US History/US History (Bureau Development Inc.)(1991).ISO/dp/0012/00126.txt

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$Unique_ID{USH00126}
$Pretitle{10}
$Title{Our Country:  Volume 2
Chapter XLVI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Lossing, Benson J., LL.D.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{english
french
pontiac
fort
quebec
general
sent
detroit
indians
tribes}
$Volume{Vol. 2}
$Date{1905}
$Log{}
Book:        Our Country:  Volume 2
Author:      Lossing, Benson J., LL.D.
Volume:      Vol. 2
Date:        1905

Chapter XLVI

     Wolfe's Illness and Despondency - Preparations to Attack Quebec - Battle,
and Death of Wolfe and Montcalm - Surrender of Quebec - Attempt to Recapture
It - Surrender of Montreal and All Canada - ogers' Expedition to Detroit -
Interview with Pontiac - Capture of Detroit - War with the Southern Indians -
War Continued abroad - Treaty of Paris - Discontent of the Indians -
Conspiracy of Pontiac and Its Effects - Fate of Pontiac.

     WOLFE soon heard, with joy, news of the capture of Fort Niagara and the
expulsion of the French from Lake Champlain.  He now listened eagerly for the
drums of Amherst, for he expected that general would speedily join him.  He
sent Murray above Quebec to destroy the French shipping, and open
communication with Amherst.  But that general did not appear, for reasons
already mentioned.

     Chagrin because of his failure at Montmorency, fatigue, anxiety,
disappointed hopes, and the extreme heat of the weather, prostrated Wolfe with
fever and dysentery.  For almost a month his life was in great peril. Early in
September he was able to hold a council of war at his bedside, and on the 9th
he wrote a desponding letter to the Earl of Holderness, in which he mentioned
the critical situation of the army and of himself.  My constitution," he
wrote, is entirely ruined, without the consolation of having done any
considerable service to the state, or without any prospect of it.  But he had
told the earl that a council of war had decided that his shattered army should
attack the foe.  His letter reached London at the middle of October.  The
result of the promised attack was awaited with intense anxiety, for the young
commander's epistle had created anger and consternation in England.  It was
followed three days later by news of that result, and the hearts of Wolfe's
countrymen throbbed quickly with emotions of joy and grief.

     It was determined to land a large body of troops above Quebec, for the
purpose of drawing Montcalm from his entrenchments into an open field fight,
in which the English would have the advantage.  Wolfe, with some companions,
in a boat, reconnoitered the shores, and selected the cove that yet bears his
name for the landing place.  From that cove a narrow path through a ravine
tangled with vines and brambles led up to the Plains of Abraham; and along
that perilous way it was resolved the troops should climb stealthily in
darkness, if possible.  The fleet was prepared to cooperate with the army, and
on the 12th of September (1759) everything was ready for the execution of the
dangerous and even desperate enterprise.

     In the afternoon of that day, a feint was made in the direction of
Montcalm's camp by the ships and some troops, to divert the attention of the
foe from the real point of attack.  At nine o'clock in the evening Wolfe and
his main army were embarked on flat-boats above Point Levi, and floated up the
river with the flood-tide, some distance above the selected landing-place,
followed by the ships.  There was joy in Quebec and the French camp, for it
was believed the English were retreating.

     The evening was warm and star-lit.  Wolfe seemed in better spirits than
usual, and at the evening mess, with a glass of wine in his hand, and in the
light of a lantern, he sang impromptu that little campaigning song which has
been often chanted in the tents of British soldiers since, beginning - "Why,
soldiers, why, Should we be melancholy, boys?  Why, soldiers why, Whose
business 'tis to die!" But a cloud of presentiment that his end was near
evidently shadowed the young hero's thoughts; and when, at past midnight,
black clouds had gathered in the sky, and the boats were floating silently
back, with muffled but unused oars, upon the ebb tide, to land the troops
under cover of the darkness at the selected place, he repeated, in a low
musing tone to the officers around him, that touching stanza in Gray's "Elegy
in a Country Churchyard" - "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all
that beauty, all that wealth e'er grave, Await, alike, the inevitable hour -
The path of glory leads but to the grave."

