The apathy of New Jersey drew forth rebuke from the Lords of Trade.[1332] Scharf[1333] describes the futile attempts of the governor of Maryland to induce his assembly to furnish supplies to the army.
The belief was not altogether unpopular in Pennsylvania, as well as in Virginia, that the story of French encroachments was simply circulated to make the government support the Ohio Company in their settlement of the country, and Washington complains that his report of the 1753 expedition failed to eradicate this notion in some quarters.[1334] In Pennsylvania there were among the Quaker population unreconcilable views of Indian management and French trespassing, and similar beliefs obtained among the German and Scotch-Irish settlers on the frontiers of the province, while the English churchmen and the Catholic Irish added not a little to the incongruousness of sentiment. The rum of the traders among the Indians further complicated matters.[1335] This contrariety of views, as well as a dispute with the proprietary governor over questions of taxation, paralyzed the power of Pennsylvania to protect its own frontiers, when, following upon the defeat of Braddock, the French commander thrust upon the settlements all along the exposed western limits party after party of French and Indian depredators.[1336] Dumas, now in command, issued orders enough to restrain the barbarities of his packs, but the injunctions availed nothing.[1337] Washington, who was put in command of a regiment of borderers at Winchester, found it impossible to exercise much control in directing them to the defence of the frontiers thereabouts.[1338] Fears of slave insurrection and a hesitating house of burgesses were quite as paralyzing in Virginia as other conditions were in Pennsylvania, and the Dinwiddie Papers explain the gloom of the hour.
For the Pennsylvania confusion, the views of the anti-proprietary party found expression in the Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, a “hotly partisan and sometimes sophistical and unfair”[1339] statement, inspired and partly written by Franklin, the leader in the assembly against the Penns.[1340] While the quarrel went on, and the assembly was neglecting the petitions of the borderers for the organization of a militia to protect them, the two parties indulged in crimination and recrimination, and launched various party pamphlets at each other.[1341] The Col. Records of Penna. (vol. vi.) chronicle the progress of this conflict. We get the current comment in Franklin’s letters,[1342] in the histories of Pennsylvania, and in such monographs as Edmund de Schweinitz’s Life and Times of David Zeisberger (Philad., 1870),—for the massacre at Gnadenhütten brought the Moravians within the vortex, while the histories[1343] of the missions of that sect reiterate the stories of rapine and murder.
Patience ceased to be a virtue, and a “Representation”[1344] to the House was finally couched in the language of a demand for protection. The assembly mocked and shirked; but the end came. A compromise was reached by the proprietaries furnishing as a free gift the money which they denied as a tax on their estates, and Franklin undertook to manage the defence of the frontiers, with such force and munitions as were now under command.[1345]
Any history of the acquisition of lands by the English, particularly by Pennsylvania, shows why the Indians of the Ohio were induced at this time to side with the French.[1346]
Pownall, in his treatise[1347] on the colonies, classified the Indian tribes by their allegiance respectively to the English and French interests.[1348] It is claimed that the Iroquois were first allured by the Dutch, through the latter’s policy of strict compensation for lands, and that the retention of the Iroquois to the English interests arose from the inheritance of that policy by their successors at Albany and New York.[1349]
Braddock’s instructions to Shirley for the conduct of the Niagara expedition are printed in A. H. Hoyt’s Pepperrell Papers (1874), p. 20. This abortive campaign does not occupy much space in the general histories, and Parkman offers the best account. The Massachusetts Archives and the legislative Journal of that province, as well as Shirley’s letters, give the best traces of the governor’s efforts to organize the campaign.[1350] Some descriptive letters of the general’s son, John Shirley, will be found in the Penna. Archives, vol. ii.[1351] The best contemporary narratives in print are found in The Conduct of Shirley briefly stated, and in Livingston’s Review of Military Operations.[1352]
The main dependence in the giving of the story of the Lake George campaign of 1755 is, on the English side, upon the papers of Johnson himself, and they are the basis of the Life and Times of Sir William Johnson,[1353] which, being begun by William L. Stone, was completed by a son of the same name, and published in Albany in 1865, in two volumes.[1354] The preface states that Sir William’s papers, as consulted by the elder Stone, consist of more than 7,000 letters and documents, which were collected from various sources, but are in good part made up of documents procured from the Johnson family in England, and of the Johnson MSS. presented to the N. Y. State library by Gen. John T. Cooper.[1355] An account of Johnson’s preparatory conferences with the Indians (June to Aug., 1755) is printed in N. Y. Col. Docs., vi. 964, etc., and in Penna. Archives, 2d ser., vi. 267-99.[1356] On the 22d of August Johnson held a council of war at the great carrying place,[1357] whence on the 24th he wrote a letter,[1358] while Col. Blanchard, of the New Hampshire regiment, a few days later (Aug. 28-30) chronicled the progress of events.[1359]