Johnson’s army, crude as it was, had in it good material.  Here was Phineas Lyman, of Connecticut, second in command, once a tutor at Yale College, and more recently a lawyer,—­a raw soldier, but a vigorous and brave one; Colonel Moses Titcomb, of Massachusetts, who had fought with credit at Louisbourg; and Ephraim Williams, also colonel of a Massachusetts regiment, a tall and portly man, who had been a captain in the last war, member of the General Court, and deputy-sheriff.  He made his will in the camp at Albany, and left a legacy to found the school which has since become Williams College.  His relative, Stephen Williams, was chaplain of his regiment, and his brother Thomas was its surgeon.  Seth Pomeroy, gunsmith at Northampton, who, like Titcomb, had seen service at Louisbourg, was its lieutenant-colonel.  He had left a wife at home, an excellent matron, to whom he was continually writing affectionate letters, mingling household cares with news of the camp, and charging her to see that their eldest boy, Seth, then in college at New Haven, did not run off to the army.  Pomeroy had with him his brother Daniel; and this he thought was enough.  Here, too, was a man whose name is still a household word in New England,—­the sturdy Israel Putnam, private in a Connecticut regiment; and another as bold as he, John Stark, lieutenant in the New Hampshire levies, and the future victor of Bennington.

The soldiers were no soldiers, but farmers and farmers’ sons who had volunteered for the summer campaign.  One of the corps had a blue uniform faced with red.  The rest wore their daily clothing.  Blankets had been served out to them by the several provinces, but the greater part brought their own guns; some under the penalty of a fine if they came without them, and some under the inducement of a reward.[297] They had no bayonets, but carried hatchets in their belts as a sort of substitute.[298] At their sides were slung powder-horns, on which, in the leisure of the camp, they carved quaint devices with the points of their jack-knives.  They came chiefly from plain New England homesteads,—­rustic abodes, unpainted and dingy, with long well-sweeps, capacious barns, rough fields of pumpkins and corn, and vast kitchen chimneys, above which in winter hung squashes to keep them from frost, and guns to keep them from rust.

[Footnote 297:  Proclamation of Governor Shirley, 1755.]

[Footnote 298:  Second Letter to a Friend on the Battle of Lake George.]

As to the manners and morals of the army there is conflict of evidence.  In some respects nothing could be more exemplary.  “Not a chicken has been stolen,” says William Smith, of New York; while, on the other hand, Colonel Ephraim Williams writes to Colonel Israel Williams, then commanding on the Massachusetts frontier:  “We are a wicked, profane army, especially the New York and Rhode Island troops.  Nothing to be heard among a great part of them but the language of Hell.