Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania)
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Fort Pitt was a
Virginia colonial protection of this area ultimately led to the development of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania by British-American colonists and immigrants.
Location and construction
In April 1754, the French began building
A number of factors contributed to this strategic withdrawal. In August 1758 the French Fort Frontenac, at the head of Lake Ontario, was captured by British Gen. Bradstreet, severing the supply lines to French fortifications across the frontier. Fort Duquesne was the southernmost of these. Short on materiel, French commander François-Marie Le Marchand de Lignery was forced to dismiss elements under his command down the Ohio River to their bases in Illinois and Louisiana, and send others overland north to Ft. Presque Isle.[3] Those Native who may have remained at Fort Duquesne were likely eager to return to their winter longhouses before the weather changed. Consequently, the fort was further undermanned, possibly left with as few as 200 regulars.[4]
The late October
The French commander, anticipating an attack along Braddock's road, had spent some effort fortifying positions there. (Forbes had several times advanced men along that route as a feint.) From prisoners captured during Maj. James Grant’s catastrophic attack on Fort Duquesne, de Lignery was reportedly surprised to learn of a fortified encampment of British troops only 50 miles away at Ligonier, Pennsylvania, with substantial reserves behind. He was also certainly cognizant of the British lightning raid on the Native village of Kittanning (40 miles north on the Allegheny River) two years earlier. Thus, a British attack from the north was a distinct possibility. Forbes had indeed contemplated an attack further north on Fort Machault (later, Ft. Venango; modern-day Franklin, PA.)
Finding himself in an under-manned, flood-prone fort in a weak defensive position, vulnerable to attack from three directions, and running low on provisions, de Lignery retreated north. He destroyed the stores and many of the structures as 1500 advance British troops under the command of Forbes drew within 10 miles. The French never returned to the region.
After constructing the temporary
Pontiac's War
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
During and after
In 1772, after Pontiac's War, the British commander at Fort Pitt sold the building to two colonists, William Thompson and Alexander Ross.
American Revolutionary War and beyond
During the
Later, during the Northwest Indian War, General Anthony Wayne built a fort adjacent to the site as Fort Lafayette, elided to Fort Fayette. Still later it was regarrisioned in the War of 1812 as a staging point and supply depot for expeditions against northern British forts. Both forts became part of the borough of Pittsburgh.
20th century
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.
A redoubt, a small brick outbuilding called the
Popular culture
- The Allegheny Uprising (1939) starred John Wayne and Claire Trevor.
- In Howard Da Silva played a gunrunner and Boris Karloff a Senecachief 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.
- Aerials of the fort can be seen during the opening credits of the 1993 film Groundhog Day as the live truck leaves the downtown area on its way to Punxsutawney.
See also
References
- ^ Lorant, Stefan. "Historic Pittsburgh Chronology". Historic Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Parkman, Francis (December 29, 2004). "Montcalm and Woolfe". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved February 12, 2020.
- ^ "Fort Duquesne".
- The Darlington Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh.
- ISBN 9780313353383.
- 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.
- 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.
- ISBN 9780822971283. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-87338-240-3.
- ^ English, William Hayden (1896). Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, 1778–1783, and Life of Gen. George Rogers Clark, vol 2. Bowen-Merrill, Indianapolis.
Further reading
- O'Meara, Walter. Guns at the Forks. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965. ISBN 0-8229-5309-9.
- 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.