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 OSWEGO : 
 
 An Historical 
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 GEORGE T. CLARK 
 
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OSWEGO 
 
 An Historical 
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 DELIVERED JULY 15, 1896, AT THE CENTENNL4L CELEBRATION 
 OF THE EVACUATION BY THE BRITISH OF FORT ONTARIO, 
 OSWEGO, NEW YORK, AND THEIR SURRENDER OF THE 
 MILITARY POSTS OF THE NORTHERN FRONTIER TO THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
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 GEORGE Tv^LARK 
 
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OSWEGO: 
 
 AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 
 
 The event in the history of the country commemo- 
 rated here to-day well merits the marked attention it 
 receives. The presence of these distinguished guests, 
 the cessation of our customary employments, this pro- 
 cession of soldiery and citizens, the oration of a famous 
 orator, accord with the significance of the occasion. 
 This old town, endeared to its citizens for its native 
 charms and for the cherished memories and associations 
 of family and friends, happy at welcoming within its 
 walls to-day this great company who is come hither to 
 honor its notable career, has a horizon in history far 
 wider than the compass of yonder lake or yonder shore. 
 
 The place and time suggest to every thoughtful mind 
 occurrences and scenes not easily surpassed for substan- 
 tial importance and striking effect. Here, in a primeval 
 forest, long ago, an old world's civilization met with a 
 new world's savagery, until the one, paling before the 
 presence of the other, dwindled and like a spirit has 
 passed away. Here people of different races, hostile by 
 long tradition, came across the sea and found fresh cause 
 of strife for supremacy. Here passed to and fro the 
 earliest emissaries of the cross, bringing to barbaric 
 tribes the hope of the new faith. Here, as well as else- 
 where, were the little beginnings of the great trade and 
 business of the land whose vast life now dominates its 
 
career. And here, too, a hundred years ago a new ship 
 of state slipped her last cable, and, steering an unknown 
 course, swept forth upon the main. 
 
 To rightfully perform the office allotted to me, to 
 properly connect this occasion with the great lines of 
 history, to acceptably tell the story of Oswego, is as far 
 beyond the limits of my time as it is beyond the limits 
 of my abilities. 
 
 We celebrate to-day the surrender to the United 
 States of the military posts of the northern frontier. 
 We commemorate the final departure from this fortifi- 
 cation of English troops, and the end of England's rule 
 over territory of the United States. 
 
 This was in 1796. What were the causes? How 
 came it that, thirteen years after articles of peace and 
 twenty years after independence was declared, England 
 held and would not yield this place, still in the virgin 
 forest, and fronting this distant lake? What the loca- 
 tion, what its importance, and what its history, that she 
 should care for it? 
 
 The new nation was more than a decade old; York- 
 town was long since fallen and Cornwallis' sword sur- 
 rendered, at hearing which Lord North had cried out in 
 despair, -It is all over!" In 1782 Charleston and 
 Savannah were evacuated. Peace was made in 1783 
 and November 25, 1783, the British troops sailed 
 from New York. The Continental soldiers were long 
 since familiar heroes, and the stories of Lexington, and 
 Saratoga, and Valley Forge, already twice-told tales at 
 many a hearthstone. Long since had Washington writ- 
 ten to Lafayette, now gone home and soon to light the 
 fires of liberty on the altars of France: "Envious of 
 
none, I am determined to be pleased with all; and this* 
 my dear friend, being the order of my march, I will 
 move gently down the stream of life until 1 sleep with 
 my fathers." But ere he slept, obeying the voice of the 
 people as the voice of God, he quitted Mt, Vernon, his 
 quiet harbor on the Potomac, to encounter the storms 
 of the Chief Magistracy. When Oswego was yielded 
 by the British, his matchless career was well-nigh over. 
 Long since had the feeble articles of confederation of 
 the disunited states been exchanged for the constitu- 
 tion of the states united. The long wait for North 
 Carolina and Rhode Island to come in was over. The 
 Northwest territory had been ceded to the general gov- 
 ernment. Hamilton had "struck the rock of national 
 resources, and abundant streams gushed forth ; had 
 touched the dead corpse of public credit, and it had 
 sprung upon its feet." Universal peace had been made 
 with Indian tribes; the infant nation had already put 
 down one insurrection. It stood upon its feet, stalwart, 
 facing the world. And yet, in 1706 the banner of 
 Great Britain still flew within the boundaries of the 
 United States, over the posts of Ogdensburg, Oswego, 
 Niagara, Erie, Sandusky, Mackinaw, and Detroit. 
 
 The cause of this anomaly is not found in the history 
 of a broken treaty alone. Such a rehearsal might indi- 
 cate the proximate cause tor England's retention of this 
 fort, but the root of the matter lies in deeper and richer 
 soil. 
 
