiety and contempt for religion.” Connecticut immediately followed the example; neither would she suffer such Babylonish pursuits. Two years afterwards, a London company of actors came over, and acted the Beau’s Stratagem and Merchant of Venice, at Annapolis and Williamsburg in Virginia. Connecticut and Massachusetts being closed against them, they confined their labours to Annapolis, Williamsburg, Philadelphia, Perth-Amboy, New York and Newport.
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle left the great causes of difference, the undefined limits of the French and English claims in America, still unsettled. The French, by virtue of the discoveries of La Salle, Marquette, Champlain and others, claimed all the lands occupied by the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi and the Lakes, and all watered by the Mississippi and its branches. In fact, they claimed the whole of America, except that portion which lies east of the Allegany chain, the rivers of which flow into the Atlantic, and even of this they claimed the basin of the Kennebec and all Maine to the east of that valley. The British on the contrary, asserted a right to the entire country, on account of the discovery of Cabot, extending their claims under the old patents with more than equal extravagance, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. To strengthen this title, they had lately purchased from the chiefs of the confederated Six Nations, acknowledged by the treaties of Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle as being under British protection, their claim to the country of the Mississippi, which, it was stated, had at some former period been conquered by them.
The French, as we have already said, had in part carried out their plan of a chain of forts, to connect their more recent settlements on the Mississippi with their earlier ones on the St. Lawrence, when in 1750 a number of gentlemen of Virginia, among whom was Lawrence Washington, the grandfather of the celebrated George, applied to the British parliament for an act for incorporating “the Ohio Company,” and granting them 600,000 acres of land on the Ohio river. This was done; the tract was surveyed, and trade commenced with the Indians. The jealousy of the French was roused; and the Marquis du Quesne, governor of Canada, complained to the authorities of New York and Pennsylvania, threatening to seize their traders if they did not quit this territory. The trade went on as before, and the French carried out their threat, burning the village of an Indian tribe which refused submission, and seizing the English traders and their merchandise; and the following year the number and importance of the French forts was increased.
Robert Dinwiddie, at that time royal governor of Virginia, alarmed at those violent proceedings, purchased permission of the Indians on the Monongahala to build a fort on the junction of that river with the Allegany, and determined to send a trusty messenger to the French commandant at Venango, to require explanation and the release of the captured traders. It was late in the season, and the embassy demanded both courage and wisdom. A young man of two-and-twenty, a major in the militia, and by profession a land-surveyor, and who when only sixteen had been employed as such by Lord Fairfax on his property in the Northern Neck, was selected for this service. This young man was George Washington.
The journey, about 400 miles through the untracked forest, and at the commencement of winter, though full of peril and wild adventure, was performed successfully. Washington was well received by the commandant, St. Pierre, who promised, after two days’ deliberation, to transmit his message to his superiors in Canada; and all unconscious of the present or future importance of their guest, who was making accurate observations as to the strength of the fort, the French officers revealed to him, over their wine, the intentions of France to occupy the whole country.
The reply of St. Pierre, the contents of which were not known till opened at Williamsburg, leaving no doubt of the hostile intentions of the French, Dinwiddie began immediately to prepare for resistance, promising to the officers and soldiers of the Virginian army 200,000 acres of land to be divided amongst them, as an encouragement to enlist. A regiment of 600 men, of which Washington was appointed lieutenant-colonel, marched in the month of April, 1754, into the disputed territory, and, encamping at the Great Meadows, were met by alarming intelligence; the French had driven the Virginians from a fort which, owing to his own recommendation, they were building at “the Fork,” the place where Pittsburg now stands, between the junction of the Monongahala and the Allegany, the importance of which position he had become aware of on his journey to Venango. This fort the French had now finished, and had called Du Quesne, in honour of the governor-general; besides which, a detachment sent against him were encamped at a few miles distance. Washington proceeded, surprised the enemy, and killed the commander, Jumonville—the first blood shed in this war.
On his return to the Great Meadows, Washington was joined by the troops from New York and South Carolina, and here erected a fort, which he called Fort Necessity. Frye, the colonel, being now dead, the chief command devolved upon Washington, who very shortly set out towards Du Quesne, when he was compelled to return and entrench himself within Fort Necessity, owing to the approach of a very superior force under De Villier, the brother of Jumonville. After a day of hard fighting, the fort itself was surrendered, on condition of the garrison being permitted to retire unmolested. A singular circumstance occurred in this capitulation: Washington, who did not understand French, employed a Dutchman as his interpreter, and he, either from ignorance or treachery, rendered the terms of the capitulation incorrectly; thus Washington signed an acknowledgment of having “assassinated” Jumonville, and engaged not again to appear in arms against the French within twelve months.
Hitherto, the intercolonial wars had originated in European quarrels; now, the causes of dispute existed in the colonies themselves, and were derivable from the growing importance of these American possessions to the mother-countries; the approaching war, in consequence, assumed an interest to the colonies which no former war had possessed. It was now, therefore, proposed by the British cabinet that a union should be formed among the colonies for their mutual protection and support, and that the friendship of the Six Nations should be immediately secured. Accordingly a congress was convened at Albany, in June, 1754, at which delegates appeared from New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut; Delaney, governor of New York, being the president. A treaty of peace was signed with the Six Nations, and the convention entered upon the subject of the great union, a plan for which had been drawn up by Benjamin Franklin, the delegate from Pennsylvania, and which was carefully discussed, clause by clause, in the assembly. Both William Penn, in 1697, and Coxe in his “Carolana,” had proposed a similar annual congress of all the colonies for the regulation of trade, and these were the bases of Franklin’s plan of union.