News that the War of the Austrian Succession (called King George's War in America
had been declared between France and England reached
Le Prévost Duquesnel on the Ile Royale (Cape Breton) on May 3, 1744.
He sent Joseph Dupont du Vivier to occupy the British fishing station
at Canso which capitulated on May 24.
Next Duquesnel asked Du Vivier to retake Port Royal (Annapolis).
He left in August with thirty men, added twenty more from Ile St. Jean,
and demanded Annapolis Royal surrender.
However the British commander Paul Mascarene declined to submit.
Michel de Gannes arrived in October and ordered a retreat.
By then French privateers led by Monsieur Dolabarats, Hertel de Beaubassin,
Pierre de Morpain, and others had captured 28 English prizes.
Fort Louisbourg on the east coast of Ile Royale (Cape Breton) had a morale problem,
and in December 1744 some of the Swiss troops mutinied
The English organized a combined force of 8,500 men.
Two thousand New Englanders landed on the shore by the strategic fort on May 11, 1745.
The French had only 560 soldiers and 800 militiamen,
and they were besieged with cannons and bombs.
In an assault against the Island Battery on June 6 the New Englanders
had 189 men killed, drowned, or captured, but the
Chevalier Charles-Joseph d'Ailleboust surrendered the Battery the next day.
On June 28 the Louisbourg commander Louis Dupont du Chambon capitulated,
and 4,460 soldiers and inhabitants were transported to France without their effects.
By the ruse of keeping the French flag flying,
the English captured three French ships worth £600,000.
In July the New England fleet took over Ile St. Jean (Prince Edward Island).
Governor Beauharnois (1726-46) tried to strengthen Quebec's defenses.
The Senecas assured Chabert de Joncaire that the Iroquois nations
would be neutral as long as the French did not attack Oswego.
Pierre-Jacques de Tafanel, Marquis de La Jonquiere had been appointed governor
of New France (Canada), and he traveled in a convoy under the command of
Jean-Baptiste de La Rochefoucauld, Duc d'Anville,
who died of a stroke in September 1744 at Chebucto Bay in Acadia.
Vice-admiral d'Estournelles took command, but he stabbed himself
with a sword and yielded to the more experienced La Jonquiere.
Already about five hundred men had died of scurvy and smallpox,
and 1,500 were too weak to work.
Because of the smallpox the Indians refused to help them with provisions or by hunting.
La Jonquiere combined all the sick on hospital ships
and took the other ships to retake Port Royal.
However, a storm and fog persuaded him to sail for France.
In this expedition the French lost two warships, 21 transports,
and 587 men without accomplishing anything.
La Jonquiere sailed with a convoy of five warships; but in May 1747
they were defeated by a British squadron of seventeen ships led
by admirals George Anson and Peter Warren, and La Jonquiere was taken to England.
Meanwhile Beauharnois had sent 680 Canadian militiamen from
Quebec in June 1746
under the Sieur de Ramezay; but he gave up
the siege of Port Royal when he found out
in November that the
fleet had gone back to France.
Ramezay learned that New England
had sent five hundred men
under Col. Arthur Noble to Grand Pré
in Nova Scotia and attacked there.
Noble's successor Benjamin
Goldthwait surrendered in February 1747.
The Iroquois had reaffirmed their neutrality in March 1746, but Rigaud de Vaudreuil
with four hundred Canadians and three hundred western Algonquins and Choctaws
captured Fort Massachusetts in August and ravaged the area.
During a council at Albany the next month Governor George Clinton
persuaded the Mohawks to fight for New York.
In November the Mohawks attacked a few farmers around Lake Champlain.
Beauharnois summoned the Indians from the Great Lakes to a conference
at Montreal in March 1747, and they declared war on the Mohawks.
Canadians led by the Chevalier de Niverville attacked Haverhill, Massachusetts in March,
and 780 militiamen from Montreal and Three Rivers and Indian allies led by
Rigaud de Vaudreuil invaded English territory near Fort St. Frédéric in June.
Saint-Luc attacked Saratoga a second time in July.
However, during a war which was mostly fought in Europe the Canadians were not
receiving enough supplies from France to improve their alliances with Indians.
By the Mississippi River the Chevalier Bertet
abandoned Fort Chartres and fell back to Kaskaskia.
The Sulpician Abbé François Picquet founded La
Présentation mission at Oswegatchie
by the St. Lawrence
River in 1748, and his converts increased
from six Indians in
1749 to 396 two years later in a community of nearly three thousand.
They were mostly Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas
because the Mohawks
had been won over by William Johnson.
When the Onondaga chief
Canasatego, who favored Pennsylvania, died in circumstances
that
Weiser considered suspicious, the Catholic convert Tohaswuchdioony,
known as The Belt of Wampum, became the leading Iroquois chief.
While the French were offering a spiritual life at La Présentation
and to Mohawks
at Caughnawaga, the British appealed to commercial
interests
with their low prices at Albany and Oswego.
French commandants, wanting to make a large profit, allowed
the fur traders
to charge the Indians high prices, and their relations
deteriorated.
When Roland-Michel Barrin, the Marquis de La Galissoniere,
arrived as governor-general
of Canada in September 1747, he worked
for the public welfare and tried to limit
the commerce to the
trading posts at Temiskaming, Nipigon, Kaministiquia,
Chagouamigon,
and to the western region around Lake Winnipeg.
Other trade was
to be strictly limited to those with permits.
He instructed Chaussegros
de Léry to open a road from Montreal on the Richelieu River
and build a fort at St. Jean. In the spring of 1748 the Minister
of Marine,
Jean-Frédéric-Phélypeaux, Comte
de Maurepas,
ordered the Governor of Canada to stop offensive
operations.
In the treaty signed at Aix-la-Chapelle on October
18 the French traded Madras,
which they had captured in India,
for Louisbourg.
The basic situation before the war was restored.
However, Canada's frontiers in Acadia and Ohio were left to be
decided by a commission,
which was appointed in 1750 and included
Governor Shirley
and La Galissoniere but failed to resolve the
issues.
In 1749 the Minister of Marine Maurepas was replaced by Antoine-Louis
Rouillé,
Comte de Jouy, and he transferred the Ohio territory
east of Illinois
from the jurisdiction of New Orleans to Quebec.
When Rouillé put Detroit under Canadian control, the Wyandot
chief Memeskia,
whom the English referred to as Old Briton and
the French called La Demoiselle,
moved to the new village Pickawillany
on the
Great Miami River to be closer to his British allies.
La
Galissoniere sent Detroit's commander Pierre-Joseph de Céloron
de Blainville
on an expedition into the Ohio region with twenty
French soldiers and 180 Canadians.
In several places he buried
lead plates to claim territory.
After reaching French Creek he
informed some English traders with fifty horses packed
with pelts
that they were trespassing. Céloron found that the Delawares,
Shawnees,
and Mingos along with the Miamis had become more friendly
to the English.
At Logstown on August 2 the Iroquois granted George
Croghan
200,000 acres by the forks of the Ohio.
The Comte de Raymond
commanded at Fort des Miamis and
reported there were three hundred
Anglo-Americans in the area.
Governor-general La Jonquiere and the Intendant François Bigot arrived in August 1749,
and they were both interested in their private profit.
La Jonquiere reserved the two most profitable trading posts
for himself, increasing competition for his favor.
Their examples inclined Canadians to cheat the government too.
Bigot granted the secretary Grasset de Saint-Sauveur
the exclusive right to sell brandy to Indians.
