THE FRENCH WARS, AND THE FIRST PLAN OF UNION.
[Sidenote: Disputed frontier between French and English colonies.]
It was said a moment ago that one of the chief objects for which the
governors wanted money was to maintain troops for defence against the
French and the Indians. This was a very serious matter indeed. To any
one who looked at a map of North America in 1750 it might well have
seemed as if the French had secured for themselves the greater part of
the continent. The western frontier of the English settlements was
generally within two hundred miles of the sea-coast. In New York it was
at Johnson Hall, not far from Schenectady; in Pennsylvania it was about
at Carlisle; in Virginia it was near Winchester, and the first explorers
were just making their way across the Alleghany mountains. Westward of
these frontier settlements lay endless stretches of forest inhabited by
warlike tribes of red men who, everywhere except in New York, were
hostile to the English and friendly to the French. Since the beginning
of the seventeenth century French towns and villages had been growing up
along the St. Lawrence, and French explorers had been pushing across
the Great Lakes and down the valley of the Mississippi river, near the
mouth of which the French town of New Orleans had been standing since
1718. It was the French doctrine that discovery and possession of a
river gave a claim to all the territory drained by that river. According
to this doctrine every acre of American soil from which water flowed
into the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi belonged to France. The claims
of the French thus came up to the very crest of the Alleghanies, and
they made no secret of their intention to shut up the English forever
between that chain of mountains and the sea-coast. There were times when
their aims were still more aggressive and dangerous, when they looked
with longing eyes upon the valley of the Hudson, and would fain have
broken through that military centre of the line of English commonwealths
and seized the keys of empire over the continent.
[Sidenote: The Indian tribes.]
From this height of their ambition the French were kept aloof by the
deadly enmity of the most fierce and powerful savages in the New World.
The Indians of those days who came into contact with the white settlers
were divided into many tribes with different names, but they all
belonged to one or another of three great stocks or families. First,
there were the _Mobilians_, far down south; to this stock belonged the
Creeks, Cherokees, and others. Secondly, there were the _Algonquins_,
comprising the Delawares to the south of the Susquehanna; the Miamis,
Shawnees, and others in the western wilderness; the Ottawas in Canada;
and all the tribes still left to the northeast of New England. Thirdly,
there were the _Iroquois_, of whom the most famous were the Five Nations
of what is now central New York. These five great tribes--the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas--had for several generations
been united in a confederacy which they likened to a long wigwam with
its eastern door looking out upon the valley of the Hudson and its
western toward the falls of Niagara. It was known far and wide over the
continent as the Long House, and wherever it was known it was dreaded.
When Frenchmen and Englishmen first settled in America, this Iroquois
league was engaged in a long career of conquest. Algonquin tribes all
the way from the Connecticut to the Mississippi were treated as its
vassals and forced to pay tribute in weapons and wampum. This conquering
career extended through the seventeenth century, until it was brought to
an end by the French. When the latter began making settlements in
Canada, they courted the friendship of their Algonquin neighbours, and
thus, without dreaming what deadly seed they were sowing, they were led
to attack the terrible Long House. It was easy enough for Champlain in
1609 to win a victory over savages who had never before seen a white man
or heard the report of a musket; but the victory was a fatal one for the
French, for it made the Iroquois their eternal enemies. The Long House
allied itself first with the Dutch and afterwards with the English, and
thus checked the progress of the French toward the lower Hudson. We too
seldom think how much we owe to those formidable savages.
[Sidenote: The French and the Iroquois.]
The Iroquois pressed the French with so much vigour that in 1689 they
even laid siege to Montreal. But by 1696 the French, assisted by all the
Algonquin tribes within reach, and led by their warlike viceroy, Count
Frontenac, one of the most picturesque figures in American history, at
length succeeded in getting the upperhand and dealing the Long House a
terrible blow, from the effects of which it never recovered. The league
remained formidable, however, until the time of the revolutionary war.
In 1715 its fighting strength was partially repaired by the adoption of
the kindred Iroquois tribe of Tuscaroras, who had just been expelled
from North Carolina by the English settlers, and migrated to New York.
After this accession the league, henceforth known as the Six Nations,
formed a power by no means to be despised, though much less bold and
aggressive than in the previous century.
After administering a check to the Iroquois, the French and Algonquins
kept up for more than sixty years a desultory warfare against the
English colonies. Whenever war broke out between England and France, it
meant war in America as well as in Europe. Indeed, one of the chief
objects of war, on the part of each of these two nations, was to extend
its colonial dominions at the expense of the other. France and England
were at war from 1689 to 1697; from 1702 to 1713; and from 1743 to 1748.
