In 1757 he was sent to North America, where he was first in Lord Loudoun's aborted expedition to Louisbourg. That winter, as a colonel he was placed in command of Fort Edward on the upper Hudson River, the forward outpost on the frontier between British New York and French Canada. He participated in James Abercrombie's disastrous attack on Fort Carillon in 1758, leading one of the attacking columns. In 1759 he served under Jeffery Amherst in his capture of Carillon, and was rewarded with promotion to brigadier general and command of the 1760 expedition from Ticonderoga to Montreal, upon which he joined Amherst and Murray there at the capitulation of Canada in September 1760.