 In the last resort, the important, part for which 
 Oswego was cast in the history of the country, and I 
 may say in the history of two continents, during the 
 eighteenth century, fell to it because of its native, its 
 
6 
 
 original gifts. These are no less dominant in the 
 career of principalities and towns than in the career 
 of the individual. Like the mental and moral equip- 
 ment of a man, the physical and geographical equipment 
 of a nation or a town are a predominating factor in its 
 fate, infiltrating all the stream of life, ameliorating mis- 
 fortune, rendering success more successful, and getting 
 the most from opportunity. 
 
 The career of Oswego is accounted for chiefly by its 
 location. So it has been, and so it will continue to be. 
 Even now the same native force of her location which had 
 free scope in the eighteenth century is heard to move as 
 if to bring forth in the twentieth. 
 
 But in the eighteenth century the land was a wilder- 
 ness; the mysterious, the well-nigh impenetrable forest 
 was everywhere, tree upon tree, thicket upon thicket, 
 rock upon rock. Who can describe it? — its gloom, its 
 grandeur, its depths, its awfulness. There the sun seldom 
 struck its beams. There were the haunts of wild beasts, 
 the bear, the wolf, the wildcat. There, the only high- 
 ways, rough, tortuous, uncertain foot trails. To traverse 
 them was an art; to lose them, suffering and even death. 
 
 In such conditions the site which Oswego occupied 
 had its extraordinary advantages. From it the water 
 went everywhere — the broad lake, the full running 
 river. These were her talismen. The streams, the 
 lakes, the rivers — these were the open, the unhindered 
 pathways of that distant time. The canoe of the red 
 man, the batteau of the voyager, the shallop of the 
 European, from camp to camp, from post to post, voy- 
 aged over them, penetrating the fastnesses of forest and 
 swamp where foot could scarcely find a way, skirting 
 
the shores of the great inland seas away toward the set- 
 ting sun. No situation on the continent surpassed 
 Oswego in that day for facilities in this communication. 
 Far from the fringe of Atlantic settlements, deep in the 
 endless woods, all roads led to her. 
 
 Toward the west stretched the blue Ontario, as fresh, 
 as fair, as tickle as to-day, drawing her waters from the 
 waters of half a continent, from Erie, Huron, Michigan, 
 Superior, from their myriad attendant lakes and streams, 
 netting those limitless lands in silver meshes. OH" there 
 were the Wyandotfs, the Ottawas, the Nippissings. 
 Well knew they Oswego, the English market for pel- 
 tries and skins. 
 
 From the south ran the strong, the rapid Oswego, 
 our familiar, beautiful stream, pouring with unceas- 
 ing flow the waters of those many limpid lakes that 
 in the basin of New York catch from surrounding slopes 
 and hills the countless rills and brooks. There was the 
 land of the Iroquois, the Six Nations, "the Romans of 
 the new world," most knowing, most ambitious, most 
 courted, most feared of the whites. The Indian, the 
 trader, the missionary, the pioneer, the soldier, with few 
 carries, passed with ample w r ater south and westward 
 for two hundred miles. South and eastward, the Mo- 
 hawk, close at hand, hurried down its lovely valley their 
 frail barks to Albany, the Hudson, and the sea. That 
 way, first the enterprising Dutch and thou the masterful 
 English, in 16G4, were in possession. 
 
 To the north and east, across the lake, opened the St. 
 Lawrence, that majestic river of the world, bearing on 
 its bosom a thousand islands, tumbling its waters along 
 the rapids, sweeping them by the ancient settlements of 
 
8 
 
 Montreal and Quebec, and pouring them far away into 
 the broad arm of the Atlantic. There were the French. 
 The pen falters that approaches the theme of the French 
 in Canada. What a story! So many heroic lives; so 
 many saints and martyrs of the Church! Such soldiers, 
 such pioneers, leaving the courts and halls of Paris and 
 Versailles to perish from famine, the winter, and the flood, 
 living with savages and dying without friends! The 
 India of the East could furnish no more to the imagin- 
 ation of Burke himself than could this India of the West. 
 
 Such was the situation of Oswego; such the territory 
 that ministered to its importance. 
 
 The name is Indian — Oshwakee, Oswago, meaning 
 " The flowing out of the waters." With the French it 
 was Chouaguen. 
 
 It was inevitable that the " pioneers of New France" 
 who followed Cartier along the great pathway of the St. 
 Lawrence, pushing westward, should almost in the 
 beginning come to this locality. As early as 1615, Sam- 
 uel de Champlain, who of all that brilliant company of 
 French crusaders left the most enduring mark, passed 
 directly through or very near to it. Tiring of the inac- 
 tivity of Quebec as he had tired of Paris before, he was 
 engaging his dauntless spirit in a second expedition 
 against the Iroquois. This was five years before the 
 Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and but six years after 
 Hendrick Hudson discovered the river that bears his 
 name. 
 