     "Now, gentlemen," said Wolfe, as he closed the verse, "I would prefer
being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow."

     In the darkness, sixteen hundred troops landed at Wolfe's Cove, and
others speedily followed.  The general led the way, with Monckton and Murray,
and Lieutenant-Colonel Howe.  They hastened up the acclivity in the face of
shots from startled sentinels along the brow of the cliff and reached the
Plains of Abraham at early dawn, three hundred feet above the St. Lawrence. At
sunrise, about five thousand British troops were standing in battle array, on
the open plain before Quebec.  News of the surprising apparition had gone into
the city like the wind, and thence to Montcalm at Beaufort.  He supposed, from
the first account received, that it was only a small party who had come to
burn a few houses and retire; but when later information reached him, he
marched a greater portion of his army from his camp to attack the British,
saying: If it is necessary to fight them, it is necessary to crush them."

     At ten o'clock the two armies stood face to face on that lofty plateau,
the French on the higher ground near the city wall.  Neither party had much
artillery - the English only a six-pounder, which some sailors had dragged up
the ravine.  They were stronger than Montcalm imagined.  He sent a messenger
to his camp for fifteen hundred reserves, and another after a detachment that
had gone up the river.  The two armies were about equal in numbers then, and
the impatient Montcalm began the attack without waiting for his
reinforcements.  Wolfe was at the head of the grenadiers who had been repulsed
at the Montmorency.  They burned with a desire to wipe out the stain of that
event, for their beloved commander had censured them for their rashness.  He
ordered his soldiers to double-shot their muskets and reserve their fire until
the enemy should be very near.

     A short and severe battle now ensued.  Terrible were the volleys of the
double-shotted muskets at close quarters.  The French were thrown into
confusion, when they were attacked by the bayonet so terrible in the hands of
English soldiers.  The general was urging on the bayonet charge, when a bullet
slightly wounded him in the head.  Another soon wounded him in the abdomen;
and a third pierced his breast with deadly effect."Support me," said the
general to an officer near him; "Do not let my brave soldiers see me drop; the
day is ours - keep it."  He was borne to the rear in a dying condition, when
the officer, on whose shoulder he was leaning, cried out, "They run!  they
run!  "Who run?  feebly inquired Wolfe.  The enemy, sir; they give way
everywhere," said the officer.  The general then gave an important order for a
movement to cut off the fugitives, and feebly said: Now, God be praised.  I
die happy!  He never spoke again, and soon afterward expired. Montcalm had
also been mortally wounded, and died the next morning.  His body was buried in
the grounds of the Ursuline Convent at Quebec.  In its chapel a small mural
tablet commemorates him and there I saw, a few years ago, the skull of that
French commander, its base covered with a blue velvet and gold-laced military
coat collar.  Wolfe's remains were taken to England, and his grateful
government erected a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey. Almost
seventy years afterward an English governor of Canada caused a noble granite
obelisk to be reared in the city of Quebec, and dedicated To the Memory of
Wolfe and Montcalm."

     General Townshend succeeded Wolfe in command of the army.  With
unparalleled selfishness and meanness, he tried to arrogate to himself the
glory of the victory.  He did not even mention Wolfe's name in his narrative
of the battle.  But others did, and public justice was quick to award honor
where honor was due, and Townshend disappeared in a peerage.  Five days after
the battle, Quebec was surrendered to the English.  The news reached England a
month afterward - three days after Wolfe's desponding letter to Holderness, as
we have observed.  The joy of the people was intense; then grief because of
the death of the hero was deep and heartfelt.  They despaired, they triumphed,
they wept," wrote Horace Walpole, for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory!
Joy, grief curiosity astonishment were painted on every countenance; the more
they inquired the higher their admiration rose."  Exultation stirred every
heart in the colonies.  Illuminations, bonfires, cannon-peals and oratory
everywhere expressed the general joy, and thanksgivings were uttered by every
lip.

     It was the 18th of September, 1759, when the city of Quebec, its
fortifications, shipping, stores and people, passed into the control of the
English, and General Murray with five thousand troops occupied it.  The
English fleet, with prisoners, sailed for Halifax.  The campaign was ended,
but Canada was not conquered.

