Taking Canada and Winning the French and Indian War 

The war started in a dispute over possession of the Ohio Territory in 1753. King George II granted leading Virginia planters, who were interested in developing the region, 200,000 acres in the Ohio River valley in 1749. But the French, determined to secure the territory against encroaching British and American traders and land speculators, built a chain of forts along Pennsylvania’s Allegheny River to prevent it. The British ministry determined to repel the French advance. However, their early efforts, including the French defeat of George Washington at Fort Necessity, were dismal failures.

In 1757 William Pitt was named secretary of state and given charge of the war effort.  Viewing America as the place “where England and Europe are to be fought for,” he resolved to commit whatever resources were necessary to defeat the French, not only in the Ohio but over the entirety of North America. This grand vision of driving out the French altogether was coupled by Pitt’s realization that the British government and armed forces could only succeed in his plan by directly involving the American colonies and their legislatures to an unprecedented extent. So he consulted with their governors extensively on all wartime matters, and even more crucially, he funded the expansion, equipage, training and weaponry of provincial militias. So under his tutelage, the American armed forces greatly increased in organization and military knowledge, and its leaders received experience that would serve them in good stead less than two decades later when they formed the backbone of the Continental Army officer corps. His policy of all working together on one grand design also united the previously divided colonies, who first at this time began to see themselves as one. Benjamin Franklin even presented a plan of union in 1754 which would have established a council to levy taxes, raise troops, and regulate trade; but this plan proved to be 12 years premature.

Pitt’s strategy worked. By the summer of 1758, the British had 50,000 men in uniform in North America, serving as British regulars or in colonial provincial regiments—a number equal to the entire white population of New France. That year the British, with colonial forces directly involved, seized Louisbourg, a French fortress guarding the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. In 1759, British forces with their colonial militiamen sailed up that river, laid siege to the city of Québec for three months, and defeated French forces in September. Pitt’s plan for the 1760 campaign was ambitious and planned to be decisive: to take Montreal and the rest of Canada, and bring the war to a successful conclusion. For this effort he would need all the troops he could get, and he again turned to the American colonies for manpower.

Probably no colony was more supportive of the French and Indian War than Connecticut, under Governor Thomas Fitch. It mobilized one out of every five of its men to fight, over 20,000 soldiers. Besides supplying manpower, Connecticut aided the cause by provisioning troops with flour, wheat, beef, and pork. Proportionate to size and resources, Connecticut expended the most of any other colony for the war effort. In the field, Connecticut men helped build Port William Henry on Lake George and took part in the offensive against Fort Louisbourg. In 1759, they assisted the British in the capture of the French fort at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, and its soldiers, led by future Revolutionary War general Israel Putnam, participated in the epochal Battle of Quebec.

Document Signed, 6 full pages, Whitehall, London, January 7, 1760, to the “Governor & Company of Connecticut” and marked “duplicate.” In it, Pitt discusses the goal of the campaign, orders the province to raise troops, offers compensation, and ends by providing inspiration. This is Pitt as war leader. “His Majesty having nothing so much at heart as to improve the great and important advantages gained the last Campaign in North America; & not doubting that all his faithful & brave subjects there will continue most cheerfully to cooperate with…completing the reduction of all Canada…, I am commanded to signify to you the King’s pleasure that you do forthwidth use your utmost endeavors and influence with the Council and Assembly of your Province to induce them to raise…at least as large a body of men as they did for the last campaign.” He continues, saying the men will be sent “into Canada, in order to reduce Montreal & all other posts belonging to the French,” and authorizing Fitch to appoint officers. He continues by stressing that Britain would bear the expenses incurred by Connecticut, affirming it would send “arms, ammunition & tents,” and vessels for transportation “at the King’s charge.” He ends saying that “the future safety and welfare of America are so nearly concerned, & the King doubts not from your known fidelity and attachment that you will employ yourself with the utmost application & dispatch, in this promising & decisive fight.”

Fitch and Connecticut again responded positively. Israel Putnam was appointed to lead Connecticut forces in the 1760 campaign, and he and they distinguished themselves in the fall of Montreal. This ended French reign in North America and indeed the war itself in the western hemisphere. The war in Europe between the same parties did not end until 1763, when the  the Treaty of Paris was signed. That treaty officially gave Britain all French land in Canada except for two tiny fishing islands south of Newfoundland.

In 1765 the post-Pitt British government sought to get the American colonies to repay the monies Britain had expended on the war in America, claiming it was for the colonists’ good that it was fought. They passed the Stamp Act, placing a tax on a wide variety of official documents. Considering that Pitt, in letters like this written to American leaders on behalf of the King, and with the Prime Minister’s assent, had explicitly committed that Britain would bear all expenses for the war, this was considered treachery in America. The sense of betrayal caused by this soon led to the American Revolution.