 With the peace that followed Champlain's unsuc- 
 cessful war upon the Indians, came followers of the 
 cross — brethren of the order of Ignatius Loyola. In 1653 
 Father Joseph Poncet, and in 1655 Father Pierre Chau- 
 
mont passed through Oswego from Montreal on missions 
 to the Onondagas, chief nation of the six. The wilder- 
 ness of the new world provoked no fears in their hearts 
 equal to their fears for the unconverted. In the spring 
 of 1655, Father Claude Dablon, with three other Jesuit 
 fathers and a company of fifty Frenchmen under Sieur 
 Dupuis, lingered at Oswego on their way to make 
 a settlement with the same people. In two years the 
 settlement failed, and all returned the same way to 
 Montreal. 
 
 From 1690 to 1696, Count de Frontenac, the vigor- 
 ous Governor of Canada, founder of Kingston, making 
 Oswego his base of operations, dispatched expeditions 
 against the Iroquois to drive them from alliance with 
 the English and into alliance with himself. In July of 
 the latter year, old man that he was, he appeared at 
 Oswego with a veritable army of Canadians and Indians, 
 having cannon, mortars, and grenades, and journeying up 
 the rapid river against the Onondagas, found their 
 villages deserted. Some chroniclers relate that on this 
 expedition Frontenac erected at Oswego a stockade. If 
 so, this was the earliest fortification here. 
 
 And now to the west and north the Dutch and 
 English traders in fur from Albany and the east pressed 
 their way among the Indians. Oswego lay on a straight 
 road toward home. Soon the red men anticipated at 
 Oswego the coming of the white, and there, in 1722, 
 William Burnet, Provincial Governor of New York, 
 hardly less distinguished as the son of the celebrated 
 prelate, author of "Burnet's History of His Own Times," 
 built a trading-house. The following year fifty-seven 
 canoes went from Oswego to Albany with seven hundred 
 and thirty-eight packs of beaver and deer skins. 
 
10 
 
 The French post at Niagara and the later one at 
 Toronto in vain essayed to intercept this trade. The 
 Abbe Piquet, a Jesuit priest and chronicler, writes in 
 his diary: "Oswego not only spoils our trade, but 
 puts the English into communication with a vast num- 
 ber of our Indians, far and near. It is true that they 
 like our brandy better than English rum; but they 
 prefer English goods to ours, and can buy for two 
 beaver-skins at Oswego a better silver bracelet than 
 we sell at Niagara for ten." Oswego owed this advan- 
 tage of five beaver-skins to one largely to her place on 
 the map. 
 
 In the spring of 1727, Governor Burnet erected on 
 the west side of the river, toward its mouth, on what is 
 now the intersection of VanBuren and First streets, a 
 masonry redoubt, loopholed for musketry, to protect his 
 trading-post. It was sixty feet by thirty, and forty feet 
 high. This was Fort Oswego, or "Oswego Old Fort," as 
 it was afterwards described. The French called it Fort 
 Chouaguen, and later Fort Pepperell. In 1741, the Pro- 
 vincial Assembly voted six hundred pounds to build a 
 wall about it "with a bastion in each corner to flank the 
 curtains." John Bartram, a Pennsylvania traveler, thus 
 describes it in 1743: "On the point formed by the 
 entrance of the river stands the fort or trading castle; 
 it is a strong, stone house, encompassed with a stone 
 wall near twenty feet high, and one hundred and twenty 
 paces round, built of large, square stones, very curious 
 for their softness. I cut my name in it with my knife. 
 The town consisted of seventy log houses, of which one- 
 half are in a row near the river, the other half opposite 
 to them." 
 
11 
 
 The Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor-General of 
 Canada, immediately demanded its evacuation, declaring 
 it to be a manifest breach of the treaty of Utrecht. 
 The diplomatic Burnet got the question referred to 
 London and Versailles, and nothing came of it. 
 
 Hitherto the conflicts between the French and Eng- 
 lish in America were faint echoes of their continental 
 strife. But in the final struggle now impending the 
 rival colonies were chief figures. The treaty of Aix la 
 Chapelle in 1748 was a weak compact in essential par- 
 ticulars. It lasted not so long as either the peace of 
 Ryswick in 1697 or the peace of Utrecht in 1713. 
 
 Says a modern writer: "It is customary in the 
 United States to regard Wolfe's victory at Quebec as 
 the solstice in the ecliptic of modern history, since it se- 
 cured America for English institutions, and American 
 civilization is to dominate the world." Says Parkman : 
 "It supplied to the United States the indispensable con- 
 dition of their greatness, if not of their national ex- 
 istence." 
 
 This view of the French and Indian war discloses 
 Oswego upon a height of historical prominence not gen- 
 erally appreciated. Its figure in this great struggle 
 towered among the highest. 
 
