The Revolutionary War was formally ended by the Treaty of Paris in early 1783. Problems with compliance arose on both sides nearly immediately on several issues. One was the continued occupation by Great Britain of the so-called “Western Forts.” These forts should have reverted to American hands according to the terms of the Treaty. The […]
In 1777, the third year of the American War for Independence, little had gone in the favor of the Patriots especially in the borderlands. They controlled Fort Pitt and several other outposts, but they were far from the main fighting; the region was considered a backwater theater. British governor of Detroit Henry Hamilton issued a […]
During the Revolutionary War, Pittsburgh was a place of constant political and economic intrigue, double-dealing, subversion, back-stabbing, disloyalty, and treachery. One of the earliest and most jaw-droppingly ambitious plans to secure the city for the British came from the mind of Dr. John Connolly.[1] Word of his “plot” spread widely across the colonies in 1775 […]
In the wake of the Seven Years’ War in North America, the costly British triumph seemed complete. Thus, when a coda to the Seven Years’ War erupted in the interior of North America, it came as an unwelcome shock to the British Empire. War broke out anew, nominally led by the Ottawa chieftain Pontiac, who […]
In 1774, as tensions between colonials and Native Americans living along the upper Ohio River grew, settlers either fled east of the mountains or forted up. During the summer, Maj. Angus McDonald of the Virginia militia marched over the Appalachians to Wheeling on the Ohio River and joined the locals like Ebenezer Zane, the town’s founder, […]
During the American Revolution, British-allied Native Americans raided American homesteads and settlements all along the Ohio Valley. As the war progressed, the increased frequency and ever-widening circle of Indian raids forced the Continental Congress and Army to respond. In 1778, a Congressional committee studied the matter and concluded that a defensive war “would not only […]
In June 1777, Henry Hamilton, the British lieutenant governor for Quebec and Superintendent for Indian Affairs at Detroit, held a council at Detroit with all who would attend. His goal was simple: mobilize the western Indian nations to attack Americans all along the Ohio frontier, just as the Six Nations were doing along the northern […]
