Cresap’s thriving community left Pennsylvania officials flummoxed. Cresap was no squatter, like Edward Parnel, who Pennsylvania’s government could evict through force. The Marylanders all possessed a legal claim from a neighboring colony, a partner in the British Empire who shared a common sovereign. Pennsylvania might dispute the validity of the Maryland land deeds, but it could not displace the residents without undermining the authority of its fellow British colony. Worse still for the Pennsylvanians, Maryland appeared willing to actively support the rights of these settlers. As James Logan remarked, because their opponent was another British colony, he did not “know … how to make war with them.”10
“Lands … Are More Valuable Now, Then They Were Before Any Form of Government Was Settled, Any Plantation Made, or Any Markets Found”
Fights between Maryland settlers and Pennsylvania officials over property rights and jurisdiction marked the first phase of the war as each side tried to accomplish their goal of establishing an undisturbed claim to the western side of the river. For Pennsylvanians, their challenge was to preserve that side of the river as undisturbed land still in Indian hands to honor the implied rights conveyed to the Conestoga at the Treaty of 1701. The way to do that was to remove the irritant, which meant they needed to target Cresap. For Marylanders, who were not party to the same treaty, their strategy was to persist by attracting settlers and to prevent Pennsylvania from establishing its authority over the region. The situation thus called for Pennsylvania to take offensive actions, though Pennsylvanians clearly saw the Marylanders who had built homes on the western side as the original offenders.
Civility’s message that October day provided Pennsylvania officials with the opportunity to seize Cresap. Before the meeting, James Logan had confided to Blunston that “he should be glad if Crissop could be taken.” The problem was the government lacked the legal pretext to do so, at least until Civility showed up. When Blunston relayed Civility’s concerns to higher officials, he also noted that Cresap harbored Samuel Chance, a runaway servant of Edmund Cartlidge, a prominent Pennsylvanian trader. Cresap, Blunston reported, “threatens to shoot any person who shal offer to take away said servant.” Blunston saw in Cresap’s seizure of Pennsylvania property a cause to act, writing “if you think it will be of service to the government to have him taken, I believe it may be done.”11
Though there are no records of the government’s response, a few weeks later Edmund Cartlidge orchestrated a ruse meant to capture Cresap. On October 31, Cresap heard three shots from the eastern side of the river, which was the usual call for his ferry. On crossing the river with Chance, the servant in question, he met Edward Beddock, Rice Morgan, and “a Negroe man belonging … to Edward Cartlidge.” Beddock and Morgan both asked to cross the river. After Cresap had rowed them seventy yards from shore, the two men drew guns and yelled, “Damn you, Cresap, turn to shore or you are a dead man.” Cresap immediately tried to pull in his oar. Rice Morgan, believing Cresap was preparing to strike his assailants, “knocked him down … with his gun, and one or both of them threw … Chance over board.”12
Cresap recovered and tried to subdue his captors with his oar. The long pole proved too unwieldy for the task, so he took to his fists. Morgan managed to get the better of Cresap. Morgan and Beddock then grabbed Cresap and threw him into the river. Cresap held onto the side of the barge “for the safety of his life” while both men “endeavoured to force [him] to quit” his grip and vowed to murder him. As both sides struggled, the current carried the boat south until Cresap could feel ground under his feet. As soon as he could stand, he let go of the boat and worked his way to an island where an Indian rescued him and brought him back to his house. He did not see his boat for three weeks, and when he finally did, “it was much damnified.”13
After drying off, Cresap sought Andrew Cornish, the sheriff of Lancaster County, to lodge a complaint with Pennsylvania justices of the peace against Cartlidge and his agents, who were duly—if weakly—punished with a fine. Cresap also brought the matter to Samuel Ogle, the Maryland governor, who wrote angry missives to Patrick Gordon about the unjust treatment of the Marylanders. Gordon took the opportunity to point out that by appealing to Pennsylvania officials for justice, Cresap had implied that his home was under Pennsylvania jurisdiction. Thus, the attempt to capture Cresap, even though it failed, had strengthened Pennsylvania’s case. The turn of events taught Cresap a valuable lesson in the way the competing legal systems on contested borders could work to bolster or undermine one side or the other. He would not make the same mistake again. Ogle also seemed to recognize the error and decided to appoint Cresap a justice of the peace, thereby extending Maryland’s legal jurisdiction to offer protection to its residents in the region. With both sides exerting competing claims to the land, legal confrontations continued, and the ensuing low-level violence defined life on the banks of the Susquehanna.14
With Pennsylvanians vowing to fight Marylanders “to … the knees in blood” and Marylanders promising to “repel force by force,” Gordon soon worried that the situation could escalate into something worse: civil war. He therefore tried to appeal to the goodwill of Maryland’s governor, Samuel Ogle, by evoking the one thing they were supposed to share: an interest in advancing the Crown’s aims in North America. Gordon wanted them to work together, lest their civil war create an opening for the French to gain ground in the west. Gordon thus argued that Pennsylvania’s model of ordered expansion and peaceful relations with Native peoples was the best means to secure broader imperial interests.15
He began his plea by outlining the uncertain nature of imperial North American geopolitics and playing upon the fears of a French invasion to unite the colonies, writing that “the French … possessed … Canada and that vast country they call Louisiana” and thus “enclose all of these British colonies.” Gordon worried that unrestrained expansion on the part of British colonies only played into French hands by sending wavering Native groups closer to New France’s imperial orbit. Of particular concern were the Shawnees. Gordon received reports suggesting the Shawnees had “given some offence” to the Six Nations Iroquois and had “retired to a branch of the Mississippi called Ohio” away from their enemies (and by default the British sphere of influence). Gordon heard that once in the Ohio region, “some French spies” had convinced the Shawnees to swear allegiance to Canada. Gordon sought to secure the Shawnee alliance by surveying “10 or 15,000 acres of land round the principal town where [the Shawnees] were last seated.” The willingness to grant such a sizable tract demonstrated how seriously Pennsylvania officials took the Shawnees’ potential to upset the precarious balance of imperial rivalries. Gordon essentially had carved out an area of Indian autonomy and independence as a way to ingratiate Pennsylvania with much-needed allies, while also providing the colony with a buffer against the French, similar to the one Logan had hoped the Scots-Irish would provide if a frontier against Indians formed.16
Of course, Gordon also complained to Ogle of “that rude fellow Cresap’s behavior.” Cresap, Gordon argued, could upset Native American relations in the empire because “those Indians consider us all as subjects of the same great Empire and their resentments against one part will unavoidably be attended with further unhappy consequences to others.” Likewise, Gordon concluded that complaints about Cresap’s actions should “concern Maryland as well as Pennsylvania, and as the British Interest may be affected by them, undoubtedly every good subject is concerned.”17
Gordon’s call for comity fell on deaf ears. Imperial interests seemed far removed from the banks of the Susquehanna in the 1730s, especially since no one had any imminent fear of invasion. In other words, because no one believed frontiers existed in the region, colonies could pursue their own self-interest rather than worry about a common external enemy like France. Another part of the problem that only exacerbated matters was that Gordon and Ogle were not the usual type of governors. They were executives of proprietary colonies, and they had to worry about their proprietors’ interests as much as, if not more than, the often vague and ill-defined interests