     De Levi succeeded Montcalm in command of the French forces.  Early in the
spring of 1760, Vaudreuil, governor of Canada, sent him to recover Quebec.
Murray, boastful and rash, marched out to meet him and at Sillery, three miles
above the city, they met and fought one of the most sanguinary battles of the
war.  De Levi led nearly ten thousand men Murray was at the head of over six
thousand men.  The English were defeated with the loss of a fine train of
artillery and a thousand soldiers, and fled back to the walled town.  The
French besieged the city, and the condition of the English was perilous, when,
early in May, a British squadron with provisions and reinforcements, sent by
the sagacious and provident Pitt, ascended the St. Lawrence.  Two of the ships
that arrived first at Quebec destroyed the French shipping there.  De Levi
supposed them to be the vanguard of a large armament, and at the middle of May
he raised the siege, abandoned most of his artillery and stores, and fled with
the greatest celerity toward Montreal. Murray pursued, but could not overtake
the fugitives.  Montreal was now the last remaining stronghold of the French
on the continent; Amherst might have had possession of it before De Levi
besieged Quebec, but he spent the whole spring and summer in preparations for
a regular invasion of Canada. Meanwhile Vaudreuil had collected all of his
available forces at Montreal for the final struggle.

     Amherst, though slow, was sure.  He moved three armies against Montreal
with so much precision that they arrived there almost simultaneously.  With
about ten thousand men he marched to Oswego, where he was joined by a thousand
warriors of the Six Nations, under Sir William Johnson.  He went over Lake
Ontario and down the St. Lawrence, and appeared before Montreal on the 6th of
September, having taken Fort Presentation at Oswegatchie (now Ogdensburg) on
the way.  On the same day General Murray arrived there from Quebec with four
thousand troops, and on the following day Colonel Haviland appeared on the St.
Lawrence, opposite Montreal, with three thousand soldiers.  He had marched
from Crown Point, and had driven the French from a Isle-aux-Noix.  Within the
space of thirty hours, over seventeen thousand English troops had gathered
around the doomed city.  Vaudreuil saw that resistance would be foolish and
vain, and he surrendered.  On the 8th day of September, 1760, all Canada
passed under the dominion of Great Britain, with no stipulations for civil
liberty.  The pleasure of the king was the law of the land.  That king -
George the Second - died suddenly a few days after the glorious news of the
conquest of Canada reached London, when he was seventy-seven years of age,
and was growing blind and deaf.  He left England the foremost nation of the
world in military fame and moral grandeur.

     General Gage was made military governor of Montreal, and General Murray
was sent to garrison Quebec with four thousand men.  Joy spread over the
English American colonies, for peace in the future seemed to be secured.  The
people everywhere assembled to utter public thanksgiving to Almighty God for
the great deliverance.  But there was something yet to be done to make the
conquest complete.  The flag of France yet waved over the fort at Detroit, and
other places in the West.  Amherst could not allow the French lilies,
emblazoned on that flag, to be seen anywhere in the conquered domain.  A few
days after the surrender of Montreal, he sent Major Rogers, with two hundred
Rangers, to plant the British standard at Detroit and elsewhere.  They went by
the way of Frontenac, and along the northern shores of Lake Ontario around to
Niagara.  At the latter place they furnished themselves with a costume
suitable for the wilderness, and voyaged over Lake Erie in the chilly days of
October and November.  At the mouth of a river on its southern shore, they met
a deputation of Ottawa chiefs, who told them to remain there until Pontiac,
their emperor, should arrive, for he desired to see them with his own eyes.

