Frontier as Destroyer of Empires

The Role of Land Hunger and Land Speculation in Weakening Great Britain's Capacity to Rule Over its American Colonies

Edward J. Dodson

[April 2008]

There is little in history to suggest that past generations considered the proposition that the earth is the equal birthright of all. In fact, experience demonstrates just the opposite. This paper examines just a few decades of the eighteenth century, and events occurring in but a portion of North America, that provide a huge volume of evidence for this conclusion.

Most students of history are at least somewhat familiar with the period of European empire-building that culminated with the near-global warfare of the late 1750s. Among Europeans this conflict is known as the Seven Years' War; and, in North America, the French and Indian War.

What prompted the writing of this paper was the reading of a remarkable book on the period written by historian Fred Anderson[1] . His treatment of the era is particularly valuable because of the detailed reporting he provides highlighting the extent to which speculation in land and the opportunities to gain enormous wealth by land speculation were integral not only to European colonial settlement in North American but of European empire-building, generally. I quote extensively from Professor Anderson's book, but this paper is not meant to be a review of Crucible of War. Rather, his writing provides the backdrop for the story within a story I have chosen to tell. I will say, without reservation, that his book is an extremely valuable resource that belongs in the library of any person interested in this period of our history.

EMERGENCE: THE END OF THE BEGINNING

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the process of European nation-state building was nearing its completion. Continental warfare continued over the absorption of peripheral territory, but most of Europe's peoples were living under the control of centralized authority. These new nation-states then sought to secure their own independence by entering into alliances and by developing a permanent military capability. And, as the need for natural resources of all kinds skyrocketed, they recognized the value of establishing both colonies and an imperial presence around the globe. Toward these ends, Britain developed the naval power to push Spain and France from the open seas and, consequently, to the brink of financial ruin.

The rulers of these European states fought one another almost continuously for more than a century. These conflicts are described by Professor Anderson as "limited, bloody, expensive, indecisive affairs that ended not in great conquests but the belligerents' mutual exhaustion and a restoration of the balance of power."[2] At some point, however, one or two of the competing nation-states would emerge supreme among these core powers.

Somehow, despite huge losses in ships, armaments, fortresses, finances and manpower, Europe's nation-states continued to battle one another to become the dominant imperial power. Naval construction alone required enormous quantities of wood no longer readily available on the European continent or the British Isles. Thus, well before the eighteenth century began shipbuilding grew into a major North American industry, "one of the most important colonial contributions to mercantilism."[3] The British Navy found in North America the tall pine trees from which ship masts were constructed, and "[s]pecial ships were sent to America to transport the masts to the mother country."[4] France and Spain had similar need for the wood coming out of the New World. Little or no thought was given to the concerns of First American tribal peoples who themselves had warred for centuries to secure access to the foodstuffs, game and other life-sustaining resources provided by nature.

Those who understood the precarious financial condition into which their governments had pulled their nations did their best to forestall renewed conflict following conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Yet, what prevailed was more of a truce than conditions upon which stable relations between nations could be nurtured. Even Great Britain, the most prosperous of the nations, relied heavily on borrowing from bankers to fund the costs of war and to provide financial assistance to its new allies.

WORLDS AND CENTURIES OF ADAPTATION APART

When the first Europeans arrived to establish settlements on the eastern coast of North America, they enjoyed a number of important advantages over the peoples they encountered. Initially, the most important advantages were technology and an organizational blueprint. They brought with them superior weaponry and the knowledge of how to construct strong defensive enclaves. What became even more important over time was their rapid increase in population, countered by the absence of resistance by the First American peoples to life-threatening diseases carried by the Old World immigrants.

Once the early settlements grew into permanent towns, the population of European-Americans was continuously supplemented by new arrivals. This was not the case for the tribes of First Americans who warred constantly with one another and with the Europeans who attempted to settle on the frontier (and who brought with them the epidemic-causing diseases).

At the same time, the intercourse between cultures established a temporary pattern of mutual dependence. European traders brought all manner of manufactured goods and weapons to the tribal peoples for which they primarily bartered animal furs.

French and English traders, as well as competing tribes aggressively competed for control of the fur trade from the New York frontier up to Hudson's Bay. Tribes speaking the Algonquin language and inhabiting territory around the Great Lakes developed strong relations with the French. A century of English settlement in the Hudson Valley of New York had nurtured trade with the Iroquois league of tribes who controlled the frontier beyond Albany.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the Iroquois had become something of a client people allied to but also dependent upon the English for economic goods. Iroquois victories over other tribes enlarged their territorial reach and, to a greater or lesser degree, brought less powerful tribes under their direction. Iroquois dominance gradually yielded significant dividends to the English colonists. For example, "once Pennsylvania and Virginia recognized Iroquois diplomats as spokesmen for the Delaware and the Shawnees, the Iroquois could dispose of those clients - and the lands on which they lived - as they pleased."[5] The Iroquois position was also strengthened by "Virginia's recognition of Iroquois warriors' right to pass through the province to attack the Cherokees and Catawbas."[6]

In the minds of the colonial leaders, many of whom owned large landed estates and sought to increase their holdings at the frontier, providing assistance to the various Indian tribes was a strategic step in their plans. As early as "the spring of 1745, the Virginia House of Burgesses had granted nearly a third of a million acres on the Ohio to a syndicate of about twenty rich land speculators from the Northern Neck (the area between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers).[7]

"Although the outbreak of King George's War temporarily delayed their activities, it would be only a couple of years more before the speculators, now calling themselves the Ohio Company of Virginia, would begin to press their western claims in earnest. They intended to sell lands at the confluence of the Allegheny and the Monongahela to settlers who, they believed, would soon cross the Appalachians."[8]

It was not long before "Virginia speculators began moving to create a permanent settlement at the Forks of the Ohio."[9] Trade with the Indian peoples was only a first, but very necessary, step in the process. "[I]f the company's plans to promote the migration of farm families to the Forks succeeded, they knew settlers and their livestock would inevitably displace both Indians and wildlife."[10]

The French who populated New France were far fewer in number than their English counterparts. They cultivated trading relations with the northern and western tribes, adopting their ways of dress and living, and frequently marrying into the tribes.

Despite the evident land hunger exhibited by English-speaking traders and settlers, the growing dependency on European goods brought more and more of the First Americans under the influence of the English. In an attempt to defend their territorial claims south of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, the French responded by constructing a series of fortifications stretching south to the Forks of the Ohio. At the same time, however, the French were finding the cost of defending their American empire to be a serious challenge:

"Whether reckoned in livres or lives, this fortified system cost the French a prodigious amount. More than four hundred men perished and at least four million livres were spent in the feverish building."[11]

The British response was slow in developing, despite a constant flow of intelligence coming into London from the colonial governors. Virginia's governor, Robert Dinwiddie, finally took the dramatic step of sending a young and wholly inexperienced George Washington on a mission to deliver the message to the French that their new forts violated the territorial integrity of the colony of Virginia. Upon Washington's return, "Dinwiddie … ordered the raising of two hundred men, who would proceed under Washington … to the Forks of the Ohio and defend Virginia's interests against further French encroachments."[12] For a multitude of reasons, Washington was slow to recruit men and organize this expedition. As Professor Anderson observes, the governor was taking on a risk of enormous dimensions:

"On top of everything else, the empires of Great Britain and France were at peace, while Dinwiddie's orders - issued on his own authority, without explicit direction from London - amounted to an invitation to start a war."[13]

And, that is exactly what George Washington did, ambushing a French party under the command of a young ensign, Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville. Washington then went on further to prove his inexperience by establishing a position in a broad, essentially indefensible meadow; he could have been annihilated, but the French commander settled for capitulation and removal of the Virginians from the Ohio Valley. For some time thereafter, the French hold on the interior of North America and an alliance with almost all the tribes of First Americans went unchallenged. Even the Iroquois League, whose eastern members lived in close proximity to the English colonies, sought out the French "to mend relations" and try to determine what French intentions toward them might be.

