Upon the movement to render secure the new fort at Pittsburgh, Parkman found in the Public Record Office, in London, letters of Col. Hugh Mercer (who commanded), January-June, 1759; letters of Brigadier Stanwix, May-July;[1484] and a narrative of John Ormsby, beside a letter in the Boston News-Letter, no. 3,023. In the Wilkes Papers, in the Historical MSS. Commission Report, No. IV., p. 400, are long and interesting accounts of affairs at this time in Pennsylvania, written from Philadelphia to Wilkes by Thomas Barrow (May 1, 1759).
The Niagara expedition was a mistake, in the judgment of some military critics, since the troops diverted to accomplish it had been used more effectually in Amherst’s direct march to Montreal. More expedition on that general’s part in completing his direct march would have rendered the fall of Niagara a necessity without attack. Perhaps the risk of leaving French forces still west of Niagara, ready for a siege of Fort Pitt, is not sufficiently considered in this view.[1485]
The Public Record Office yields Amherst’s instructions and letters to Prideaux, and the letters of Johnson to Amherst. Stone[1486] prints Johnson’s diary of the expedition, and the Haldimand Papers in the British Museum throw much light.[1487] Letters of Amherst are in the N. Y. State Library at Albany.
On the French side, the account in Pouchot’s Mémoires sur la dernière guerre[1488] is that of the builder and defender of the fort.[1489] His narrative is given in English in N. Y. Col. Docs., x. 977, etc., as well as in Hough’s ed. of Pouchot. The letters of Vaudreuil from the French Archives are in the Parkman MSS. The English found in the fort a French journal (July 6-July 24, 1759), of which an English version was printed in the N. Y. Mercury, Aug. 20, 1759. It is also given in English in the Hist. Mag. (March, 1869), xv. p. 199.
For the Oswego episode, beside Pouchot,[1490] see Mémoire sur le Canada, 1749-60, and a letter in the Boston Evening Post, no. 1,248.
The best recent accounts are in Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, ii. ch. 26; Warburton’s Conquest of Canada, ii. ch. 9, and Stone’s Life of Johnson, vol. ii.
Johnson’s diary, as given by Stone,[1491] shows how undecided, under Amherst’s instructions, Gage was about attacking the French at La Galette, on the St. Lawrence.
Gage, who, in August and September, 1759, was at Oswego, was much perplexed with the commissary and transportation service, but got relief when Bradstreet undertook to regulate matters at Albany.[1492]
While the expeditions of Stanwix and Prideaux constituted the left wing of the grand forward movement, that conducted by Amherst himself was the centre.
The letters of Amherst to Pitt and Wolfe are in the Public Record Office in London,[1493] as well as a journal of Colonel Amherst, a brother of the general. Mante and Knox afford good contemporary narratives.[1494]