NO. 21 THE C LE MENTS LI BRARY ASS OC IATE S SPRING-SUMMER 2004 FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR eorge Washington composed In other words. as Washington faced War II did for Americans in the late one of the odder letters in his his greatest crisis yet as comm ander-in­ I950s or early ' 60s. The cen tral public voluminou s co rrespondence on chief of the Continental Army. it was event of Washington's life to date, as Jul y 20, 1776, as he and his men less the futu re of the United States for his gene ration, had been the destruc­ prepared to defend New York against than his personal history that was on tio n of New France. the stunning victo­ the invasion that Ge neral \Villiam Howe his mind. The specific experie nces ry that had made Britain the greatest was abo ut to unleash. Hundreds of were a pair of spectacular defeats that imperi al power of the day. Yet victory Royal Navy ships had somehow also cre­ rode at anchor in ated the con ditions that the harbo r, and had plunged the British thousands of British Empire into civil war, and Hessian troops just a little mor e than were encamped on 12 years after the Staten Island when Peace of Paris. the commander-in­ Today, 250 years chief wrote the afte r the Seven Years' following words War began in America. to his old comrade­ we have almost forgot­ in-arms. Adam ten the eve nts that Stephen: loomed so large for "I did not let Washin gton in 1776. the Anniversary of Chi efamong the rea­ the 3d or 9th of this sons for this collec tive Instj an]t [month] amnesia is the success pass of[ f] without of the American a grateful remem­ Sea power was critical to victory' in America. B.1/ /758 the Royal Navy dominated Revolution itself. "It brance of the the Atlantic and could launch amphibious operations against the fortress port of is," Francis Parkman escape we had at Lauisbourg on Cape Brehm Island. A French squadron was trapped ill the harbor. observed in the intro ­ the Meadows and This 1771 print, from a scene by Richard Paton. celebrates a British raid on the ducti on to Montcalm on the Banks of the night ofluly 26 that captu red Bienfaisant (64 Ijll ll S) lind burned Prudent (74). and ~V<) lfe . "the nature Monongahela. [Tjhe of great events to same Provedence that protected us both he and Stephen had survived: the obsc ure the great events that came upon those occasion s will, I hope, Battle of Fort Necess ity, Ju ly 3, 1754, before them." Th e Seven Years' War co ntinue his Mercies, and make us and the destruction of General Edward had, as a result. been "half lost to sight happy Instruments in resto ring Peace Braddock's army at the Battle of the beh ind the storm -clo ud of the War of & liberty to this once favour' d, but Monongahel a on July 9, 1755. Independence ." Yet it is important for now distressed Country:' (Emm et Whi le it may puzzle us that us today to understand the significance Collection,The New York Publi c Washington paused at the very moment of that con flict and the role that Library) of the Rep ublic's birth to make "grate­ Washington- a young man hungry for What makes this passage all the ful remem bra nce" of the twin disasters glory and eager to extend the authority more curious is that on July 9th, the that began his military career, it made of his king into the interi or of North day he commemorated his "escape ... perfect sense for him to do so. For America- played in it, if only on the Banks of the Monongahela ," Washington, as for many oth er middle­ because there is no clearer reminder Washington had also ordered his aged Ameri can s in 1776, the Seven in A merican history of the iron ies of officers to read the newly-arrived Years' War- what they called "the late imperial victory and the un intended Declaration of Independence at the head French War" and later would name the consequences of war. of each regiment. Yet nowhere in his French and Indian War-carried the Nor is there any better place letter did he mention the Declaration. same kind of significa nce that World in the United States to inve stigate - ----i}f-- - - vival had depended upon it. These new, indis­ criminate attitudes, soon to be reinforced by the bitter experience of the War of Independence on the northern and western frontiers, helped create the foundations of an American cultural and political identity separate from the older British one. even as they promoted and justi­ fied the annihilation of whole Indian peoples in the name of freedom. civilization, and peace. In that sense, the story of the Seven Years' War is much more than a phase in the early military career of George w ashington and more than a prelude to the American Revolution with which we are familiar- the struggle for liberty against oppression, rights against power, independence against