WILLIAM SHIRLEY TO WILLIAM WILLIAMS1 [Instructions for Captain Williams] The Great Carrying Place You are as soon as Capt. Marcus Petri arrives here with his Company, to Collect the Detachment that Came under your Command from New York at the East end of this Carrying place and there remain encamp'd till further orders. You are to use your best endeavours to protect the Stores and provisions going over this Carrying place from any attempts of the French or their Indians, and to forward what Stores and provisions may come here for the forces on Lake Ontario, to Oswego with the utmost dispatch, You are to keep twenty Battoes with a proper Number of Battoe men constantly employed in bringing provisions and stores from Johan Jost Herkimer to this place and also 30 Battoes in Carrying the same from Wood Creek to Oswego, you shall be furnished with a power to Impress men if Necessary for this Service, and you are to keep the Slay men employed in Carrying the same from hence to the other end of the Carrying place, and to keep exact accounts of what provisions and Stores come here, what you send to Oswego, and of the Service of the Battoe men and Slay men, employed in the Same, and as none are to be paid for the future without your Certificate of their work, you are from time to time to give them proper Certificates of the same, and you are to give such Certificates to none who quit their work without your leave. And lastly you are from time to time to send me exact returns of the State of your Command and of what provisions and Stores are with you. Endorsed: Genl. Shirley's orders W. SHIRLEY. By his Exys. Command WM. ALEXANDER Secy. 1 P. R. O., C. O. 5, 46. A transcript is in the Library of Con gress. SIR, WILLIAM SHIRLEY TO HORATIO SHARPE1 Camp on the Great Carrying Place between the Mohawk River and the Wood Creek August 13th, 1755. I have but a few Minutes time before I proceed on my March, to write and inclose you a Copy of the Letter and Orders sent to Col. Dunbar. The Successful Execution of them will be of the last Importance to his Majesty's Service. It will now, Sir, depend upon your own Government and those of Pensilvania and Virginia, to assist him with Reinforcements, Provisions, Ammunition, Artillery, Ordnance Stores, Carriages, Horses and all other things, necessary to fit him out for his March, and the Service he is ordered upon. And I have wrote to the same Effect to Govr. Dinwiddie and Morris, whose Assistance with your own I must entirely rely upon at this Extraordinary Crisis. As to the Expence of the necessary Supplies your Honour I know and his Majesty's two other Governors will do the Crown all the Justice you can, in getting your respective Assembly's to bear the whole, or as great a part of it as is possible; the remainder of it I must for the good of his Majesty's Service which is now at Stake, submit to draw upon the Deputy Pay Master for, which you may depend upon it I will, trusting that the Government at Home will take proper Measures for reimbursing the Crown from the Colonies. I am with great regard and Esteem, Sir, Your Honour's most Humble and most Obedt. Servt. The Honble. Horatio Sharpe Esqr. W. SHIRLEY. 1 Original, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. WILLIAM SHIRLEY TO THOMAS DUNBAR 1 SIR, Camp at Canada Creek, August 14, 1755. It appearing to me from several Lists which have been transmitted me of the Officers of his Majesty's two Regiments of foot under the respective Command of yourself and the late Sir Peter Halket who were kill'd in the late Action near the Banks of the Monongahela under the Command of the late Major General Braddock that it is necessary for the good of his Majesty's present Service that the great number of Vacancies occasion'd by the Death of those Officers should be fill'd up as soon as may be by Appointmts to take place until his Majesty's pleasure shall be further known which cannot be done in the most regular and effectual manner until you shall make me a return of the officers of the aforesd Regimts distinguishing those who were kill'd in the Said late Action or are dead of the wounds receiv'd in it, you are hereby directed to make me such Return with the several Ranks of those Officers, and seniority of their respective Commissions in such Ranks, and in the mean time the eldest Lieutenant or Lieutenants in each of the sd Regiments are ordered to do Duty as Captains therein in the room of such Captains as are Killed, and the eldest Ensign or Ensigns to do Duty as Lieutents in their Room until further order. Endorsed: Copy Major General Shirley's letter to Col Dunbar dated Camp at Canada creek, Augst. 14. 1755. 1 P. R. O., C. O. 5, 46. A transcript is in the Library of Congress. WILLIAM SHIRLEY TO SIR THOMAS ROBINSON1 M. G. Shir- Plan for the [Abstract, Plan for the reduction of Canada] This Plan is founded on One, laid during the last War; but Mr. Shirley thinks it would bear some Alterations, and therefore proposes, That the King should Allot the Number of Men to be raised by each Province: This would probably bring into the Field Last Number Order'd to be raised 1 B. M., Additional Manuscript 33029, 202. A transcript is in the Library of Congress. The original letter of which this is an abstract is of 3200 words and is in P. R. O., C. O. 5, 46. This plan proposed by Shirley loses nothing when compared with that adopted by William Pitt in 1759, and carried out by Amherst, Prideaux, and Wolfe supported by an ample naval force. Pitt, indeed, worked along the very lines here proposed. Particularly noticeable is Shirley's argument that with the French driven from Canada the English Colonies could defend themselves. Twenty years later, with a population corresponding to the governor's estimate, they did so. The Governors to be Nominal Colonels of the Provincial Troops, which would be a Saving and also encourage the Inlisting. Arms, Powder, Artillery, Ordnance Stores, and Cloathing, or Materials for it, to be sent over early in the Spring. Each Captain to be chargeable for the Return of the Arms of his Company to the Kings Magazines at Williamsburg, Boston, and New York. A squadron, with five or six regiments from England to rendezvous at Halifax, early in the Spring, and proceed up the River St. Lawrence to Quebec. 3000 New England Men to go up the Kennebeck, and down the Chaudiere; destroy the French Settlements there; cross the River St. Lawrence, and join the English Regiments before Quebec. 3000 more to go from Oswego, cross the Lake Ontario, and thro' the River Iroquois, (which falls into the River St. Lawrence) to the Island of Montreal. And the remaining 11,400 to go thither by Lake Champlain, in which March the strongest Opposition is to be expected. Upon carrying Montreal, a Reinforcement may be sent to Quebec. Embargoes in all the Colonies to prevent the Exportation of Provisions.1 Mr. Shirley, in this Letter, enters into long Reasonings on the many Advantages of taking Canada, and driving the French entirely out of No. America; and as to the Expence of Maintaining such a large Acquisition, He thinks a less Force will be Sufficient, than what is now necessary to defend the Frontiers against the Encroachments of the French, and the Depredations of their Indians; and Mr. Shirley imagines that a Body of 3000 Men, including the 1 The manner in which provisions and indeed supplies of all kinds were exported from the English colonies to the French West Indies had been noticed in earlier wars. It was to be notorious before the conclusion of the war on which Great Britain was entering. Could this practice have been prevented by Shirley's plan or by any other it might have been unnecessary for England to have conquered America in Germany. See Stephen Hopkins to William Pitt in Kimball, Correspondence of William Pitt, 2, 373. |