Bigot made deals with his friends Hughes Péan, Joseph Cadet, and Brassard Deschenaux,
buying articles and selling them for twice as much or selling the same merchandise
several times at a higher price each time.
La Jonquiere ordered the defenses strengthened at Michilimackinac
and had new posts built at Sault Ste. Marie, at the end of the Niagara portage,
and at Fort Rouillé (Toronto) by the mouth of the Humber River.
He tried to keep furs from being sold to the English
at Fort Chouaguen (Oswego) and Albany.
The Jesuit Tournois had been helping the Desauniers sisters sell to the English for years,
but in May 1750 La Jonquiere ordered them to leave the mission village.
They appealed, but the order was upheld by Rouillé in 1752.
Louisiana's Governor Vaudreuil increased the Illinois garrison from two companies
to six and ordered the militia to prepare for war.
The Ile Royale was formally returned to the French on July 23, 1749,
and Charles des Herbiers was appointed governor.
Acadians were encouraged to move there and to the Ile St. Jean.
The English founded Halifax in Nova Scotia (Acadia).
Canadian Governor La Galissoniere had sent Charles Deschamps, Sieur de Boishébert,
to stop the British from extending their authority from Nova Scotia to the St. John valley,
and Le Loutre's Micmacs burned buildings at Beaubassin.
When the English interfered with the movement of provisions,
La Jonquiere sent a royal vessel as an escort.
In four years the population of the Ile St. Jean more than tripled to 2,223
with more than twice that many farm animals.
The Ile Royale developed a fishing industry worth more than two million livres.
Their large fleets took cod from the Grand Banks off New Foundland,
and the French sold three times as much fish as the English.
Edward Cornwallis became governor at Halifax, Nova Scotia in the spring of 1749,
and fourteen ships with 2,576 settlers soon arrived.
They were promised food for one year and exemption from land taxes for ten years.
Cornwallis complained to Des Herbiers that the Abbé Le Loutre
was urging the Indians to attack English settlements.
Cornwallis sent former privateer John Rous with three British ships
that forced Boishébert to withdraw up the St. John River.
In June 1749 Cornwallis led an expedition to start a town at Chebucto harbor,
and he offered free rent for ten years to Acadians who converted to the Protestant religion.
He ordered Fort Edward constructed at Pisiquid to control the Chignecto Isthmus.
In September the Abbé Le Loutre instigated the Micmacs to attack Canso,
and that fall La Jonquiere sent Luc de La Corne to Chignecto with a small detachment.
In April 1750 Major Charles Lawrence led a force of four hundred men against
Beaubassin at Chignecto Bay, and La Corne withdrew
his forces to the north shore of the Missaguash River.
When Le Loutre's Indians burned a village and a church, Lawrence retreated;
but he came back with about seven hundred men in September
and began erecting Fort Lawrence at Beaubassin.
The Acadians reacted by burning six villages and moving to French territory.
The next month Captain Howe was treacherously murdered
during a parley with the Micmac Etienne Batard.
In 1751 the French were constructing Fort Beauséjour while troops led
by Luc de La Corne camped within a mile of the British who were building Fort Lawrence.
Minister Rouillé instructed Vaudreuil to increase his
permanent garrisons
of troops in Louisiana to a total of two thousand
men.
He sent three hundred of them to Barthélemy Macarty-Mactigue,
who started building a new fort at Chartres near Kaskaskia in
1753.
La Jonquiere sent Céloron to raise Indians to attack
Memeskia's Miamis;
but they refused to join so few French, and
so the Governor-general
merely offered a bounty for the chief's
scalp.
La Jonquiere died of illness on March 17, 1752.
Legardeur
de Saint-Pierre continued the quest west in 1750 up the Saskatchewan
River
into the Rockies, building Fort La Jonquiere in 1751 in
what is now Alberta.
However, in 1752 he realized that the English
from Hudson Bay
had persuaded the western tribes to oppose the
French venture.
Montreal's Governor Charles Le Moyne, Baron de Longueil, administered
the Canadian government until the Marquis Duquesne de Menneville
arrived at Quebec on July 30, 1752.
Minister Rouillé had ordered Duquesne "to drive the English from our land
and to prevent their coming there to trade."
In June about 240 Saulteurs and Ottawas led by Charles-Michel Langlade
had attacked Pickawillany and killed Memeskia (La Demoiselle).
Eight English traders were captured with their furs,
and they were imprisoned before returning to Pennsylvania.
Duquesne organized a special militia with scarlet uniforms
for the middle class under elite officers.
In the 1750s Joseph Marin was the commandant at La Baye,
and he came into conflict with La Vérendrye at Chagouamigon
for control over the headwaters of the Mississippi.
After some Illinois killed a French blacksmith and three Sakis in 1753,
Marin used diplomacy and brandy to persuade the Sakis,
Outagamies, and Sioux not to engage in reprisals.
Cornwallis went back to England in 1752 and was succeeded by
Col. Peregrine Hopson,
who did not try to make Acadians take an
oath of allegiance.
Halifax paid £10 for an Indian scalp.
So when Indians brought eighteen scalps to Fort Beauséjour
in the summer of 1753,
Le Loutre paid 100 livres for each scalp.
Hopson became ill and left in October,
and Lt. Col. Charles Lawrence
was appointed lieutenant governor.
Also in 1753 Lunenberg was
founded with 1,500 Protestant
immigrants from Germany and Switzerland.
In 1754 Boishébert returned and built a fort at the mouth
of the St. John River.
Hearing reports that English soldiers were assembling at Chouaguen,
Governor Duquesne sent Villiers with 270 soldiers and Indians
to Niagara.
Captain Louis Billouart de Kerlérec succeeded
the Marquis de Vaudreuil
as governor of Louisiana in January 1753.
Kerlérec met with the Choctaws at Mobile in June and later
with the Arkansas
who protected French ships on the Mississippi.
Governor-general Duquesne sent Captain Pierre-Paul de la Malgue,
Sieur de Marin,
with 300 French marines, 1,700 Canadian militiamen,
and 200 Indians
to construct forts in the Ohio valley.
In May
1753 Boishébert commanded the building at Presque Isle,
where
Tanacharison (Half King) led a delegation of Mingo warriors
to claim Ohio territory.
Captain Marin told him in no uncertain
terms that the French owned that territory,
and Marin gladly welcomed
Shawnees who denied the Mingo claim.
However, Tanacharison's warning
could be considered
the first of three before the Iroquois declare
war.
Captain Marin sent other men to erect forts at Le Boeuf and
Venango (Fort Machault).
Supply lines were difficult, and Paul
Marin worked his men hard and died of illness himself
in the fall
along with four hundred others.
Three hundred men were left in
a garrison under Legardeur de Saint-Pierre,
and the rest of the
emaciated men returned to Quebec before winter.
The expedition
cost four million livres because of Intendant Bigot's graft.
Rouillé
was so alarmed that he recalled Bigot to France in 1754.
Meanwhile Virginia had sent William Trent to meet with Indians
at Logstown in August 1753, and he distributed arms and ammunition.
Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia received the authority from London
in October
to construct forts in the Ohio and attack French invaders.
He quickly sent Major George Washington, who found Indian allies
at Logstown.
However, Philippe de Joncaire at Venango persuaded
all but Half King
and three other Mingos to leave Washington's
group.
Washington reached Fort Le Boeuf on December 11 and delivered
his letter
from Dinwiddie to Legardeur de Saint-Pierre.
