WILLIAM JOHNSON TO WILLIAM SHIRLEY

[Extracts]1

June 19, 1755

With your Excellency's favour of the 9th Inst. I received a Specification of the Sundrys which your Province have provided and are providing. Herewith I send you a list of those things which are yet wanting or of which there is not a sufficient quantity in the said specification relating to the Artillery, and which I must earnestly recommend to your Excellency may be furnished without loss of time. The Report of the Committee of both Houses, in which they have concurred, and your Excellency consented, I have read and considered and beg leave to observe thereupon,

That the £600 therein mentioned for the Indian Service, is not specified to be Sterling or what Currency. I make no doubt it is the former and that the word Sterling is an omission. In this you will make me positive.

To establish the Indians into Companys of 100 men each with Captains, Lieutenants and Ensigns, is impossible, that sort of regularity cannot be obtained amongst those People their officers must be Interpreters and take care of them in all respects, besides doing their Duty as officers. Ensigns will be needless. You may depend I will employ no more officers than what are absolutely necessary for the service. Herein I expect the Governments will confide in me and they shall have no just cause for reproach.

The Pay set down for me, their Proportion of which your Province is to be answerable for, I submit to, but surely your Government doth not intend or suppose these Wages (as they term it) is to supply me with Equipage, with necessarys, charge of servants and the various other Expences which the Command will subject me to. I am far from intending or desiring a support for a vain or useless Ostentation, but

1

1 Original, Johnson Manuscripts, 2, 24; printed: Doct. Hist. of New York (Quarto), 2, 386.

they will I presume think it necessary that I sustain the honour conferred upon me with a Decent Dignity; the troops will naturally expect to see it, the officers to feel it, neither my policy nor my spirit will allow me to disgrace the Character I am placed in. The Province of New Jersey have agreed to give Collo. Peter Schuyler who commands but 500 men £300. Currency for his Table &ca. Is not a Secretary, are not Aid de Camps necessary about me, is there to be no Establishment for them; must they be always of my Table?

I supposed these matters would naturally occur to the Gentlemen of your Legislature, and I thought it would with more propriety come from them then be proposed by me. Perhaps thro hurry it may have been omitted in the Report you send me for the Wages allowed me are I suppose considered only as a compensation for my Time and Fatigue. Tho I make no objection on that head, yet I must on this occasion say, that no pay which even a lavish Generosity might have given me would be adequate to the loss and prejudice I shall sustain in my own private affairs, and if publick spirit had not prevailed with me above all other motives, I should have declined the honour which was offered me. I have already declared to you Sir and permit me to repeat it, that I disavow the least Intentions or desire of increasing my private fortune by this Command. I laid it to account in the best light, that I should be a considerable looser. I am contented to be so as far as I can prudently bear. I am fully sensible and Gratefull for the honour done me, I am ambitious, and if the Plan agreed upon at Alexandria is put into Effect, I hope with the Divine assistance to do honour to my Country, and Contribute to her future Tranquility.

Your Excellency must pardon me for giving you so much interruption on this subject, but I thought myself obliged to be thus explicit.

If the Indians should agree to assist us in our enterprizes, they will throw themselves immediately upon me for their maintainance, which will be daily a very great Expence. If

the measures agreed upon against the French, of which in my principal Speech I shall give them some general Notices, should be laid aside, depend upon it, we shall loose them for ever, nay I fear if we are not successful their opinion of us will be very fatal for our Interest. If on the Contrary we should chastize the Insolence of the French, drive them from their Encroachments and maintain our Conquests, I dare prophecy with common prudence on our side, the French will not rule a Nation of Indians on the Continent, and the Inhabitants of these Colonies will reap a thousand fold for their present Expences, and enjoy their possessions in uninterrupted security. . .

...

WILLIAM SHIRLEY TO SIR THOMAS ROBINSON 2

SIR,

Boston, New England, June 20, 1755.

I had the honour to acquaint you in my last 3 that Major General Braddock had inform'd me by letter from Williamsburg soon after his arrival in America, of the plan of operations he propos'd this year, vizt the attack of the French Forts upon the Ohio with the two British regiments, two of the New York Independent Companies and the Provincial troops of Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, amounting all of them to about 2400 men, under his own command; and the reduction of the French Forts at the Strait of Niagara with the two American new rais'd regiments, which service he

1 In a letter of June 15, Shirley had written Peter Schuyler that Lt. Col. Thomas Ellison, Johnson, John Henry Lydius and Schuyler were to confer upon the proper measures to be taken to convey the troops destined for Niagara in the expedition under Shirley's command. Manuscripts in N. Y. State Library (1909).