Although no official declaration of war was made by either France or Great Britain, the British King's ministers ordered General Edward Braddock to the colonies in the Fall of 1754 to conduct an expedition to the Forks of the Ohio. The stage was simultaneously set for future discord between Great Britain and its colonial subjects, when the colonies were ordered to establish a "common defense fund … to support the operation of these forces."[14] In fact, almost every aspect of assumed colonial involvement and support challenged long-standing arrangements between the colonies and the mother country.

The French countered by sending reinforcements to Canada and by courting Austria's queen away from her nation's alliance with Great Britain. Austria now joined with France and Russia to stand against Great Britain and Prussia. Events had clearly gotten well out of hand:

"How the clash of tiny numbers of men in a frontier conflict would grow into a world war, how that war would redraw the map of Europe's empires, and how it would transform the relationship between England and her American colonies - such a chain of events would have defied the most exuberant imagining."[15]

Colonial governors understood just how exposed their colonies were to attack beyond the major settlements but were ill-prepared to take the actions necessary for a unified defense.

In June of 1755, the colonies were ordered by Great Britain's Board of Trade to send delegates to Albany, New York. Rather than their mutual defense, however, colonial delegates were looking beyond the current crisis to a time when the vast frontier would be safely available for settlement and to the enjoyment of profits from land speculation.[16] Delegates expressed concern that "a fierce contest raged between representatives of a Connecticut land-speculating syndicate and … Pennsylvania's proprietary family, who were vying for a huge Iroquois cession of land in Pennsylvania."[17]

Various tribal chiefs were induced by great quantities of rum to agree to the sale of over five million acres of land in the Wyoming Valley on the upper Susquehanna River at a price of two thousand pounds in New York currency. Representatives of Pennsylvania's proprietary family countered by securing a deed to all remaining Iroquois lands within the boundaries of Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin, pressing hard his own plan for colonial union, also had a strong interest "in the strategic (and speculative) potential of the Ohio Valley."[18]

Nothing substantive came of the Albany conference. Defense matters were, as a result, left to General Braddock, who arrived in Virginia early in March, 1755, with a military plan crafted in London without any input from people familiar with the challenges an army would face marching across a densely-forested, mountainous, swampy and insect-infested interior in the summer heat. Braddock alienated virtually all Indian support by declaring his intention of taking control of the entire Ohio Valley in the name of Great Britain. The details of what happened to Braddock's force are well-known and need not be repeated here. Worth noting is that George Washington, who served as Braddock's aide-de-camp on the campaign, was already an active land "speculator who knew that a continuing Indian presence in the Ohio Valley would only delay the day that settlers would begin buying Ohio Company lands."[19] With the defeat of Braddock's army, tribal warriors set out to reclaim the frontier wilderness and to push settlement back east across the chain of mountains running from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

A northern campaign to take the French position at Crown Point on Lake Champlain was assigned to the Indian Superintendent, William Johnson, who secured support from the Iroquois in return for the Crown's "repudiation of the fraudulent land cession [to] the Susquehannah Company at the Albany Congress, and a reduction in the size of the grant [Pennsylvania] had simultaneously secured from [the Iroquois chief] Hendrick."[20]

At the same time, a provincial army of New Englanders attacked and captured the French position on Nova Scotia, after which the French-speaking inhabitants were removed. The victorious colonists took the land and all property, "declaring all their lands and cattle forfeit, and ordering them and their families deported from the province."[21] Within a few years, thousands of New Englanders arrived to take possession of Nova Scotia and the land and property left behind by the departed French.

THE ILLUSION OF FRENCH SUPERIORITY

The early stage of the war for North America favored the French, who benefited by the inaccessibility of their positions to British attack and by the inept planning and leadership of British forces. Another, perhaps even more important advantage, had been the cultural divide between the military leaders dispatched to North America by Great Britain's ministry and the colonials, who were viewed as subjects of the Crown and thereby subordinate in all matters to the interests of the Crown. This attitude did not go over well in the colonies. As John Campbell, the Earl of Loudoun, wrote to the government: "…opposition [to royal authority] seems not to come from the lower People, but from the leading People, who raise the dispute, in order to have a merit with the others, by defending their Liberties, as they call them."[22]

These early advantages enjoyed by the French were gradually lost because of even greater internal corruption within the colonial government of New France, a provincial population roughly one-twentieth that of Britain's colonies, enormous difficulties of bringing provisions and men to Canada during a good part of the year, and the failure of the new French commander - Louis-Joseph, marquis de Montcalm - to nurture long-standing relations with the tribes who "had long preserved New France from conquest"[23] by checking the northern and western advance of English settlement.

As an aristocratic European military commander, Montcalm deplored the manner of warfare conducted by First American warriors, in particular their uncontrolled savage attacks on unarmed prisoners, including women and children. Despite Montcalm's efforts, French victories under his direction were accompanied by repeated Indian atrocities that only deepened the hatred for both the Indians and the French on the part of the more numerous English colonials.

Another critical factor in the outcome of the conflict was that with every response by English colonials and soldiers, the sustainability of Indian resolve weakened. "Because Indian agriculture did not produce large surpluses, even a single missed harvest could cause severe privation."[24] And the French were not in a position to provide the provisions necessary to keep their Indian allies in the field.

"Moreover, the interruption of the normal patterns of hunting, as young men went off on raiding expeditions, meant the loss of both the group's main source of animal protein and the skins and furs that provided its only trading commodities."[25]

The French farmers in New France faced similar hardships, but for different reasons. Most important was that Canadian weather was often unreliable. "New France had suffered a disastrous crop failure in 1756,"[26] which prevented Montcalm from undertaking offensive operations until provisions arrived from France. This problem was to continue, particularly in the region surrounding Quebec. "The harvest of 1758 had been the worst of the whole war in Canada, and the winter of 1758-59 the coldest in memory. Without provisions from France, no defense at all would have been possible."[27] As it was, the French campaigns were plagued by shortages of men and materials.

What the French needed in New France was time to build up their military strength. Keeping the British naval fleet close to home became an essential component of this strategy, so the French moved some one hundred thousand troops to the Channel ports so the British would have to dedicate resources to protect against a possible invasion. Well into 1757, the French continued to hold the upper hand in North America. The chain of British failures and defeats brought down the ministry, but internal rivalries and factions prevented the new government, headed by William Pitt and Thomas Pelham-Holles (the Duke of Newcastle), from decisive action. On the continent, Britain's Prussian ally was being pressed hard on all sides by Austrian, Swedish, Russian and French armies.