     Pontiac soon came.  He was a fine specimen of a North American Indian,
and was ruler over a magnificent domain in Ohio and Michigan.  His people (the
Ottawas) revered him, and the tribes over whom he reigned admired him for his
wisdom and bravery.  He met Rogers with a princely air, and demanded why he
had entered his dominions without his leave.  Rogers explained that the
English had conquered Canada, and that he came only to drive out the French,
their common enemy, and then gave the emperor a belt of peace.  Pontiac
returned it, saying: "I stand in the path until morning." Turning on his heel,
he left Rogers in doubt concerning the chief's intentions.  His men kept watch
for treachery all night.  In the morning, Pontiac sent them some food.  He
soon followed, and gave Rogers assurances of his friendship.  He had been the
ally of the French, but was too shrewd to adhere to a waning cause.  He was
willing to court the favor of the English; so he and Rogers sat upon a log and
smoked the calumet.  He sent word to the tribes south and west of Lake Erie
that the strangers had his permission to cross his dominions.  Rogers marched
on, and on the 29th of December, 1760, he unfurled the British flag at
Detroit.  The garrison were made prisoners, but the French settlers were
allowed to remain on the condition of taking the oath of allegiance to the
British crown.

     When Canada was falling prostrate at the feet of British power, the
storm of war lowered darkly along the Carolina frontiers.  There had been
strife with the Indians there for years.  The Cherokees, the treaty friends of
the English, strove hard to maintain peace.  They were the hardiest and most
enlightened of the savages in that region.  These mountaineers, occupying the
hill country of Georgia, exerted a powerful influence over the surrounding
tribes.  But their patience was exhausted by wrongs which they and their
friends had suffered at the hands of frontier Virginia Rangers, and the
treachery of the royal governor of South Carolina, and in the spring of 1760,
they flew to arms with the tribes of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia as allies.
In the space of a few weeks the western frontiers of the Carolinas were swept
with the fiery besom of desolation.  French emissaries had worked powerfully
upon the Indian mind, and military stores had been sent to the Cherokees from
Louisiana.  The smitten and menaced people called loudly for help.  Amherst
heeded their supplications, and early in April, he detached Colonel Montgomery
(afterward Lord Eglinton) from the army of Stanwix, with six hundred
Highlanders and as many Royal Americans, to strike the Cherokees. He was
accompanied by Colonel Grant, who had been assailed by the garrison of Fort Du
Quesne a few months before.  In the western part of South Carolina, beyond the
Saluda, they were joined by seven hundred Carolina Rangers, among whom was
Moultrie, who afterward figured in the American War for Independence.

     On the first of June the English were ready to apply the scourge.  They
penetrated the beautiful Valley of the Keowee, on the western borders of
Anderson District, in which well-built houses and cultivated fields gave
tokens of a semi-civilization.  That valley they plundered, and desolated it
with fire, driving the families to the wooded hills, where they looked down
upon their possessions utterly ruined.  Onward the English marched over the
hills and the headwaters of the Savannah to the Valley of the Little
Tennessee.  Down that valley they marched, compelled to fight almost every
inch of their way in the heart of the Southern Alleghany Mountains.  The whole
country was aroused.  The patriotism of the Cherokees gave intensity to their
anger.  The English were in serious peril, and Montgomery wisely retraced his
steps.  This movement left the English garrison at Fort Loudon, on the
Tennessee, at the mercy of the savages, who murdered a part of them after they
had surrendered, and scattered the remainder, as prisoners of war, among the
tribes.  Montgomery hastened to Charleston, and regardless of the prayers of
the people, who feared the ire of the exasperated Cherokees, he embarked for
Halifax.

     The Cherokees were not subdued, but were more fiercely inflamed against
the English.  They prepared for the war-path the next year, when Colonel Grant
appeared with a stronger force, and compelled them to stand on the defensive.
He burned their villages, desolated their fields, and killed many of their
warriors.  Finally, the nation, dispirited, humbly sued for peace in June,
1761, and a treaty to that effect was made.

     Although the war had ceased in America, the French and English continued
it upon the ocean and among the West India islands, with almost unbroken
success by the latter.  It was ended by a treaty of peace negotiated in 1762,
and signed at Paris on the 10th of February, 1763.  By its terms France ceded
to Great Britain all her claimed territory in America eastward of the
Mississippi River, north of the latitude of the Iberville River, a little
below Baton Rouge.  New Orleans, and the whole of Louisiana, was ceded by
France to Spain, at the same time and so her entire possessions in North
America, for which she had labored and fought for more than a century, were
relinquished.  Spain, with whom the English had been at war for a year
previously, ceded East and West Florida to Great Britain, at the same time.
Now the English held undisputed possession (excepting by the Indians) of the
whole continent from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the Frozen Sea, and
by claimed prescriptive right, from ocean to ocean.  The domain wrested from
the French had been procured at a cost to Great Britain and her American
colonies of five hundred and sixty million dollars.

