JONATHAN EDWARDS. THE GREAT REVIVAL.

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personal piety, were admitted to the full privileges of CHAP. church members.

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In the midst of this declension a religious "Awaken- 1735. ing," better known as the "Great Revival," commenced at Northampton, in Massachusetts, under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, a young man remarkable for his intellectual endowments. His sermons were doctrinal and strongly Calvinistic. His religious character had been early developed. At thirteen he entered Yale College; thoughtful beyond his years, a metaphysician by nature, at that early age he was enraptured with the perusal of Locke on the " Understanding." Secluded from the world by the love of study, he penetrated far into the mysteries of the workings of the human mind.

Edwards drew from the Bible the knowledge of the true relation between the church and the world. The contest was long and strenuous, but the lines were clearly drawn, and from that day to this the distinction is marked and appreciated. "He repudiated the system of the Halfway covenant," and proclaimed the old doctrines of "the sole right of the sanctified to enjoy the privileges of church members, and of salvation by faith alone." As the influence of the state in religious matters thus began to fade away, a closer spiritual relation of men to men, not as members of a commonwealth alone, but as members of a great brotherhood, gained in importance.

Parties sprang into existence; those who favored a more spiritual life in religion were stigmatized as New Lights," while the steady conservatives were known as the "Old Lights." So bitter was the feeling that in Connecticut the civil authority was invoked, and severe laws 1742. were enacted against the New Lights. The controversy was so warm that Edwards was driven from his congregation-at that time, "the largest Protestant society in the world." He went as a missionary to the Housatonic Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. There in the forest,

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CHAP. amid toils and privations, he wrote his far-famed treatise on the "Freedom of the Will," which has exerted so 1750. much influence in the theological world, while the writer was the first American that obtained a European reputation as an author.

1740.

During this period Whitefield came, by invitation, to New England. He had been preaching in the south with unexampled success. At intervals, for more than thirty years, he preached the gospel from colony to colony. "Hundreds of thousands heard the highest evangelical truths uttered with an eloquence probably never equalled." The influence of the awakening spread till all the colonies were visited by the same blessings, especially the Presbyterians of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and in a less degree in the more southern colonies. These influences were not limited to that age, for similar revivals have continued to our own times.

The Baptists, hitherto but few in number, received a new impulse, as many of the New Light churches adopted their views; and the preaching of Whitefield prepared the way for the success of the Methodists.

The revival created a want for ministers of the gospel, to supply which, the Rev. William Tennent established an academy at Neshaminy; an institution where young men professing the religious fervor that characterized those prominent in the revival, could be prepared for the sacred office. This was the germ of Princeton College.

This religious sentiment met with little sympathy from the authorities of the colony, and with difficulty a 1746. charter was obtained. The institution was named Nassau

Hall, in honor of the great Protestant hero, William III. It was first located at Elizabethtown, then at Newark, 1757. and finally at Princeton. Its success was unexampled; in ten years the number of students increased from eight to ninety.

CHAPTER XXI.

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.

The Valley of the Ohio.-French and English Claimants.-Gist the Pioneer. -George Washington; his Character; his Mission to the French on the Alleghany.-Returns to Williamsburg.-St. Pierre's Letter unsatisfactory. Virginians driven from the Ohio.-Fort Du Quesne built.Washington sent to defend the Frontiers.-Conflict at Fort Necessity.The Fort abandoned.-British Troops arrive in America.-Plan of operations.—General Braddock; his qualifications.-The Army marches from Wills' Creek.—Obstinacy of Braddock.—Arrival on the Monongahela.-The Battle.-Defeat.-Death and Burial of Braddock.-Dunbar's Panic. The Frontiers left unprotected.

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SCARCELY an English colonist had yet settled in the val- CHAP. ley of the Ohio. The traders who visited the Indians in that region, told marvellous stories of the fertility of the 1749. soil, and the desirableness of the climate. It was proposed to found a colony west of the Alleghany mountains. The governor of Virginia received royal instructions to grant the "Ohio Company" five hundred thousand acres of land lying between the rivers Monongahela and Kanawha, and on the Ohio. The company engaged to send one hundred families; to induce them to emigrate they offered them freedom from quit-rents for ten years.

Meantime, the French sent three hundred men to expel the English traders and take possession of the valley. They also sent agents, who passed through the territory north of the Ohio river, and at various points nailed on the trees plates of lead, on which were inscribed the arms of France. This they were careful to do in the presence

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CHAP. of the Indians, who suspected they intended to take away their lands. When the English came and made surveys 1749. on the south side of the Ohio, they asked them the puzzling question: "If the French take possession of the north side of the Ohio, and the English of the south. where is the Indian's land?"

At Wills' Creek, now Cumberland, Maryland, one of the easiest passes over the mountains commenced. Here the Ohio Company established a place of deposit to supply Indian traders with goods. They also wished to explore the Ohio river to the great falls; to ascertain the location of the best lands, and whether the Indians were friendly or unfriendly. They employed for this dangerous and difficult task the celebrated trader and pioneer Christopher Gist, who crossed the mountains and came upon the Alleghany river, at a village occupied by a few Delaware Indians. Thence he passed down to Logstown, a sort of head-quarters for traders, situated some miles below the junction of that river and the Monongahela. Here dwelt a renowned chief of the western tribes, Tanacharison, or half-king. as he was called, because he acknowledged a sort of allegiance to the Mohawks. "You are come to settle the Indian lands," said the resident traders, whose suspicions were roused; "you will never go home safe." Gist traversed the region of the Muskingum and of the Scioto, then crossed the Ohio, and passed up the Cuttawa or Kentucky to its very springs. He gave a glowing account of the beauty and fertility of the region he had visited. It was covered with trees of immense size, the wild cherry, the ash, the black walnut, and the sugar maple, the two latter giving indubitable proof of the fertility of the soil; a land abounding in never-failing springs and rivulets, forests interspersed with small meadows, covered with long grass and white clover, on which fed herds of elk, deer, and buffalo, while the wild turkey and other game promised abundance to the hunter and

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pioneer. Such was the primitive character of the territory CHAP. since known as the State of Ohio.

He ascertained that French emissaries were visiting 1749. all the western tribes, to induce them to take up arms against the English; that the Indians looked upon both as intruders, and though willing to trade with both, were unwilling that either should occupy their lands. The French saw that if the English obtained a foothold on the Ohio, they would cut off the communication between the Lakes and the Mississippi. The final struggle for the supremacy in the valley was near at hand.

While the English, by invitation of the Indians, were approaching from the south, to build a fort at the head of the Ohio, the French were approaching the same point from the north. The latter had built war vessels at Frontenac to give them the command of Lake Ontario; they had strengthened themselves by treaties with the most powerful tribes, the Shawnees and the Delawares; they had repaired Fort Niagara, at the foot of Lake Erie, and at this time had not less than sixty fortified and well garrisoned posts between Montreal and New Orleans. They had also built a fort at Presque Isle, now Erie, one on French Creek, on the site of Waterford, and another at the junction of that creek with the Alleghany, now the village of Franklin.

Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, resolved to send a messenger to remonstrate with the French for intruding on English territory. Where could he find a man of energy and prudence to trust in this laborious and perilous undertaking? His attention was directed to a mere youth, in his twenty-second year, a surveyor, who, in the duties of his profession, had become somewhat familiar 1732. with the privations of forest life. That young man was 22. George Washington. He was a native of Westmoreland county, Virginia. The death of his father left him an orphan when eleven years of age. The wealthy Virginia

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