The contest with France

Competing claims in North America

It was inevitable that Great Britain and France should wage a struggle for mastery in North America. Two powers could not occupy the same land without a desperate battle for supremacy. In its century-long course and its far-reaching consequences, this became one of the epic contests of modern history. It was a protracted war between two peoples, two cultures, and two sets of political and religious institutions. Fought out with the deep wilderness as the setting and background and involving the Native American tribes as participants on both sides, its marches, sieges, and battles have a picturesqueness seldom found in modern war. It produced leaders of high character and ability: Louis de Buade, comte de Palluau et de Frontenac, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, and Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Grozon, marquis de Montcalm on the French side, and James Wolfe, Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, John Forbes, and George Washington among the Anglo-Americans.

Led by Samuel de Champlain and by Jesuit, Recollect, and Franciscan churchmen, the French strove with little success in the first half of the 17th century to develop Canada as a colony. Seeking fish, furs, and converts in a chilly, difficult land, they failed to plant strong agricultural settlements. The despotic if paternal government in Paris kept the colonists under tight rein instead of encouraging self-government and individual initiative based on the English model; it refused to allow any but Roman Catholics to immigrate instead of inviting persons of all faiths. By 1660 only a few thousand French were settled in all of Canada. But when Louis XIV came to the throne, he showed an intelligent interest in New France. His government sent out shiploads of emigrants, gave generous subsidies, encouraged exploration, and helped fur traders and missionaries carry French influence through the Great Lakes region. In 1659 the first bishop, François de Montmorency Laval, an able, iron-willed man, arrived in Quebec, determined to make the church dominant in a livelier, more energetic colony.

Then in the last quarter of the century the greatest of the French governors, the count de Frontenac, made New France a genuine threat to English America. During his regime, which with one short interval lasted from 1672 to 1698, the great explorations of Jacques Marquette, René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, and Louis Jolliet opened the way into the West. They mapped much of the upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys; La Salle descended the Mississippi to its mouth and penetrated Texas. Two other explorers, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, entered the country beyond Lake Superior. Frontenac, with characteristic ability and determination, asserted the authority of the secular arm over the church. The hostile Iroquois had practically wiped out the friendly Huron and Erie tribes among whom the Jesuits had made their best converts. Frontenac chastised the Iroquois and temporarily broke their strength. As New France expanded, the English became alarmed. In Europe the Stuarts, subservient to the French crown, made way in 1688 for William and Mary; and William III, who had defended the Netherlands against the attacks of Louis XIV, was ready to continue hostilities. The conflict at once spread to North America, where it was called King William’s War (1689–97).

In this first round of the long conflict, neither side accomplished much. Enlisting Indian allies in a ruthless campaign, the French raided the English colonies from Schenectady, New York, to Haverhill, Massachusetts, and along the Maine coast. In return the English organized an expedition which captured Port Royal in Acadia (now Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia), and sent a fleet of 34 ships under Sir William Phips which disastrously failed to take Quebec. The final Treaty of Rijswijk left matters just as they had previously stood. After a brief breathing space, Queen Anne’s War (1702–13), contemporaneous with the War of Spanish Succession in Europe (1701–14), followed. While John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, won his brilliant victories in Europe, hostilities ran their former course in America. The French once more conducted raids with the Indians on exposed settlements; the Anglo-American forces once more retaliated with descents on Canada. While a new expedition against Quebec again failed, this time by shipwreck, New England troops and British marines recaptured Port Royal. But this time the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave the British Empire great gains: in Europe, Gibraltar and Minorca; in America, Acadia, Newfoundland, and a great belt of territory surrounding Hudson Bay.

The final test of strength lay not far ahead. In preparation the French set up a belt of forts around British America. They had founded Mobile, Alabama, in 1702, and established New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1718. They connected these Gulf ports with Quebec by nine important posts. Fort Chartres on the Mississippi opposite St. Louis, Missouri; Vincennes and French Fort on the Wabash River; Fort Miami on the Maumee River; Fort St. Joseph near the lower tip of Lake Michigan; Michilimackinac and Sainte Marie on the upper lakes; Detroit, guarding Lake Huron; and Niagara, guarding Lake Erie. Thus New France possessed itself of the heart of the continent, confining British America to the seaboard. When a new conflict broke out, King George’s War (1744–48), the American phase of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48), the French maintained their vital positions. They had built a strong fortress at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island to guard the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, and it sheltered privateers who harried New England commerce. Gathering all their energies, the New Englanders under William Pepperrell astonished everyone by capturing it. This was a brilliant feat. When peace was made, however, Great Britain returned Louisbourg to France.