 In a letter to the Provincial Assembly in 1740, Gov- 
 ernor Clark, of New York, writes that Oswego was the 
 only English military post on the northwestern frontier, 
 and if captured, nothing prevented the French from 
 holding all the lands from Canada to Georgia. "The 
 peace and happiness of the plantations and the trade 
 of England, if not the very being of His Majesty's 
 dominion on this continent, depend on the holding of 
 
12 
 
 Oswego," he says. Governor Clinton wrote to his 
 Assembly in 1744 that it was "the key for the commerce 
 between the colonies and the inland nations of Indians." 
 The possession of Oswego by the English was a thorn 
 in the side of the French. SaysParkman: " No Eng- 
 lish establishment on the continent was of such ill omen 
 to the French." To them it was the hated Chouaguen. 
 
 Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts, first commander- 
 in-chief of the British forces in America, and a man of 
 great energy, regarded Oswego as more important than 
 any post, and to it he first gave his attention. By his 
 orders Colonel Mercer constructed, in October, 1755, 
 Fort Ontario, very nearly, if not precisely, on the site of 
 the fort where we now are. It was a substantial fortifi- 
 cation, one hundred and eighty feet on each side, built 
 of pickets eighteen inches in diameter, rising nine feet 
 from the ground, and surrounded by a ditch eighteen 
 feet wide by eight feet deep. It appears to have been a 
 "starred fort." A third and inferior fortification, known 
 as "Oswego New Fort," or "Fort George," he also 
 erected on the high ground of the west bank, on what is 
 now the southwest corner of Van Buren and Seventh 
 streets, and where is now the residence of Hon. Edwin 
 Allen. It was one hundred and seventy feet on each 
 side, with ramparts of earth and stone twenty feet 
 thick and twelve feet high, encompassed with a ditch 
 fourteen feet broad and ten feet deep. 
 
 The French and Indian war was formally declared in 
 May, 1756. On July 3d of that year the command of 
 Colonel Bradstreet, returning to Albany from Oswego, 
 where he had been with stores and reinforcements for 
 the garrison, was waylaid above Minetto by French and 
 
13 
 
 Indians under DeVilliers. Bradstreet withdrew his men, 
 about two hundred and fifty in number, to Battle Island, 
 repulsed the enemy after a sanguinary fight, and cross- 
 ing to the mainland, finally put them to flight, 
 
 In August of the same year, the Marquis de Mont- 
 calm, commander of the French troops in America, and 
 hero of many continental engagements, was before 
 Oswego with a force variously stated at from three 
 thousand to five thousand men. There is in the posses- 
 sion of the library of the city the original map of Oswego, 
 made by an engineer of this expedition, Chevalier 
 Chaussegros de Lery, and used by the French in their 
 attack. It discloses, in addition to the fortifications 
 already mentioned, a fourth, in the nature of a lunette or 
 small outwork, situated apparently near the intersection 
 of the present West First and Schuyler streets. 
 
 But few details of the conquest of Oswego by 
 the French can be given here. The English force 
 of about eighteen hundred men was divided between 
 Fort Ontario, in command of Colonel Littlehales; Fort 
 Oswego, in command of Colonel Mercer, and Fort 
 George, in command of Colonel Schuyler. The French 
 approached from their landing-place, about three miles 
 east, and invested Fort Ontario. After delivering a 
 somewhat brisk fire from the fort, the English with- 
 drew across the river to Fort Oswego. The French, 
 occupying Fort Ontario, turned their batteries upon 
 Fort Oswego and Fort George upon the hill. Twenty- 
 five hundred Canadians and Indians crossed the river 
 and attacked from the land side. On August 14, 1756, 
 the remaining fortifications capitulated, after Colonel 
 Mercer had been killed. Fifteen hundred men were 
 
14 
 
 captured, Shirley's and Pepperell's regiments, veterans of 
 Fotenoy, and, in addition, seven vessels of war, one 
 hundred and thirty-nine guns, and large stores of 
 ammunition and provisions. Among the English cap- 
 tives was Francis Lewis, afterwards a signer of the 
 Declaration of Independence. The forts were demol- 
 ished. The zealous Abbe Piquet erected over the ruins 
 of this fort a cross, on which appeared the words " In 
 hoc signo vincunV Near by he raised a staff bearing the 
 arms of France, and wrote beneath the words "Manibus 
 date lilia plenis" The captured flags were carried in 
 triumph through the streets of Montreal and Quebec, and 
 hung like votive offerings in their cathedrals. 
 