In North America, General John Campbell (the Earl of Loudoun), gathered his forces and provisions for a campaign into Canada. He had little patience for colonial concerns, believing "the colonists were incapable of self-sacrifice" and determined "to bring the colonies in line by whatever means necessary."[28] His treatment of the colonials as subjects rather than allies "produced short-run results at the cost of eroding colonial affections."[29] One of his most destructive decisions was to impose an embargo on all movement of ships in and out of North American port cities, severely harming colonial planters, merchants, seamen and other workingmen. Only his inability to effectively enforce these measures brought him to rescind the directive and allow trade to resume late in June of 1757, after six months of mutual frustration.

Campbell commanded a force of over six thousand troops, headed for the French fortress at Louisbourg. Meanwhile, Montcalm was assembling an equal number of troops, accompanied by some 1,700 Indians from "no fewer than thirty-three nations"[30] to march south against Fort William Henry. After a brief siege, the fort fell to Montcalm on August 9. Another massacre of prisoners by the assembled warriors followed. More important to the future direction of the conflict, "virtually all of [the Indians] left without delay once they had secured the prisoners, scalps, and plunder they had earned in battle."[31] Unknowingly, one of the things many of the Indians took home with them was smallpox, providing "the seeds of a great epidemic, which would devastate their homelands."[32]

Despite his victory, Montcalm was then forced to withdraw after destroying Fort William Henry, as many of his provincial soldiers were desperately needed at home to bring in the year's harvest. When this harvest failed as well, widespread distress - and near-starvation -- occurred throughout Canada.

At Louisbourg, Campbell found himself facing a strong French fleet and was forced to retire to New York, where he immediately drafted plans for a march against the fort at Ticonderoga. Winter weather intervened, and before he could regroup in the Spring of 1758, he was recalled. Major General James Abercromby was appointed to take over in British North America. William Pitt, now head of the ministry, had decided to alter the relationship with the colonial governments by agreeing to fund the full costs of the war. And, from this point on, "Pitt himself would direct policies and, insofar as possible, plan campaigns."[33]

The French were about to be overwhelmed by a combined force of "nearly 50,000 Anglo-American troops." This new army essentially equaled "two-thirds of the whole population of Canada."[34] Equally important, the British navy was effectively preventing new supplies from reaching Montcalm.

Montcalm experienced just one more significant victory, this time over the incompetent General Abercromby, who attempted to take Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga by a series of frontal infantry attacks rather than an artillery siege. But Montcalm was far too weak to pursue the British in retreat. And, from other fields the news was only of disaster. The Louisbourg fortress had been taken late in July and Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario fell to the British in August. A month later, Pitt transferred command of British forces from Abercromby to forty year old Jeffery Amherst.

THE DELAWARE: A PEOPLE WITHOUT A HOMELAND

What the Delawares of eastern Pennsylvania needed as much as any tribe caught in the middle of the war were two things - peace and a homeland secure from encroachment. These objectives brought the Delaware chief, Teedyuscung, to Easton, Pennsylvania to negotiate repudiation of the so-called Walking Purchase and to secure a 2.5 million-acre homeland in the Wyoming Valley. He also asked "for immediate aid in the form of a permanent settlement, to be built at Pennsylvania's expense in the Wyoming Valley - with houses, a trading post, and teachers to instruct his people in reading and writing."[35]

Resistance by the Penn family to Teedyuscung's demands was assured.

"As proprietors of the province, the Penn family owned all Pennsylvania's unallocated lands and enjoyed the sole right to acquire title to tracts held by Indian nations. Together with rents from the Penns' manorial estates, the sale of lands from these reserves generated most of the family's enormous annual income. Pennsylvania's governors, who represented the interests of the family as well as those of the Crown, had steadfastly resisted the assembly's efforts to tax proprietary lands."[36]

Nonetheless, Governor Denny of Pennsylvania "agreed to set aside the Penn family's interests and accede to Teedyuscung's demands for aid, trade, land, and in inquiry into the Walking Purchase."[37] However, the following year Teedyuscung's efforts were undermined by the Iroquois League, who "reasserted their claims to hegemony over the eastern Delawares."[38] To the Iroquois, Teedyuscung pleaded: "Do you not see, Fathers, that I have no place to alight? I sit here as a bird on a bough. I look about and do not know where to go. Let me therefore come down upon the ground."[39] Sir William Johnson then offered to solve the problem by selling back to the Iroquois land the English had purchased from them in western Pennsylvania along the Ohio River. With the concurrence of the Iroquois, this land could be set aside for the Delawares and Shawnees.

THE TAKING OF CANADA

Britain's naval superiority prevented reinforcements from reaching Montcalm, and the loss of Louisbourg provided the British navy with an uncontested ability to blockade the entrance to the St. Lawrence seaway. Thus, the French had no alternative but to abandon their position at the Forks of the Ohio, and the British soon began construction of a major new fortress there. A British force, supported by hundreds of Iroquois warriors, then captured Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario in July, forcing the French to abandon other vulnerable positions on the southern rim of the Great Lakes. Another British army under Jeffery Amherst pushed the French from Lake Champlain "all the way to Ile-aux-Noix, a fortified island at the foot of the lake."[40]

Late in June, the French fortress at Quebec came under attack by an army commanded by General James Wolfe, but the city defenses were well-designed and Montcalm held out through September. The British then climbed the steep bluff west of the city and attacked at its weakest defensive position. Montcalm inexplicably decided to meet the British on the plain outside the city walls. Both Wolfe and Montcalm were mortally wounded during the battle and did not live to see the city fall. Under the terms of surrender, the citizens of Quebec were "guaranteed the security of their property and assured of their right to continue practicing their religion."[41] All that was required was that they take an oath of fidelity to the British Crown. Now in possession of Quebec, the great challenge to the British command was to prevent starvation during the coming winter. By the Spring, "typhus, typhoid, dysentery, scurvy, frostbite, [and] hypothermia … had killed a thousand men."[42]

News of the fall of Quebec reached Jeffery Amherst in mid-October. He then prepared to advance against the French on the Isle-aux-Noix, but the early arrival of winter weather forced him to abandon the expedition until Spring.

In April, the French attempted to recapture Quebec and nearly did so. The weakened British force was rescued by the arrival of the H.M.S. Vanguard to deliver heavy fire on the French, who were forced to retreat back toward Montreal. Reinforcements soon arrived, and the British advanced up the river to attack Montreal. In the face of overwhelming odds, the French Governor-General, Pierre de Rigaud (the marquis de Vaudreuil) surrendered the city on the 9th of September, 1760. "So ended the dominion of France in North America."[43]

FADING GLORY IN THE TRIUMPHS OF EMPIRE

Those who fought in the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War sensed that "the war had transformed their world."[44] For the colonials who fought against the French, "the war had changed them, too, by laying the groundwork for something unprecedented in the history of the colonies: a generation capable, on the basis of shared experience, of forming a common view of the world, of the empire, and of the men who had once been their masters."[45] Expediency rather than deliberate action had contributed to this change. Nevertheless, "[t]he colonists, so long antagonized by British policies and behavior, by 1959 had become convinced that they were full partners in Pitt's imperial adventure."[46]

