PREFACE.

      In the correspondence of Governor Sharpe, the earlier portion of

    which is now for the first time published, we have one of the most

    precious sources of information concerning a momentous period in our

    colonial history, the final struggle between England and France for the

    possession of North America.

      About the year 1745, the Marquis de la Galissonière, Governor-

    General of Canada, foreseeing the approach of the inevitable contest,

    began to take steps toward realising the gigantic scheme of linking

    together all the territories that the French possessed or claimed in

    North America, by a chain of fortified posts, extending, by the way of the

    St. Lawrence, the lakes, the Ohio and the Mississippi, from the Bay of

    Fundy to the Gulf of Mexico. His successor, the Marquis Du Quesne

    de Menneville, in pursuance of this strategy, after connecting Montreal

    with the Rivière aux Bœufs (flow French Creek) in Pennsylvania, by a

    cordon of small forts, in 1754 made preparations for further advances on

    such a scale as seriously to alarm the colonial and home governments,

    which determined to take active measures in resistance.

      Horatio Sharpe, who succeeded Ogle as Governor of Maryland in

    1753, was a man of both military and colonial experience, having seen

    service in the West Indies. His appointment was probably due in part

    to family influence, as his brother John had been one of the guardians

    of the young Proprietary, Frederick, sixth and last Lord Baltimore; and

    partly to the obvious expediency of placing a military man at the head

    of a province so near the French advance, and already threatened by

    them, as they laid claim to all the lands watered by affluents of the

    Ohio.

      On his arrival, Sharpe proceeded to place himself in communication

    with the governors of the other colonies, and soon became a sort of

    centre for all the military operations in the south. Actual hostilities

    began in April 1754 by the capture of a small English fort at the

    junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers, by Contrecœur, the

    French commander at Rivière aux Bceufs, who at once proceeded to

    convert it into a formidable fortification, which he called Fort Du

    Quesne. Col. Joshua Fry had been sent by Gov. Dinwiddie of Virginia

    to garrison the English post, with about 300 militia and Col. George

    Washington as his second in command; but before he reached the spot,

    the fort had been surrendered. When Washington, who was on the

    march, learned this news, he advanced cautiously, making a road as he

    went; and while thus employed he fell in with a party of French