The Crown Point expedition was a failure disguised under an incidental
success. The northern provinces, especially Massachusetts and
Connecticut, did what they could to forward it, and after the battle
sent a herd of raw recruits to the scene of action. Shirley wrote to
Johnson from Oswego; declared that his reasons for not advancing were
insufficient, and urged him to push for Ticonderoga at once. Johnson
replied that he had not wagons enough, and that his troops were
ill-clothed, ill-fed, discontented, insubordinate and sickly. He
complained that discipline was out of the question, because the officers
were chosen by popular election; that many of them were no better than
the men, unfit for command, and like so many "heads of a mob."[317] The
reinforcements began to come in, till, in October there were thirty-six
hundred men in the camp; and as most of them wore summer clothing and
had but one thin domestic blanket, they were half frozen in the chill
autumn nights.
[Footnote 317: _Shirley to Johnson, 19 Sept. 1755. Ibid., 24 Sept. 1755.
Johnson to Shirley, 22 Sept. 1755. Johnson to Phipps, 10 Oct. 1755_
(Massachusetts Archives).]
Johnson called a council of war; and as he was suffering from inflamed
eyes, and was still kept in his tent by his wound, he asked Lyman to
preside,--not unwilling, perhaps, to shift the responsibility upon him.
After several sessions and much debate, the assembled officers decided
that it was inexpedient to proceed.
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