ress for provisions that a private subscription was
proposed for their relief.[296]

[Footnote 295: _The Conduct of Major-General Shirley briefly stated_
(London, 1758).]

[Footnote 296: _Blanchard to Wentworth, 28 Aug. 1755_, in _Provincial
Papers of New Hampshire_, VI. 429.]

Johnson's army, crude as it was, had in it good material. Here was
Phineas Lyman, of Connecticut, second in command, once a tutor at Yale
College, and more recently a lawyer,--a raw soldier, but a vigorous and
brave one; Colonel Moses Titcomb, of Massachusetts, who had fought with
credit at Louisbourg; and Ephraim Williams, also colonel of a
Massachusetts regiment, a tall and portly man, who had been a captain in
the last war, member of the General Court, and deputy-sheriff. He made
his will in the camp at Albany, and left a legacy to found the school
which has since become Williams College. His relative, Stephen Williams,
was chaplain of his regiment, and his brother Thomas was its surgeon.
Seth Pomeroy, gunsmith at Northampton, who, like Titcomb, had seen
service at Louisbourg, was its lieutenant-colonel. He had left a wife at
home, an excellent matron, to whom he was continually writing
affectionate letters, mingling household cares with news of the camp,
and charging her to see that their eldest boy, Seth, then in college at
New Haven, did not run off to the army. Pomeroy had with him his brother
Daniel; and this he thought was enough. Here, too, was a man whose name
is still a household word in New England,--the sturdy Israel Putnam,
private in a Connecticut regiment; and another as bold as he, John
Stark, lieutenant in the New Hampshire levies, and the future victor of
Bennington.

The soldiers were no soldiers, but farmers and farmers' sons who had
volunteered for the summer campaign. One of the corps had a blue uniform
faced with red. The rest wore their daily clothing. Blankets had been
served out to them by the several provinces, but the greater part
brought their own guns; some under the penalty of a fine if they came
without them, and some under the inducement of a reward.[297] They had
no bayonets, but carried hatchets in their belts as a sort of
substitute.[298] At their sides were slung powder-horns, on which, in
the leisure of the camp, they carved quaint devices with the points of
their jack-knives. They came chiefly from plain New England
homesteads,--rustic abodes, unpainted and dingy, with long well-sweeps,
capacious barn