Shirley had not attended the congress. He had left Boston in June (1754) on the province frigate “Massachusetts,” with the forces under John Winslow to build a fort on the Kennebec, which was completed on the 3d of September and called Fort Halifax. On his way he stopped at Falmouth, and on the 28th of June he had a conference with the Norridgewock Indians, and on July 5th another with the Penobscots. Accompanied by some young Indians who were entrusted to the English for education, the governor was once more in Boston on the 9th of September, where he was received with due honor. This expedition and the congress were but the prelude to eventful years. When Henry Pelham died, on the 6th of March of this year, his king, in remembrance of the wise and peaceful policy of his minister, exclaimed, “Now I shall have no more peace!” For the struggle which was impending, New England had grown in strength and preparation, and had had much inuring to the trials of predatory warfare. She had increased about sixfold in population, while New York and Virginia had increased fivefold. The newer colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland had fairly outstripped these older ones, and numbered now nine times as large a population as they had sixty-five years earlier. The Carolinas and Georgia had increased in a ratio far more rapid. Massachusetts at this time probably had 45,000 on its alarm list, and in train-bands over 30,000 stood ready for the call.[304] John Adams, when teaching a school in Worcester the next year, ventured to write to a friend, “If we can remove the turbulent Gallicks, our people will in another century become more numerous than England itself.” In the spring of 1755 Shirley went to Alexandria, in Virginia, being on the way from March 30 till April 12, to meet the other governors, and to confer with General Braddock upon the organization of that general’s disastrous campaign. When the news of its fatal ending reached New England it gave new fervor to the attempts, in which she was participating, of attacking the French on the Canada side,[305] and the war seemed brought nearer home to her people when, by the death of Braddock, the supreme command devolved on the Massachusetts governor.[306] On the 6th of November, at Thomas Hutchinson’s instigation and in expression of their good-will at Shirley’s promotion, the General Court passed a vote of congratulation.