Note 417 — Chapter XXVI · 1764. BRADSTREET’S ARMY ON THE LAKES.
Reading edition
MS. Letter—Morris to Bradstreet, 18 Sept. 1764.
The journal sent by Morris to Bradstreet is in the State Paper Office of London. This journal, and the record of an examination of Morris’s Indian and Canadian attendants, made in Bradstreet’s presence at Sandusky, were the authorities on which the account in the first edition of this work was based. Morris afterwards rewrote his journal, with many additions. Returning to England after the war, he lost his property by speculations, and resolved, for the sake of his children, to solicit a pension, on the score of his embassy to the Illinois. With this view it was that the journal was rewritten; but failing to find a suitable person to lay it before the King, he resolved to print it, together with several original poems and a translation of the fourth and fourteenth satires of Juvenal. The book appeared in 1791, under the title of Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. It is very scarce. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. S. G. Drake for the opportunity of examining it.
The two journals and the evidence before Bradstreet’s court of inquiry agree in essentials, but differ in some details. In this edition, I have followed chiefly the printed journal, borrowing some additional facts from the evidence taken before Bradstreet.