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Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania)
"A Plan of the New Fort at Pitts-Burgh", drawn by cartographer John Rocque and published in 1765.
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Fort Pitt was a fort built by British forces between 1759 and 1761 during the French and Indian War at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, where the Ohio River is formed in western Pennsylvania (modern day Pittsburgh). It was near (but not directly on) the site of Fort Duquesne, a French colonial fort built in 1754 as tensions increased between Great Britain and France in both Europe and North America. The French destroyed the fort in 1758 when they retreated under British attack.
British colonial protection of this area ultimately led to the development of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania by British-American colonists and immigrants.
Contents
1 Location and construction
2 Pontiac's War
3 American Revolutionary War
4 Later history
5 Popular culture
6 See also
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Location and construction
Artist's interpretation of Fort Pitt in 1759, with Allegheny (left) and Monongahela rivers. At their confluence is the Ohio River (bottom)
In April 1754, the French began building Fort Duquesne on the site of the small British Fort Prince George at the beginning of the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War).[1] The Braddock expedition, a 1755 British attempt to take Fort Duquesne, met with defeat at the Battle of the Monongahela at present-day Braddock, Pennsylvania. The French garrison defeated an attacking British regiment in September 1758 at the Battle of Fort Duquesne.
French Colonel de Lignery ordered Fort Duquesne destroyed and abandoned at the approach of General John Forbes' expedition in late November.[2]
The Forbes expedition was successful where the Braddock expedition had failed because the British Treaty of Easton of 1758 had cut into former French alliances with Native American tribes. Chiefs of 13 American Indian nations agreed to negotiate peace with the colonial governments of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and to abandon any alliances with the French. The nations were primarily the Six Nations of the Iroquois League, bands of the Lenape (Delaware), and the Shawnee. They agreed to the treaty based on the colonial governments' promising to respect their rights to hunting and territory in the Ohio Country, to prohibit establishing new settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains, and to withdraw British and colonial military troops after the war.
The American Indians wanted a trading post at Fort Duquesne, but they did not want a British army garrison or colonial settlement.[citation needed] The British built a new fort and named it Fort Pitt, after William Pitt the Elder. The fort was built from 1759 to 1761 during the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War), next to the site of former Fort Duquesne. It was built in the popular pentagram shape, with bastions at the star points, by Captain Harry Gordon, a British Engineer in the 60th Royal American Regiment. [3]
Pontiac's War
The Fort Pitt Blockhouse, constructed in 1764
After the colonial war and in the face of continued broken treaties, broken promises and encroachment by the Europeans, in 1763 the western Lenape and Shawnee took part in a Native uprising known as Pontiac's War, an effort to drive settlers out of the Native American territory. The American Indians' siege of Fort Pitt began on June 22, 1763, but they found it too well-fortified to be taken by force. In negotiations during the siege, Captain Simeon Ecuyer, the commander of Fort Pitt, gave two Delaware emissaries blankets that had been exposed to smallpox. The potential of this act to cause an epidemic among the American Indians was clearly understood. Commander William Trent wrote that he hoped "it will have the desired effect."[4] Colonel Henry Bouquet, leading a relief force, would discuss similar tactics with Commander-in-Chief Jeffery Amherst. The effectiveness of these attempts to spread the disease are unknown, although it is known that the method used is inefficient compared to respiratory transmission, and it is difficult to differentiate from naturally occurring epidemics resulting from previous contacts with colonists.[5][6]
During and after Pontiac's War, epidemics of smallpox among Native Americans devastated the tribes of Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes areas. On August 1, 1763, most of the American Indians broke off the siege to intercept the approaching force under Colonel Bouquet. In the Battle of Bushy Run, Bouquet fought off the American Indian attack and relieved Fort Pitt on August 10.
In 1772, after Pontiac's War, the British commander at Fort Pitt sold the building to two colonists, William Thompson and Alexander Ross.[7] At that time, the Pittsburgh area was claimed by the colonies of both Virginia and Pennsylvania, which struggled for power over the region. After Virginians took control of Fort Pitt, they called it Fort Dunmore, in honour of Virginia's Governor Lord Dunmore. The fort served as a staging ground in Dunmore's War of 1774.
American Revolutionary War
During the American Revolutionary War, Fort Pitt served as a headquarters for the western theatre of the war.[clarification needed] In present-day Michigan, the British garrisoned Fort Detroit.