After
a few days Presque Isle commander Louis de Repentigny gave Washington
a letter,
which he took back to Dinwiddie.
When King George's War was declared in March 1744,
Governor William
Shirley (1741-57) of Massachusetts offered recruits bounties
as
high as £25 to reinforce Mascarene at Annapolis Royal.
Shirley's
proposal to attack Louisbourg was at first rejected by a secret
meeting
of the legislature, but then petitions by New England
fishermen persuaded them to adopt
the scheme promoted by the preaching
of William Vaughan.
Shirley organized an expedition led by William
Peperell with 3,250 men from Massachusetts,
500 from Connecticut,
and 300 each from New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
They were supported
by 4,000 marines under Admiral Peter Warren.
They successfully
landed at Louisbourg in May 1745 and began a siege that
bombarded
the fortress with more than 9,000 cannon balls and 600 bombs.
The New Englanders assaulted the Island Battery on June 6, 1745.
On June 28 the French surrendered Louisbourg and were allowed
to return to France
with the honors of war, promising not to fight
the British for the next twelve months.
New England lost only
101 men in battle, and thirty had died of disease.
However, during
the next winter 1,200 men in the garrison died of sickness.
Peperell
sent a small force that occupied the Ile St. Jean.
The peace treaty
signed at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 gave Louisbourg
back to the
French, shocking New England.
Private lotteries were forbidden, but in 1745 the first public lottery
in Massachusetts raised £7,500 for defense.
Royal instructions removed restrictions on the issuing of credit for defense,
and King George's War ballooned the Massachusetts debt
from £305,000 in 1744 to £2,100,000 by 1749.
The House of Commons appropriated £183,649 in 1748
to reimburse the colony for the Louisbourg expedition.
That year Samuel Adams and others started the Independent Advertiser.
In the first issue they declared that liberty cannot subsist with equality,
and so they should inquire how men’s riches were acquired.
When the chests of silver and copper coins arrived at Boston in September 1749,
the paper currency was redeemed at the rate of seven and a half to one.
The second lottery in 1751 raised £26,700.
In November 1747 Commodore Knowles had abducted
some laborers along with his deserting sailors.
Workers gathered with clubs and surrounded the Governor's house.
Governor Shirley fled to the Castle and asked Knowles to release the men;
but he refused for three days before relenting and sending most of them back.
Massachusetts transferred territory with five towns
and 5,000 people to Rhode Island in 1747.
That year the towns of Woodstock, Suffield, Enfield, and Somers,
being within the boundaries of the Connecticut charter, petitioned to be in the jurisdiction
of Connecticut, which had lower taxes than Massachusetts,
and in 1755 the Crown granted their request.
Also in 1747 Connecticut refused to accept bills of credit from other colonies.
Connecticut issued £80,000 in credit during King George's War
and received nearly £29,000 from England.
Parliament passed a law in 1750 to limit the public credit of New England colonies
to current expenses, but they must be retired within two years
or during an emergency within five years.
Rhode Island had just issued some money,
but they had to go back to regular taxation in 1754.
Connecticut's Governor Jonathan Law died in 1751 and
was succeeded by his deputy since 1742, Roger Wolcott.
He was disliked for treating badly a Spanish merchant in distress,
and in 1754 Thomas Fitch won the election.
The number of slaves in Connecticut rose from one thousand in 1749 to 3,587 in 1756
and to about five thousand in 1761.
The Connecticut Gazette became the colony's first newspaper
in 1755.
Historian William Douglass proposed that a colonial council
in London could be
a uniform government for the colonies with
parliamentary approval.
Massachusetts sent five delegates to the
conference at Albany.
Thomas Hutchinson presented a draft for
a union of colonial governments,
but Benjamin Franklin's
suggestions were probably more influential in the plan
that was
adopted on July 10, 1754.
However, the Massachusetts General Court
and all the colonies rejected the plan.
Secretary Willard wrote
to William Bollan, their agent in London, that they were concerned
"it would be subversive of the most valuable rights and liberties
of the several colonies."1
While in London in 1753 Governor Shirley had discussed with
British officials
the English claim to the Atlantic coast south
of the St. Lawrence River.
Thomas Hancock advanced him £20,000,
and in December 1754
Shirley was authorized to activate the regiments
in Massachusetts.
Admiral George Clinton was governor of New York 1743-53.
The
British government sent instructions that money could only be
spent
with warrants that were signed by the Governor and approved
by the Council.
James De Lancey led the opposition to Clinton.
Albany traders, New York City merchants,
and others were not eager
to pay taxes for King George's War.
After more than a hundred
people were killed by the French and Indians at Saratoga
on November
28, 1745, New York began to mobilize.
In July 1746 an intercolonial
force gathered in northern New York
for an expedition to Canada
led by Clinton.
However, in September the forces were diverted
to Louisbourg and Boston.
New York's recruits were unpaid and
became mutinous, as were the Iroquois allies.
The fort at Saratoga
was abandoned in the fall of 1747,
and the settlements north of
Albany were evacuated.
Indians burned some cabins near Schenectady
in 1748.
During King George's War that ended in 1748 about three
dozen privateers from New York
captured several hundred French
and Spanish prizes,
gaining about £618,000 for investors
and the crews.
Archibald Kennedy wrote six tracts on frontier defense and Indian policy
between 1750 and 1755, arguing for better Indian relations, intercolonial cooperation
against French threats, a stop to trade between Albany and Montreal,
and more effort to collect royal quitrents in New York.
In 1753 the new governor Danvers Osborne discovered such
opposition in a conference that he committed suicide the next day.
Lieutenant-Governor De Lancey succeeded by
adjusting his warrants to the will of the Assembly, which
passed a bill to collect quitrents in 1755.
In the 1750s the New Theater on Nassau Street presented English plays.
The Assembly approved a lottery in 1746 to finance a college, and after
much wrangling between Anglicans and their opponents,
Governor De Lancey granted King's College a charter in 1754.
Later that year William Livingstone founded the New York Society Library.
William Johnson was 23 when he came to New York in 1738.
He
managed the large estate of his uncle Peter Warren in the Mohawk
Valley
and sold tracts of it to Irish tenant farmers.
He developed
a good trading relationship with the Iroquois.
In 1744 Johnson
sold two-thirds of Warren's estate and bought several thousand
acres
on the north bank of the Mohawk River,
where he gave long
leases to the Irish, Scots-Irish, and Palatines.
He established
schools and missions for the Indians.
He often behaved like an
Indian, joining in their war dances.
After his German wife died,
he married the Mohawk princess Molly Brant.
He had many Mohawk
lovers and was said to have fathered perhaps a hundred children.
Clinton appointed Johnson the Indian agent for New York in 1746,
and he gained the loyalty of the Iroquois and provided them with
arms.
He persuaded 331 of his neighbors and 318 Iroquois to attack
the French in 1747,
but they only frightened them.
Johnson spent
£7,000 of his own money, and the Assembly failed to reimburse
him fully.
When he resigned in July 1751, the province still owed
him about £4,500.
In 1753 the Assembly owed him even more
and only paid him about £700;
so he left the Council for
good on July 2.
Thus English relations with the Iroquois declined
in the early 1750s.
Without consulting the Assembly, De Lancey hosted a conference at Albany in June 1754
recommended by the Board of Trade to promote intercolonial cooperation.
Virginia and New Jersey declined to attend.
De Lancey met separately with the Indians for two days before
the congress to fend off investigation of land swindles.
