A party of New Hampshire troops on their way from Fort Lyman, encountered the baggage of Dieskau's army, which they captured after overpowering the guard. These three actions, fought the same day, and known as the battle of Lake George, were proclaimed through the colonies as a great victory, for which Johnson was rewarded with the honors of knighthood, and a parliamentary grant of £5,000. As Johnson had been wounded early in the action, the Connecticut troops claimed the honor of the victory for General Lyman, second in command.

One of the Massachusetts regiments distinguished in this action was commanded by Timothy Ruggles, afterward president of the Stamp Act Congress. The personal history of Ruggles serves to illustrate the simple manner of those

Son of a minister, he had been educated at Cambridge, had studied law, and commenced the practice of it in Plymouth and Barnstable, with good success. Marrying the widow of a rich inn-keeper, he added tavern-keeping to his business as a lawyer. When the war broke out, he entered into the military line, and being a man of energy and sense, he served with distinction for the next five years. Israel Putnam, afterward a revolutionary major-general, now a captain in one of the Connecticut regiments, had already distinguished himself as a partisan officer, in which capacity he served during the war.

Though re-enforced from Massachusetts, which colony, on hearing of Braddock's defeat, had voted two thousand additional troops, Johnson made no attempt on Crown Point. He even allowed the French to establish and fortify themselves at Ticonderoga. Under the superintendence of Gridley, who acted as engineer, Fort William Henry was built, near the late field of battle, at the head of Lake George. The New Englanders accused Johnson of incapacity; but he alleged the want of provisions and means of transportation sufficient to justify active operations.

After having made great preparations at Oswego, heavy rains delayed Shirley's embarkation; and finally, owing to the approach of winter and the scanty supply of provisions, the enterprise against Niagara was given over for the season. Shirley left seven hundred men in garrison at Oswego; but all the colonial levies, except six hundred men to garrison

Fort William Henry, and such troops as Massachusetts kept up at the eastward for frontier defense, were marched home and disbanded.

The frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, uncovered by Dunbar's precipitate retreat, were exposed to war-parties of Indians in the French interest. The discontented Delawares on the northern borders of Pennsylvania, and the Shawanese in the interior, availed themselves of this crisis to commence hostilities. Governor Morris called loudly for men and money to defend the frontiers. The inhabitants of Philadelphia, in an address to the Assembly, urged a liberal grant. Dropping their favorite paper money project, the Assembly voted a tax of £50,000, to be levied on real and personal estates, "not excepting those of the proprietaries "a clause, as they well knew, as contrary as the paper money, to the governor's instructions. If that clause might be omitted, some gentlemen of Philadelphia, in the proprietary interest, offered to contribute £5,000, the estimated amount of the tax on the proprietary estates. But the Assembly wishing to improve this emergency to establish a precedent, dexterously evaded the offer; the governor stood out, and the bill fell to the ground. Dunbar's regulars advancing from Philadelphia toward the frontier, afforded a temporary protection.

To furnish funds for defending their frontiers, the Assembly of Virginia voted £40,000 in taxes, in anticipation of which a new batch of treasury notes was issued. To Washington, for his gallant behavior at Braddock's defeat, £300 were voted, with lesser gratuities to several of the officers, and £5 to each of the surviving Virginia privates who remained in the service. Among the officers thus distinguished were Captain Adam Stephen, and Surgeon Hector Craig, the one afterward a major-general, the other at the head of the medical department of the revolutionary army. The Virginia regiment was reorganized, and Washington again placed at its head, with Stephen for lieutenant-colonel, undertook the difficult task of repelling the Indians, whose ravages now extended as far as Winchester. The Assembly of Maryland granted £6,000 for the defense of the province, and an additional sum was raised by voluntary subscription. A body of militia presently took the field under Governor Sharpe.

A violent dispute arose between Sharpe and Dinwidie, as to the command of Fort Cumberland. The pretensions of Dagworthy, in the Maryland service, who had formerly borne a royal commission, and who claimed precedence on that account over all officers with merely colonial commissions, was another source of trouble; and Washington presently found himself obliged to make a winter's visit to Boston, to obtain from Shirley definite orders on that point.

The Quakers were still a majority in the Pennsylvania Assembly, but they could no longer resist the loud cry to arms, raised in Philadelphia and re-echoed from the frontiers, occasioned by Indian inroads on the Juniata settlements. The proprietary party made every effort, and not without success, to stir up the public discontent. After a sharp struggle with the governor, in consideration of a voluntary contribution by the proprietaries of £5,000, the Assembly consented to levy a tax of £55,000, from which the proprietary estates were exempted. The expenditure of this money was specially intrusted to a joint committee of seven, of whom a majority were members of Assembly, which committee became the chief managers of the war now formally declared against the Delawares and Shawanese. Thus driven, for the first time, to open participation in war, some of the Quaker members resigned their seats in the Assembly. Others declined a re-election. The rule of the Quakers came to an end. But this change, contrary to the hopes and expectations of the proprietaries, did not reconcile the quarrel between them and the Assembly. That body insisted as strenuously as ever on their right to tax the proprietary estates.

