ootnote 327: On the Niagara expedition, _Braddock's Instructions to
Major-General Shirley. Correspondence of Shirley_, 1755. _Conduct of
Major-General Shirley_ (London, 1758). Letters of John Shirley in
_Pennsylvania Archives_, II. _Bradstreet to Shirley, 17 Aug._ 1755. MSS.
in Massachusetts Archives, _Review of Military Operations in North
America. Gentleman's Magazine_, 1757, p. 73. _London Magazine,_ 1759, p.
594. Trumbull, _Hist. Connecticut_, II. 370.]

Unfortunately for him, he had fallen out with Johnson, whom he had made
what he was, but who now turned against him,--a seeming ingratitude not
wholly unprovoked. Shirley had diverted the New Jersey regiment,
destined originally for Crown Point, to his own expedition against
Niagara. Naturally inclined to keep all the reins in his own hands, he
had encroached on Johnson's new office of Indian superintendent, held
conferences with the Five Nations, and employed agents of his own to
deal with them. These agents were persons obnoxious to Johnson, being
allied with the clique of Dutch traders at Albany, who hated him because
he had supplanted them in the direction of Indian affairs; and in a
violent letter to the Lords of Trade, he inveighs against their
"licentious and abandoned proceedings," "villanous conduct," "scurrilous
falsehoods," and "base and insolent behavior."[328] "I am considerable
enough," he says, "to have enemies and to be envied;"[329] and he
declares he has proof that Shirley told the Mohawks that he, Johnson,
was an upstart of his creating, whom he had set up and could pull down.
Again, he charges Shirley's agents with trying to "debauch the Indians
from joining him;" while Shirley, on his side, retorts the same
complaint against his accuser.[330] When, by the death of Braddock,
Shirley became commander-in-chief, Johnson grew so restive at being
subject to his instructions that he declined to hold the management of
Indian affairs unless it was made independent of his rival. The dispute
became mingled with the teapot-tempest of New York provincial politics.
The Lieutenant-Governor, Delancey, a politician of restless ambition and
consummate dexterity, had taken umbrage at Shirley, of whose rising
honors, not borne with remarkable humility, he appears to have been
jealous. Delancey had hitherto favored the Dutch faction in the
Assembly, hostile to Johnson; but he now changed attitude, and joined
hands with him against the object of their common dislike.