He proposed a chain of forts on the New York frontier.
When the other delegates ignored his request, he refused to support their plan for a union.
Johnson's friend, Mohawk chief Hendrick, complained that the English cheated the Mohawks
out of their land, supplied too much rum and too few useful tools, and encroached on
Iroquois territory in western Pennsylvania and Virginia.
He said that the English had so few fortifications that they were like women.
The 23 delegates recommended some defensive measures,
but none of the seven colonial assemblies ratified the agreement.
During the conference Connecticut's agent John Henry Lydius got some chiefs drunk
and purchased land in Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley from the Iroquois,
while Conrad Weiser plied drinks to get a conflicting deed for Pennsylvania
that included vast territory on the Ohio.
Proprietor Thomas Penn accepted this questionable deed, gave Weiser and Peters
2,000 acres each, and ordered the area, which was supposed
to have been already occupied, quickly settled.
Indians who sold these lands probably knew that
the Iroquois League would not approve them.
This started a land dispute between Connecticut and Pennsylvania
that would go on until the Continental Congress settled it in 1782.
Governor Lewis Morris got the New Jersey Assembly
to appropriate £2,000 to fight the French in 1745.
In September proprietors ejected many squatters, but at Newark
about 150 farmers freed some of them who had been arrested for cutting timber.
In late December the royal governor had the sheriff arrest three of the farmers,
but 300 farmers overpowered the militia and the sheriff to free their friends.
Morris died in 1746, and the senior councilor John Hamilton became acting governor.
He had rioters arrested after they broke into the Somerset County jail.
Hamilton died in June, and his successor could not quell the violence.
In July 1747 about 200 men freed one of their leaders
from jail in Perth Amboy in East New Jersey.
The College of New Jersey was founded at Princeton in 1746, and their charter prohibited
excluding any student because of religion.
When Gilbert Tennent and Samuel Davies went to England to ask for funds in 1753,
they found that this liberal provision helped them raise more than £3,000.
Jonathan Belcher was governor of New Jersey from 1747 to his
death in 1757.
After he arrived, the Assembly offered amnesty
to all rioters
who asked for it before October 1748.
Squatters
continued to plunder timber, and Amos Roberts, who had organized
the rebels by
levying taxes and establishing courts and a militia,
was arrested in Essex County for treason;
but a mob freed him
from the Newark jail.
Belcher called an election, but the new
Assembly
refused to appropriate funds to enforce the laws.
Chief
Justice Robert Hunter Morris went to London, and in 1751
the Board
of Trade instructed the Assembly to restore peace.
In January
1752 with the New Jersey debt up to £8,000,
the Assembly
voted to assess the squatters for the land they occupied and passed
a revenue bill to pay the Governor's salary.
The Assembly had
gained the power to control the royal governor.
In 1754 the Assembly
authorized a loan of £60,000, which the Council
opposed
and the Crown eventually disallowed.
In June 1744 Governor George Thomas of Pennsylvania met with commissioners
from Virginia and Maryland and about 250 Indian chiefs at Lancaster.
Because of the skilled diplomacy of Conrad Weiser, the Six Nations of the Iroquois
got their claims to territory ratified in exchange for
supporting the English alliance against the French.
Thomas proclaimed the English declaration of war against France on June 11, 1745.
In July the Assembly appropriated £4,000 for the King's use
to purchase "bread, beef, pork, flour, wheat, or other grain."
Thomas told the Council that he took "other grain" to mean gunpowder.
He sent Conrad Weiser to reassure the Iroquois.
Weiser attended a conference at Albany in October with speaker John Kinsey,
Isaac Norris, and Councilor Lawrence, but only the Pennsylvanians rejected
the proposal for the Six Nations to declare war on Indians in New England.
In December 1745 Governor Thomas wrote to John Penn and expressed
the hope
that the provinces might drive the French out of Canada.
The next year £5,000 went to equip four companies to fight
against Canada,
and an excise tax on liquor was expected to pay
for it over ten years.
The Pennsylvania Assembly refused to send
commissioners to a conference
with the Six Nations because they
opposed urging Indians to engage in war.
During King George's
War some French and Spanish privateers sailed
up the Delaware
and attacked Pennsylvanians.
On April 6, 1747 the French ambushed
sixty Pennsylvanian soldiers, killing eight.
Within two months
130 Pennsylvanians had deserted.
Governor Thomas resigned because
of his health and left on May 28.
He was succeeded by the oldest
councilor, Anthony Palmer.
Twelve Pennsylvanian ships had already
been lost.
The Quakers won the
elections again, and at the end of October the
commander William
Shirley dismissed the remnants of the Pennsylvanian forces.
After Shickellamy died in 1747, the Six Nations appointed
the
Seneca chief Tanacharison a Half King.
He and the Oneida chief
Scarouady (Monacatoocha)
were made supervisors of the Ohio Shawnees.
Conrad Weiser made treaties for Pennsylvania at Lancaster in July
1748 with the Iroquois
and Twightwees (Miamis) and in 1749 with
the Iroquois,
Delawares, Mohicans, Wyandots, and Zisagechroons.
Weiser ignored the grand council at Onondaga and after consulting
with Mingos,
he made the Wyandots part of Pennsylvania's chain
of friendship.
Pennsylvania traders made the Indian village at
Logstown their headquarters.
Territory between the Blue Mountain and the northern branch of the Susquehanna River
was purchased in 1749 but attracted few settlers
until it was exempted from quitrents six years later.
The adventurous Indian trader George Croghan became justice of the peace in
Cumberland County, and in May 1750 he was sent to evict squatters,
who refused to go to jail but said they would leave.
Croghan burned their cabins so they would not come back.
The Pennsylvania Assembly refused to support the building of a fort in the Ohio region,
but they appropriated £1,250 for gifts to Indians in 1750 and £1,260 the next year.
Speaker John Kinsey died in 1750 and was succeeded by Isaac Norris II,
who held that position until 1764.
Israel Pemberton Jr. replaced Kinsey as clerk of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,
and the proprietary supporter William Allen took Kinsey's position as chief justice.
An era was ended as James Logan died in 1751.
Half King Tanacharison arrived at the Logstown conference
in
the spring of 1752 with an English flag.
The Ohio Delawares were
allowed to speak for themselves without Iroquois intervention,
and Half King "gave" them Shingas as their king.
To
counter the French aggression in destroying Pickawillany, Virginia
was authorized
to build a fort where the Monongahela and Allegheny
rivers join the Ohio.
On the side the interpreter Andrew Montour
made a land deal
for 80,000 acres with Half King.
The Delawares
were led to believe that the new "fort" would not include
a settlement,
contrary to what was usual with the English.
Montour
and Croghan managed to get control of most of the goods brought
for
the
Ohio
Indians even though the Pennsylvania commissioner
Richard Peters did not trust Croghan.
Connecticut sent agents to buy the Wyoming Valley (modern Wilkes-Barre)
from the Six Nations and used liquor to do so.
Many Delawares and Mahicans in this area had been converted by Moravians.
Pennsylvania and the Iroquois had reserved this land for the Delawares in 1742;
the Onondaga Council repudiated the purchase as a fraud,
and this land controversy was not settled until 1782.
On November 17, 1747 Benjamin Franklin published
"Plain Truth by a Tradesman of Philadelphia"
and printed 2,000 copies,
which were quickly sold out.
His pamphlet
pointed out that Pennsylvania was the only English colony
that
had not provided for its own defense.
