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Lord Jeffery Amherst’s tour of duty in North America 1758-1763
N O T E F RO M T H E
AUTHORSDon MacNaughton, Amherst ’65, a retired lawyer, was fascinated by 18_ century English history, and had studied it in depth. When the student demonstrations at Amherst College took place in late 2015 and early 2016, one of the most divisive issues became the story that Lord Jeffery Amherst had been involved in a plan to distribute smallpox- infected blankets in an attempt to spread the disease among troublesome Native Americans. Don wrote a thoroughly researched history of General Amherst’s role regarding this question, as well as his interesting tour of duty in North America.
At the same time, Gordon Hall, Amherst ’52, had questioned Lord Jeff ’s banishment as a mascot, and had delivered his class’s concerns in a letter to the Trustees.
After the official vote of the Trustees, there still remained the commonly held perception that the legend of General Amherst’s participation in the infected blankets incident was factual. Perceptions can be as important as facts, and at the time, the College had no choice.
Don and Gordon knew one another from having worked together on the Alumni Fund many years earlier. Gordon approached Don about the idea of changing the tone of Don’s work and distributing it as a straightforward history, relating the events and importantly, the context of the times. Both Don and Gordon agreed that setting the matter straight in a scholarly and dispassionate manner is important. This is the result.
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In 2016 the Amherst College Board of Trustees,
under intense pressure from its students and faculty,
determined to disassociate the College from Lord Jeffery
Amherst, its mascot of over 100 years. The Board
concluded that Lord Jeffery’s image had become too
divisive and disruptive. Indeed it had, and the President
and Trustees were right to remove the mascot, as he no
longer is, and cannot be, a unifying symbol. We do not
seek to challenge or overturn that decision. Rather, in
this paper we wish to present a full and balanced scholarly
history of the man. We do so in an attempt to correct
the misimpression of many in our society who believe
that Lord Jeffery Amherst was an inherent bigot who
gladly practiced germ warfare against Native Americans.
This is not what history tells us. Instead it is a far more
complicated story.
The sources for this paper include highly respected
historical scholarship on the Seven Years’ War and
Pontiac’s Uprising, including several epic works by Francis
Parkman published over 100 years ago, and those of
Prof. Fred Anderson, published within the past 15 years
(see Bibliography for sources). Directly on point is the
authoritative paper by Dr. Philip Ranlet published in the
journal Pennsylvania History in the summer of 2000. Also
informative are several other classic works: Prof. John Shy
on the problems confronting the British Army in North
America prior to the Revolution; Prof. Jack Sosin on the
role of the Midwest in British colonial policy during the
same period; and Dr. Peter Silver’s recent study of the
fear, hatred, and violence engendered in response to the
brutal Indian assaults on colonial settlements in Middle
Pennsylvania at the outset of the Seven Years’ War in
1755, and during Pontiac’s Uprising in 1763.
A career army officer, Jeffery Amherst had served with
distinction in several European conflicts, but he had no
prior experience with American Indians when he was
hand-picked by First Minister William Pitt in 1758 over
numerous more senior officers to command all British
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forces in North America during the Seven Years’ War.
Parkman describes Amherst as “energetic and resolute,
somewhat cautious and slow, but with bulldog tenacity
of grip.” Shy explains how the challenges confronting
the British and French forces in North America were
primarily logistical in nature. Accordingly, Shy writes,
Amherst was the right man for this assignment:
“[Amherst’s] talents were managerial, not inspirational
or tactical. His experience as quartermaster in Germany
had revealed and developed the qualities of care and
method so essential to the North American theater, and
his personality matched his talents.” It was Amherst’s
young subordinate, James Wolfe, the budding resourceful
superstar, who was expected to shine in the field, as he
eventually did.
