The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775

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The Military Journals of Two Private?by Abraham Tomlinson

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Soldiers, 1758-1775, by Abraham Tomlinson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 With Numerous Illustrative Notes
Author: Abraham Tomlinson
Release Date: February 21, 2007 [EBook #20636]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Transcriber's note: Author's spelling has been retained.]
[Illustration: RUINS OF FORT TICONDEROGA (From Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution.)]

THE
MILITARY JOURNALS
OF TWO
PRIVATE SOLDIERS,
1758--1775,

WITH
NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES
TO WHICH IS ADDED,
A SUPPLEMENT,
CONTAINING
OFFICIAL PAPERS ON THE SKIRMISHES AT LEXINGTON AND CONCORD.

POUGHKEEPSIE: PUBLISHED BY ABRAHAM TOMLINSON, AT THE MUSEUM. 1855.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854,
By ABRAHAM TOMLINSON,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Southern District of New York.

STEREOTYPED BY C. C. SAVAGE. 13 Chambers Street, N. Y.
C. A. ALVORD, PRINTER, 29 Gold Street, N. Y.

ADVERTISEMENT.
Having been, for several years, engaged in the establishment of a Museum in Poughkeepsie, I have, by extensive travel and research, and by the kindness of many of my fellow-citizens in Dutchess county and elsewhere, obtained numerous objects, not only curious in themselves, but valuable as materials for history. Among these are two manuscript Journals, kept by common soldiers, each during a single campaign, and written at periods seventeen years apart. One of these soldiers served in a campaign of the conflict known as the FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR, which commenced a hundred years ago; the other soldier assisted in the siege of Boston, by the American army, in 1775 and 1776. Believing that a faithful transcript of those Journals, given verbatim et literatim, as recorded by the actors themselves, might have an interest for American readers, as exhibiting the every-day life of a common soldier in those wars which led to the founding of our republic, I have yielded to the solicitations of friends, and the dictates of my own judgment and feelings, and in the following pages present to the public faithful copies of those diaries.
Perceiving that much of the intrinsic value of these Journals would consist in a proper understanding of the historical facts to which allusions are made in them, I prevailed upon Mr. LOSSING, the well-known author of the "Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution" to illustrate and elucidate these diaries by explanatory notes. His name is a sufficient guaranty for their accuracy and general usefulness; and I flatter myself that this little volume will not only amuse, but edify, and that the useful objects aimed at in its publication will be fully attained. With this hope, it is submitted to my fellow-citizens.
ABRAHAM TOMLINSON. POUGHKEEPSIE MUSEUM, December, 1854.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
The conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, and in Europe as the Seven Years' War, originated in disputes between the French and English colonists, in the New World, concerning territorial limits. For a century the colonies of the two nations had been gradually expanding and increasing in importance. The English, more than a million in number, occupied the seaboard from the Penobscot to the St. Mary's, a thousand miles in extent; all eastward of the great ranges of the Alleganies, and far northward toward the St. Lawrence. The French, not more than a hundred thousand strong, made settlements along the St. Lawrence, the shores of the great lakes, on the Mississippi and its tributaries, and upon the borders of the gulf of Mexico. They early founded Detroit, Kaskaskia, Vincennes, and New Orleans.
The English planted agricultural colonies--the French were chiefly engaged in traffic with the Indians. This trade, and the operations of the Jesuit missionaries, who were usually the self-denying pioneers of commerce in its penetration of the wilderness, gave the French great influence over the tribes of a vast extent of country lying in the rear of the English settlements.
The ancient quarrel between the two nations, originating far back in the feudal ages, and kept alive by subsequent collisions, burned vigorously in the bosoms of the respective colonists in America, where it was continually fed by frequent hostilities on frontier ground. They had ever regarded each other with extreme jealousy, for the prize before them was supreme rule in the New World. The trading-posts and missionary-stations of the French, in the far Northwest, and in the bosom of the dark wilderness, several hundred miles distant from the most remote settlements on the