Notwithstanding his hymeneal entanglement, Shirley was unquestionably the most powerful Englishman at this time in America. The fortuitous success of his Louisbourg expedition had given him a factitious military reputation.[302] A test of it seemed imminent. For the sixth time in eighty years the frontiers were now ravaged by the savages. Pepperrell was sent to pacify the eastern Indians. The French were stretching a cordon of posts from the Atlantic to the gulf which alarmed Shirley, and he doubted if anything was safe to the eastward beyond the Merrimac, unless the French could be pushed back from Nova Scotia. He feared New Hampshire would be lost, and with it the supply of masts for the royal navy. A road had been cut along the Westfield River through Poontoosuck (Pittsfield) to Albany, and Shirley planned defences among the Berkshire Hills.
At this juncture a conference of the colonies was called at Albany in 1754, which had been commanded through the governor of New York by the Board of Trade. The reader will find its history traced on a later page. Hutchinson in July brought back to Boston a draft of the plan of action. In the autumn the legislature was considering the question, while Franklin was in Boston (October-December) conferring with Shirley and discussing plans. Boston held a town meeting and denounced the Albany plan, and in December (14th) the legislature definitely rejected it, as all the other colonies in due time did. Rhode Island, particularly, was very vigilant, lest an attempt might be made to abridge her charter-privileges. Connecticut established its first press in this very year, which with the press of the other colonies, was lukewarm or hostile to the plan.[303]
Shirley had not attended the congress. He had left Boston in June (1754) on the province frigate “Massachusetts,” with the forces under John Winslow to build a fort on the Kennebec, which was completed on the 3d of September and called Fort Halifax. On his way he stopped at Falmouth, and on the 28th of June he had a conference with the Norridgewock Indians, and on July 5th another with the Penobscots. Accompanied by some young Indians who were entrusted to the English for education, the governor was once more in Boston on the 9th of September, where he was received with due honor.
This expedition and the congress were but the prelude to eventful years. When Henry Pelham died, on the 6th of March of this year, his king, in remembrance of the wise and peaceful policy of his minister, exclaimed, “Now I shall have no more peace!” For the struggle which was impending, New England had grown in strength and preparation, and had had much inuring to the trials of predatory warfare. She had increased about sixfold in population, while New York and Virginia had increased fivefold. The newer colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland had fairly outstripped these older ones, and numbered now nine times as large a population as they had sixty-five years earlier. The Carolinas and Georgia had increased in a ratio far more rapid. Massachusetts at this time probably had 45,000 on its alarm list, and in train-bands over 30,000 stood ready for the call.[304] John Adams, when teaching a school in Worcester the next year, ventured to write to a friend, “If we can remove the turbulent Gallicks, our people will in another century become more numerous than England itself.”
In the spring of 1755 Shirley went to Alexandria, in Virginia, being on the way from March 30 till April 12, to meet the other governors, and to confer with General Braddock upon the organization of that general’s disastrous campaign. When the news of its fatal ending reached New England it gave new fervor to the attempts, in which she was participating, of attacking the French on the Canada side,[305] and the war seemed brought nearer home to her people when, by the death of Braddock, the supreme command devolved on the Massachusetts governor.[306] On the 6th of November, at Thomas Hutchinson’s instigation and in expression of their good-will at Shirley’s promotion, the General Court passed a vote of congratulation.
The autumn had been one of excitement in Boston.[307] The forces of nature were conspiring to add to the wonderment of the hour. A part of the same series of convulsions which overturned Lisbon on November 1st and buried Sir Henry Frankland in the ruins, to be extricated by that Agnes Surriage whose romantic story has already been referred to, had been experienced in New England at four o’clock in the morning of the 18th of the same month, with a foreboding of a greater danger; but the commotion failed in the end to do great damage to its principal town, then esteemed, if we may believe the Gentleman’s Magazine, finer than any town in England excepting London. People looked to the leading man of science in New England of that time for some exposition of this mighty power, and Prof. John Winthrop gave at Cambridge his famous lecture on earthquakes, which was shortly printed.[308] The electrical forces of nature had not long before revealed themselves to Franklin with his kite, and it was in November or December that the news was exciting comment in Boston, turning men’s thoughts from the weariness of the war.