He warned that their riches
were in danger and that the city could be pillaged and burned
and that their wives and daughters could be raped by Negroes and
mulattoes.
He argued that as friends, if not as legislators, the
government
of the people is responsible for protection.
The Quakers were reluctant because of
religious scruples,
and the Proprietary Party had also refused
to protect the city.
Franklin appealed especially to people "who can have no confidence
that
God will protect those that neglect the use of rational means
for their security."2
He warned that the Six Nations might
join the French and that French privateers
were driving up insurance
rates, which increased the prices of imported goods.
He argued
that public money comes from all and belongs to all.
He computed
that without the Quakers they
still
had about 60,000 fighting men in Pennsylvania.
So he proposed
that they form a private association
for defense and concluded
with a prayer.
Franklin appealed especially to the "middling people" who were the
farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans of the middle class.
Within a week he gained their approval; but he also met separately with the principal
gentlemen before submitting it to a large meeting of citizens.
"Plain Truth" quickly had a second printing and was translated into German.
Citizens met in the large building, and hundreds of people subscribed in Philadelphia.
As copies were distributed, the Association increased to ten thousand men who agreed
to furnish themselves with arms and form companies and regiments with their own officers.
They chose Franklin to be their colonel, but he considered himself unfit and declined.
Franklin had already
organized fire companies
and quipped that a big gun was just another
"fire-engine."
Franklin wrote the
"Form of Association" for the large meeting on November
24
with eight articles explaining the organization.
Each man must
supply his own musket and ammunition; companies would be
formed without regard to social status; they would elect their own officers;
and they were not to be subjected to fines or corporal punishment.
Franklin advertised and
sold muskets and related supplies.
He organized a lottery that
sold £20,000 in tickets and paid out £17,000 in prizes,
providing £3,000 for purchasing cannons and to arm the poor.
He proposed a public day of fasting and prayer
on January 7, 1748
to get the clergy involved.
Such days had been used in New England
but had not been tried yet in Pennsylvania.
Franklin published "The Necessity of Self-Defense" in The
Pennsylvania Gazette
on December 29, 1747 and argued that
when Jesus told his disciples to put up their
swords while he
was being arrested, he did not exclude the possibility of their
using weapons for self-defense in other circumstances.
The proprietor
Thomas Penn believed this private militia showed
contempt for
government and was only a little short of treason;
he considered Franklin a dangerous
man.
Franklin went to New
York with Col. Abraham Taylor, Lt. Col. Thomas Lawrence
and William
Allen, and at a dinner while drinking Madeira wine they persuaded
Governor Clinton to change his mind and lend them eighteen cannons.
However, peace was proclaimed in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1748.
That year James Hamilton became deputy governor.
On September
3 Conrad Weiser claimed Logstown in the Ohio territory for the
British.
The European peace helped the Quakers win the elections again in October.
In 1748 Franklin wrote
"Advice to a Young Tradesman" to remind people that
time is money, credit is money, and that money will proliferate
if one is industrious and frugal.
He was elected to the city council
in October 1748.
He was appointed a justice of the peace for Philadelphia
the next year;
but because he found he lacked enough knowledge
of common law, he resigned.
Franklin wrote "Proposals
Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania"
in October
1749 and drew upon the liberal ideas of Milton, Locke,
Francis
Hutcheson, Obadiah Walker, and others.
He proposed an academy
in or near the town
with a rector of good morals and understanding.
He recommended that boarding students dine together "plainly,
temperately, and frugally."
He advised exercise by running,
leaping, wrestling, and swimming.
He believed that studies should
emphasize what is most useful and ornamental.
These would be drawing,
arithmetic, accounting, geometry, astronomy, English grammar,
writing, speech, and history that includes geography, chronology,
ancient customs,
morality, oratory, religion, government, law,
ethics, commerce, and mechanics.
Franklin thought that divinity students should learn Greek and Latin;
scientists
Latin, Greek, and French; lawyers Latin and French;
and merchants
French, German, and Spanish.
The study of Nature should include
gardening, planting, grafting, inoculating, etc.
Franklin concluded that the idea of merit should be conveyed so that
youths
will be inclined and able "to serve mankind, one's country,
friends and family."
Within two months they had raised £2,000
in subscriptions.
Franklin was elected president of the Academy in November 1749
and served
in that position until 1756.
In 1748 Franklin had
turned his printing business over to David Hall
so that he could
spend more time on his electrical experiments.
He experimented
with static electricity by rubbing glass tubes with cloth
and
with lightning by using iron rods.
Peter Collinson gave Franklin's
letters on his electrical experiments to the Royal Society.
In
April 1749 Franklin explained
in a letter to John Mitchell how lightning could be
discharged
when particles of water become electrically charged by the jostling
wind in clouds.
He was the first to suggest experiments to prove
that lightning is a form of electricity.
His papers were read
before England's Royal Society,
but at first they laughed at his
ideas.
By replacing the water with lead and combining several
jars together,
Franklin made an "electrical battery" that could store enough
electricity to kill turkeys.
One day he nearly electrocuted himself
when he took a jolt from two of the jars.
Franklin warned against taking shelter under a lone tree during a thunder
storm.
He argued that wet clothes are safer because
the electricity
will run on the surface of the body;
but it will go through the
body if the clothes are dry.
He proved it by showing that a wet
rat
could not be killed by a shock, but a dry rat could.
In 1751 Franklin published Experiments and Observations on Electricity.
He proposed
an experiment using an iron rod on a high tower,
and he advised
the precaution of using insulated handles
for those concerned
about electrocution.
Philadelphia had no tall buildings; but this
experiment was sponsored by Louis XV
in May 1752, and the sparks
proved Franklin's theory.
A month later before he knew the results, Franklin with the help of his son William flew
a kite during a rainstorm
and received a shock from a key tied to the string.
After John
Canton verified the French experiment in England using a pointed
rod to
draw lightning from clouds, the Royal Society gave Franklin the
Copley Medal
in 1753 and later made him a member.
Others had survived shocks
during mild storms, but in 1753 the Swedish scientist
Georg Wilhelm
Richmann was killed by the electrocution
because he had not taken
the precautions.
Franklin developed the lightning rod to protect buildings,
but he refused
to patent it for his personal profit.
Whenever he wanted to initiate a public project, Franklin did not use his own name
but said that "some public-spirited
gentlemen" had a proposal.
They began gathering subscriptions
for an academy.
They arranged to use the new building by promising
to allow
occasional preachers and maintain a free school for poor
children.
The school opened in 1751 and became a college in 1755
and the University of Pennsylvania in 1765.
The Governor appointed Franklin to a Commission
of the Peace.
He served on the City Council and then was elected
to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1751.
He was re-elected every
year for ten years and wrote that he never asked for votes.
He
made various efforts to clean the dirt and mud from the streets
and get them paved.
In April 1751 Franklin objected to the English policy that forbade the colonies
from
imposing duties on the importation of felons, and to their argument
that such laws
prevented the "improvement and well-peopling
of the colonies."
The next month he used biting satire in
the article "Rattle-Snakes for Felons" in which
Americanus
suggests that sending rattlesnakes to England would be a fair
return for their
sending their felons except that at least the
rattlesnakes give warning before they strike.
Franklin gave Dr.
Thomas Bond the credit for initiating the
subscription campaign
to found a hospital in Philadelphia.
Franklin published an "Appeal for the Hospital" in
The Pennsylvania
Gazette on August 15, 1751.
He noted that charity is essential
to the spirit of Christianity.