 The loss of Oswego was regarded in England as a 
 national misfortune. Pitt, the Great Commoner, taunted 
 the ministry with it from the opposition benches. The fall 
 of Henry Fox and the accession of Pitt to power were 
 doubtless partially precipitated by it. Horace Walpole, 
 the most famous letter writer in English literature, writes 
 to Horace Mann from Arlington street, under date of No- 
 vember 4, 1756, as follows: "Minorca is gone; Oswego 
 is gone; the nation is in a ferment; Oswego, often times 
 more importance than Minorca, is annihilated." Let it 
 be recalled that Minorca was the strongest place in Eu- 
 rope after Gibraltar. November 15 he writes: "The 
 massacre at Oswego happily proves a romance; part of 
 the two regiments that were made prisoners are actually 
 arrived at Plymouth, Quebec being too scanty to admit 
 additional numbers." 
 
 In 1758, Louis XV. struck a medal to commemorate 
 the victories of France. On the obverse appears his bust, 
 entitled "Imperator Orbis" the Ruler of the World; on 
 
15 
 
 the reverse appear the following names: " Wesel, Oswego, 
 Port Malion, St David" Port Malum, on Minorca, was 
 the most important fortress in the Mediterranean, cap- 
 tured by the French in 1756; St. David, the strongest 
 fort in India, taken by Count Lally in 1757; Wesel, the 
 fortified town of the French on the lower Rhine, success- 
 fully held against siege, and Oswego, the most valued 
 position in North America, captured by Montcalm in 1756. 
 These were the tokens of the title of the world-conquer- 
 ing Louis. One of these medals is the property of Mr. 
 Theodore Irwin, of this city. 
 
 With Pitt as Prime Minister, English affairs in North 
 America took a turn. 
 
 The forts being demolished, Oswego was suffered by 
 the French to slip back to the English. In August, 
 1758, General Bradstreet, with Major-General Schuyler 
 and three thousand men, crossed from Oswego in bat- 
 teaux, whaleboats, and a small schooner, and took Fort 
 Frontenac, now Kingston, from the French — a disheart- 
 ening loss. July 1, 1759, General Prideaux, with two 
 thousand regulars, and Sir William Johnson, with one 
 thousand Indians from his seat on the Mohawk, proceed- 
 ing from Oswego, captured Fort Niagara after a long 
 siege. While they were gone the Chevalier de la Corne 
 attempted in vain to retake Oswego, then guarded by 
 six hundred provincials under General Haldimand. 
 
 September 18, 1759, Quebec fell, and Wolfe and 
 Montcalm gained immortality. In that year Fort On- 
 tario was rebuilt, and became the base of operations 
 against Montreal, the seat of the French Empire in 
 Canada. August 10, 1760, Lord Amherst, with ten 
 thousand men and thirteen hundred Indians, embarked 
 
16 
 
 from Oswego against Montreal. The spectacle of this 
 great army of red-coats and Indians, at that time one of 
 the largest ever assembled on the continent, can better 
 be imagined than described. With the surrender of 
 Montreal on the 8th of September, the Seven Years' 
 War in America, regarded as a great crisis in its history, 
 was at an end. The peace of Paris, nearly three years 
 later, left little to France east of the Mississippi but a 
 share in the fisheries of Newfoundland and the St. 
 Lawrence. 
 
 After the peace the post of Oswego was garrisoned 
 by the Fifty-fifth Infantry, a Scotch regiment from Ster- 
 ling, under command of Major Alexander Duncan. The 
 daughter of one of his captains was Annie McVicar, who 
 became Mrs. Grant, the authoress of the " Memoirs of 
 an American Lady," published in London in 1808, justly 
 celebrated sketches of maimers and scenery in America 
 as they existed prior to the Revolution. She tells us 
 that in 1760 in the hollow south of this fort there was 
 a fine garden, which "throve beyond belief or example," 
 and also a bowling green and fish pond. 
 
 This, also, was about the time and this the place in 
 which Cooper laid the scene of his renowned romance of 
 Mabel, Jasper, and the Pathfinder. 
 
 In the summer of 1766, Pontiac, the great Ottawa 
 chieftain, who had captured all but three of the West- 
 ern posts, and for years defied his enemies, at length 
 submitting, journeyed to a great council fire at Oswego 
 from his seat in the West, to meet the English and the 
 Iroquois, with Sir William Johnson at their head. The 
 pipe of peace passed around, and Pontiac and his dusky 
 followers voyaged homeward On the lake, each with a 
 
17 
 
 medal bearing this inscription: "A pledge of peace and 
 friendship with Great Britain, confirmed in 1766." 
 
 Thereafter trade, the ward of peace, was left to in- 
 crease and multiply at Oswego. 
 
 The center of the storm known as the French and 
 Indian War passed over this locality; the center of the 
 greater conflict of the Revolution, now at hand, lay to 
 the south and east. The limits imposed by time and 
 the occasion allow of no excursion into the history of 
 that war. Oswego's part in it was, by comparison, in- 
 considerable. She stood like a sentinel on the outskirts 
 of the battle. The war's alarms sounded faintly on her 
 ears. Seldom was she drafted into active service. 
 