"Great Britain triumphed in North America for two related reasons. One was military and well understood at the time; the other was in the broadest sense cultural, and understood not at all. The military factors … centered on supplies and supply lines. …Only an understanding of the cultural interactions that the war had shaped, and that in turn had shaped the war, can explain the Anglo-American victory in such a way as to make sense of the problems that arose between the British and various North American groups after the conquest of Canada."[47] At this crucial point in the relationship, William Pitt lost his position in the government, and his policies of treating the colonials as allies were quickly reversed. Relations with the various tribes of First Americans also quickly deteriorated because of "the disorderly settlement of white farmers and hunters in the backcountry."[48] General Amherst made matters worse by ordering that traders not sell alcohol to the Indians and by curtailing the practice of providing the tribes with gifts that had previously helped to cement their acquiescence to a British presence in their homelands. Moreover, as settlers poured into the fringes of their territory where British forts arose, the Indians quickly realized they were experiencing "colonization in the wake of conquest."[49]

While the hundreds of tribes of First Americans were neither aware nor consulted, the diplomats of Great Britain, France and Spain redrew the map of North America. France yielded its claims over Louisiana to Spain, and the Spanish in turn relinquished to Great Britain their claims to the territory stretching from the Mississippi River into Georgia. Control over Cuba (captured by the British during the war) was returned to Spain. And, Great Britain became to sole European possessor of Canada. Conversely, on the European continent, "six years of heroic expenditure and savage bloodshed had accomplished precisely nothing."[50]

"The most significant trends in political and economic integration had not drawn colony closer to colony, but the colonies as a group closer to the metropolis. The American provinces had thus been able to demonstrate unprecedented coordination during the war, but only as a result of direction from above, not as a consequence of consultations among themselves."[51]

INATTENTION IN LIEU OF A COLONIAL POLICY

Forgetting the Constructiveness of Salutary Neglect

In order to secure its new territories and police the North American frontier, Parliament continued to provide funding to the colonial governments after 1761. This was deemed necessary because British regulars were needed elsewhere even though the Provincial troops were, in the view of the British officers, undisciplined and largely unreliable.

Outside of the military, the attitude of British officials toward their colonial counterparts was often condescending. The colonials were looked upon as corrupt and opportunistic, as evidenced by their ongoing trade with the French and Spanish during the war. Smuggling frustrated British authorities able to do little to bring it to a half. Only after Britain's capture of the French possessions in the West Indies did tensions over smuggling dissipate, as trade with these islands became legal.

Exerting British authority and enforcing government policies became increasingly difficult away from the coastal population centers. Throughout the war and despite the risks, the frontier experienced "the rapid movement of colonists and European emigrants into backwoods and newly conquered regions"[52] where there was, essentially, no government established. Even where settlement already existed, as in Nova Scotia, the arrival of large numbers of emigrants from New England stretched the capacity of the governor and the assembly to establish an orderly conveyance of confiscated properties to the new arrivals. "The effect of Nova Scotia's policy … was to inaugurate a decade of feverish speculation - 'a veritable carnival of land grabbing' - and to encourage wild schemes, conflicting claims, and unfulfillable promises that actually hindered the colony's recovery from the devastation of war and depopulation."[53]

All along the frontier, tensions between First Americans, settlers and British military forces reached the boiling point. Warnings by several Indian prophets of the dangers of further association with whites fueled the fires. Violence erupted in April of 1763 when the Ottawa warrior Pontiac (Obwondiyag) attacked the British garrison at Detroit. Uncharacteristically, Pontiac's warriors surrounded and kept up a steady attack on the fort for nearly eight months. The British managed to resupply the fort by ship during these months. Only the coming of winter and difficulty controlling his multi-tribe force caused Pontiac to lift the siege in mid-October. During this same period, Forts St. Joseph, Sandusky, Miami, Michilimackinac, Venango, LeBoeuf, and Presque Isle fell in succession to independent Indian attacks. At Fort Pitt, the commander, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, responded to threats from a Delaware delegation by providing them with provisions, liquor and "blankets and a hankerchief … from the fort's smallpox hospital."[54] Elsewhere, Indian raiding parties once again drove settlers back to the safety of the East.

The intervention of Sir William Johnson with the leaders of the Iroquois League, as well as his negative reports to the Board of Trade regarding the consequences of General Amherst's policies on relations with the Indians, helped to bring about important changes. Johnson also had a much more realistic appreciation for how white settlement should proceed:

"I humbly conceive that a certain line should be run at the back of the northern Colonies beyond which no settlement should be made until the whole Six Nations should think proper of selling part thereof. This would encourage the thick settlement of the frontiers, oblige the proprietors of large grants to get them inhabited, and secure the Indians from being further deceives. …The thirst of making distant settlements is very impolitic, as such frontiers are too weak and remote to oppose even an ordinary scalping party, and therefore it will be time enough to advance our settlements when the large tracts already patented are thoroughly inhabited."[55]

"Even without the formidable enmity of Sir William Johnson, in the autumn of 1763 Amherst's days as commander in chief would have been numbered."[56] In October, Amherst received his orders to return to England, replaced by Major General Thomas Gage. A new ministry in London also assumed power, and "from the fall of 1763 through the following spring Grenville and Halifax attended to reforming imperial relations with an intensity rarely seen before."[57] "Unfortunately for the empire's future, they had no … sense of how their reforms would interact with postwar conditions, nor … any clear idea of how their initiative might appear to colonists whose understandings of the war and its lessons differed significantly from their own."[58]

George III issued a proclamation to the effect that all land outside of three newly-formed colonies "was reserved for the use of the Indians."[59] In this territory, which encompassed the Great Lakes basin to Florida, and from the Mississippi to the western slope of the Appalachians, colonial land grants were prohibited and any land purchases from the area tribes were restricted to agents of the Crown. Any Whites living beyond the Appalachian ridge were to return to the East. A more comprehensive program for stabilizing relations between the colonies, the Indians and British authority was mandated by concentrating the management of Indian affairs in the hands of the northern and southern superintendents. Yet, as the year 1764 unfolded, General Gage determined to carry out the campaign against the Indians as developed by Amherst. Before doing so, however, Gage called on Johnson to gain his advice.

Johnson enlisted the Iroquois to take up arms against the Delawares and Shawnees in western Pennsylvania, but the Delawares and other minor tribes simply withdrew from the path of the advancing Iroquois. Johnson's next move was to call all the tribes to a peace conference at Niagara, threatening those who did not attend with eventual annihilation. To demonstrate to the Indians that the British were serious and would make good on Johnson's threat, Gage put his forces into the field.