subjuga­ tion. It is also a darker story, one in which the very realization of imperial ambitions produces European milita ryforces encountered Native Americans as both allies und enemies. A cartouche unpredictable results: in which victory breeds itlustration. from Thomas Hutchins 's map ofthe Ohio CO U Ilt1)~ depicts CJ /764 council between Colonel disaster for the victor; in which the evidently Henry Bouquet and local Indians. Additional details include a rare image of a Scottish soldier (left) benign growth of a population of peaceable and a military encampm ent. farmers leads to the wholesale destruction of native peoples. Those are as much a part of the historical experience. and even the look. Years' War undermined, and ultimately American history as the brighter. more familiar, of the Seven Years' War than the Clements destroyed, the ability of native peoples to resist more comfortable story of rights defended and Library. Benjamin West' s 'T he Death of the expansion of Anglo-American settlement. liberty maintained. The fact that both stories General Wolfe" -his third rendition of the The war 's violence and brutality, moreover, meet in the person of George Washington is scene. completed in I776--hangs over the engendered attitudes and patterns of behavior worth thinking about as we seek to understand elegant Main Room in solemn glory. It is on the frontier that encouraged whites to hate the causes. character. and consequences of a only the most visible treasure in an unmatched Indians as they had never been able to do in war that no one wanted but which transformed collection of books, maps. images, and manu­ the pre-war world. In that earlier time of com­ their world forever. scripts relating to the war in America. petition between empires. colonists had been - Fred Anderson Engravings. like a colored mezzotint from required to make distinctions between friendly Professor ofHistory 1771 depicting the capture of the French and hostile groups, if only because their sur- University ofColorado, Boulder line-of-battle ship Hienfaisant at the siege of Louisbourg in July 1758, capture the drama Drawings by military and naval officers were the basis fo r the plates q{Sccnographia Americana, of military events. Other prints-notably publish ed ill / 768. MallY combin e wartime events with dramatic scenery. This is Cap Rouge on the twenty-eight plates of the Sceno graphia the St. Lawrence River, nine miles above Quebec. drawn by Captain Hervey Smyth. Americana: Or, a Collection of Views in North America and the West Indies . .. From Drawings taken on the Spot, by Several Officers ofthe British Navy and Army­ show contemporary views of cities and forts, seascapes and landscapes, and communicate the fascination of British subjects with the exotic locales in which the war was fought. If these images hint at the exultation of the British in the greatest military victory of their history, thc Gage Papers and other manuscripts. including the diaries of common soldiers, speak with equal power of the grind­ ing daily realities of the war experie nce and the terrors of battle. What remains largely unseen in the images of the war, although not in the grittier world depicted in the manuscripts and maps, are those aspects of the conflict and its mean­ ing that modern Americans might most prof­ itably contemplate on the 250th anniversary of its beginning. In bringing to an end the French empire in North America, the Seven PAGE 2 THE Q1/ARTO A CONFLICT DOCUMENTED red Anderson, who powder train for war, and the Lib rary has the Lower levels of command may be provides the introdu c­ letterbooks and papers of William Mildmay, glimpsed in the Browne Brothers Papers, tion to thi s issue of the one of the British commissioners appointed to the correspondence of lieutenants Richard Quarto, is the author of determine the bound aries of Acadia. A recent and Francis Browne, who describe, respective­ Crucible of War: The Seven acquisition also relates to the beginning of the ly, events in Germany and in Nova Scotia. the Years' War and the Fate ofEmpire in British conflict. Sometime in 1757 an American West Indi es, and Cuba. The sinews of the war North America, /754-/766 (New York, 2( 00). colonis t, prob ably Virginia provincial officer are revealed in the James Furnis Letterbook of His comprehensive study is one of the most William Trent, drew on his own experienc es to 1755-58 containing the writings of an officer recent of many works to draw on the rich prepare a ten-page critique of a French account who served as commissary of stores and pay ­ resources of the Clement s Library documentin g of the early events of the war in western master in Albany and later comptroller of ord­ the contlict most America ns still think of as the Pennsylvania.