Sold – Landing British Regiments in America For the French and Indian War

In January 1756, John Stanwix was named colonel and given the job of organizing the Royal American Regiment, which under his direction was to become one of the most noted regiments in the British Army. In 1758 he was promoted to general and began his successful defence of the frontier regions from the French. He built Fort Stanwix, which secured the Mohawk Valley, then constructed Fort Pitt to secure Pittsburgh. Archibald Kennedy was commander of the Royal Navy station at New York (and one of the colony’s greatest landowners. He held title to the island on which the Statue of Liberty now stands).

Autograph Letter Signed, New York, August 19th 1756, to Kennedy who was acting as “agent for transports.” “Please deliver to the commanding officers of the different regiments all their stores, baggage etc. belonging to their respective regiments, which sloops are to be paid by the respective regiments whose stores they carry – or as Lord Loudon shall direct at Albany.”

Loudon was the British commander-in-chief. It is quite a commentary on the inefficiency of British military and civil organization at the time that paying for the equipping of even the most crucial regiments, at a dangerous juncture of a major war, was not the responsibility of the national government but of each individual regiment. And these regiments, in turn, had to deal with the individual ships that had carried their goods.