John Bradstreet's Raid, 1758

A year after John Bradstreets raid of 1758the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great American victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians. In this first comprehensive analysis of Bradstreets raid, Ian Macpherson McCulloch uses never-before-seen materials and a new interpretive approach to dispel many of the myths that have grown up around the operation. The result is a closely observed, deeply researched revisionist microhistorythe first unvarnished, balanced account of a critical moment in early American military history. Examined within the context of campaign planning and the friction among commanders in the wars first three years, the raid looks markedly different than Bradstreets heroic portrayal. The operation was carried out principally by American colonial soldiers, and McCulloch lets many of the provincial participants give voice to their own experiences. He consults little-known French documents that give Bradstreets opponents side of the story, as well as supporting material such as orders of battle, meteorological data, and overviews of captured ships. McCulloch also examines the riverine operational capability that Bradstreet put in place, a new water-borne style of combat that the British-American army would soon successfully deploy in the campaigns of Niagara (1759) and Montreal (1760). McCullochs history is the most detailed, thoroughgoing view of Bradstreets raid ever produced.