     The storm in the south had scarcely ceased when another, more portentous,
was seen gathering in the northwest.  All over the land from the Shenandoah
Valley to Lake Superior, from Western New York and the line of the Alleghany
Mountains stretching into the Carolinas, to the Mississippi River, a
deep-rooted jealousy of the English appeared among the Indians after the
conquest of Canada.  They regarded the English as a nation of amazing power,
who were ready to rob them of their lands and destroy their race.  The
treatment of the natives by the English was so cold and unfriendly when
compared with the French, that the savages could feel no real friendship for
the British, and it was only fear or policy that caused the Indians to make
treaties with them.  The chiefs were treated with contempt by the British
officers, and so their pride was wounded; they treated the people as children
or slaves, and so lost their respect.  Traders cheated them and aroused their
anger.  In every way they were made to feel, by contrast with the conduct of
the French, the meanness and wickedness of the English.  The jealousy of the
savages was crystallized into implacable hatred, and in 1761, they began to
form confederacies and plotted conspiracies for the destruction of their
English masters.

     When, after the treaty of Paris in 1763, the tribes were informed that
France had ceded the country to Great Britain, without asking their leave,
there was wide-spread indignation among them.  The arrogance of Amherst in his
official intercourse with them fanned the flame, and a vast confederacy was
formed for the purpose of attacking all of the English forts on the frontiers
on the same day, to destroy their garrisons and to desolate their settlements,
westward of the Alleghanies.

     At the head of this conspiracy was the great Ottawa chief Pontiac, then
about fifty years of age.  He was conspicuous for courage, resolution, energy,
and magnetic attraction and vehement ambition, and ruled many tribes with
almost despotic power.  He had fought on the side of the French in the war
just ended, and was their friend until his interview with Major Rogers. He
trimmed his sails so as to catch the favoring breeze of the power he held to
be the most potential, but his pride was soon deeply wounded by the arrogance
and neglect of the English.  He saw his race divided, weak, and powerless
before a great nation.  He saw the English rapidly spreading their settlements
over the hunting-grounds of the Indians, and driving them steadily toward the
setting sun.  In his horoscope of the future, he saw the last of his race,
naked and famishing, driven into the Pacific Ocean, of which he had vague
ideas.  Ambition and patriotism urged him to lead a conspiracy for the
salvation of his country and his race.  He did so, with marvelous skill and
energy.

     Late in 1762, Pontiac sent ambassadors to the tribes around the lakes,
and all over the country southward far toward the Gulf of Mexico.  Each bore
the wampum war-belt and a hatchet painted red 'in token of hostilities.  Each
delivered the stirring words of Pontiac, calling them to the defence of their
country and their lives and everywhere his words were approved.  He called a
general council at a spot near Detroit, designated by him, and there the
tribes were assembled in April, 1763 - the Ottawas, Miamis, Wyandotts,
Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Mississaugas, Shawnoees, Foxes, Winnebagoes and
Senecas - the latter the most warlike of the Six Nations.  Pontiac was there
with his squaws and children, and the meadow in which the council was held
presented a gay and animated scene.  The idle young warriors gathered in
groups to feast, smoke, gamble, and tell stories; many of them bedizened with
beads, feathers, hawks' bills, and other tokens of foppery.  Here, too," says
Parkman, "were young damsels radiant with bears' oil, ruddy with vermilion,
and versed in all the arts of forest coquetry, shriveled hags, with limbs of
wire, and the voices of screech-owls and troops of naked children, with small,
black, mischievous eyes, roaming along the outskirts of the woods."

     The council was convened on the 27th of April.  All were seated on the
grass in a wide circle, row within row, a grave and silent assembly.  When
pipes had been lighted and passed from hand to hand, Pontiac arose, plumed and
painted, in full war-costume, and with loud voice and impassioned manner,
addressed the multitude.  He recounted the wrongs of the red race, and spoke
of the danger to be apprehended from the sovereignty of the English.  He held
out a long and broad belt of wampum, which, he said, he had received from the
king of the French, and that the fleets and armies of that monarch would soon
come back to reconquer Canada, when the Indians would once more fight by their
side.  He appealed to the superstition of his hearers by reciting an Indian
legend, and in various ways he excited them with a burning desire for
immediate action.

