Two hundred and fifty years ago Cumberland County was the focus of one of the three battles in 1758 that would change the outcome of the French and Indian War in North America. Carlisle, the new seat of Cumberland County, was the launching point for the third military expedition to attempt to take Fort Duquesne from the French and open up the Ohio country to English traders. General John Forbes would lead this campaign and succeed where others had failed. This paper will consider the campaign primarily through the words of the people who were there. General Forbes, Colonel Henry Bouquet and Reverend Thomas Barton all left letters, journals, and reports that have been preserved, and these primary sources form the core of this article.
So why did the English want the French to leave the Ohio country? The short answer is money. Both New France (Canada) and the British colonies in North America existed to further the economies of their respective mother countries. Both France and England claimed the Ohio country and its natural resources. While the English colonies included warmer regions where tobacco and other cash crops grew, the colder climate in New France provided fewer choices for the Canadians to produce that were of value to France. Canada's main export to France was pelts, especially beaver, that could be used to make felt. Hat industries in Europe consumed vast amounts of felt made from fur from North America. The best felt for hats was made using the underhairs of the beaver and other aquatic mammals. The best fur came from the coldest places, which in North America meant Canada.
For the most part, colonists did not hunt or trap animals for their pelts. The main source of these furs was trade with the various Indian nations. The Indians brought the furs from the interior of the continent to trading posts established by the colonists. The English had higher quality goods at lower prices than the French, but the Indians had to travel farther to reach the English trading posts.
There were few roads in colonial America and most of those were poor. Most travel was done by water. Lakes and rivers were the natural transportation venues. While the English colonists lived east of the Appalachian Mountains, the French colonists lived near the Saint Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, as well as the tributaries of these bodies of water. This gave the French claim to Canada, the Ohio country, the Illinois country, and Louisiana, a vast area that nearly surrounded the British colonies. A Canadian could travel all the way from Quebec City to New Orleans by water, with only a few portages. On such a trip he would pass the spot where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River- the site of modern Pittsburgh. This location became the focal point of the opening years of the French and Indian War. However, the story actually starts a few years earlier. In 1753 the Ohio Company of Virginia sent a group of men under the leadership of veteran woodsmen William Trent, Thomas Cresap and Christopher Gist to build a fortified trading post on a bluff near were the three rivers meet. Before they could finish building the post they were driven from the area by the French. Since this territory was claimed by Virginia, that colony's governor, Robert Dinwiddie, sent George Washington, then only 21 years old, on a diplomatic mission to ask the French to leave. The French, at their winter quarters of Fort Le Boeuf, received him politely bur refused his request.
The following summer (1754) Governor Dinwiddie again sent George Washington on a mission, this time a military one. Washington led a force of over 200 Virginians and South Carolinians on a mission to evict the French from what was now Fort Duquesne. On the way there, Washington attacked a French patrol after which the leader of the patrol, Ensign Jumonville (brother to the commander of Fort Duquesne), was killed by an Indian allied with the British. Washington retreated a few miles to a place called Great Meadows, built a fort he called Fort Necessity, and waited for the French to arrive. When they did, Washington was dealt his first military defeat. After one day of fighting, in which rain spoiled most of his men's gunpowder, Washington accepted the generous French surrender terms. He and his men were allowed to leave the fort (ironically on July 4th, 1754) with their guns and baggage, their flag, and one of their cannons.
One of the Hamilton Library's oldest 18th century manuscripts provides a unique glimpse into what life was like for Pennsylvania's soldiers serving in America's French and Indian War, the 250th anniversary of which is now being commemorated.