was dispatched to the Chesapeake with two British regiments. Two regiments of a thousand men in each were ordered to be raised and officered in New England, and three thousand men were to be enlisted in Pennsylvania by the authority of the crown. In April, Braddock met a convention of colonial governors at Alexandria, where three expeditions were determined upon. One, commanded by himself, was to proceed against Fort Duquesne, and expel the French from the Ohio; a second, under Shirley, of Massachusetts, recently appointed major-general, was to march against Niagara; and a third, under Johnson, a man of vast influence among the Six Nations, was to undertake the capture of Crown Point, on the western shore of Lake Champlain.[1]
Braddock was a brave soldier, and had served with credit in the field; but he was entirely ignorant of the peculiarities of warfare in the New World, and what was worse, was determined to take no advice from those better informed than himself. Vexed at the delays in the means of transportation, and the malpractices of the contractors, he indulged himself in no measured terms against every thing and every body in America, and became less and less disposed to listen to any advice. Franklin visited him at Fredericton, ostensibly in discharge of his duty as post-master, and offered his intervention with the farmers and others, in order to expedite matters for the general's proposed campaign. Braddock gladly availed himself of this timely aid. Franklin also ventured to hint the possibility of danger in the new kind of warfare which was before the royal troops. "In conversation with him one day," says Franklin, "he was giving me some account of his intended progress. 'After taking Fort Duquesne,' said he, 'I am to proceed to Niagara; and having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time, and I suppose it will; for Duquesne can hardly detain me three or four days; and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.' Having before revolved in my mind," continues Franklin, "the long line his army must make in their march by a very narrow road, to be cut for them through the woods and bushes, and also what I had read of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, who invaded the Illinois country, I had conceived some doubts and some fears for the event of the campaign. But I ventured only to say, ' To be sure, sir, if you arrive well before Duquesne, with these fine troops, so well provided with artillery, the fort, though completely fortified, and assisted with a very strong garrison, can probably make but a short resistance. The only danger I apprehend of obstruction to your march, is from the ambuscades of the Indians, who, by constant practice, are dexterous in laying and executing them; and the slender line, near four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise in its
- ↑ According to a return made to the Board of Trade, the population of the colonies amounted at this date to nearly 1,500, 000, of which not quite 300,000 were blacks. The population of New France was hardly 100,000.