The men in New York or Boston in 1750, who could remember the past sixty
years, could thus look back over at least four-and-twenty years of open
war; and even in the intervals of professed peace there was a good deal
of disturbance on the frontiers. A most frightful sort of warfare it
was, ghastly with torture of prisoners and the ruthless murder of women
and children. The expense of raising and arming troops for defence was
great enough to subject several of the colonies to a heavy burden of
debt. In 1750 Massachusetts was just throwing off the load of debt under
which she had staggered since 1693; and most of this debt was incurred
for expeditions against the French and Algonquins.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of getting the English colonies to act in
concert.]
Under these circumstances it was natural that the colonial governments
should find it hard to raise enough money for war expenses, and that the
governors should think the legislatures too slow in acting. They were
slow; for, as is apt to be the case when money is to be borrowed without
the best security, there were a good many things to be considered. All
this was made worse by the fact that there were so many separate
governments, so that each one was inclined to hold back and wait for the
others. On the other hand, the French viceroy in Canada had despotic
power; the colony which he governed never pretended to be
self-supporting; and so, if he could not squeeze money enough out of the
people in Canada, he just sent to France for it and got it; for the
government of Louis XV. regarded Canada as one of the brightest jewels
in its crown, and was always ready to spend money for damaging the
English. Accordingly the Frenchman could plan his campaign, call his red
men together, and set the whole frontier in a blaze, while the
legislatures in Boston or New York were talking about what had better be
done in case of invasion. No wonder the royal governors fretted and
fumed, and sent home to England dismal accounts of the perverseness of
these Americans! Many people in England thought that the colonies were
allowed to govern themselves altogether too much, and that for their own
good the British government ought to tax them. Once while Sir Robert
Walpole was prime minister (1721-1742) some one is said to have advised
him to lay a direct tax upon the Americans; but that wise old statesman
shook his head. It was bad enough, he said, to be scolded and abused by
half the people in the old country; he did not wish to make enemies of
every man, woman, and child in the new.
[Sidenote: Need of a union between the English colonies.]
But if the power to raise American armies for the common defence, and to
collect money in America for this purpose, was not to be assumed by the
British government, was there any way in which unity and promptness of
action in time of war could be secured? There was another way, if people
could be persuaded to adopt it. The thirteen colonies might be joined
together in a federal union; and the federal government, without
interfering in the local affairs of any single colony, might be clothed
with the power of levying taxes all over the country for purposes of
common defence. The royal governors were inclined to favour a union of
the colonies, no matter how it might be brought about. They thought it
necessary that some decisive step should be taken quickly, for it was
evident that the peace of 1748 was only an armed truce. Evidently a
great and decisive struggle was at hand. In 1750 the Ohio Company,
formed for the purpose of colonizing the valley drained by that river,
had surveyed the country as far as the present site of Louisville. In
1753 the French, taking the alarm, crossed Lake Erie, and began to
fortify themselves at Presque Isle, and at Venango on the Alleghany
river. They seized persons trading within the limits of the Ohio
Company, which lay within the territory of Virginia; and accordingly
Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, selected George Washington--a venturous
and hardy young land-surveyor, only twenty-one years old, but gifted
with a sagacity beyond his years--and sent him to Venango to warn off
the trespassers. It was an exceedingly delicate and dangerous mission,
and Washington showed rare skill and courage in this first act of his
public career, but the French commander made polite excuses and
remained. Next spring the French and English tried each to forestall the
other in fortifying the all-important place where the Alleghany and
Monongahela rivers unite to form the Ohio, the place long afterward
commonly known as the "Gateway of the West," the place where the city of
Pittsburgh now stands. In the course of these preliminary manoeuvres
Washington was besieged in Fort Necessity by overwhelming numbers, and
on July 4, 1754, was obliged to surrender the whole of his force, but
obtained leave to march away. So the French got possession of the
much-coveted situation, and erected there Fort Duquesne as a menace to
all future English intruders. As yet war had not been declared between
France and England, but these skirmishings indicated that war in earnest
was not far off.
[Sidenote: The Congress at Albany, 1754.]
