ABSTRACT
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle did not resolve the disputed possession of the Ohio River valley, and the French subsequently built forts there. The construction of Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers prompted Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia in October 1753 to send George Washington to demand French withdrawal. French refusal resulted in the French and Indian War (1754—60), which initially went disastrously for Britain until William Pitt’s administration from June 1757 turned this and the wider Seven Years War (1756—63) around. Samuel Hopkins’s Address to the People of New-England was partly a product of the early crisis, partly of longstanding concerns. Samuel Hopkins was part of a frontier puritan dynasty. This Hopkins founded ‘consistent Calvinism’, also called the New Divinity and ‘Hopkinsianism’. The first measure Hopkins advocates to secure Indian allegiance is licensing Indian traders.