Prior to Amherst’s appointment, the war with the French
had gone very badly for the British, with the destruction
of Braddock’s force on the Monongahela in 1755, the fall
of Ft. Oswego in 1756, and the loss of Ft. William Henry
at the foot of Lake George in 1757. Each of these disasters
had been accompanied by horrific atrocities. Amherst and
his team succeeded in reversing the tide, culminating in
Wolfe’s stunning capture of Quebec in 1759, as well as
Amherst’s own success at Montreal in 1760. At the end of
this last campaign in late 1760, colonial America rejoiced
at the defeat of the French and their native allies, bringing
to a successful close over 100 years of conflict on the
continent.
Not only were the French ejected from this theater,
but their departure also signified what most colonials
expected to be the end of the repeated surprise Indian
raids on frontier settlements that had resulted in the
death, torture, and enslavement of several thousand
settlers. It had been French policy for decades to induce
their native allies to engage in these marauding actions.
One of the worst of these episodes was the Deerfield
massacre of 1704 when Abenaki warriors swept into the
town of 300, killing 48 inhabitants and dragging off 112
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men, women, and children as
captives, forcing them to march
several hundred miles into
Canada.
As a career army officer,
Amherst had developed
a strong sense of what was
right and wrong conduct in warfare, based solely on his
European experiences. During the American campaign,
he was appalled by the wartime behavior of the Native
American warriors, both those who fought for him
and those against him. What was acceptable, if not
admirable, behavior in their native culture was considered
by Amherst to be horrible barbarities. Perhaps the worst
example was the way French officers stood by while their
native allies brutally massacred the British garrison that
had been given a safe conduct passage as its members
filed out of Ft. William Henry in August 1757. Even the
sick and wounded, remaining bed-ridden in the captured
fort, were slain in the massacre.
For these reasons, when it came
time in late 1760 to negotiate
terms with the French officers at
the conclusion of the fighting in
North America, Amherst refused
French requests for the traditional
terms of honor because, as he
stated at the time, French officers repeatedly had “incited”
their Indian allies to commit “the most horrid and
unheard of barbarities,” and Amherst wished “to manifest
to all the world by [the terms of] their capitulation my
detestation of such practices.”
Following his victory over the French, Amherst wished
to return home where he could expect to receive all
the honors of the conquering hero. He was also deeply
troubled by reports of his wife’s deteriorating sanity.
Instead, Amherst was ordered to take on the difficult task
of garrison duty in North America. This was a daunting
Fort William HenryAttack on Deerfield 1704
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assignment. Amherst and his superiors in London were
thoroughly dissatisfied with the pre-war failures of the
several colonial governments to regulate trade adequately
with the Indians and to protect Indian territory as
recognized by the British Government. As Prof. Sosin
has demonstrated, rather than resort to the old system
of giving the colonies control over such matters, the
British concluded that the best way to avoid any further
warfare with the Indians after 1760 was to step in and
directly manage their affairs. Sosin emphasizes that, as
commander in chief on the ground, Amherst participated
fully in the development of this new policy based upon
the principle of protecting the natives from unscrupulous
colonials.
Amherst was instructed by the Earl of Egremont,
Amherst’s superior in London, to “treat the Indians
upon ... principles of humanity and proper indulgence”
and to beware colonial traders who made “no scruple
of using every low trick and artifice ... to cheat those
unguarded ignorant people .... ” The Indians were to be
accorded “every act of strict justice” and “protection from
encroachments on [their] lands.” Amherst and his Indian
agents consequently issued orders to the western garrisons
commanding that all trade with the Indians take place at
assigned locations and under a licensing system intended
to protect the natives. Other regulations set up an Indian
Reserve beyond the Allegheny Mountains, which was not
to be settled by the colonials. The British army was to
enforce this new system.
Accordingly, after the War General Amherst was required
to try to keep the peace between colonial settlers and
Indian tribes occupying thousands of square miles. He
was compelled to do so, however, with a substantially
depleted force.
Shy describes how the majority of Amherst’s 17,000-man
battle-tested army had been reassigned to the West Indies
as a new phase of the Seven Years’ War opened with Spain
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in 1761-1762. Of the remaining 8,000 regulars available
to him, nearly three quarters were tied down in Canada
to control the French population there. This left only
a handful of troops--fewer than 1,000--to be assigned
across small outposts in the American West, a territory
stretching from western Pennsylvania to Wisconsin.
