Download Free George Croghan Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online George Croghan and write the review.

George Croghan--land speculator, Indian trader, and prominent Indian agent--was a man of fascinating, if dubious, character whose career epitomized the history of the West before the Revolution. This study is based on Croghan's long-lost personal papers that were found by the author in an old Philadelphia attic. Originally published in 1959. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
This dual biography focuses on the lives of two very different men who fought for and settled the American West and whose vision secured the old Northwest Territory for the new nation. The two represented contrasting American experiences: famed military leader George Rogers Clark was from the Virginia planter class. William Croghan was an Irish immigrant with tight family ties to the British in America. Yet their lives would intersect in ways that would make independence and western settlement possible. The war experiences of Clark and Croghan epitomize the American course of the Revolution. Croghan fought in the Revolutionary War at Trenton and spent the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge with George Washington and LaFayette before being taken prisoner at Charleston. Clark, known as the "Hannibal of the West," was famous for his victorious Illinois campaign against the British and as an Indian fighter. Following the war, Croghan became Clark's deputy surveyor of military lands for the Virginia State Line, enabling him to acquire some 54,000 acres on the edge of the American frontier. Croghan's marriage to Lucy Clark, George Rogers Clark's sister, solidified his position in society. Clark, however, was regularly called by Virginia and the federal government to secure peace in the Ohio River Valley, leading to his financial ruin and emotional decline. Croghan remained at Clark's side throughout it all, even as he prospered in the new world they had fought to create, while Clark languished. These men nevertheless worked and eventually lived together, bound by the familial connections they shared and a political ideology honed by the Revolution.
At the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the British secured the largest land cession in colonial North America. Crown representatives gained possession of an area claimed but not occupied by the Iroquois that encompassed parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The Iroquois, however, were far from naïve—and the outcome was not an instance of their simply being dispossessed by Europeans. In Speculators in Empire, William J. Campbell examines the diplomacy, land speculation, and empire building that led up to the treaty. His detailed study overturns common assumptions about the roles of the Iroquois and British on the eve of the American Revolution. Through the treaty, the Iroquois directed the expansion of empire in order to serve their own needs while Crown negotiators obtained more territory than they were authorized to accept. How did this questionable transfer happen, who benefited, and at what cost? Campbell unravels complex intercultural negotiations in which colonial officials, land speculators, traders, tribes, and individual Indians pursued a variety of agendas, each side possessing considerable understanding of the other’s expectations and intentions. Historians have credited British Indian superintendent Sir William Johnson with pulling off the land grab, but Campbell shows that Johnson was only one of many players. Johnson’s deputy, George Croghan, used the treaty to capitalize on a lifetime of scheming and speculation. Iroquois leaders and their peoples also benefited substantially. With keen awareness of the workings of the English legal system, they gained protection for their homelands by opening the Ohio country to settlement. Campbell’s navigation of the complexities of Native and British politics and land speculation illuminates a time when regional concerns and personal politicking would have lasting consequences for the continent. As Speculators in Empire shows, colonial and Native history are unavoidably entwined, and even interdependent.
The untold story of the “Black Boys,” a rebellion on the American frontier in 1765 that sparked the American Revolution. In 1763, the Seven Years’ War ended in a spectacular victory for the British. The French army agreed to leave North America, but many Native Americans, fearing that the British Empire would expand onto their lands and conquer them, refused to lay down their weapons. Under the leadership of a shrewd Ottawa warrior named Pontiac, they kept fighting for their freedom, capturing several British forts and devastating many of the westernmost colonial settlements. The British, battered from the costly war, needed to stop the violent attacks on their borderlands. Peace with Pontiac was their only option—if they could convince him to negotiate. Enter George Croghan, a wily trader-turned-diplomat with close ties to Native Americans. Under the wary eye of the British commander-in-chief, Croghan organized one of the largest peace offerings ever assembled and began a daring voyage into the interior of North America in search of Pontiac. Meanwhile, a ragtag group of frontiersmen set about stopping this peace deal in its tracks. Furious at the Empire for capitulating to Native groups, whom they considered their sworn enemies, and suspicious of Croghan’s intentions, these colonists turned Native American tactics of warfare on the British Empire. Dressing as Native Americans and smearing their faces in charcoal, these frontiersmen, known as the Black Boys, launched targeted assaults to destroy Croghan’s peace offering before it could be delivered. The outcome of these interwoven struggles would determine whose independence would prevail on the American frontier—whether freedom would be defined by the British, Native Americans, or colonial settlers. Drawing on largely forgotten manuscript sources from archives across North America, Patrick Spero recasts the familiar narrative of the American Revolution, moving the action from the Eastern Seaboard to the treacherous western frontier. In spellbinding detail, Frontier Rebels reveals an often-overlooked truth: the West played a crucial role in igniting the flame of American independence.