Jesus healed individuals, and they
collectively could heal many in a hospital,
"whether deserving
or undeserving."
He noted that several large infirmaries
had been started in Britain,
and not one had failed for lack of
charitable contributions.
Franklin initiated the method of matching grants by getting a law passed
in the Assembly
that the Government would provide £2,000
for the building of a hospital on the condition
that an equal
amount was raised by private subscriptions.
He suggested that
nursing care could be ten times more efficient
in a hospital than
in private lodgings.
In 1752 after learning that his brother John
in Boston was having trouble urinating,
Franklin invented a flexible catheter and had a silversmith make one that
he sent him.
The British Iron Act of 1750 prohibited the building of mills,
forges, and steel furnaces
in the American colonies; but Franklin and many Americans believed that such protection
of British industry
would harm colonial growth.
He wrote "Observations Concerning
the Increase of Mankind" in 1751,
but it was not published
until late in 1754.
Franklin observed, "When families can be easily supported,
more persons
marry, and earlier in life."3
He noted that Europe has been
generally settled,
but America has plenty of land that is cheap
for farmers
Twice as many Americans marry as Europeans,
and they
average twice as many children—eight.
He calculated that the population
of America was doubling every twenty years
and correctly predicted
that in a century its population would surpass England's.
Franklin estimated the current
population of America at one million
and noted that only about
80,000 had come by sea.
Thousands came to Pennsylvania, but the
labor is no cheaper
than it had been thirty years before.
Franklin believed it would not become cheap until America was fully settled.
He explained that even slave labor cannot be cheap because of
what slaves cost and because hired men leave their employers to go on their own.
Franklin listed the factors
that diminish a nation as being conquered, losing territory,
losing
trade, losing food, bad government making property insecure, and
slavery.
He argued that whites who have slaves are enfeebled and
do not work
while the slaves are overworked.
Franklin was concerned about too many Germans and Africans being imported,
and he admitted that he was partial to the white race.
However,
later in his life he would become less prejudiced.
In 1755 he
became a trustee for a charitable organization
that relieved and
educated poor German settlers.
Franklin became an
alderman in 1751, and he was elected
to the Pennsylvania Assembly
in August.
He served on the currency committee and argued that
paper currency enabled the poor
to purchase land, helping the
Proprietaries dispose of their land while strengthening
and extending
the Crown's dominions and benefiting their manufactures.
He drafted
a currency bill, and in February 1752
the Assembly approved £40,000
in paper money.
When Governor James Hamilton vetoed it as "very
unseasonable," the Assembly
passed £20,000, which was
also rejected.
The counties of Berks and Northampton were created
with one representative each,
the under-representation reflecting
anti-German sentiment.
Franklin wrote a bill for paving the streets and installing lamps.
He improved
the lamps by giving them ventilation so that they would not be
darkened
by smoke and by replacing the globes with four flat panes
so that broken glass could be repaired more cheaply.
Franklin served on the board of managers for the Pennsylvania hospital,
and in April 1752 he met with businessmen to organiz
the first
American fire insurance company.
He helped the career of his son
William by letting him succeed himself as clerk
in the Assembly
and as postmaster of Philadelphia in 1753,
promoting him to controller
the next year.
In September 1753 Franklin,
Speaker Norris, and proprietary secretary Richard Peters
went
to Carlisle to make a treaty with Ohio Indians,
who asked them
to restrain the invading settlers.
Hamilton urged them to spend
the entire £800 the Assembl
had appropriated on gifts for
the Indians.
They forbade the selling of liquor but promised them
they could have rum after the negotiations were completed.
When
the Indians got drunk afterward, Franklin observed their wild behavior.
A native orator argued that rum
had a divine purpose, and Franklin speculated,
If it be the desireof providence to extirpate these savages
in order to make room for cultivators of the earth,
it seems not improbable that
rum may be the appointed means.
It has already annihilated all the tribes
who formerly inhabited the seacoast.4
Franklin (and William
Hunter of Virginia) became deputy postmasters for America in 1753,
and over the next twenty years Franklin developed it so that it eventually
paid his salary of £300
a year and yielded revenue for the Crown.
Presentation of plays
was discouraged in Philadelphia, but during his last year
Governor
Hamilton gave Lewis Hallam permission to perform
as long as nothing
was "indecent or immoral."
Pennsylvania sent John Penn, Peters, Norris, and Franklin as
commissioners to the Albany conference in June 1754.
They met
with the Iroquois to improve the covenant chain;
but Franklin doubted it would be effective until the English colonies formed
a union.
After Governor De Lancey's plan for two western forts
failed
because they could not agree on how to pay the expenses,
Franklin was appointed
to a committee to prepare plans for a union of the colonies.
He
believed that if the Iroquois could have an effective confederation
for so long,
they could use federalism to organize defense and
westward expansion.
Franklin suggested that the King appoint a president general and
that the
assemblies of the colonies elect a grand council.
His plan was
accepted with amendments by the conference.
However, all the colonies
rejected the plan as having too much prerogative for England.
The Board of Trade did not approve it because they considered
it too democratic.
Franklin reflected that if the colonies had been united to defend themselves,
they would not have needed British troops and the subsequent excuse
for taxing Americans might not have arisen.
After the Albany congress Franklin wrote
"A Plan for Settling Two Western Colonies in North
America," which he considered
more practical than the claims
of some colonies to territory
that extended as far as the west
coast of America.
Governor Shirley of Massachusetts wanted the King to appoint
the federal congress instead of the colonial assemblies.
Franklin wrote him three letters that emphasized the importance
of representatives
making important decisions.
In the letter he wrote on December
4, 1754 Franklin made arguments
that would be used in the revolution.
He began by noting that the colonies are loyal subjects of the King and that
their representatives are willing to grant what is needed to defend the country.
The people who suffer invasion of an enemy are better able to judge
the forces and forts that are necessary.
He noted that many colonial governors appointed by the crown raise more forces
than are needed in order to gain profits for themselves and their friends.
The Parliament in England may be misinformed by them.
Franklin asserted the "undoubted right of Englishmen not to be taxed
but by their own consent given through their representatives."5
He noted that the colonies have no representatives in the Parliament and argued that
forcing them to pay money without their consent is
"like raising contributions in an enemy's country."
He also argued that the mercantile policies are like an additional tax
for the benefit of British merchants and manufacturers.
The colonists are settling new countries and extending the dominion and its commerce,
but they have "forfeited the native rights of Britons."
He warned that if reforms were not made, "Animosities and dangerous feuds
will arise between the governors and governed, and everything go into confusion."6
John Peter Salley and John Howard began exploring the western
wilderness for the
Virginia Council in 1737, and in 1742 they
went down the Mississippi River,
where they were captured by the French
and taken to New Orleans.
Salley escaped and made it back by way
of Charles Town in 1745.
Howard and the others were sent to France
and then released to England.
Their accounts gave the English
a claim to the Mississippi Valley and helped draw two maps.
One
was made by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson (father of Thomas);
the other by John Mitchell was published in London in 1755
and
has been called the most important map in American history.
In April 1745 Virginia’s Governor William Gooch (1727-49) in Council granted
100,000 acres on the Greenbrier River to John Robinson Sr. and Jr. and the associates
of the Greenbrier Company, and they were given four years
to survey the land and pay for their rights.
On the same day Col. James Patton and his partners were given 100,000 acres
on the
Ohio River, and Henry Downes and others received 50,000 acres on Greenbrier River.