 The British made haste to range the savages of the 
 land on their side. The baronial family of the Johnsons 
 on the Mohawk, sons of the famous Sir William, were 
 the chief emissaries for this purpose. Twice did they, 
 with Joseph Brant and the execrated Butler, organize 
 grand councils of the red men at Oswego to win them 
 over. On July 27, 1777, Colonel Barry St. Leger, with 
 Canadians and Indians, whose purpose was to co-operate 
 with the army of Burgoyne from the north tor an invasion 
 of the Valley of the Mohawk, set forth from Oswego. Up 
 the river moved this army of two thousand white men 
 and Indians. They besieged Fort Schuyler, on the Great 
 Carry, between Wood's Creek and the Mohawk, where 
 the waters flow one way to the lakes and the oilier to the 
 sea, and on August 6th fought with the provincials one of 
 the bloodiest battles of the war — Oriskany. There the 
 valiant Herkimer, wounded and dying, withstood the foe. 
 At length the relief of Arnold, raising the siege of the 
 fort, turned the overwhelming tide and rescued Central 
 
18 
 
 New York. The defeated English hastened to Oswego, 
 and there scattered, some to Montreal, some to Niagara. 
 Fort Ontario was left unoccupied. In July, 1778, Ameri- 
 cans under Lieutenant McClelland destroyed it to prevent, 
 as- far as possible, its reoccupation. In the eyes of the 
 Indian allies of the English, the vision of Oswego, the 
 time-honored Chouaguen, laid low, was ominous. They 
 besought the English to restore it, but in vain, and, as 
 report goes, it was not until some time between 1780 and 
 1782 that Fort Ontario was partly raised from its ruins 
 and supplied with a garrison of British soldiers. 
 
 Almost the last, if not the last, military movement of 
 the Revolution was directed against Fort Ontario. Con- 
 scious of its importance to the British in their relations 
 with the Indians, Washington at Newburgh directed 
 Colonel Willett with a small force to surprise and cap- 
 ture Fort Ontario. This was as late as January, 
 1783, the news of the signing of the treaty not yet 
 being received. Willett reached the fort, but his ex- 
 pedition was unsuccessful, owing to the severity of the 
 cold and snow, and his failure to surprise the garrison. 
 
 Thus it has been attempted to outline the important 
 part played by Oswego in the great drama of the 
 continent. It fell to her because of her location; by 
 reason of that it was as inevitable as are any human 
 events. Thereafter, until the war of 1812, she was a 
 passive quantity in the controversies and parleys that 
 arose over the terms of peace of 1783, to finally subside 
 in the evacuation by the British in 1796 which we are 
 here to celebrate. 
 
 And now to the proximate causes of this day. The 
 scene is shifted to Paris and Versailles. There were 
 
19 
 
 the captivating, the wise Franklin, the sturdy Adams, and 
 the astute Jay, waging the diplomatic battles of their 
 country against the reluctant commissioners of Great 
 Britain. The negotiations which resulted in the definite 
 treaty of peace, September 3, 1783, are declared by 
 high authority to have been " one of the most brilliant 
 triumphs of the whole history of modern diplomacy." 
 Certain it is that the opposition to the terms of it in 
 Parliament turned Lord Shelburne out of office. In the 
 item of transcendant importance — namely, territory — the 
 success of the American commissioners was beyond all 
 expectation. " The boundaries must have caused aston- 
 ishment in America," wrote De Vergennes, the French 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Luzerne, the representa- 
 tive of France in America. And so they did. Against 
 the secret eiforts of France herself to prevent, the 
 American triumvirate pushed the boundaries of the 
 new nation over the Alleghanies as far as the Missis- 
 sippi, secured the priceless right to navigate that river, 
 to fish on the Newfoundland banks, and to an opening to 
 the Pacific. Chief credit for this exploit is commonly 
 given to Jay, and yet Franklin's tact and Adams' bold- 
 ness were indispensable. 
 
 There were, however, other provisions of this famous 
 convention with which we to-day have especially to do. 
 They were the adjustment of troubles deeply vexing the 
 two countries, touching keenly the sensibilities of their 
 peoples. The treaty provided that private debts on each 
 side should be paid, and that Congress should recom- 
 mend the state legislatures to restore estates confiscated 
 from British citizens and their American sympathizers. 
 The debts referred to were for the most part obligations 
 
20 
 
 incurred to English merchants by American merchants 
 for goods sold prior to the commencement of the war. 
 