A redoubt, a small brick outbuilding called the Blockhouse, survives in Point State Park as the sole remnant of Fort Pitt. Erected in 1764, it is believed to be the oldest building still standing in Pittsburgh. Used for many years as a private residence, the blockhouse was purchased and preserved for many years by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Later history
A view of the Fort Pitt Museum from Mount Washington; its structure is a re-creation of a bastion of Ft. Pitt.
Notice was given to area residents of an auction of all salvageable remains of the fort on August 3, 1797 after the U.S. Army decommissioned the site.
In the 20th century, the city of Pittsburgh commissioned archeological excavation of the foundations of Fort Pitt. Afterward, some of the fort was reconstructed to give visitors at Point State Park a sense of the size of the fort. In this rebuilt section, the Fort Pitt Museum is housed in the Monongahela Bastion, and excavated portions of the fort were filled in.
Fort Pitt Foundry was an important armaments manufacturing center for the Federal government during the Civil War, under the charge of William Metcalf.
Popular culture
- The Allegheny Uprising (1939) starred John Wayne and Claire Trevor.
- In Cecil B. DeMille's Unconquered (1947), starring Gary Cooper and Paulette Goddard, Howard Da Silva played a gunrunner and Boris Karloff a Seneca chief who lead an American Indian uprising in 1763. Cooper and Goddard save Fort Pitt.
- The video game Assassin's Creed III (2012) features Fort Pitt, but it is referred to as "Fort Duquesne", although some of the action takes place after the Braddock and Forbes expeditions, when Pitt had been built to replace Duquesne.
Conrad Richter's youth novel, The Light in the Forest (1953), is partially set at Fort Pitt.
See also
- Great Britain in the Seven Years' War
Fort Dunmore, a later fort on the same site
Fort Fayette, a later fort by Gen. Anthony Wayne on the same site
References
^ Lorant, Stefan. "Historic Pittsburgh Chronology". Historic Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved 19 September 2013..mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"""""""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration{color:#555}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration span{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/12px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png")no-repeat;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output code.cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#33aa33;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-right{padding-right:0.2em}
^ Bomberger, Christian Martin. "The Battle of Bushy Run: the most decisive victory in all history gained by the white man over the American Indian". Historic Pittsburgh Text Collection. University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
^ Pittsburgh Waste Book and Fort Pitt Trading Post Papers, 1757-1765, DAR.1925.03, The Darlington Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.
^ Mann, Barbara Alice (2009-01-01). The Tainted Gift: The Disease Method of Frontier Expansion. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780313353383.
^ Barras, V.; Greub, G. (June 2014). "History of biological warfare and bioterrorism" (PDF). Clinical Microbiology and Infection. 20 (6): 497–502. doi:10.1111/1469-0691.12706. PMID 24894605.However, in the light of contemporary knowledge, it remains doubtful whether his hopes were fulfilled, given the fact that the transmission of smallpox through this kind of vector is much less efficient than respiratory transmission, and that Native Americans had been in contact with smallpox >200 years before Ecuyer’s trickery, notably during Pizarro’s conquest of South America in the 16th century. As a whole, the analysis of the various 'pre-micro-biological' attempts at BW illustrate the difficulty of differentiating attempted biological attack from naturally occurring epidemics.
^ Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare. Government Printing Office. 2007. p. 3. ISBN 9780160872389.In retrospect, it is difficult to evaluate the tactical success of Captain Ecuyer's biological attack because smallpox may have been transmitted after other contacts with colonists, as had previously happened in New England and the South. Although scabs from smallpox patients are thought to be of low infectivity as a result of binding of the virus in fibrin metric, and transmission by fomites has been considered inefficient compared with respiratory droplet transmission.
^ O'Meara, Walter (2005). Guns at the Forks. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 249. ISBN 9780822971283. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
Further reading
- O'Meara, Walter. Guns at the Forks. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965.
ISBN 0-8229-5309-9.
Stotz, Charles Morse. Outposts Of The War For Empire: The French And English In Western Pennsylvania: Their Armies, Their Forts, Their People 1749-1764. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005.
ISBN 0-8229-4262-3.- Durant, Samuel W., plate IV, History of Allegheny Co., Pennsylvania : with illustrations descriptive of its scenery, palatial residences, public buildings, fine blocks, and important manufactories, Philadelphia: L. H. Everts, 1876.
Pittsburgh Waste Book and Fort Pitt Trading Post Papers. ULS Archives Service Center University of Pittsburgh Library System.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania). |
- Fort Pitt Museum and Bushy Run Battlefield
- 360° panorama of the Blockhouse exterior
- 360° panorama of the Blockhouse interior
Coordinates: 40°26′28″N 80°00′32″W / 40.4411°N 80.0090°W / 40.4411; -80.0090
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