2 P. R. O., C. O. 5, 15. Printed: Docts. rel. Col. Hist. of New York, 6, 953; 2 Penna. Arch. 6, 245. With this letter Shirley forwarded copies of the Minute of the Council of Alexandria of April 14, Braddock's instructions and letter of April 16, his own message to the Massachusetts Assembly of June 13, and the answer of the General Court to that message, ante, p. 190, note.

See Shirley to Robinson, Mar. 24, ante, p. 144.

purposed to put under my command. The measures for removing the French from their incroachments upon the Isthmus of Nova Scotia and St John's River were as I had before acquainted you Sir, concerted, and the expedition against the French incroachments at Crown point form'd, before the General's arrival. The business of my own Government (the General Court being sitting when I received His Excellency's letter) and in particular the disposition and orders relative to the two last mention'd expeditions, which were requisite to be settled before I left the Province in order to keep all the preparations going on in my absence, for carrying them into execution in case the General should approve of them at my interview with him, necessarily detained me from setting out from Boston untill the 30th of March. On the twelfth day of April I arrived at the Camp at Alexandria in Virginia, about 565 miles distance from this place, where I had the honour of meeting the General and the same day, after consulting with Commodore Keppell and myself, His Excellency determin'd upon the whole plan which consisted of the before mention'd operations upon the Ohio, at Niagara, in Nova Scotia, and Crown Point, to be executed as near as might be about the same time. The first part of the plan indeed, was in effect concluded upon, and several steps taken in it (the whole corps of the British Regiments, except two Companies, being march'd with their baggage and greatest part of the train of artillery for Winchester in their way to Wills Creek) before my arrival.

The attempt to remove the French from their incroachments in Nova Scotia and at Crown Point were, upon my communicating the propos'd schemes for effecting them, to the General, both intirely approv'd of by him; and an express was thereupon sent the same day, with his directions for Colonel Lawrence1 immediately to proceed in the former

1 Charles Lawrence was a member of His Majesty's Council in Nova Scotia in 1749. He became Administrator of the government, November 1, 1753; Lieutenant Governor, October 21, 1754, and Governor of the Province July 23, 1756. Major of the Royal

according to the plans concerted between him and me, without staying till the regiments in Nova Scotia should be compleated to 1000 men each for which he had lately received orders. The attempt of the reduction of the French Forts at Niagara with mine and Sir Wililam Pepperrell's regiments (as His Excellency had propos'd in his letter) was at the same time determin'd upon by him, and in order to secure the important pass there in the most effectual manner, it was agreed to have some vessells forthwith built to command the navigation of the Lake Ontario; the care of doing which the Commodore hath committed to me.1

According to this plan, the French will be attack'd almost at the same time in all their incroachments in North America; and if it should be successfully executed in every part, it seems highly probable that all points in dispute there with them may be adjusted this year, and in case of a sudden. rupture between the two Crowns the way pav'd for the reduction of Canada, whenever it shall be His Majesty's pleasure to order it.

After I parted with the General, I found from the deficiency of Sir William Pepperell's levies, that there was no prospect of his raising more than 600 men by the time that the troops destin'd for Niagara must begin their march, and as two of the Companies of his regiment were order'd to be posted at Oswego upon an expectation that the French would attack it which will reduce them to 1400 men, and that force would in the general opinion as well as my own be too weak an one to secure the pass at Niagara; in my return thro' the Government of New Jerseys, I apply'd to the Assembly which was then sitting there, to permit the Regiment of 500 men, which they had lately voted to raise for the expedition against Crown Point, to join their forces under my command in the reduction of Niagara, and prevail'd with

American Regiment in 1750, he was advanced to the post of Colonel on Sept. 28, 1757, and became Brigadier General in America on Dec. 31 of the same year. He died Oct. 19, 1759.

1 Braddock's instructions to Shirley for the Niagara campaign are in A. H. Hoyt, Pepperrell Papers (1874), p. 20.