Gage faced serious problems, not the least of which was the financial condition of the colonial governments. Extremely short of funds, none were able to raise and pay for the number of troops requisitioned for the campaign. A strong British force marched, unopposed, to the relief of the garrison at Detroit. Unfortunately, the commander of this expedition, Colonel John Bradstreet, made one mistake after another. The Indians in and around Detroit merely waited to the opportune moment to retake the initiative. In October, Bradstreet withdrew back to Fort Niagara in terrible weather, losing provisions, cannon, countless bateau and many men. He left the Provincials and Indians to make their way back without provisions. Throughout December, Iroquois warriors were arriving back at Sir William Johnson's headquarters in terrible condition. Small bands of Senecas ambushed soldiers who ventured from Fort Niagara, "nearly severing communications with Detroit."[60]

A different force under Colonel Henry Bouquet marched from Fort Pitt up the Ohio River into the territory of the Delawares, Mingos and Shawnees. Bouquet established his army at a strong defensive position and entered negotiations with these tribes for the return of white prisoners. After recovering some two hundred whites, Bouquet returned to Fort Pitt. Among the Indians but "especially among the Shawnees and Delawares, the ravages of smallpox were still taking their toll."[61]

Gage's broader strategy was to enlist Pontiac as an ally in achieving a lasting peace by recognizing him as "a kind of supreme chieftainship of the western Indians." What the British failed to grasp was that Pontiac was only one of many war chiefs and held no such position among the tribes. British attention actually served to create resentment and jealousy toward Pontiac. The Ottawa chief planned to "deliver a hammer blow to the English"[62] in the summer of 1764 by enlisting many of the more western tribes. But, without direct support from the French, the Indians lacked the capacity to carry on a coordinated and sustained series of attacks against British positions; and, the tribes of the Illinois Confederacy could not be induced by Pontiac to go to war against the British. Even among his own Ottawa tribe, only a small number of young warriors remained eager to follow him into battle. In the end, he was compelled in mid-1766 to meet with Sir William Johnson and sign a treaty of peace with the British. "When the British did not follow through with the stream of gifts that were necessary to affirm his status, …the Ottawas themselves rejected his pretentions to chieftainship."[63]

In the end, British authority could not be effectively extended into the wilderness relinquished by the French. The military had neither the financial reserves nor the manpower to garrison and maintain the large number of forts constructed during the war with the French. Even if this had been possible, the enormous size of the wilderness territory made it impossible to prevent the continuous migration of traders and settlers into land occupied by the tribes. If anything, the conflict between Indians and whites was certain to intensify, as many whites on the frontier harbored a deep desire "to exterminate every native person."[64]

"Regardless of what Britain's political leaders believed about their nation's capacity to crush America to atoms, it was not British power that could preserve the empire to which Washington and those like him were devoted. In truth the security of the empire depended on intangible qualities that the vigorous exercise of power could only destroy: faith in the justice and protection of the Crown, hope for a better future, and love of English liberty."[65]

FISCAL FAILURES

British victories on land and on the high seas, accompanied by the acquisition of an immense new territory, brought the empire to the brink of financial collapse. "When the House of Commons reconvened in November [1758] … the M.P.s approved the largest budget in British history, nearly thirteen million pounds sterling, for the coming year. Over half of this staggering sum was to be borrowed, and nearly half of the expected tax revenues were to be assigned to pay interest on the skyrocketing public debt."[66] The landed of Great Britain looked everywhere but to themselves for the sources of revenues sufficient to service the accumulating national debt, to cover ongoing expenses of empire, to support the monarchy and to pay for the normally-occurring costs of government. There was nothing new about this.

While William Pitt had developed a brilliant strategy for expanding the empire of Great Britain, he "naively believed that the government's credit was bottomless" and did not appreciate the fact that "the financial resources of the nation had been stretched taut by taxation and borrowing."[67] The problem with taxation was not the amount of revenue collected but the fact that it came from the empire's merchants and workers producing goods and providing services. Even so, the costs of war had climbed to some twenty million pounds annually, of which only one-third was covered by taxes. Half of this revenue went to pay the interest on the national debt. Anxious to end the war and thereby allow the economy to recover, Pitt's enemies in Parliament conspired with King George III to force his resignation.

While political upheaval occurred within Britain, the Spanish entered into an alliance with the French, and the war actually expanded. Increased borrowing was required in 1762, at a higher rate of interest than previously and with the government bonds heavily discounted at the outset. Even so, the government was not able to raise the full amount budgeted, triggering the issuance of "Exchequer bills without the cooperation of the Bank of England."[68] In other words, government IOUs would be printed and added to the money supply. When Spain threatened Portugal with invasion, an additional million pounds was necessary to send a British army to Portugal's defense.

Although this global war had pulled the British government into debt to the point of near-bankruptcy, the other nations engaged in this conflict were in even worse financial condition. Fiscal stress and British victories combined to bring everyone finally to negotiate an end to the war. Great Britain also enjoyed an extremely important underlying strength. "[T]he prosperity of the British empire, not the power of its army and navy, secured the cooperation of vanquished peoples as surely as it had gained the goodwill of Anglo-American colonists. Where British arms reaped costly laurels, the merchants, the colonies, and the conquered harvested profits."[69] What British authorities failed to grasp was that a key component of its mercantilist system was the ineffective enforcement of its provisions. Leaks in the system allowed for market forces to operate to the empire's advantage. Had this been understood by the ministry and by Parliament, their future actions might have strengthened rather than weakened the empire's hold on North America.

Few outside the center of power understood that the "war's prolongation had delayed the day when the costs of victory would have to be reckoned, but the return of peace would require those who had seemingly profited from the war to shoulder some of the burdens of glory."[70] Resigned to the need for maintaining a large military force in North America and facing a 146 million pound national debt, the King and his ministers decided that after 1763, "taxes on the colonies would support the troops stationed there."[71] Putting the ministry's case before the House of Commons, Grenville summarized the situation:

"This hour is a very serious one. France is in great distress at present, greater even than ours. Happy circumstances for us, as we are little able to afford another war, we now have peace; let us make the best use of it."[72]

The first order of business was to tighten the collection of customs duties at the colonial ports. Thus, came the American Duties Act of 1764. "Its many sections included three kinds of measures: those intended to make customs enforcement more effective, those that placed new duties on items widely consumed in America, and those that adjusted old rates in such a way as to maximize revenues."[73] Grenville and the ministry "expected colonial opposition, but he also expected to prevail."[74] At the same time, the ministry made it almost impossible for many colonists to comply by passing legislation prohibiting the colonial governments from declaring "that the paper money [the colonies] had issued was legal tender for the payment of private debts."[75] British creditors lobbied for this bill to protect themselves from the declining purchasing power of colonial currencies and their deteriorating rate of exchange against sterling.

These changes in legislation occurred amidst a major financial crisis that was spreading throughout Europe following the collapse of a major Amsterdam banking house. As credit disappeared or become more expensive, a chain of default materialized. To protect themselves from currency depreciation, British merchants demanded payment from their colonial customers in sterling. Worse yet in terms of impact on the colonies, "the wording was so inclusive as to suggest that the colony governments could no longer even make their currency legal tender for public debts - that is, for the payment of taxes."[76] As the financial circumstances of colonial merchants worsened, the result was a dramatic increase in the number of bankruptcies. Unemployment began to rise, wages began to fall and the number of poor escalated. Despite elimination of the French as a competitor for control of North America, the colonial governments and Great Britain's ministry were unable to collaboratively respond to the new challenges they faced.

