It boded no good that the Six Nations also, in April, had sent deputies to Vaudreuil, and all through the spring the region north of the Mohawk was the scene of rapine.[1444] The truth was, the successes of the French had driven the westerly tribes of the Six Nations into a neutrality, which might turn easily into enmity, and to confirm them in their passiveness, and to incite the Mohawks and the easterly tribes into active alliance, Johnson, who knew his life to be in danger, summoned the deputies of the confederacy to meet him at Johnson Hall on the 10th of June. His journal for some time previous to the meeting is printed by Stone.[1445] Johnson accomplished all he could hope for. His answer to the Senecas of June 16 is in the Penna. Archives, vi. 511. Under his counsel, the final conclusion with the Indians farther south was reached in a conference at Easton, in Pennsylvania, in July and August.[1446]
Of the defeat of Rogers in March, which opened the campaign of 1758, his own report after he got into Fort Edward, printed at the time in the newspapers, is mainly given in his Journals, together with a long letter of two British regular officers who accompanied him, and who in the fight escaped capture, but wandered off in the woods, till hunger compelled them to seek the French fort, whence by a flag of truce they despatched (Mar. 28) their narrative. The French accounts are derived from the usual documentary sources as indicated by Parkman (ii. p. 16).
The English historians of the war in Europe all describe the change in political feeling which brought Pitt once more into power, with popular sympathy to sustain him.[1447] The public had aroused to the incompetency of the English military rule in America, and upon the importance of making head there against the French, as a vantage for any satisfactory peace in Europe.[1448] This revulsion is best described in Parkman[1449] and in Bancroft.[1450] The letter of Pitt recalling Loudon (who was not without his defenders[1451]), as addressed to the governor of Connecticut, is in the Trumbull MSS., vol. i. p. 127.
The condition of the camp at Lake George in the spring and early summer is to be studied in the official papers, as well as in letters printed in the Boston News-Letter and in the Boston Evening Post.[1452] Parkman describes from the best sources the fort and the outer entrenchments.[1453]
The official reports on the English side of the fight on July 8th are in the Public Record Office. The letter which Abercrombie addressed to Pitt from Lake George, July 12, as it appeared in the London Gazette Extraordinary, Aug. 22, is printed in the N.Y. Col. Docs., x. 728. Dwight represents the opinions of Abercrombie’s generalship as current in the colonies,[1454] and we read in Smith’s New York, vol. ii. p. 264, that the difficulty “appeared to be more in the head than the body.” The diary of William Parkman, a youth of seventeen, who was in a Massachusetts regiment, reflects the charitable criticism of his troops, when the diarist calls their commander “an aged gentleman, infirm in body and mind.”[1455] We have various other descriptions and diaries from officers engaged.[1456]
Parkman[1457] collates the different authorities as respects the losses on the two sides,[1458] and his details are the best of all the later historians.[1459] Of the French contemporary accounts, which are numerous, there are several from the Paris Archives in the Parkman MSS., which have been used for the first time in his Montcalm and Wolfe. Some of the more important ones are printed in the N. Y. Col. Docs. x.[1460]
There is an account in Pouchot, and Chevalier Johnstone’s “Dialogue in Hades” is in the Transactions of the Lit. and Hist. Soc. of Quebec, and summarized accounts in Martin’s De Montcalm en Canada, ch. vii., and in Garneau’s Canada, p. 279.[1461] For the life of the camp later established at the head of Lake George, there are items to be drawn, not only from the official reports, but from the Israel Williams MSS. Parkman (ii. 117) uses a diary of Chaplain Cleaveland. An orderly book of Col. Jonathan Bagley, of a Connecticut regiment, covering Aug. 20-Sept. 11, 1758, is in the library of the American Antiq. Society.[1462] It indicates that the celebration at Lake George of the victory at Louisbourg took place Aug. 28, as does an orderly book of Rogers’ Rangers, covering Aug.-Nov., 1758, at Lake George and Fort Edward.[1463]
Of the autumn scouting, there are letters in the Boston Weekly Advertiser, the centre of interest being the fight between Rogers and Morin.[1464]
Of the Frontenac expedition, Bradstreet’s own report to Abercrombie is in the Public Record Office. Parkman uses it, as well as letters in the Boston Gazette, no. 182; Boston Evening Post, no. 1,203; Boston News-Letter, no. 2,932; N. H. Gazette, no. 104. The articles of capitulation are in the N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 826. Smith (New York, ii. 266), speaking of Bradstreet’s expedition, says he “rather flew than marched.”[1465]