The chain of forts, at first seventeen, afterwards increased to fifty, built by the Assembly on the Pennsylvania frontier was a good plan so far as it went, but it was merely defensive and by no means completely defensive, since Indian raiding parties could pass between the forts.They served chiefly as refuges for neighboring settlers.The colonial troops or militia, after manning the fifty forts and sending their quota to the operations against Canada by way of New England and New York, were not numerous enough to attack the Indians.They could only act on the defensive as Franklin's command had done.As for the rangers, as the small bands of frontiersmen acting without any authority of either governor or legislature were called, they were very efficient as individuals but they accomplished very little because they acted at widely isolated spots.What was needed was a well organized force which could pursue the Indians on their own ground so far westward that the settlers on the frontier would be safe.The only troops which could do this were the British regulars with the assistance of the colonial militia.
Two energetic efforts to end the war without aid from abroad were made, however, one by the pacific Quakers and the other by the combatant portion of the people.Both of these were successful so far as they went, but had little effect on the general situation.
In the summer of 1756, the Quakers made a very earnest effort to persuade the two principal Pennsylvania tribes, the Delawares and Shawanoes, to withdraw from the French alliance and return to their old friends.These two tribes possessed a knowledge of the country which enabled them greatly to assist the French designs on Pennsylvania.Chiefs of these tribes were brought under safe conducts to Philadelphia, where they were entertained as equals in the Quaker homes.Such progress, indeed, was made that by the end of July a treaty of peace was concluded at Easton eliminating those two tribes from the war.This has sometimes been sneered at as mere Quaker pacifism; but it was certainly successful in lessening the numbers and effectiveness of the enemy.
The other undertaking was a military one, the famous attack upon Kittanning conducted by Colonel John Armstrong, an Ulsterman from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the first really aggressive officer the province had produced.The Indians had two headquarters for their raids into the province, one at Logstown on the Ohio a few miles below Fort Duquesne, and the other at Kittanning or, as the French called it, Attique, about forty miles northeast.At these two points they assembled their forces, received ammunition and supplies from the French, and organized their expeditions.As Kittanning was the nearer, Armstrong in a masterly maneuver took three hundred men through the mountains without being discovered and, by falling upon the village early in the morning, he effected a complete surprise.The town was set on fire, the Indians were put to flight, and large quantities of their ammunition were destroyed.But Armstrong could not follow up his success.Threatened by overwhelming numbers, he hastened to withdraw.The effect which the fighting and the Quaker treaty had on the frontier was good.Incursions of the savages were, at least for the present, checked.But the root of the evil had not yet been reached, and the Indians remained massed along the Ohio, ready to break in upon the people again at the first opportunity.
The following year, 1757, was the most depressing period of the war.The proprietors of Pennsylvania took the opportunity to exempt their own estate from taxation and throw the burden of furnishing money for the war upon the colonists.Under pressure of the increasing success of the French and Indians and because the dreadful massacres were coming nearer and nearer to Philadelphia, the Quaker Assembly yielded, voted the largest sum they had ever voted to the war, and exempted the proprietary estates.The colony was soon boiling with excitement.The Churchmen, as friends of the proprietors, were delighted to have the estates exempted, thought it a good opportunity to have the Quaker Assembly abolished, and sent petitions and letters and proofs of alleged Quaker incompetence to the British Government.
The Quakers and a large majority of the colonists, on the other hand, instead of consenting to their own destruction, struck at the root of the Churchmen's power by proposing to abolish the proprietors.And in a letter to Isaac Norris, Benjamin Franklin, who had been sent to England to present the grievances of the colonists, even suggested that "tumults and insurrections that might prove the proprietary government unable to preserve order, or show the people to be ungovernable, would do the business immediately."Turmoil and party strife rose to the most exciting heights, and the details of it might, under certain circumstances, be interesting to describe.But the next year, 1758, the British Government, by sending a powerful force of regulars to Pennsylvania, at last adopted the only method for ending the war.
Confidence was at once restored.The Pennsylvania Assembly now voted the sufficient and, indeed, immense sum of one hundred thousand pounds, and offered a bounty of five pounds to every recruit.It was no longer a war of defense but now a war of aggression and conquest.Fort Duquesne on the Ohio was taken; and the next autumn Fort Pitt was built on its ruins.Then Canada fell, and the French empire in America came to an end.Canada and the Great West passed into the possession of the Anglo-Saxon race.