"Colonial public debts could not be funded and made perpetual, but had to be paid off by the retirement of currency issues within stipulated numbers of years. Colonial governments, obligated to continue taxing their citizens at very high levels so long as war debts remained unretired, withdrew money from circulation and deflated colonial economies even as Parliament's subsidies ended and the worst recession in Anglo-American history strangled colonial commerce."[77]

Massachusetts' elected representatives were the first to formally respond to the House of Commons, expressing their deep concern over the impact of the American Duties Act on an already distressed economy and declining trade. "Only the New York Assembly sent a petition to Parliament denouncing the act as a tax levied without the consent of the colonies and thus a violation of their rights."[78] The reason the colonial assemblies did not respond more generally was that the act "mainly affected rum distillers, merchants engaged in the coastwise trade, and consumers of expensive imports."[79] The measure that stirred unrest and brought about universal protest in the colonies was the proposed stamp tax.

News of passage of the Stamp Act reached the colonies in April of 1765. Initially, each colonial assembly contemplated compliance. New York invited the other colonies to a conference in October to discuss the implications of the act with the objective of providing a unified response to Parliament. In May, however, Virginians narrowly adopted a set of resolutions declaring, essentially, that the Stamp Act was illegal. The strength of argument came from Patrick Henry, who "cast the debate as a contest between right and wrong." Henry argued that to "tax an Englishman without his consent was to deprive him of his rights, to reduce him to slavery."[80] It must be noted, of course, that the Englishmen to whom Henry referred were men of property - landed property, particularly -- and, therefore, those who according to the ethical values of the time had a rightful and legitimate stake in the affairs of state.

Word of the so-called "Virginia Resolves" quickly spread to other colonies, serving to ignite a flame of protest. Boston radicals were the first to act. One by one, the Crown's appointed stamp distributors were forced by colonial mobs to resign or seek British protection. Yet, when the colonial delegates met at New York in October to discuss a unified response, "they agreed from the start on the necessity of moderation."[81] The colonial representatives affirmed their acceptance of Parliament's authority to regulate trade (which implied the authority to impose tariffs and excise duties), but argued that the colonial charters guaranteed protections against direct taxation by the Crown. Although colonial leaders understood that trade was the key to the economies of coastal cities and towns, hundreds of merchants embraced a "nonimportation covenant" directed against goods shipped from Great Britain.

The reaction by Great Britain's merchants, to whom enormous sums were owed by their colonial counterparts, was swift. A new ministry understood that on economic terms alone the Stamp Act had to be repealed. However, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty over the colonies had to be restored and enforced as a political outcome. In Parliament, William Pitt delivered a speech that might have come directly from Samuel Adams or Patrick Henry. Pitt declared that sovereignty over the colonies did not extend the right to impose internal taxes on the colonists. He also declared that the concept of "virtual representation" was "the most contemptible idea that ever entered into the head of man."[82] In response, George Grenville offered a prediction of what might well occur if the government retrenched: "The government over them being dissolved, a revolution will take place in America. …The nation has run itself into an immense debt to give them their protection; and now [that] they are called upon to contribute a small share toward the public expense … they renounce your authority, insult your officers, and break out … into open rebellion."[83] But, Pitt had more to say:

"I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest. …The Americans have not acted in all things with prudence and temper. The Americans have been wronged. They have been drive to madness by injustice. ..."[84]

Few others shared Pitt's views, but nearly all realized the situation was precariously close to the open rebellion as stated by Grenville. Trade was at a standstill. Britain's merchants were owed an estimated 4.5 million pounds by the colonists but had no money with which to make payment. Nor were the colonists in a financial position to pay for the military forces garrisoned in North America. Benjamin Franklin was called before Parliament as a witness and explained how the war costs had been overwhelmingly borne by the colonies, despite the subsidies provided by the Crown. Trade between Britain and the colonies was, argued Franklin, far more important to British merchants than to the colonists. "I do not know a single article imported into the Northern Colonies, but what they can either do without, or make themselves,"[85] explained Franklin. Americans were tied to Great Britain less by necessity than by "a rapidly eroding tie of affection."[86]

To what extent Franklin's testimony caused members of Parliament to rethink their positions is not recorded. However, at the end of the long debate on the Stamp Act, the vote was in favor of repealing the measure. The public reaction in both Great Britain and North America was exhilaration. These celebrations masked several undeniable truths:

"America was more divided than Pitt and his contemporaries knew, Britain less omnipotent than they thought, and the rock of parliamentary sovereignty on which they assumed Britain's constitution was founded might easily become the rock on which Britain's empire would founder."[87]

There was yet no unity of opinion in the colonies. The citizens of each colony continued to think of their problems as provincial. The idea of being American was not yet in their hearts or minds. "In Massachusetts, a seismic shift in the balance of political power; in New York, a standoff between governor and assembly; in Virginia, a divided elite. All of these followed the Stamp Act, and the controversies surrounding it intensified them all, yet the Stamp Act caused none of them. …In every case, local competition, tensions, and anxieties defined the conflicts that the Stamp Act had aggravated and magnified."[88] Slowly, perhaps inevitably, the actions of Britain's ministry, King and Parliament would push these dynamics into the background.

FILLING UP A SPARSELY POPULATED FRONTIER

Where Are They All Coming From?

Continuous war slowed but did not halt the migration of traders and settlers from worn out farmlands in New England and the coastal regions. Leading colonists and frontiersmen lobbied British authorities, colonial governors and legislatures to secure the rights over unsurveyed land well beyond the fringes of existing settlements. "[E]ven the temporary removal of the enemy threat to the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania … was enough to permit the rival colonies to resume their competition for control over the Ohio County, even as it also allowed the endemic internal factionalism of Pennsylvania politics to reemerge."[89] Both Virginia and Pennsylvania claimed the territory from the Forks of the Ohio River; thus, once a British fort was firmly established, the area around Pittsburgh became a magnet for settlers and land speculators. The Crown's second leading Indian superintendent, George Croghan "was also eager to establish himself at Pittsburgh because he had land-speculating interests there to protect. Back in 1749, the wily Irishman had purchased from the Iroquois Council the rights to 200,000 acres near the Forks."[90]

To the great surprise of British authorities, tensions between the Cherokee and frontier whites in eastern Tennessee and portions of southwest Virginia and into Georgia erupted into all-out war. Initially successful in pushing the whites back, the Cherokee's capacity to fight was seriously weakened by a shortage of ammunition and a very severe 1760-61 winter. Then, in May of 1761 a strong British force engaged the Cherokee in a prolonged battle resulting in the destruction of fifteen Cherokee towns. The British also "laid waste to fifteen hundred acres of corn- and bean-fields."[91] This was followed by further defeats at the hands of Chickasaw, Catawba and Iroquois war parties armed by the British. The defeated Cherokees sued for peace in August of 1761 and were forced to relinquish control over a major portion of their traditional hunting grounds. One of the main lessons the British command - and their Provincial counterparts -- learned from this conflict was that "the Indians depended so heavily on European supplies that even skilled warriors protected by distance and difficult terrain could be brought to terms once their stocks of lead, powder, and other strategic goods were spent."[92] Another was that ancient tribal rivalries could be relied upon to continuously weaken all the tribes by manpower losses incurred in warfare.

General Amherst set the stage for future uprisings by authorizing "grants of land in the vicinity of various posts."[93] Land grants of ten thousand acres were made in the areas of Fort Niagara and Fort Stanwix. Additional land grants were authorized at Fort Bedford, Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt. "The promoters of these schemes intended to make a speculative profit on the sale of lands to farmers, to promote trade, or even … to create manors on which they could settle tenants whom they would import from Europe."[94] Amherst reasoned these settlements would provide locally-grown crops to feed the garrisons, reducing the costs of bringing in provisions from the East.