 The seventh article of the treaty was as follows: 
 "His Britannic Majesty shall with all convenient speed, 
 and without causing any destruction and without carry- 
 ing away any negroes or other property of the American 
 inhabitants, withdraw all his armies, garrisons and fleets 
 from the said United States, and from any port, harbor 
 or place within the same." The requirements of this 
 article were not fulfilled. British troops sailed from 
 New York taking negroes with them, and when Baron 
 Steuben, on behalf of the Americans, proceeded to assert 
 formal possession of the military posts on the northern 
 frontier, it was denied him. No orders had been re- 
 ceived, said General Haldimand, to evacuate, but only 
 to cease hostilities. For thirteen years soldiers of the 
 foreign power mounted guard, flew their country's ensign, 
 and fired the evening gun over Fort Ontario and the 
 frontier posts. This spectacle was a constant irritation. 
 Nor was its effect merely sentimental. British officers 
 levied duties on American boats passing Oswego. Trad- 
 ers and boatmen were in a ferment. They vented their 
 wrath by seizing batteaux of goods in charge of the 
 Johnsons, the ancient allies of the British, at Three Riv- 
 ers, on the Oswego. 
 
 England's retention of the northern posts cost Ameri- 
 can fur-traders dear. A list of furs advertised at London 
 for the spring sales of 1787, as stated in the American 
 Museum, contained over three hundred and sixty thou- 
 sand skins, which were valued at two hundred and 
 twenty-five thousand pounds. These figures convey 
 some notion of the trade largely diverted from American 
 traders at Oswego, Albany and New York. 
 
21 
 
 But it is not to be understood that Great Britain 
 willfully continued her possession of the posts. In 
 November, 17 ( «>2, Jefferson, then Secretary of State, 
 formally opened the subject of the violation of the 
 seventh article of the treaty by the retention of the posts, 
 with Hammond, the English envoy to this country. The 
 explanation came quickly that the King-, his master, had 
 suspended that article because of the failure of Congress 
 to prevent the hindrance of British creditors in collect- 
 ing their debts, and because estates confiscated from the 
 Tories had not been restored. The charge was true. 
 Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and 
 South Carolina had every one enacted statutes blocking 
 the machinery of the law against English creditors. To 
 the other charge of failure to restore the confiscated 
 Tory estates, Jefferson replied that the only engagement 
 had been to recommend a restoration of the estates, not 
 to restore them. The claim was made at the time that 
 English handlers of the profitable fur trade influenced the 
 British ministry to delay a settlement whilst they were 
 enjoying what was naturally the business of Americans. 
 It was also charged that the well known feebleness of the 
 infant nation to enforce reprisals contented England with 
 the situation in which things were. Still another cause 
 assigned was the purpose of the British to compel the 
 alliance of the Indians through the threat implied in 
 the possession of the frontier posts. 
 
 These and other poignant hostilities established a 
 high tension between the countries. On April 21, 
 1794, the Republicans in Congress moved to suspend 
 all commercial intercourse with Great Britain until the 
 frontier posts were given up. The people, loaded with 
 
22 
 
 debt, and otherwise never so poorly prepared for war, 
 still clamored for its declaration. But now he who so 
 often before had stilled the tempest, disclosed his calm 
 and majestic personality for the salvation of his country. 
 Oblivious of the storm of popular disapproval, Washing- 
 ton wrote to the Senate: " But as peace ought to be 
 preserved with unremitted zeal before the last recourse, 
 which has so often been the scourge of nations, and can- 
 not fail to check the advancing prosperity of the United 
 States, is contemplated, I have thought proper to nomi- 
 nate and I do hereby nominate John Jay as envoy ex- 
 traordinary of the United States to His Britannic Maj- 
 esty." 
 
 The faithful servant who a decade before had obtained 
 peace with so much honor for his country, was again 
 enlisted to preserve it. Well did he know the unpopu- 
 larity of his mission. He writes: " If Washington sees 
 fit to call me to this service I will go and perform it, fore- 
 seeing as I do the consequence to my personal popularity. 
 The good of my country I believe demands the sacrifice, 
 and I am ready to make it." 
 
 He sailed on the 12th of May, 1794. While he was 
 upon the sea, affairs at home were rapidly approaching 
 war. Three companies of a British regiment invaded 
 what is now Northern Ohio to establish Fort Miami 
 there, and in a message to Congress Washington suggests 
 the propriety of preparing for the dread event. But the 
 celebrated treaty known by the name of its negotiator, 
 signed in London on the 19th of November, 1794, averted 
 a catastrophe. By its terms the United States under- 
 took to compensate British creditors. British troops 
 were to withdraw from all territories of the United 
 
23 
 
 States on June 1, 1796. Compensation for retention of 
 the posts was omitted on the ground that the United 
 States had suffered several states to prevent the re- 
 covery of debts owed to British creditors. 
 