That war had not prospered under Shirley, and with a suspicion that he had been pushed beyond his military capacity he was recalled to England, ostensibly to give advice on its further conduct. He had found that Massachusetts could not be led to tax herself directly for the money which he needed, and only pledged herself to reimburse, if required, the king’s military chest for £35,000, which Shirley drew from it. A scale of bounties had failed to induce much activity in enlistments, and the forces necessary for the coming campaign were gathering but slowly.[309] This was the condition of affairs when Shirley left for England, carrying with him the consoling commendations of the General Court.
Spencer Phips, the lieutenant-governor, succeeded to the executive chair in Massachusetts at a time when even Boston was not felt to be secure, so fortunate or skilful were the weaker French in a purpose that was not imperilled by the jealousies which misguided the stronger English. It was now problematical if Loudon, the new commander-in-chief, was to bring better auguries. In January of the next year (1757), he came to Boston to confer with the New England governors. The New England colonies now agreed to raise 4,000 new troops. Meanwhile Phips had died in April (4th) in the midst of the war preparations, and Pepperrell, as president of the council, next directed affairs till Thomas Pownall,[310] who had been commissioned governor, and who had reached Halifax on the fleet which brought Lord Howe’s troops, arrived in Boston, August 3d, on the very day when Montcalm on Lake George was laying siege to Fort William Henry, which in a few days surrendered. The news did not reach Pownall till he had pushed forward troops to Springfield on their way to relieve the fort. He put Pepperrell at once in command of the militia,[311] and a large body of armed men gathered under him on the line of the Connecticut;[312] for there was ignorance at the time of Montcalm’s inability to advance because of desertions, and of the weakening of his force by reason of the details he had made to guard and transport the captured stores. Messengers were hurried to the other colonies to arouse them. John Adams, then a young man teaching in Worcester, kept from the pulpit by reason of his disbelief in Calvinism, stirred by the times, with the hope some day of commanding a troop of horse or a company of foot, was one of these messengers sent to Rhode Island, and he tells us how struck he was with the gayety and social aspect of Sunday in that colony, compared with the staid routine which characterized the day in Massachusetts.[313]
Massachusetts had enrolled 7,000 men for the campaign. Connecticut had put 5,000 in the field, and Rhode Island and New Hampshire a regiment each. Massachusetts had further maintained a guard of 600 men along her frontiers. The cost of all these preparations necessitated a tax of half the income of personal and landed property.
In a commercial sense almost crushed,[314] in a political sense the people were as buoyant as ever. When Loudon sent orders to quarter a regiment of the British troops on the people, the legislature forbade it, and grew defiant, and nothing could pacify them but the withdrawal of the order. The commander-in-chief, however he stormed in New York, found it expedient to yield when he learned of the fury his order was exciting in a colony upon whose vigor the home government was largely depending for the successful prosecution of the war. This had now fallen into the hands of Pitt, and he at once recalled Loudon, who chanced to be in Boston, parleying with the legislature about raising troops, when an express brought him his recall. Abercrombie, who succeeded, was even a worse failure; but there was a burst of light at the eastward. Amherst had captured Louisbourg in July (1758),[315] and bringing his troops by water to Boston had landed them on September 13. Never was there so brilliant array of war seen in the harbor as the war-ships presented, or on Boston Common where the troops were encamped. Amherst delayed but three days for rest, when on the 16th of September he began his march westward to join the humbled Abercrombie. At Worcester the troops halted, and John Adams tells us of the “excellent order and discipline” which they presented, and of the picturesqueness of the Scotch in their plaids, as this army of four thousand men filled his ardent gaze.