Military grants in the Mohawk Valley created "something like a miniature land rush."[95] Veterans of the war also settled on land west of the Connecticut River and north of the Massachusetts border. Two land speculating ventures, the Ohio Company and the Loyal Company, renewed their earlier conflicting claims to land along the Ohio River, even though the Board of Trade ordered Virginia's governor, Francis Fauquier, "to promote neither claim [and] to discourage any settlement that would interfere with Indian hunting rights."[96] Alternatively, the Ohio Company managed to secure rights to some land in the vicinity of Fort Cumberland, which was sold during 1763.

"The fundamental force … that animated the whole system of settlement and speculation was the dynamism of a farming population seeking opportunity. …With the defeat of the French accomplished and the Indians unlikely to mount effective military resistance, …both governments and private enterprises tried to position themselves to take advantage of population movements that no one could control."[97] Others maneuvered to take maximum financial advantage of this overwhelming urge of people to acquire land. Agents in London offered "shares to political insiders and influence-peddlers" which resulted in "ever larger and more powerful speculative syndicates."[98]

By 1762 groups of settlers from Connecticut were constructing new communities west of the Delaware River, in a region Pennsylvania claimed and its officials had promised would be reserved for the Delawares. Protests by their chief, Teedyuscung, were ignored, and not long thereafter the chief died in a suspicious fire. Despite the King's proclamation, uncontrollable "social forces" propelling the westward movement of settlers were unleashed. Enforcement was impossible. Moreover, the grants of land being offered to veterans of the war added up to "more than enough to whet the appetite of speculators willing to buy up the warrants of men who wanted the rewards of their service but did not intend personally to take up land in the wilderness."[99] Speculators anticipated that restrictions on the locations of these land grants would be lifted in time and extended to Provincial soldiers as well as those in the regular army.

Despite the worsening economic situation in the colonies, the appetite for investing in land remained strong. George Washington, for example, acquired some 650 square miles of wetlands on the border between Virginia and North Carolina, with the intention of draining it for settlement. Sir William Johnson and George Croghan sought a grant of 200,000 acres in the Mohawk Valley. When this failed to materialize, Croghan, supported by Benjamin Franklin, petitioned for a grant of land in the new Illinois colony.

Not only were American colonists moving away from the eastern coast into the interior, a new wave of immigration occurred from Great Britain itself. "The willingness of migrants - the better-off families searching for farms to buy, the poorest individuals selling themselves as servants to escape pauperization - to move to North America intersected with the availability of land in the new colonies, making speculative ventures attractive to Britons with good connections and narrowing investment options."[100]

For reasons not well-understood, the death rate among young European children began to decline by the middle of the eighteenth century, contributing to a steadily rising population. "The new situation called into question the old peasant assumption that all sons would be able to find farms capable of maintaining them at the status their fathers had held."[101] Slowly at first, but steadily increasing in numbers, they left their Old World villages and came to America.

As the economic downturn spread, the competition for access to undeveloped and cheap land only intensified. Settlers who carved their farms out of the wilderness often found the land on which they lived and cultivated owned by absentee speculators with political connections. Almost unbelievably, the thought of settlement as far west as the Mississippi River was already contemplated. "Original members of the Ohio Company reorganized as the Mississippi Company and brought in new recruits, including George Washington."[102] Though this design proved to be rather premature, Mississippi Company owners were in the midst of negotiations for a grant of some 2.5 million acres between the Appalachian mountains and the Ohio River when the colonial rebellion against British authority erupted. Numerous other companies were formed during this period, many with British government officials involved, each seeking to gain control over vast stretches of land still occupied by tribes of First Americans.

POSTCRIPT

Throughout the decade of the 1760s settlers continued to cross the Allegheny Divide from its northern reaches in New York down to the southern end of North Carolina. "For many, it was an opportunity to have, for the first time in their lives, a piece of land to call their own."[103] Many had finally completed their obligations as indentured workers and were eager to realize their dreams of farming their own land.

"Anyone could take up land if he had the hardihood to build a cabin and raise a small crop, coupled with the fortitude to face hardship or even extreme jeopardy. For such physical and mental expenditure, the individual could lay claim to 400 acres and stake out preemption rights to an additional 1,000 acres that could eventually be secured through a land office warrant. When certificates of settlement right were properly filled out and submitted to the land commissioners, they then lay in trust for six months, and if no one had already claimed the land or there were no overlapping or counterclaims, at the end of six months a patent was issued and the land was then theirs free and clear."[104]

In 1768, a majority of the northern tribes signed a new treaty relinquishing claims to all land south and east of the Ohio River. Settlers were now free to pour into western Pennsylvania, western Virginia and Kentucky. The Ohio Land Company soon began to advertise the sale of their western lands. Benjamin Franklin was one of the investors in another company, the Walpole Land Company (so named because of one of its other investors, Thomas Walpole). The Iroquois chiefs willingly sold their rights (obtained by mere declaration of such) to these companies, who just as willingly ignored the fact that the Iroquois had no power to enforce these sales.

Among those who actually ventured into the newly-opened territory was George Washington. In 1770, Washington formed a large party to claim tracts of land along the Ohio River, adding to a 1,600 acre claim made in the valley of the Youghiogheny River. He finally chose an additional tract of some 10,000 acres along the Ohio around 70 miles beyond the current location of Wheeling, West Virginia. Thousands more followed:

"They came on foot, rifles in hand, possessions in backpacks. They came by horseback, singly, in small groups, among friends and neighbors, in trains of mounted people leading scores of heavily laden packhorses. They came in wagons where they could, though with only two wagon roads open and jammed with traffic, progress was slow, especially when inclemencies turned those roads into mires. Still they came."[105]

One of the frontiersmen who helped the new arrivals find and claim land was Daniel Boone. Boone had been elected to the Virginia legislature in 1781 by his fellow Virginians living in the Kentucky territory. On his way to the assembly, he was taken prisoner by the British but not held very long. Less than a year later he was back in Kentucky and engaged in battles with Indians struggled to hold on to their territory. Then, early in 1783, Boone "made final arrangements to establish himself as a merchant, trade, and innkeeper at the [Ohio] river port of Limestone,"[106] joining another famous frontier figure, Simon Kenton. During the next five years, Boone (a slave-owner) operated a tavern and sold provisions to settlers. Appointed deputy surveyor of Fayette County, he was able to "lay out plats and register them at the land office."[107] His surveying business added nicely to his income, and the money he did not need he invested in land speculations, filing claims to nearly 40,000 acres in Kentucky. A good portion of his successful land claims were transferred to his sons and sons-in-law. His income was drained in many ways, including heavy property taxes levied by the state of Virginia. "Boone found himself in court so frequently"[108] he was forced to retain an attorney to represent him. By 1790 he joined over half of all Kentucky settlers who lost most or all of their land claims in the courts.