In November, Councilor John Blair Sr. was granted 100,000 acres
on the Youghiogheny River west of the Fairfax line.
In 1746 a joint commission representing Virginia and Thomas Fairfax
determined the boundaries of six million acres owned by Fairfax.
That year Virginia appropriated £4,000 for the British
expedition from New York
against French Canada, and Captain Beverley
Robinson led 136 men.
In 1747 Governor Gooch and his Council issued
a proclamation against itinerant
preachers by prohibiting their
meetings, whether they were
"New Light men, Moravians, or
Methodists."
That year William Stith published his History
of the First Discovery
and Settlement of Virginia in which he emphasized that
he colonists in Virginia had always held the rights, franchises, and immunities of Englishmen,
and he noted that the early charters also claimed territory from sea to sea.
Thomas Lee was president of the Virginia Council, and in 1747 he organized the
Ohio Company, which was approved by King George II two years later
and granted 200,000 acres north of the Ohio River.
During their legislative sessions in 1748 and 1749 the Virginia Assembly
revised the colony's entire code of laws.
By 1749 the entire Valley of Virginia from the Potomac to the James had been settled.
The northern counties had equal numbers of Virginians, Scotch-Irish, and Germans.
Robert Rose began fastening two canoes together
to carry more tobacco down the upland streams.
On May 11, 1749 Governor Gooch made an affectionate farewell speech
to the General Assembly and urged them to hold to the Anglican Church.
During his 22 years Virginia had nearly doubled in population,
and settlements were extended by a third.
Because of the influence of Quaker merchant John Hanbury, who was offered a share
in the Company, in July the Privy Council approved a grant of 200,000 acres to the
Ohio Company of Thomas Lee and others. Once the Company built and garrisoned
a fort and established one hundred families, they would receive an additional 300,000 acres.
Twenty of the 25 Virginians involved in the Ohio Company were burgesses.
Other grants were made the same day totaling more than a million acres.
George II ordered Governor Gooch to issue the grant to the Ohio Company in March 1749.
The Ohio Company began building at Wills Creek and
stocked the storehouse with £4,000 of merchandise.
In the next three years they made a trail for pack-horses to the mouth
of Red Stone Creek at the Monongahela River.
Meanwhile Christopher Gist was sent exploring,
and he traveled more than
1,200 miles visiting Thomas Cresap, George Croghan, and Kentucky.
Gist was paid £20 to invite the Ohio Indians to a treaty conference in Virginia
while the Company paid him £150 to search the territory.
Some Senecas and Cayugas had migrated to Cuyahoga (Cleveland)
and called themselves Mingos. Croghan had established a trading post there in 1744.
Virginia authorized Conrad Weiser to give the Iroquois £250 worth of arms.
He invited them to a conference at Fredericksburg, but they declined.
Instead, Fry, Gist, interpreter Andrew Montour, and others brought £1,000 worth
of gifts to the Indians meeting at Logstown in the spring of 1752.
The Indians agreed not to disturb the English on the southeast side of the Ohio River,
but the Onondaga Council had to approve the treaty.
Another conference at Winchester a year later
also lacked the support of the Onondaga Council.
In June 1752 the French took over the village Pickawillany, where the English had
had a Miami ally they called Old Briton.
Five English traders were captured, but a few days later Captain William Trent
arrived at the deserted fort and replaced the French flags.
In October the Ohio Company began petitioning Virginia and the Crown
for 200,000 acres south of the Ohio and east of the Great Kanawha.
Robert Dinwiddie arrived as the new governor in November 1751,
but the Assembly did not meet until February 1752.
Dinwiddie informed
them in April that the Board of Trade
had disallowed ten laws
while confirming 57.
To change the confirmed laws the Virginia
legislature would have to suspend
the revisions for two years
while waiting for royal approval.
The law on the General Court
was disallowed retroactively,
throwing the judicial system into
temporary chaos.
After Adjutant General Lawrence Washington died,
Governor Dinwiddie created
four militia districts and appointed
his half-brother
George Washington adjutant of the southern district.
The Governor also announced that George II had agreed to accept
the previously
disallowed laws establishing the General Court
and extending the duty on slaves.
In February 1753 the Assembly
encouraged settlements on the western frontier
by exempting them
from all taxes for ten years,
and in November they extended this
to fifteen years.
Dr. William Dawson died in July 1752; he had been a councilor, commissary
of the Anglican Church, and president of the College of William and Mary.
The historian William Stith was elected president of the college;
but Dinwiddie and John Blair believed he was too unorthodox to be commissary,
and they persuaded the Bishop of London to appoint Thomas Dawson.
Governor Dinwiddie created a storm of controversy when he began demanding
a fee of one pistole, a Spanish coin worth enough to buy a cow and a calf,
for his use of the seal on each land patent.
Stith strongly opposed Dinwiddie's pistole fee, and in April 1753 he wrote
to the Bishop that to try to impose a tax without a law from the Assembly
was a violation of their property rights.
The House of Burgesses passed resolutions condemning the Governor's fee
as "illegal and arbitrary, and tending to subvert the laws and constitution of this government."7
They also resolved that anyone who paid the pistole fee should be deemed a betrayer
of the people's rights, and they appropriated £2,500 to send
Attorney General Peyton Randolph to England to plead their case.
On October 30, 1753 Virginia’s Governor Dinwiddie, who was also involved in the
Ohio Company, commissioned 21-year-old Major George Washington to warn the
French commander at Fort Le Boeuf to depart from the Ohio Valley.
Washington took Jacob van Braam to interpret French,
and Christopher Gist joined him as a guide at Wills Creek.
They were accompanied by the Delaware chief Shingas and added Half King Tanacharison
and three more Indians at Logstown.
Captain Philippe Joincaire tried to delay them by giving the Indians presents and liquor.
Shingas excused himself, and Half King could only
persuade three Mingos to push on through snow and rain.
Washington delivered the message to
Legardeur de St. Pierre at Fort Le Boeuf near Lake Erie.
Washington and Gist barely survived freezing weather on the way back,
and Dinwiddie urged Washington to write an account of his adventure
that was published in Williamsburg and London.
Daniel Dulany visited western Maryland in the fall of 1744
and patented 20,000 acres
for his agent Thomas Cresap to sell
to German and Scotch-Irish immigrants
without their having to
pay any cash down.
Dr. Alexander Hamilton founded the famous Tuesday
Club
for a few gentlemen at Annapolis in 1745.
They made speeches
and held mock trials while trying to avoid politics.
Samuel Ogle
returned to Maryland for another term as governor in March 1747.
A campaign publicized by the Maryland Gazette led to the
Act for Amending the Staple of Tobacco in 1747 that established
inspection by officers
in eighty public warehouses in order to
improve the quality of Maryland tobacco.
By reducing the amount
of tobacco exported the colony developed other
agricultural products,
making the economy more diverse and healthy.
Because of these
efforts, when the accounts were balanced in 1764,
Maryland had
made a profit of £25,000 from the paper currency transaction
of 1733.
In 1751 a crime wave prompted the legislature to pass a law
allowing testimony by convicted persons.
That year young Frederick
Calvert became the sixth and last Lord Baltimore,
but he was a
minor and selected his uncle Cecilius Calvert as his secretary.
They appointed Horatio Sharpe governor, and he arrived in Maryland
in 1753
with the intention of using the land system for maximum
income.
The commissions of the receivers were lowered to 15%,
and two years later county sheriffs did the collecting for 10%.