 The storm of popular disapproval which greeted this 
 treaty was not less than Jay had anticipated. In Phila- 
 delphia he was hung in effigy, and in New York Hamil- 
 ton was stoned when he arose to speak in his defense. 
 " Calumny," said the unruffled Jay, " is seldom durable; 
 it will in time yield to truth." On June 24, 1795, the 
 treaty was ratified by the Senate, and on August 15th 
 Washington signed it. 
 
 The delay in the withdrawal of the British forces 
 from Fort Ontario after June 1st until the day, one hun- 
 dred years ago, whose anniversary we celebrate, was not 
 the fault of Great Britain. Washington in his last mes- 
 sage to Congress assigned the reason for it. He writes 
 that the period at which the appropriation was passed to 
 carry into effect the treaty "necessarily procrastinated 
 the reception of the posts stipulated to be delivered, 
 beyond the date assigned for that exenV 1 The diplo- 
 matic correspondence on the subject in the foreign office 
 in London between the Duke of Portland, Great Brit- 
 ain's Secretary of State, and Lord Dorchester, Governor- 
 General of Canada, discloses the readiness on their part 
 to comply with the terms of the treaty. They arranged 
 to retain a guard for the security of the posts until the 
 United States should be ready to occupy them. 
 
 And so it transpired that in July, 1796, a hundred 
 years ago, Fort Ontario, a cherished fortification, passed 
 from the possession of a great power across the sea, and 
 entered into the birthright of its own people. There 
 
24 
 
 is slight record of the circumstances of the transfer. 
 Like many significant events in history, it transpired in 
 quietness and simplicity. No great display of arms, no 
 strains of martial music, no concourse of people, no pres- 
 ence of distinguished men and women, then honored that 
 great day as now it is honored. 
 
 One eye witness of the event says that the British 
 garrison marched out and gave possession to the Amer- 
 ican troops, who marched in with their field-pieces, 
 planted the standard of the United States on the ram- 
 parts of the tort, and fired a salute of fifteen cannon. He 
 further declares that the British officers behaved with 
 great politeness. 
 
 Another witness, Mr. F. Elmer, an American officer, 
 writing to Mr. George Scriba, says that the American 
 flag under a federal salute was for the first time dis- 
 played from the citadel of the fort at the hour of ten in 
 the morning. Captain Clark and Colonel Fothergill 
 were His Majesty's officers, left with a detachment of 
 thirty men for the protection of the works. " From 
 these gentlemen," he says, " the greatest politeness and 
 civility was displayed to us in adjusting the transfer, 
 the buildings and gardens being left in the neatest order." 
 
 These are the simple annals of the evacuation of Fort 
 Ontario by the British. Thus ended England's sover- 
 eignty over territory of the United States. 
 
 Time forbids and the occasion does not require the 
 later history of this time-honored fort. It must suffice 
 to say that for some time prior to the war of 1812 Fort 
 Ontario was unoccupied. During that war, on May 5, 
 1814, a British fleet of eight vessels from Kingston, 
 carrying two hundred and twenty guns and three thou- 
 
25 
 
 sand men, under Sir James Yeo, appeared before Oswego 
 and bombarded it, It was defended by Colonel Mitchell, 
 who had been dispatched from Sackett's Harbor with 
 three hundred men. Under protection of the ships' 
 guns, the British troops were landed, and on May 6, after 
 a vigorous resistance, the command in Fort Ontario sur- 
 rendered. The British threw down the fortifications and 
 abandoned the place. Thus it lay until in 1839 Con- 
 gress voted a sum for its restoration. The timber work 
 and the houses you see about you are of that date. 
 Since then it has been continuously garrisoned until two 
 years ago, when the authorities at Washington saw fit to 
 abandon this historic and strategic fort. 
 
 And now we would depart the scene and this occa- 
 sion with sentiments of welcome and friendship fir our 
 kinsmen of Great Britain across the lake and across the 
 sea. 
 
 We celebrate here to-day no victories. The occasion 
 does not invite nor does our disposition so incline us. 
 We celebrate rather the final coming into his estate of 
 the rightful heir. The just Washington, in his last mes- 
 sage to Congress, December 7, 1796, writes that as 
 soon as the Governor-General of Canada could be ad- 
 dressed with propriety on the subject, arrangements 
 were cordially and promptly concluded by Great Britain 
 for the evacuation of the posts. Eye witnesses of the 
 event we celebrate declare that it was conducted by the 
 British with the greatest politeness and civility. This 
 cordiality, this courtesy, may we be permitted on this 
 occasion to acknowledge and to reciprocate. If courtesy 
 be the flower of peace, then with the flowers of peace 
 we, too, would decorate this day as they did decorate 
 
26 
 
 the day a hundred years ago. Peace has been in our time. 
 In our time may it not be marred. 
 
 It has been said that the destiny of the race is in the 
 custody of the English-speaking people. Together, then, 
 let them bear onward toward " the universal pacification 
 of mankind." 
 
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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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