Back East, in the Mohawk territory, Sir William Johnson had helped these Iroquois to adapt to life among European colonists. Many Mohawks were literate and their homes well-furnished. "Sir William was showing, through his own holdings in the Mohawk Valley, that the application of planning, capital, and paternalism could create a happy meeting ground between Indian and settler - and also make a fortune for the promoter."[109] In 1769, Johnson was granted 99,000 acres of land by the King for his services to the Crown. He also purchased another 123,000 acres from the Oneidas and owned shares in other land companies. This immigrant from Ireland hated absentee landowners and made enormous efforts to bring in and provide for new settlers. He understood very well how the first and even second settlers on the frontier were swindled out of the land they cleared and planted. So, Johnson provided both support and security. He provided communal fields for settlers to plant and harvest crops until their own fields were cleared. On easy terms, he often provided horses and cows to his tenant farmers. And, his lands were criss-crossed with roads connecting the farms with outside markets, gristmills and sawmills erected by Johnson. He even constructed a small town to attract artisans to service the needs of the farmers. He introduced the growing of hay, hemp, peas, peanuts, grapevines and sheep raising. With each new settlement, he had schools constructed for the young. His tenants considered his terms quite reasonable:

"The first five years, when woods were being changed into farms, were given rent free, and the next ten at a reduced rent. Sir William insisted on keeping the right to all ores; he liked to take a percentage of the value of improvements if a lease were sold, and to forbid the building of mills to compete with those he himself built and rented."[110]

By the early 1770s Johnson's lands were quickly filling up with settlers and becoming increasingly valuable. He was set, or so it seemed, for a stable and prosperous period in his life. His influence with the Indians was unmatched, and he had greater influence with the ministry in London than any other colonial. So, it fitting to end this history of how land hunger and land speculation made it impossible for Great Britain to rule for long in most of North America with the final chapter in the life of Sir William Johnson.

As unrest exploded into uprisings against British authority, Johnson's estates remained peaceful. However, his own health was failing, and early in 1774 he made plans to pass on the bulk of his estate to his son John. Sir William died on July 11, 1774. "Eventually, all of Sir William's white heirs deserted his settlements, fleeing to Canada with as many of their tenants as still accepted their lead."[111] During the war, John Johnson led numerous raiding parties into the Mohawk Valley, burning farmhouses and thousands of acres of planted crops. "The Mohawk Valley became the Revolution's bloodiest cockpit,"[112] with an estimated two-thirds of the population killed. The American patriots drove the Iroquois to Canada and destroyed their capital at Onondaga. Sir Williams estates were confiscated and sold off.

REFERERENCES

1. Fred Anderson. Crucible of War, The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 2000.
2. Anderson, p. 11.
3. Oscar Theodore Barck, Jr. and Hugh Talmage Lefler. Colonial America, 2nd edition (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1968), p. 347.
4. Barck and Lefler, p.347.
5. Anderson, p. 16.
6. Anderson, p. 23.
7. Anderson, p. 23.
8. Anderson, p. 23.
9. Anderson, p. 27.
10. Anderson, p. 30.
11. Anderson, p. 32.
12. Anderson, p. 45.
13. Anderson, p. 51.
14. Anderson, p. 70.
15. Anderson, pp. 72-73.
16. As Anderson explains (pp. 159-160), the concerns of the South's landed class were complicated by the large slave population: "The fact was that the great planters who comprised the assembly feared French and Indians on the frontier less than the possibility that the war would encourage a slave rebellion in the tidewater."
17. Anderson, p. 78.
18. Anderson, p. 80.
19. Anderson, p. 106.
20. Anderson, p. 92.
21. Anderson, p. 114.
22. Anderson, p. 148.
23. Anderson, p. 135.
24. Anderson, p. 164.
25. Anderson, p. 164.
26. Anderson, p. 200.
27. Anderson, p. 345.
28. Anderson, p. 182.
29. Anderson, p. 182.
30. Anderson, p. 189.
31. Anderson, p. 198.
32. Anderson, p. 199.
33. Anderson, p. 231.
34. Anderson, p. 236.
35. Anderson, p. 207.
36. Anderson, p. 161.
37. Anderson, p. 269.
38. Anderson, p. 276.
39. Quoted in: Allan W. Eckert. Wilderness Empire (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), p. 536.
40. Anderson, p. 342.
41. Anderson, p. 365.
42. Anderson, p. 393.
43. Anderson, p. 408.
44. Anderson, p. 414.
45. Anderson, p. 414.
46. Anderson, p. 322.
47. Anderson, p. 454.
48. Anderson, p. 457.
49. Anderson, p. 475.
50. Anderson, p. 506.
51. Anderson, p. 615.
52. Anderson, p. 522.
53. Anderson, p. 523.
54. Anderson, p. 541.
55. James Thomas Flexner. Mohawk Baronet, A Biography of Sir William Johnson (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press edition, 1989. Originally published 1959), p. 260.
56. Anderson, p. 552.
57. Anderson, p. 558.
58. Anderson, p. 559.
59. Anderson, p. 566.
60. Anderson, p. 625.
61. Allan W. Eckert. The Conquerors (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), p.589.
62. Allan W. Eckert. The Conquerors, p.606.
63. Anderson, p. 633. Just three years later, Pontiac was assassinated by a young Peoria warrior who had sometime earlier joined Pontiac's band.
64. Anderson, p. 637.
65. Anderson, p. 741.
66. Anderson, pp. 308-309.
67. Anderson, p. 479.
68. Anderson, p. 493.
69. Anderson, p. 502.
70. Anderson, p. 502.
71. Anderson, p. 562.
72. Quoted in: Anderson, p. 573.
73. Anderson, p. 574.
74. Anderson, p. 580.
75. Anderson, p. 581.
76. Anderson, p. 584.
77. Anderson, p. 602.
78. Anderson, p. 608.
79. Anderson, p. 610.
80. Anderson, p. 662.
81. Anderson, p. 679.
82. Anderson, p. 699.
83. Anderson, p. 699.
84. Anderson, pp. 700-701.
85. Anderson, p. 706.
86. Anderson, p. 707.
87. Anderson, p. 712.
88. Anderson, p. 729.
89. Anderson, p. 324.
90. Anderson, p. 327.
91. Anderson, p. 466.
92. Anderson, p. 468.
93. Anderson, pp. 473-474.
94. Anderson, p. 474.
95. Anderson, p. 523.
96. Anderson, p. 525.
97. Anderson, p. 526.
98. Anderson, p. 527.
99. Anderson, p. 569.
100. Anderson, p. 597.
101. Oscar Handlin. The Uprooted (New York: Groset & Dunlap, 1951), p.25.
102. Oscar Theodore Barck, Jr. and Hugh Talmage Lefler. Colonial America, pp. 479-480.
103. Allan W. Eckert. That Dark and Bloody River (New York: Bantam Books, 1995), p.4.
104. Allan W. Eckert. That Dark and Bloody River, p. 5.
105. Allan W. Eckert. That Dark and Bloody River, p. 15.
106. John Mack Faragher. Daniel Boone (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992), p. 225.
107. John Mack Faragher. Daniel Boone,/i>, p. 238.
108. John Mack Faragher. Daniel Boone, p. 248.
109. James Thomas Flexner. Mohawk Baronet, p. 295.
110. James Thomas Flexner. Mohawk Baronet, p. 302.
111. James Thomas Flexner. Mohawk Baronet, p. 349.
112. James Thomas Flexner. Mohawk Baronet, p. 351.