In view of the approaching war a meeting was arranged at Albany between
the principal chiefs of the Six Nations and commissioners from several
of the colonies, that the alliance between English and Iroquois might be
freshly cemented; and some of the royal governors improved the occasion
to call for a Congress of all the colonies, in order to prepare some
plan of confederation such as all the colonies might be willing to
adopt. At the time of Washington's surrender such a Congress was in
session at Albany, but Maryland was the most southerly colony
represented in it. The people nowhere showed any interest in it. No
public meetings were held in its favour. The only newspaper which warmly
approved it was the "Pennsylvania Gazette," which appeared with a union
device, a snake divided into thirteen segments, with the motto "Unite or
Die!"
[Sidenote: Franklin's plan for a Federal Union.]
The editor of this paper was Benjamin Franklin, then eight-and-forty
years of age and already one of the most famous men in America. In the
preceding year he had been appointed by the crown postmaster-general for
the American colonies, and he had received from the Royal Society the
Copley medal for his brilliant discovery that lightning is a discharge
of electricity. Franklin was very anxious to see the colonies united in
a federal body, and he was now a delegate to the Congress. He drew up a
plan of union which the Congress adopted, after a very long debate; and
it has ever since been known as the Albany Plan. The federal government
was to consist, _first_, of a President or Governor-general, appointed
and paid by the crown, and holding office during its pleasure; and
_secondly_, of a Grand Council composed of representatives elected every
third year by the legislatures of the several colonies. This federal
government was not to meddle with the internal affairs of any colony,
but on questions of war and such other questions as concerned all the
colonies alike, it was to be supreme; and to this end it was to have the
power of levying taxes for federal purposes directly upon the people of
the several colonies. Philadelphia, as the most centrally situated of
the larger towns, was mentioned as a proper seat for the federal
government.
The end of our story will show the wonderful foresightedness of
Franklin's scheme. If the Revolution had never occurred, we might very
likely have sooner or later come to live under a constitution resembling
the Albany Plan. On the other hand, if the Albany Plan had been put into
operation, it might perhaps have so adjusted the relations of the
colonies to the British government that the Revolution would not have
occurred. Perhaps, however, it would only have reproduced, on a larger
scale, the irrepressible conflict between royal governor and popular
assembly. The scheme failed for want of support. The Congress
recommended it to the colonial legislatures, but not one of them voted
to adopt it. The difficulty was the same in 1754 that it was thirty
years later,--only much stronger. The people of one colony saw but
little of the people in another, had but few dealings with them, and
cared not much about them. They knew and trusted their own local
assemblies which sat and voted almost under their eyes; they were not
inclined to grant strange powers of taxation to a new assembly distant
by a week's journey. This was a point to which people could never have
been brought except as the alternative to something confessedly worse.
[Sidenote: Its failure.]
The failure of the Albany Plan left the question of providing for
military defence just where it was before, and the great Seven Years'
War came on while governors and assemblies were wrangling to no purpose.
In 1755 Braddock's army was unable to get support except from the
steadfast personal exertions of Franklin, who used his great influence
with the farmers of Pennsylvania to obtain horses, wagons, and
provisions, pledging his own property for their payment. Nevertheless,
as the war went on and the people of the colonies became fully alive to
its importance, they did contribute liberally both in men and in money,
and at last it appeared that in proportion to their wealth and
population they had done even more than the regular army and the royal
exchequer toward overthrowing the common enemy.
[Sidenote: Overthrow of the French power in America.]
When the war came to an end in 1763 the whole face of things in America
was changed. Seldom, if ever, had the world seen so complete a victory.
France no longer possessed so much as an acre of ground in all North
America. The unknown regions beyond the Mississippi river were handed
over to Spain in payment for bootless assistance rendered to France
toward the close of the war. Spain also received New Orleans, while
Florida, which then reached westward nearly to New Orleans, passed from
Spanish into British hands. The whole country north of Florida and east
of the Mississippi river, including Canada, was now English. A strong
combination of Indian tribes, chiefly Algonquin, under the lead of the
Ottawa sachem Pontiac, made a last desperate attempt, after the loss of
their French allies, to cripple the English; but by 1765, after many
harrowing scenes of bloodshed, these red men were crushed. There was no
power left that could threaten the peace of the thirteen colonies unless
it were the mother-country herself. "Well," said the French minister,
the Duke de Choiseul, as he signed the treaty that shut France out of
North America, "so we are gone; it will be England's turn next!" And
like a prudent seeker after knowledge, as he was, the Duke presently
bethought him of an able and high-minded man, the Baron de Kalb, and
sent him in 1767 to America, to look about and see if there were not
good grounds for his bold prophecy.