Neither the British Government nor the colonial
legislatures was willing to spend any more money for
additional troops or augmented fortifications, a stalemate
that eventually led to the Revolution. As a result, with
woefully inadequate resources, Amherst found himself
caught between two overwhelming forces, a tidal wave of
colonial settlers moving West and Indian tribes growing
increasingly aggrieved at such incursions. As Anderson
eloquently observes,
“The intertwined histories of land speculation and frontier
settlement in the postwar colonies seem no more than a snarled
skein of ambition, self-interest, greed and deceit. But these
instances …, in fact, reveal patterns that help clarify the
essential processes of change in the 1760s. The fundamental force
at work in them all, and the power that animated the whole
system of settlement and speculation, was the dynamism of a
farming population seeking opportunity. In the aftermath of
the Seven Years’ War, American farmers moved to take up new
lands regardless of virtually every factor but the safety of their
families. Only violent resistance by native peoples … could
effectively restrain the movements of a population that paid
little heed to any contravening laws, boundaries or policies of
colonial governments.”
British efforts to keep colonial settlers off native lands
failed for lack of manpower. Efforts to prevent colonial
traders from supplying the natives with alcohol and arms
only increased the tensions between native tribes and the
British authorities.
The descent of the French on St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1762
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As Parkman describes, in the aftermath of the war,
an Indian prophet named Neolin preached a return
to old-time warrior instincts, which appealed to many in
the Midwest at the time. The British were criticized for
failing to bestow gifts of arms and alcohol as the French
had done. Neolin’s acolytes also blamed the British
for failing to keep settlers out of their hunting grounds
beyond the Alleghenies.
After several years of relative
calm, the impending storm
suddenly erupted in early May
1763, when an Ottawa chief,
Pontiac, attacked Ft. Detroit.
The uprising spread like wildfire
among numerous other tribes
in the Ohio Country. Eight isolated British garrisons in
Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were wiped
out completely in the next several weeks, with the loss of
225 of Amherst’s men. Hundreds of defenseless settlers,
men, women, and children, were also attacked. The
violence was horrific. For example, the commanding
officer of one overwhelmed garrison was roasted alive over
several nights. Another of Amherst’s officers was boiled
and eaten, and a third had skin from his dead body turned
into a tobacco pouch. Here was a tragic cultural clash
wherein the warlike behavior of one culture was shocking
and anathema to a very different military tradition.
It took many weeks for the full picture to emerge at
Amherst’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan. At first, he
disbelieved the severity of the problem. Meanwhile, in the
West events were moving rapidly. By mid-June 1763, Ft.
Pitt had been cut off and surrounded by hostile warriors.
The lives of several hundred settlers who had fled to the
garrison seeking safety were at risk, along with the troops
stationed there. There was little hope for prompt relief.
On June 24, two Delaware tribal leaders came to the fort
demanding its surrender. Distrusting promises of safety,
the garrison commander, Capt. Simeon Ecuyer, rejected
the Indian demands.
In a famous council on April 28, 1763, Pontiac urged listeners to rise up against the British. (19th century engraving by Alfred Bobbett).
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On parting, the two chiefs were given two blankets and
a handkerchief taken from the garrison’s quarantined
smallpox house. Most leading historians agree that it
is impossible to say with any certainty whether this led
to a new outbreak of the disease among the Indians
because for several years previous smallpox outbreaks had
occurred among the Ohio tribes. Dr. Ranlet’s extensively
researched paper, relying on the journals of colonial
traders who lived among the Indians and upon scientific
analysis of the epidemiology of smallpox, concludes that it
is highly unlikely that the two blankets and handkerchief
caused or could cause an outbreak of the disease.