Toward the close of the year, Shirley met a convention of provincial governors at New York, to arrange plans for the next campaign. Expeditions against Fort Du Quesne, Niagara, and Crown Point were agreed upon, for which twenty thousand men would be necessary. New York voted

seventeen hundred men as her quota, and issued £40,000 in paper, to support them. But the New England colonies, exhausted by their late efforts, and disgusted by their ill-success, did not respond to the expectations of Shirley. Feebly supported in his own province, the commander-in-chief was fiercely assailed by Johnson and Delancey, who ascribed to his

alleged want of military experience, the ill success of the late expeditions against Niagara and Crown Point, and whose intrigues presently procured his recall.

Acts were passed in Pennsylvania for enrolling a volunteer militia and for raising rangers by enlistment. Having been very active in procuring these enactments, Franklin undertook the military command of the frontier, with the rank of colonel, and, under his directions, along the base of the Kittaniny Mountains, from the Delaware to the Maryland line, a chain of forts and block-houses was erected, commanding the most important passes, and inclosing the greater part of the settlements. This volunteer militia, however, was far from satisfactory to the proprietary party, who sought by every means to obstruct it, and the act, at the request of the proprietaries, was presently set aside by a royal veto. On the other hand, some of the sturdier Quakers protested against a tax for war purposes, and advised a passive resistance to its collection. William Denny, a military officer, was sent out to supersede Morris, as deputy-governor. (1756.)

The proprietary of Maryland having relinquished his claim to the fines and forfeitures, the Assembly granted £40,000, principally in paper money. A provision that papists should pay double taxes toward the redemption of this paper, evinced the still existing force of sectarian hostility. The lands and manors of the proprietary were also included among the articles taxed. Fort Cumberland was too far in advance to be of any use, and a new fort, called Frederick, was built at that bend of the Potomac which approaches nearest the Pennsylvania line.

Fifteen hundred volunteers and drafted militia, commanded by Washington, and scattered in forts, afforded but an imperfect defense to the suffering inhabitants of the Virginia Valley, many of whom abandoned their farms. In apology for the small number of these forces, Dinwiddie wrote to the Board of Trade, "We dare not part with any of our white men to any distance, as we must have a watchful eye over our negro slaves." Dumas, the conqueror of Braddock, in command at Fort Du Quesne, and De Celeron at Detroit, were constantly stimulating the Indians. Du Quesne having returned to the marine service, the Marquis de Vaudreuil de

Cavagnal had been appointed to succeed him as governor of New France.

The French had all along offered to treat; but they demanded, as a preliminary, the restoration of the merchant ships seized by the English-an act which they complained of as piratical. When this was refused, they commissioned privateers, and threatened to invade England with a fleet and army collected at Brest. To guard against this threatened invasion, a body of Hessian and Hanoverian troops was received into England. To excite the colonists to fresh efforts, £115,000 were voted as a reimbursement to the provinces concerned in Dieskau's defeat. Provision was also made for enlisting a royal American regiment, to be composed of four battalions of a thousand men each. A clause, afterward somewhat modified, authorizing the appointment of seventy officers in this regiment, from among the foreign Protestants settled and naturalized in America, gave great offense in the colonies, as did another clause, for the enlistment of indented servants upon a compensation to be paid to their masters out of the colony funds. All hopes of reconciliation being now over, England formally declared war against France, to which the French court presently responded.

Vigorous measures were, meanwhile, in progress for the supply and re-enforcement of Oswego. Bradstreet, of New York, appointed commissary-general, employed in this service forty companies of boatmen, each of fifty men. Under him, Philip Schuyler took his first lessons in the art of war. William Alexander, another native of New York, known afterward in the revolutionary armies as Lord Sterling, acted as Shirley's military secretary. By promises of parliamentary reimbursements, and the advance to Massachusetts of £30,000 out of the king's money, in his hands, Shirley assembled at Albany seven thousand provincials, chiefly of New England, under the command of General Winslow. The remains of Braddock's regiments, ordered on the same service, were presently joined by two new regiments from England, under General Abercrombie, who outranked and superseded Shirley. But the Earl of Loudon, selected by the British war office as commander-in-chief, being daily expected, Abercrombie declined the responsibility of any forward movement.