     Treachery was to be the first movement of Pontiac and his followers in
the execution of the sanguinary scheme.  He was to begin the tragedy at
Detroit.  Under the pretext of holding a friendly council with Major Gladwin,
the commander of the fort, he entered it in May, with about three hundred
warriors, each carrying a knife, tomahawk and short gun, concealed under his
blanket.  When Pontiac should arise and show the green side of a belt, the
massacre of the garrison was to begin.  A friendly Indian had warned Gladwin
of the danger the day before, and it was averted by the appointment of another
conference.  The gates were shut upon Pontiac after he and his warriors had
retired, and he began a siege of the fort that continued more than a year.  By
similar acts of treachery, or by sudden and unexpected assaults, every post
west of Oswego, excepting Niagara, Fort Pitt and Detroit, fell into the hands
of the dusky confederates within a fortnight afterward, for the work was
performed at different points almost simultaneously.

     At Michilimackinac, Indians came to the fort at the close of May, as if
to trade.  Every day they engaged in the exciting pastime of ball-playing on
the plain near the fort.  On the 2nd of June their squaws came with them,
entered the fort, and stayed there.  The commander and a lieutenant,
unsuspicious of any danger, stood just outside the gate, watching the game. At
length the ball was sent near the gate, and two or three Indians pursuing it,
went behind the officers, seized them, and carried them off to the woods. The
other Indians rushed into the fort, seized hatchets which the squaws carried
under their blankets, and murdered a part of the garrison, making prisoners of
the remainder.

     Captain Dalyell, aide-de-camp to General Amherst was sent in a vessel
with reinforcements and supplies for the garrison at Detroit.  They ran up the
river in the night at the close of July, and succeeded in getting both into
the fort.  Dalyell at once proposed to make a sally from the fort and attack
the besiegers, who lay about a mile up the river.  Gladwin thought it would be
imprudent.  Dalyell persisted, and with two hundred and forty chosen men, he
marched in the darkness at three o'clock in the morning of the 31st of July,
to surprise Pontiac.  The chief was on the alert, and at a small stream at the
northern verge of the city of Detroit, the English, furiously assailed, were
forced to make a precipitate retreat, leaving twenty of their comrades killed
and forty-two wounded, on the borders of the brook, which, to this day, bears
the name of Bloody Run.  Dalyell was slain while trying to carry off the
wounded, and his scalp was an Indian's trophy.

     This victory encouraged the Indians, and they swarmed around Detroit and
Fort Pitt.  For the relief of the latter, Colonel Bouquet was sent with a
force of regulars from Pennsylvania.  Early in August he approached the fort,
when the besieging savages attacked him.  He had two desperate fights with
them, in which he lost about one-fourth of his command and all of his horses,
but he drove the assailants away and entered the fort with the remainder.
Detroit was relieved the next summer by a force under Colonel Bradstreet.
The power of the Indian Confederacy was now broken, and chiefs of the
hostile tribes sued for pardon and peace.  The haughty Pontiac would not
yield.  He tried to rally the confederate tribes, but in vain.  He went to the
Illinois country where no Englishman had been, and where the French flag yet
waved.  Among the tribes there he exerted his eloquence to induce them to make
war on the English.  He sent an ambassador to New Orleans to ask the French to
aid him.  His efforts were vain.  The cause that lay next to his heart was
ruined.  Afterward we find him holding a friendly conference with Sir William
Johnson at Oswego; then he is seen at St. Louis trying to arouse the French
people there to drive the English out of the Illinois country, which they had
seized.  At last, in 1769, this haughty Indian prince - this Catawba prisoner
adopted by the Ottawas - who had swayed almost unbounded power over thousands
of square miles of territory, was slain near Cahokia.  A strolling Indian was
bribed by an English trader to murder him.  That savage, for the gift of a
barrel of rum stole softly behind Pontiac in the forest and buried his hatchet
in his brain.