Amherst was not aware of Ecuyer’s actions, and he had
nothing to do with the captain’s decision to hand over the
blankets and handkerchief. Amherst was in Manhattan
and Ecuyer was in western Pennsylvania. It would
have taken several weeks for them to communicate with
each other, assuming the safe passage of a messenger
through hostile Indian territory. There is no evidence
that Amherst ever learned of the Fort Pitt incident,
and if so, when and how he reacted to it. To quote Dr.
Ranlet, “Neither Amherst nor [his Ohio territory theater
commander, Col. Henry] Bouquet actually tried germ
warfare. The attempt to disseminate smallpox took place
at Fort Pitt independent of both of them.”
This is the only incident
of its kind that we know
of throughout Amherst’s
five-year tenure in North
America. Prior to this time
Parkman mentions one other smallpox incident. Twelve
years earlier, in 1751, the French commanding officer of
Ft. Detroit expressed his hope that reports of smallpox
raging among various Ohio tribes (then allied with the
British) were true, as he believed the epidemic “would be
fully as good as an army.”
In June 1763, Ecuyer may have similarly hoped for this
as a salvation, and as the best chance to save those under
The Siege of the Fort at Detroit, depiction of the 1763 Siege of Fort Detroit by Frederic Remington.
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his protection in the surrounded Ft. Pitt. Yet we need not
focus on Ecuyer and the morality of his actions, as it is
Amherst whom we are trying to understand.
Back at headquarters in New York,
Amherst had been receiving increasingly
disturbing reports from Col. Bouquet,
in Philadelphia. As first Bouquet, and
then Amherst, gradually learned more of
the tragic events unfolding in the far-off
West, the dialogue between them became animated. From
their exchange of letters in June-July 1763, it is obvious
that both European-trained officers were incensed by
the level of the atrocities committed against their troops
and non-combatants. Both men were well aware of the
extraordinary steps undertaken by the British forces to
protect the Indians and their lands. They were angered
that the intended beneficiaries of this protection had so
counterproductively breached the peace, and done so with
such violence. Passions ran very high. Both men used
extreme and abusive language about the rebellious Indians
Henry Bouquet
and spoke of the need to extirpate them. Quotes taken out
of context today as evidence of Amherst’s alleged “racism”
most often arise from this time frame. It is in this context
that Amherst’s correspondence with Bouquet in mid-July
1763 gives us reason to pause. First, Amherst ordered a
“take no prisoners” policy for all Indian warriors involved
in the attacks. Second, Amherst asked Bouquet, “Could
it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among the
disaffected tribes?” Bouquet replied in a manner somewhat
lacking in enthusiasm, writing in a postscript that he
would try it with infected blankets while taking care not
to get the disease himself.
Amherst responded, also in a postscript, “You will do
well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets,
as well as to try every other method that can serve to
extirpate this Execrable Race.” This exchange occurred
several weeks after the incident that had occurred on June
24 at Ft. Pitt. There is no evidence that Bouquet ever
implemented this idea first advanced by Amherst in July,
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or that Amherst ever followed up with any criticism for
the failure to do so, or with an order commanding that it
be done. Over the course of the past 150 years of historical
scholarship, no evidence has been discovered of any other
blanket incidents during Amherst’s North American
tenure beyond what had taken place at Ft. Pitt several
weeks before.
Amherst and Bouquet were far from the only people in
the colonies to react strongly to the sudden resumption
of Native American violence in mid-1763. Dr. Silver’s
research on the Pennsylvania frontier at the time details
the widespread fear and outrage among colonial men
and women as the Indians engaged in raids on their
settlements. The colonials reacted, not only with words,
but with the vilest of deeds. For example, responding to
offers made by colonial leaders, vigilante bands, seeking
the bounties offered for Indian scalps, resumed Indian
raids and murdered and pillaged native villages without
regard to the culpability of the victims. In this context,
the racially charged outbursts of Amherst and Bouquet in
June-July 1763 were by no means unusual or extreme.
