n influence, and at the same
time so little known to general readers, as Sir William Johnson. The
reason is, that his great powers were exercised on a theatre which,
though vast and wellnigh boundless, was exterior to the familiar field
of political action. Yet on the single influence of this man depended at
times the prosperity and growth of all the British American colonies.
Could France have won his influence in her behalf, England could not
have broken that rival power in America without an exhausting
expenditure of men and treasure, and without leaders of a different
stamp from the blockheads with whom she long continued to paralyze her
Cisatlantic armies. At the darkest crisis of the last French War, the
influence of Johnson alone saved the English colonies from the miseries
which would have ensued from the enmity of the powerful confederacy of
the Six Nations; and for many years after, in his capacity of
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, he continued to exercise an
unparalleled power over the tribes of the interior, soothing their
jealousies, composing their quarrels, and protecting them with equal
justice, benevolence, and ability from the fraud and outrage of
encroaching whites.

Johnson settled on the Mohawk in his youth, and immediately fell into
relations with his savage neighbors. He was accustomed to join their
sports and assume their dress; and it is an evidence of the native force
and dignity of his character, that, in thus taking a course which
commonly provoked their contempt, he gained their affection, without
diminishing their respect and admiration. He gained a military
reputation--not unqualified--by the Battle of Lake George, in 1755,
where he commanded the British force; and he won brighter laurels by the
capture of Fort Niagara in 1759. His true fame rests, however, on his
civic achievements,--on the tact, energy, and judgment, the humanity and
breadth of views, with which he managed the important interest placed in
his hands. It would be hard to say whether the Indians or the Colonists
profited most by his influence; for while with a fearless adroitness he
overthrew the schemes of hungry speculators, he averted from peaceful
settlers many a peril of whose existence, perhaps, they were unaware. He
gave peace to the borders, and sweetened, as far as lay in the power of
man, that bitter cup which had fallen to the lot of the wretched races
of the forest.

Mr. Stone's book covers a period extendi