Once more the French took steps to strengthen their position. Laying claim to the whole Ohio Valley, they built a new chain of forts from what is now Erie, Pennsylvania (Presque-Isle), to the Allegheny River. This was an area in which Anglo-American fur traders and land companies had a strong interest. When the French warned British traders away from the country, Gov. Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia sent George Washington to tell the French in turn to keep off and to build a fort on the site of present-day Pittsburgh. The sequel was the capture of the site by the French, their erection of Fort Duquesne, and a clash between French troops and Virginia militia under Washington. Thus opened the final conflict of the two empires in North America.

The French and Indian War

The French had certain advantages in this hard-fought struggle, which became known as the French and Indian War (1754–63) in America and the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) in Europe. France was more populous than Great Britain, with larger military forces, and theoretically could send over greater armies. The highly centralized government of New France could wage hostilities more efficiently than the loosely associated colonies under 13 different governments. The strategically placed French forts were an important asset. But in the end the British colonies were certain of victory. They had a population by 1754 of about 1,500,000, which was 15 times as great as that of New France. They held a superior strategic position; operating from inside lines, they could strike at almost any point in the long, thinly peopled French crescent extending from Louisbourg to New Orleans. The British navy, superior to the French, could better reinforce and supply the armies and could lay siege to the ports of New France. Finally, both Britain and British America excelled in leadership. William Pitt the Elder, as prime minister of Great Britain, proved himself a greater statesman than anyone in France; James Wolfe, Jeffery Amherst, and William Howe were a trio of generals the French could not equal; and such colonial officers as George Washington and Phineas Lyman showed real ability.

At first the war went badly for the Anglo-American effort. Expeditions in 1755 against the French forts at Niagara and at Crown Point on Lake Champlain broke down. An army marching under Gen. Edward Braddock to seize Fort Duquesne fell into an ambush and was almost destroyed, with the death of its commander. The next year a brilliant French soldier, the marquis de Montcalm, arrived and gave his forces new energy and organization. He at once captured the British post at Oswego on Lake Ontario, while in 1757 he took Fort William Henry at the southern tip of Lake George. Later he defeated a British attempt to invade New France by way of Ticonderoga and Lake Champlain.

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But after Pitt flung himself into the tasks of war with enthusiasm and vision, the current changed its course. He mobilized the army and navy on a scale never before seen in America. He obtained from the colonial governments, impressed at last with the gravity of the contest, a new degree of cooperation. In 1758 a three-pronged plan of campaign was pushed with adequate resources, able generals, and indomitable determination. Gen. John Forbes cut a road across Pennsylvania and seized Fort Duquesne, evacuated by the French; Amherst took the fortress of Louisbourg for the second and last time; and other troops took possession of outposts on the Ohio River. In the summer of 1759 came the decisive stroke of the war in America. General Wolfe, after two months of unsuccessful siege at Quebec, found a path up the cliffs, led 4,500 troops up under cover of night, and at dawn on September 13 confronted Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham commanding the city. Wolfe died in battle, but not before he heard that the French were in flight. Montcalm was borne back mortally wounded during the rout. The capture of Quebec decided the campaign, the war, and the fate of New France. The next year Montreal fell to Amherst.

The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Great Britain all the French possessions in America east of the Mississippi save two small fishing islands and the island of New Orleans. Spain, which had entered the war, ceded Florida to Great Britain. The whole eastern half of the continent—except for New Orleans, which France turned over to Spain—became part of the British Empire. It was a matter of great and almost immediate concern to Americans that Louisiana and all French claims west of the Mississippi were ceded to Spain. The British during the war had captured Cuba and the Philippines from the Spaniards; the fact that they were quietly returned to Spain would in time also concern American policy. But the greatest fact of all was that for the moment the colonies seemed free from all threat of aggression.