Governor James Glen finally arrived at Charles Town in December
1743.
That year Jacob Motte paid off his competitor
Othniel Beale
in order to be appointed Treasurer.
After France declared war
on England the following March,
Glen tried to prepare South Carolina's
defenses;
but the Assembly declined to appropriate the £20,000.
The Louisiana governor sent agents to the southern Indians.
Chickasaws,
frustrated by the lack of presents from Charles Town, raided some
settlements.
By 1746 over-production of rice had caused the price
to fall seventy percent in five years.
Increasing amounts of indigo
were grown in the off-season,
and indigo exports to England increased
from 63,000 pounds in 1750
to more than 500,000 pounds in 1760.
Several petitions complained of debts, high interest, and lack
of currency.
In 1746 South Carolina issued £210,000 in bills
of credit,
and in 1748 the Assembly lowered the interest rate
from ten to eight percent.
By 1749 the colony's taxes were down
to £48,000 in currency
and in the next decade South Carolina
prospered.
In 1752 a hurricane caused much damage in Charles Town,
but Treasurer Motte
had borrowed funds and could not honor £70,000
in tax certificates.
He owed £90,000, and his estate was
given to trustees until this debt was paid in 1759.
Motte continued
as Treasurer until he died in 1770.
In February 1747 Governor Glen purchased lands by Long Canes
Creek
from the Cherokees, the first sale of Cherokee land to the
King of England.
Mary and Thomas Bosomworth helped Malatchi become
emperor of the Creeks in 1747, and he favored the French.
Glen
met with the Cherokees and Creeks but could not persuade them
to attack the French.
The Choctaws had revolted against their
French allies in 1746,
and the chief the English called Red Shoes
made peace with the Chickasaws,
sending his brother Little King
to Charles Town, where
he signed a treaty with Glen in April 1747.
South Carolina promised the Choctaws trade, arms, and ammunition.
Charles McNair and the Governor's brother, Dr. Thomas Glen,
formed
McNair and Company, which was called
the Sphinx Company because
of its secret deals.
In the next three years only one pack train
of goods reached the Choctaws.
A French agent assassinated Red
Shoes in 1747, and Little King died two years later.
By 1750 of
46 Choctaw towns 22 had renewed their alliance with France,
and
by 1752 all the Choctaws were French allies again.
The European peace of 1748 suspended the war, and the next
year
the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Catawbas renewed their treaties
with South Carolina.
England granted £6,000 sterling to
South Carolina and Georgia
to provide presents for the Indians
in 1749 and 1750.
Some Creeks attacked Cherokees; but Governor
Glen did not fulfill his obligation
of punishing the Creeks because
Georgia refused to help.
So the Cherokees raided South Carolinian
traders.
Glen, who had more respect for the Indians than most,
negotiated a new treaty with 162 Cherokees in November 1751.
The
Creeks remained at war with the Cherokees;
but Glen threatened
them with a trade embargo,
and both nations agreed on a peace
treaty in October 1752.
The Cherokees offered to help build forts
on their land,
but because of delays Fort Prince George at Keowee
was not completed until 1753.
That year Glen confirmed the treaty
with the
Overhill Cherokees by offering them more trade.
The northern counties of North Carolina had five members in the Assembly
to two
for the southern counties; but they resisted reform and boycotted the Assembly in 1746.
When only fifteen out of 54 members passed new laws, the northern counties refused
to hold elections, obey the laws, or pay the taxes in an unarmed rebellion.
By 1747 the value of paper currency was down to ten percent of specie,
but Governor Gabriel Johnston would still not allow rents to be paid in commodities.
So little money was collected that his salary could not be paid.
Rents were especially in arrears in the northern territory of Carteret,
now the powerful Earl Granville.
A Spanish invasion at Beaufort in the summer of 1747 stimulated the Assembly
to issue £6,000 in new currency, and a fort was constructed at Cape Fear.
New courthouses were built, and the court system was improved.
Samuel Swann and Edward Moseley led the commission
that revised the laws by April 1749.
That year James Davis established a printing office
and began publishing the laws of North Carolina.
Nathaniel Rice succeeded Governor Johnston in 1752 but died in January 1753.
Matthew Rowan had been a councilor for twenty years and became governor.
On August 29, 1754 a Catawba chieftain called King Haglar
by the English complained about the beverage made from rotten grain
that was causing his young men to get drunk, commit crimes, and get sick.
Mary Bosomworth continued to help Oglethorpe's successors
have
good relations with the Creek (Muskogee) nation.
In 1746 she petitioned
the Georgia Trustees for £1,204 in back salary and for
bounties
on wheat, corn, peas, and potatoes from 1739 and 1742, but they
denied her claim.
In January 1747 her cousin Malatchi deeded to
her the islands of St. Catherines,
Sapelo, and Ossabaw and other
land from the treaty of 1739.
Oglethorpe's military successor,
Major William Horton, had continued her salary,
but in 1747 his
replacement, Col. Heron, stopped paying it.
A rumor that Mary
was to be sent to England in chains provoked the Lower Creeks
into warning the English that they would not let them settle above
the tidewater,
and in August about two hundred Lower Creeks alarmed
Savannah by firing guns
while approaching on the river.
Mary was
arrested and released and arrested again.
Bosomworth apologized
for his wife, and the Indians left Savannah on August 19.
Seven
chiefs at Coweta supported her land deeds in August 1750, but
in May 1751
Patrick Graham bought for Georgia from 26 Upper Creek
chiefs
the three islands and the Yamacraw tract.
The Bosomworths
went to England in 1754 without success,
and in 1759 the Crown
disallowed their claims.
However Governor Ellis and his Council
sold Ossabaw and Sapelo Islands
for £2,050 and paid the
money to the Bosomworths, and in 1760 Ellis
granted them St. Catherines,
where they built a house, lived, and were buried.
In 1747 George Whitefield bought a plantation of 640 acres
in South Carolina and several slaves, and he used
the profits to support the Bethesda Orphanage.
Whitefield and James Habersham urged the Trustees to allow slaves in Georgia,
and in 1748 even Bolzius and the Lutherans ended
their opposition to the importation of African slaves.
The anti-slavery law was repealed in 1750.
Henry Parker became vice president, and the
elderly William Stephens retired the next year.
Habersham was appointed secretary and was commissioned to promote silk production.
In 1751 the Parliament refused to grant the Trustees any funds.
The Trustees granted nearly 75,000 acres in 1752
before they surrendered their charter on June 23.
The Trustee officials continued to administer the government
for the next two years until they were replaced.
When Georgia became a royal province in 1752,
it had about three thousand Europeans
and less than five hundred Africans.
In Spanish Florida the authority of the Franciscan priests
had been transferred to the secular clergy in 1745.
1. Quoted in "Controversies Over British Control (1753-1765)
in
Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, Volume 2 ed.
Albert Bushnell Hart, p. 461.
2. "Plain Truth" in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin ed. Leonard W.
Labaree et al,
Volume 3, p. 200.
3. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin ed. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall, p. 102.
4. "Observations Concerning the increase of Mankind, Peopling
of Countries, &c."
by Benjamin Franklin in Benjamin Franklin Writings ed. J. A. Leo Lemay, p. 367.
5. "Letter to Governor William Shirley, December 4, 1754"
in Benjamin Franklin Writings ed. J. A. Leo Lemay, p. 405.
6. Ibid., p. 407.
7. Quoted in Colonial Virginia, Volume 2 by Richard L.
Morton, p. 629.
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