Prof. Anderson describes how once Amherst’s initial
“hysterical reaction [to the uprising] … had passed,”
a long-term strategy was devised and implemented
to quell it and to rescue those trapped at Ft. Pitt and
Ft. Detroit. The uprising ran its course in 1764, but
not before Amherst had been recalled to England in
November 1763. By this time the Pitt Government
had fallen and Amherst, with little remaining political
support at Whitehall, was exposed to criticism for having
allowed the uprising to occur. William Pitt was returned
to the government in 1766, and Amherst’s reputation
was gradually restored. He was promoted and raised to
the peerage as Baron Amherst in 1776. In 1778 he was
appointed commander in chief of all British forces world-
wide, a cabinet position. At that time, he was among
the candidates considered to take charge of British forces
fighting in the American Revolutionary War, but after he
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insisted that it would take a huge force of 75,000 troops to
defeat the rebellious colonials, the offer was withdrawn.
He continued to serve in England in a variety of senior
positions through the 1780s and ‘90s, and died in 1797.
These are the facts as we know them today. What should
we make of this man, and of what he said and did? Some
will recognize the context of his position and unfortunate
remarks about the Native American foes. They will
emphasize the fact that his suggestion to use “germ
warfare” was made in anger and never implemented.
Others will focus on the words themselves as inexcusable
under any circumstances, whether acted on or not.
Neither point of view is unreasonable, and therefore Lord
Jeffery has become a divisive figure.
The passage of time also appears to have played a role in
the differing perspectives of the man. For many decades
after retiring to England, General Amherst remained a
hero on this continent. He had stopped the horror and
bloodshed that had prevailed for over a century. It is no
wonder that towns in New York, New Hampshire, Ohio,
Virginia, and Canada, as well as Massachusetts, celebrated
Amherst’s name by taking it as their own. That is the
context of Lord Jeffery over 200 years ago.
The context of 2016 is very different. Society’s guilt for
the manner in which we treated Native Americans in
the intervening 253 years, and changes in our culture
and laws, have provided many of us with a very different
attitude. During this period Amherst’s correspondence
with Bouquet was discovered and published by Parkman,
and over time, as people looked more closely, their
perception of the man changed. No longer is Lord
Jeffrey Amherst deemed to be the perfect conquering
hero. Rather, a fable has grown that he practiced what
we today have outlawed in international conventions as
“germ warfare,” and that he did so without any plausible
motivation other than unbridled hatred for the natives.
As we have demonstrated, the facts available to us today
dispel the fable, but nonetheless, General Amherst’s
blemishes remain.
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These facts by no means excuse Amherst for writing such
vehement racial recriminations in today’s context, but they
do enable us to understand the man in the context of his
times over 200 years ago.
We have provided this information in the most
complete detail that available and reliable records make
possible. Amherst College deservedly prides itself on its
scholarship. We feel closure on the banishment of Lord
Jeff, the mascot whose time was over, is not complete until
a scholarly correction and understanding of the history of
General Jeffery Amherst, the man, is part of the College’s
literature.
Donald T MacNaughton, class of 1965 Gordon Hall, class of 1952
Bibliography01.
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05.
06.
07.
08.
Parkman, Francis. The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War, 6th ed. Boston: Little Brown, 1871.
Parkman, Francis. Montcalm and Wolfe. Boston: Little Brown, 1884.
Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000; London: Faber and Faber, 2000
Anderson, Fred. The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Philip Ranlet, “The British, the Indians, and Smallpox: What Actually Happened at Fort Pitt in 1763?” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 67 (2000): 427-441, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27774278.
Shy, John. Toward Lexington: The Role of the British Army in the Coming of the American Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.
Sosin, Jack M. Whitehall and the Wilderness, The Middle West in British Colonial Policy 1760-1775. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1961.
Silver, Peter. Our Savage Neighbors, How Indian War Transformed Early America. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.
Alessandra Bianchi Herman, class of 1986Copy Editor:
British fort taken by Indians
British fort attacked but not taken
British fort abandoned
French fort
Battle site
Point of interest
Colonial town